A few weeks ago, we featured a video of comedian John Branyan's Elizabethan-style retelling of The Three Little Pigs. Vocabulary.com has since had the opportunity to interview John Branyan and find out how he did it. Here's a transcript of our conversation.
Vocabulary.com: How in the world did you ever come up with that sketch? Do you have a Ph.D. in archaic language?
John Branyan: Heaven's no, I don't have a PhD. I wouldn't have been able to stay in school long enough.
Words have always been important in my family. My parents always used not big words but grown up vocabulary from when I was a kid. I always knew what words meant because of them.
Also, I read a lot. I think that people who read a lot can do anything. I tell this to my kids — the most important things to learn are communication skills. Because I read so much I get what words mean. I've seen them before or I recognize them in context.
VC: Where did you get the idea for the sketch?
JB: I started reading the classics, because I'd heard for years, "This is classic literature. These are the greats." I slogged all the way through Moby Dick. Treasure Island was a little better. As I was reading Dracula, I just starting thinking, "The way they talk to each other!" A woman walks into a room, and someone greets her, and the salutation would be like a paragraph. And it occurred to me, I wonder what fairy tales would have been like. Little kids back then, that kind of language was probably no big deal for them.
VC: And that's when you wrote the sketch?
JB: Well, the idea rolled around in my head for a couple of years before I got the guts to try it on stage.
VC: And how did it go the first time?
JB: This is how much I understand about comedy. I was convinced that not only would it not work, it would be a dismal failure. When I tried it at a church in Greenwood, IN, I told myself I would do the first line, they're going to stare at me, and then I'd bail out.
VC: And...?
JB: I did the first line, and it got this huge thunderous applause. I said to them, "Really?" I told them, "I know the whole thing, you want to hear it?" I got a standing ovation.
On the way home I was going, "I didn't really expect that, but I guess I'll try that again." The next night I had a show at a men's group. No women. Men are hard. I tried it there with no qualifying statement, such as "This is new," and it got a similar response. I had 500 guys standing up and applauding.
VC: Have you changed it since then?
JB: Not really. The YouTube video is pretty much the way it started, but I've tweaked a few words here and there.
VC: Okay, so back to brass tacks. How did you get to all those amazing words? Did you use a thesaurus?
JB: Yes. First I transcribed The Three Little Pigs story the way I remembered it. I went through and edited it for superfluous information. Then I went line by line and thought, What would that line be like in Elizabethan English?
I used about four different thesauruses. The best were the ones that put the word in context. When you see a word in a sentence, that helps a lot to know what it means. Also, it's helpful to see a list of two, three, or four other words that mean the same thing. Chances are I know one of those and can get to the word's meaning using the words I do already know.
VC: Were you laughing as you wrote it?
JB: No. I didn't think it was going to work. I thought it was just amusing to me.
VC: On the video, it looks like there are times when you are actually laughing along with the audience. What's happening there?
JB: Sometimes I get tickled because everybody else is laughing. And there's still a certain part of me that can't believe people are going with me down this long complex slide.
VC: Tell us about the picture book, A Triune Tale of Diminutive Swine, illustrated by Bret Hawkins.
JB: I would get asked for the script all the time from people who want to perform it and use it, and then I would get requests for a book. So we just did a children's book. It's been really well received.
VC: People are performing it?
JB: There are a couple of videos out on YouTube of kids have memorized it and are performing it. That's really satisfying to me.
VC: We think your video would be a great tool for teachers to use, to bring vocabulary learning to life for kids.
JB: I've had lots of teachers say that they've used it in their class, and students have been assigned to do the same thing with another fairy tale, or something along those lines.
As a thank you to John for his time, we've collected links to videos of kids performing his monologue, as well as students adapting The Three Little Pigs story in Elizabethan — and other — ways.
Performances of John Branyan's The Three Little Pigs
"The Three Little Pigs" (John Branyan) Performed by Becka...Shakespearean Style :)
The Three Little Pigs in Old English
Other Three Little Pigs Adaptations