Okay, doesn't this look like an album cover photo from some 80's indy band? There's even the disaffected bass player in the back. Actually, it's Angela, Aaron, Chris, and Kenna in a Directed Story With Genres.
This week, there are only 45 photos in the album! The excuse was that the camera's batteries ran out. Luckily, that allowed me to put a caption on all of them - although some of the captions are more snarky than informative.
We had 20 people in the class, and two of them were there for the first time: Aaron and Chris (both pictured, above). Both have had stage experience, and so there was no hesitation about getting up to participate. Welcome!
We started the evening with Character Intros, and then moved on to a hugely chaotic version of Zip Zap Zop. In this version, each person who was pointed to had to point out to two others, resulting in a population limited, geometric progression (!). It quickly progresses beyond what anyone can fully keep track of, but it's meant to exercise the limits of what you can keep track of. We ended our warms ups with One-Word Stories.
We moved on to Directed Story With Genres. No competition this time (that would have been Story Story Die). I wanted everyone to get some practice with directed transitions.
Next came Assigned Quirks. This is always a wacky piece and it's another exercise where the players see what makes a quirk interesting when performed.
We did a few rounds of Irish Drinking Song, but the camera must have been running low on power because there aren't any pictures from that part of the night. We also did a Three Line Drill, and everyone participated in that.
At the end, we got to the more difficult exercise of the night. Three people had to play a scene where they were each allowed only one line of dialog. The rest of the time they had to be silent, and not engage in some sort of pantomime. The real work is to practice silent communication: to express emotion without words. It was pretty challenging for most folks, but there were enough excellent examples that I think we all could see how effective this can be. It's a practical example of the improv concept Show, Don't Tell.
Once again, we ended the night with a round of Freeze Tag.