I think this picture captured the essence of the last class. It's from an Animal Transform scene with Scott as a baboon, Dustin as a hyena, Jim is a chick, Justin is an owl, and Mark is a termite. It was that kind of night. You'll find the rest of the 111 photos from the night at the album.
We had 30 people in this class, and I think it moved along fairly well for being so large. We had 6 people with us for the first time, and so welcome to Susana, Justin, Lilly, Ellah, Spenser, and Todd. We never had to coax any of the new folks onto the stage. They were ready to jump in with the rest of us and it was great to have such new and energetic players.
Warm-ups consisted of Character Intro, Enemy-Defender, Whoosh-Bang-Pow, and a set of 1-Word Stories. After a brief "Intro to Basic Improv" speech we were off to our first stage work of the night: a set of Yes And scenes. It's more of an exercise than a performance piece, and everyone enthusiastically set to work trying to sell the most ridiculous of products (although I'm assured that there really is musical underwear).
Next we got to a favorite of mine: Animal Transform. This piece is meant to explore characters and get a player away from their normal biases in creating a character. The range of animals was fairly diverse, but what I thought everyone did really well was stay away from weird, animal-human hybrids. Once folks transformed to humans, I thought they were all fairly believable humans. They had characteristics influenced by the animals, but were not part-animal. That's a subtlety often missed.
Next was a set of Irish Drinking Songs, and I think everyone redeemed themselves from the last week. I'm less concerned with how well everyone hits all the notes (although that is helpful) as I am that everyone keeps to a beat and gets their lines out (rhyme or no rhyme). That helped to make it fun.
I decided to forgo the advanced work this week and instead do one more large group exercise, Entrances and Exits. The scenes were quite fun and everyone kept their energy high even though it was the end of the night.
And so it was a very good night!