Class August 23, 2006

I brought the camera ... really, I did! It was broken ... no, really ... ask Andy

Rats!

So, no pictures this week. Really unfortunate because there was some great physical work. I think just about everyone came up with interesting characters for the Class Picture scenes, and several had great physical traits. And, Emotional Zone kept everyone moving, so the stage picture really held our interest while it kept changing.

Okay, and now for my favorite line of the evening (or at least the most notable). Eric threw this out in the middle of a Repeating Scene Changing Genre game:

I been through you like a man with a cream puff in the big one

I believe it was delivered in a Film Noir version of an office scene

Back in Control

David Razowky has a great little article discussing what to do when a scene has spun out of control. To summarize:

• Make sure each line of dialog starts with "You ...", keeping the focus on each other
• Be honest when confused or lost
• Tell your partner how you feel about them
• Slow the scene down - allow silences and work the environment
• Don't let anything get by you - react to everything

I like every one of his suggestions, and they should be part of any good scene right from the start.

Caught in the Act, August 19 Show

Last Saturday's Caught in the Act show was great fun. We had 5 players for this one: Andy, Jim, Mike, Patrick, and myself (Alan). We got 18 games into the hour and half show. We always video tape the shows for the players to review and so here are a few images I was able to capture:

This was from a Slideshow scene. I've got to complement Jim for taking the pose on his head, and holding it for Patrick's explanation. All I kept thinking was "Hurry up! Jim's gonna pass out"

Eric volunteered to be the Frozen Audience member. As I recall, Jim and Andy were endowing him with trying to pick out a Victoria's Secret gift for their mother.

Oh yeah, Patrick was describing the viscous lion that Andy needed to tame as I was petting it. From the Blind Dubbing scene.

Our two volunteers, Krista and Mikki, were providing Patrick and Andy with words for their Pillars scene about earthquake safety.

Hmm, it will be hard to appreciate this Movie Review scene without having been there. Jim had just consumed Andy's arm while Patrick was singing Hungarian revolutionary songs. Mike and I were reviewing their little art film.

In this shot from a Montage scene, we were all consuming Andy's fresh-out-of-the-oven baked goods as he was getting ready to douse us with a glass of water.

There's no way the humor translates from my description of these still shots. Still, it was nice for me to relive them while trying.

And don't we all just look great in black.

Class August 16, 2006

Well, no photos from this class; I forgot the camera. Ah well, next time. We had 5 new players show up this week. They came with a variety of stage experience but not much improv. That made for a pretty fun class, although with 16 people in the workshop right now, our range of experience is pretty broad.

We did a few more large group pieces, including 5 Letter Word, Switch Dubbing, and Entrances & Exits. My favorite line for the night (and I appologize for not writing down who delivered it):

My Aunt likes the suppositories

Class August 9, 2006

Another large class, this time about 16 people. And, the camera became a group tool that anyone could pickup and use to snap a shot or two. So, we had a pretty good selection from the class. Early on, we went through an exercise of hitch-hiker, and this is a shot of Metro, Patricia, and Scott.

I don't remember what characteristic Patricia brought into this round, but I appreciate Scott's sneering driver.

I included this shot of Allegra, because I wonder if she's like this when just driving around town?

Plus, I really dig the red racing stripe on the shoes.

I found this shot in the middle of a group of scene pictures, and I think I just like Andy's noggin. You can see Karla in front and Mike behind, with a half shot of Patrick's head. I'm going to assume that Mike is just squinting, and not sneering at what he's seeing.

And just what is Colby doing there, under Andy's chin?

Okay, this one was shot during a Pillars scene, with Scott and Mike as pillars.

I'd say that Shirley is desperately trying to not react to Jim.

Metro is delivering the next line of an Irish Drinking Song. I think Eric is swinging a beer stein, rather than taking a swing at Metro. Patricia and Patrick are preparing for their lines and yes, that is my hand, directing with a speed surpassing the capabilities of most digital cameras.

There were some other pictures, but I think that's a pretty good representation of the class. Thanks to all the players who picked up the camera and shot a few.

My favorite line of the evening was Ben's, who in response to his partner saying something like "...look at you striding in here all full of yourself" responded with "Yes, I do like to stride".

Improv Jam

Okay, generally I focus on Improv as performance, typically comedy improv. However, this just caught my fancy, and I felt like it needed to be shared. It involves an additional (or more correctly, an occasional) pastime of mine.

The public announcement is so well written, I'm going to be lifting direct quotes from the webpage:

The Fallen Fruit collective will conduct a Public Jam, in which they collaborate with the citizens of Los Angeles in a communal jam-making session...

The kinds of jam we make will improvise on the fruit that people provide...

This will be happening in LA on Sunday, August 20.

Caught in the Act, August 19

It's official. Caught in the Act will have a show on Saturday, August 19. It'll be our usual format, starting at 8:00 pm and lasting about an hour and a half. I don't have a list of the players, yet. I'll be putting up a page for the show and sending out an email announcement later this week.

Class August 2, 2006

Pretty big class on Wednesday night with 16 people. Five were new to the class, and most of those came with no improv experience, so we had a night of good, basic work. Andy grabbed the camera, so we have pictures from actual scene work from this workshop! This first one shows Jim and Allegra during a Switch-Dubbing scene. Andre was off stage dubbing Allegra, and Patrick was dubbing Jim. I believe this was a Paraguayan film, involving a beauty shop and a barber. I'll let you figure out the roles from the picture.

The second shot shows Mike, Allegra, and Eric (one of the new players) in an Entrances and Exits scene. I don't have many notes on that scene, although I believe there was a ficus plant, a knife, and a light involved.

Unfortunately, most of the other shots were pretty blurry. I selected thesetwo as the most interesting of the acceptable shots.I think the new improvisers did remarkably well. They were all willing to get on stage and try whatever I threw at them, so there was a lot of trust between the players. We held off of any of the more advanced, open scene work, but that had as much to do with it being such a large class as anything else. We'll try to work in some of the open scene work next week.

Another interesting exercise ...

Hmm, another interesting exercise from Bill Arnett at I.O. I really like the way he deconstructs improv and gets to nice little nuggets of improv insight. In his short article, he talks about the tendency to overly focus on coming up with a funny line, rather than staying true to the character we are creating. The lines and actions of our characters are what define them to the audience and they should come from the context of the character. To work on this, his exercise is to ask a player to name 6 things a character might say given their job or relationship. What are 6 things a mother would say? An elementary school teacher? And be specific. Don't give a line that someone from ANY profession would say.

Plan on seeing something based on this next Wednesday...

Class July 26, 2006

Look! A picture from the class! If only it were an actual picture from an actual scene. No, I have to admit that this was posed. Thanks to Ben and Karla for taking pity on me when, after the class had just ended, I once again realized I had no pictures. Damn. Anyway, we had a fine class, with 12 folks making a bunch of improv goodness.

For the three line drill, my instruction was that the opening line had to be something that the player had actually said or heard in his or her life. We were to start with that bit of reality and see how the scene would open. VERY COOL! Some of the best scene starts occurred, with really powerful lines and strong reactions. And the wants that the players found were great choices. I'd say that I wanted to see every scene all the way through.

We'll try this exercise again sometime.

Oh, here's another candid shot.

Puppet Improv

Okay, how the heck did I miss this?!? Apparently, at ComicCon, the folks at the Jim Henson Company put on a performance called Jim Henson's Puppet Improv. Here's a clip from the show. After the introduction, they do a translation improv game. The sound isn't great, but you get the idea. I was astounded at their ability to do a nice improv scene, do the puppeteering, and keep those characters physicalizing their reactions. Sweet!

The Correct Way to Improvise

Bill Arnet is an experienced improviser at I.O. Chicago (Improv Olympic) and wrote a short piece about various ways of approaching an improv scene, especially at the opening. It definitely got me thinking, and I plan on trying his "slice from typical life" opening this Wednesday during the last hour. By the way, the heading for this entry is the name of his article, not a policy of the SBIW.

Bomb Scare Actually Second City Prop

This is a goofy story with an improv twist. Apparently, a discarded prop from a Second City improv show was mistaken for a bomb in Chicago.

Auction Complete

That group auctioning off the right to name their performing troupe has successfully completed their auction. The GoldenPalace.com (an on-line gambling site) had the highest bid ($1,385) and has named the group: The GoldenPalace.com Ha Rollers

Ouch! Well, the publicity probably made it all worthwhile.

Back in Town

Whoa! It's been over a week since my last post. I've been hosting family and traveling so no time for keeping up on the latest improv news. I went down to the San Diego ComicCon, and in addition to all the geeky things that happened, I ran into several improvisers. A couple from Vancouver are working in LA, and they'd been meaning to come up to Santa Barbara for some R&R. Hopefully they'll drop in to play sometime. I missed the class last Wednesday, but Victoria took center stage and I'm sure it was a fun night. When I get the low-down, I'll make another post. Maybe someone else was better at getting a few pictures.

In the meantime, several items of interest have come across my screen, and I'll try and get them up over the next couple of days.

Hammer & Tickle

Okay, Improv is not about the jokes. We work to avoid "going for the joke" in a scene. The humor comes from the situation, interaction, and relationship. We all get that, right? Good, because now I want to talk about an interesting article that won't really help your improv skills, but instead discusses jokes ... communist jokes. As in jokes told IN communist countries. Wow, did they have some dark sense of humor. This is the lead joke from the article:

A man dies and goes to hell. There he discovers that he has a choice: he can go to capitalist hell or to communist hell. Naturally, he wants to compare the two, so he goes over to capitalist hell. There outside the door is the devil, who looks a bit like Ronald Reagan. "What's it like in there?" asks the visitor. "Well," the devil replies, "in capitalist hell, they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives."

"That's terrible!" he gasps. "I'm going to check out communist hell!" He goes over to communist hell, where he discovers a huge queue of people waiting to get in. He waits in line. Eventually he gets to the front and there at the door to communist hell is a little old man who looks a bit like Karl Marx. "I'm still in the free world, Karl," he says, "and before I come in, I want to know what it's like in there."

"In communist hell," says Marx impatiently, "they flay you alive, then they boil you in oil, and then they cut you up into small pieces with sharp knives."

"But?� but that's the same as capitalist hell!" protests the visitor, "Why such a long queue?"

"Well," sighs Marx, "Sometimes we're out of oil, sometimes we don't have knives, sometimes no hot water?�"

The article is somewhat academic, discussing the history and reasons for the jokes. But it is peppered with examples of the jokes being discussed, and most are of the type that cause you to cover your mouth as you chuckle. A bit surprising, a bit tragic, self deprecating, and definitely funny.

I guess it appeals to me because the humor lies in THEIR experience, although it is recognizable to me. And that it is humor coming out of the difficulties that they face. There's some parallel with the humor that comes out of really good improv: a reflection of the difficulties in life that are absurd, but recognizable. At least, that's what I find most memorable in really good improv.

So maybe this was more about improv than I realized.

Class July 12, 2006

We had a fairly big class last night; 15 people total. With that big a group, we don't get a lot of open scene work done, but I think everyone is really improving on the three line drill. I find myself wanting to see more of the scenes fully played out. Depending on time and size of the group, I'll do more of the three-line-drill to full-scene exercise. Once again, I brought the camera, but did not take a single picture DURING the class. I snapped a few with people after class, but someone made a very good suggestion that I hand off the camera at the beginning of class. Let someone else shoot pictures. Next time.

Actually, speaking of next time, I'll be out of town next week so Victoria will be teaching the July 19 class. I hear nothing but good things after she teaches (uh-oh...) so plan on attending.

Reaction vs. Response

I just read an interesting article by Jeff Miller titled Emotional Truth in Improvisation. He discusses the problem I see in a lot of improv scenes (mine very much included) where the player is so focused on an interesting response, that he or she loses any real (or believable) emotional reaction to an offer. He deconstructs the Reaction from the Response to an offer, and I think gives a good structure for getting away from over-intellectualizing in a scene. It's a short article, and well worth reading.

Improv Everywhere

I came across the Improv Everywhere website which organizes what I would call "street improv" in NYC. In their own words, "Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places". I have a real fondness for this form of guerrilla theater, and envy/admiration for what they've already accomplished. I found the court document from their No Pants Case interesting and a bit reassuring that the justice system can allow for some random acts of fun.

Improv Glossary

There's a pretty good glossary of improv terms at the Improv Encyclopedia. Some of the definitions are a little thin and some are circularly referential (what is advancing?), but overall it's got a lot of good information.