Class December 13, 2006

We've got a few pictures from the last class, thanks to Andy's skills with the camera. The lighting is pretty tough in our workshop space, but Andy keeps working the camera until we get some pretty nice shots, And thanks to the Picasa picture editor, I'm able to clean them up a bit for publication.

Li-at, Jennifer, Scott, and Scott are playing a Typewriter scene. We haven't played this in quite a while, but this was a nice scene taking place at a librarians' picnic.

This is also a typewriter scene with Karla playing an aide to Justin's governor. Marie is his wife who has walked in on their affair. I believe Scott is at the typewriter, but he's out of the picture.

In this scene, Scott, Justin, Patrick, and Li-At are playing Entrances and Exits. There's clearly something on the floor that has them fascinated.

Your basic Irish Drinking Song, with Marika, Neil, Li-At, and Karla. I'm sure there's a 5th singer, but I'm blocking the shot. I haven't decided whether the color balance in the picture is wrong, or Neil's blood pressure just spikes when he has to come up with a rhyme.

Finally, I decided to include this shot because it shows off Andy's skill with my (crappy) camera. Although I'm a bit uncomfortable seeing myself like this, I think it's a lovely shot. Thanks.

Caught in the Act Show, December 2, 2006

Caught In The Act will be putting on a show this coming Saturday December 2, 2006. We have some new players joining us this time, and it should be a great start to the holiday season. The particulars:

Saturday, December 2, 2006, 8:00 pm to 9:30 pm Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street Tickets are $5 at the door

We hope to see you there!

Back from Borneo

Hiya all - I'm back! Borneo was fabulous, very different than I expected, but easy, inexpensive, quite interesting, beautiful, and the food was fantastic. I was mainly in Malaysia and Brunei, and I can recommend it to just about anyone as a great vacation spot. I got back in time to sit in on Victoria's class last Wednesday (Novemeber 22). I think that was one of the best times I've had at an improv class in quite a while. I enjoy teaching, but I also enjoy just being a player - it gets my old rusty chops loosened up. Thanks to Victoria for filling in so beautifully! I've heard nothing but good things about every class she taught while I was away.

Starting this Wednesday, I'm back at the helm - hopefully with batteries recharged and a new focus on individualized feedback. More on that another time.

This coming Wednesday, November 29, we will be at the same address, but in Room C rather than in Jefferson Hall. I'll have signs up so it should be clear. It's only a one week substitution, we're back in Jefferson Hall the next week (December 6).

Victoria At The Helm

For the next few weeks, Victoria will be teaching the workshop. I'm on vacation until Thanksgiving (I'll be traveling in Malaysia) and this coming Wednesday November 1 the class is canceled. But the following Wednesdays will see Victoria shaking things up. Also, while I'm gone, this blog won't be updated much (or at all). I'll be taking along an improv book or two so I may have something to blog about. Otherwise, watch for a flood of posts just after Thanksgiving.

CLASS CANCELLED NOV. 1, 2006

We are canceling the class for Wednesday, November 1, 2006. The entire facility is being used for a rummage sale and they don't have an alternate space available. I wasn't able to find us another location (within budget and time constraints), so we'll cancel for this week. Sorry about any inconvenience.

Class October 25, 2006

Here are a few pictures from the last class, most of them taken by Andrew. I tried to color correct, but with mixed results, as you'll see. Our focus for the night was on physicalizing.

Scott made an appearance and is seen with Victoria in this Create an Object to Speak exercise. They are in a hospital's ER room, but I don't think they're dancing.

Marika, Allegra, and Jim are in another performance of the same exercise, but this took place in a jail. You can pretty much figure out the roles of each character just from this shot.

I like this shot of Neil. I'm not sure what scene this was taken from, but it captures his expression, well.

Okay, I had to throw this shot in. Ben and Dustin. You've gotta go with the interesting verticals in this scene.

I also like this shot. It looks like they are listening to the most interesting feedback.

Eric and I are in the middle of a scene that I know was all innuendo. Think Brokeback Mountain, but the topic of discussion is camp food.

A fine class with 16 people that night. It's funny how 16 in the class starts to feel like a small class. We took advantage of the situation to do some extended open scenes, and I was pleased with how well they all went.

Caught in the Act, October 21, 2006 Show

Here are a few photos from Caught in the Act's October 21, 2006 show. We had a good sized crowd and it was a fun show. These images are all captured from video, and may be a bit blurry.

The Gibberish Translator scene was pretty good with Neil translating a disagreement on cooking styles between Victoria's character and Mike's character. Needless to say, the gesticulation and miming was wildly beyond the mundane argument.

Here, Jim Andrew, and Neil are playing a Who Am I? scene where Jim is trying to determine his profession. For this scene, he was a baker, although the event being portrayed was the oddest bar-mitzvah.

This was a beautiful Opera scene, with Mike translating an Indian opera for Victoria and Andrew. Some great physical work.

This is a moment in the oddest scene that came out of Scenes From a Hat. Eric is a porcupine, and Jim, Andrew, and Victoria are international mosquitoes. Whatever it was, it was funny.

Now that's a song. In this case it was the Fight Song, but just look at that enthusiasm. Wonderful to watch.

This photo pretty much captures the essence of this Arms Through scene. It's a French cooking show, and yes, that is a raw chicken in "my" hands. They were Mike's hands, actually. And Neil was the one getting instruction. I'm not certain I can make clear how messy this scene became. Let's just say that I still smell of mustard.

Ah yes, Eric, Mike, and I are performing ballet. This was the hit of the Repeating Scene, Changing Genre scene. Nothing more amusing than three guys trying to dance ballet.

This is an Expert Panel with Magazines scene. Jim was from Good Housekeeping, Eric from Cat Fancier, Victoria from (I believe) Teen Life and I'm from The National Enquirer. Neil is the moderator.

Our final piece of the evening is, as usual, a Montage. This particular piece was the ending scene where we had hired people off the street to come to Neil's party.

There were quite a few more pieces in the show (19 total) but I thought this was a pretty good representation of what we did. A fine show.

Computer Problems

Last Tuesday morning (3:00 am), we had a very weird power surge at my home which blew out all of our computers. Although I was able to get access to the internet, the photos I had for a couple of blog posts were stuck on those systems. Just a couple of hours ago, we finally got my computer back up and operating. So I apologize for being out of touch, and I'll try and catch up by posting a few entries with photos.

Class October 18, 2006

We had 11 people in our class this last Wednesday. It wasn't that long ago when I would have considered that a BIG class. Compared to most of our classes for the last year, however, it seemed pretty small. We took advantage of the opportunity to do exercises and games in smaller groups. For the night, we focused on character work. "Character Intro", "Greetings", "Info Booth", "Class Photo to Scene", "Panel of Experts", and (of course) "Animal Xform" were the exercises and games that had everyone stretching character creation. Throw in "One Word Story", an "Irish Drinking Song", "Three Line Drill", and some "Freeze Tag" and we had a pretty busy night.

Only a couple of pictures from the class, I had to do a little tweaking to get them presentable.

I like "Animal Xform" because you can explore new charateristics for portraying a character. Here Todd (parrot), Mike (octopus), Patricia (possum), and Marika (donkey) are transforming from their assigned animals to humans influenced by the characteristics they found while acting out their "totem". I found the characters to be very believable, interesting, and often a stretch for the performers. They moved away from their usual character portrayals.

"Panel of Experts" allows each player to create a character appropriate for their assigned topic. In this scene, Eric is the moderator for a panel discussing hair. Mike player Luis, a French hair stylist working in New York. Jim played Stephen, Luis' long suffering assistant with wildly different philosophies on hair. And Justin created Jeff, a natural hair zealot who considers cutting hair to be morally offensive. He said my favorite line of the night, "Justice for Hair!"

The Right Way To Do A Scene

A couple of weeks ago, Bill Arnett at iO Chicago wrote up another interesting post, this time about "the right way to do a scene". His point: there really isn't a right way to do a scene. There are plenty of things you can do wrong, but there isn't some absolute best way for a scene to go. The process of building the scene is more important than the specific rules. And that process includes supporting the connections your fellow players make, no matter how wrong you may think they are.

Poster for Caught in the Act, October 21

Mike updated our poster for the Caught in the Act show, this Saturday Oct. 21 at Jefferson Hall.You can find the poster here, or click on the image.

The specifics for the show are:

Saturday October 21, 2006 8:00 pm to 9:30 pm Jefferson Hall 1525 Santa Barbara Street

Tickets: $5 at the door

Class October 11, 2006

When there aren't any pictures, there isn't as much to write about from a class. We were down to 17 players, which makes this class a relatively small one. And, we had no brand new players, everyone was returning with some experience. So, we did a few more 3 person games. In addition to the warm ups, we got in a nice "No P" game and a full round of "Playbook" (aka "Actor's Nightmare"). Everyone got in a song (a bit of a challenge this time) and we had the time to do a 3 line drill (long form) as well as a few rotations of a Montage.

My two favorite lines from the night:

"She wants you to nurse the damn thing", said by Jim to Allegra, quoting a message from her sister regarding a newly born child.

"I loved you once", said by Mike to Victoria in a Montage scene.

Santa Maria's Mission Improvable

I was just directed to a Santa Maria improv group named Mission Improvable by someone from work (thanks Rick). I recognize some of the players in the group from John Kinde's days running the Theatresports franchise up there, including Jeanne Sparks who was always a political oasis for me. Several of us from the Santa Barbara Improv Workshop used to travel up and perform with John's group. They always had large and enthusiastic crowds, and we had a good time performing with their players. Michael Passarelli is the director of this group, and according to an article in the Santa Maria Times, he's also the director of a San Luis Obispo based improv group. I'll try and get more info on that for another post.

In the meantime, Mission Improvable is performing regularly on the 2nd Friday of each month, with shows posted for the following dates: October 13, November 10, and December 8. They perform at the Accoustic Lounge, which is located upstairs in the Santa Maria Town Center East. That's the S.E. corner of Broadway and Main Street (Google Map).

They also teach a class on Monday nights from 5:30 to 7:00 pm at the same location.

Caught in the Act show will be October 21, 2006

Caught in the Act will be putting on a show! It's been a bit too long since the last show, and once again we'll be changing some of our players around. The particulars are: Saturday October 21, 2006 8:00 pm to 9:30 pm Jefferson Hall 1525 Santa Barbara Street

Tickets: $5 at the door

We'll be trying to be a bit more organized with our publicity for this one. Thanks Patricia!

Class October 4, 2006

Unfortunately, we don't have pictures from this class, so this will be a pretty short post. There were 18 people who attended with 3 of them new to our workshop and new to improv. Once again, the new players were quite good, enthusiatically jumping up to participate, and making some great choices on stage.

My favorite opening lines of the night was given by Mark: "Mom, I'm home! The cops let me go."

Experiences Finding a Game in a Scene

I want to direct you to series of posts by Ben Whitehouse in his blog Improvoker (which is a great name). He's going through a UCB (Upright Citizen Brigade) class in New York: Improv 201. At this point, there are only two entries, but the class is focusing on long form work and "finding the game". His first entry was from the 4th class in the session when he had an interesting insight into the concept of "finding" the game. Rather than it meaning he had to search out a game from the scene - artificially building a game from elements in the scene - he realized that it also meant discovering a game by chance or happenstance.

Along with that realization he thought about the concept of finding "a" game rather than "the" game. This seemed to eliminate some resistance he was having to these "cerebral" concepts in long form work. His post is well written and insightful.

His second entry focused on the second beat of a Harold scene. This second beat is the second round of scenes that follow the first set of establishing scenes. It should carry forward the games found in the the first beat, not necessarily the plots. He gives a good example of this and the post is worth a read for some more insights he has into the Harold long form.

Recital September 30, 2006

Here they are: the 15 screen shots I've collected from last night's recital. I laughed almost as hard replaying the video as I did during the show. I tried to pick out a representative frame for each piece, and the only games I missed were those that didn't really look good in a single, static image - like Tag Out Story.

Opening and Warm Up

I was pretty pleased with this opening shot, until I realized I was missing Andy, Victoria, and Mike. They get enough exposure from Caught in the Act, so I'm glad all the other players have a good clear shot (well, and me of course). From the left we have Neil, Justin, Marika, Eric, Alan, Scott, Patricia, Allegra, Teri, and Ben.

Pillars

We had two great volunteer word-givers from the audience. Mike and Neil were given "laundromat" as their starting location, and at this point, the word "twit" was given out to be applied to Neil. I think our volunteer word giver surprised and embarrassed herself. Neil, on the other hand, is in a pretty typical pose.

Story Story Die

This is the start of the piece, so everyone is still in play. Andy is starting off, and he had been given something like "ineffectual evil" as his emotion/attitude. Victoria, Eric, Alan (from behind), Teri, Patricia, and Ben round out the players in this frame.

Irish Drinking Song

Teri, Victoria, Patricia, and Andy belted out this song about Irish immigration in the 19th century ... oh no, wait. This one was about NASCAR.

I have it on good authority (well, the one Irish person who attended the show) that this isn't really an Irish song.

Really?!

Alphabet

Mike, Justin, and Scott were given the set up "prison camp". At this point in the scene, the warden (Scott) is trying to get on with a pottery class while the prisoners are spending a lot of time talking about escaping.

Almost all of the letters in the alphabet were used in this scene, although I do not guarantee that they were used in the order they are normally given.

Open Scene

Andy and Allegra had "nurses" as their starter. So, of course Allegra was stealing drugs (and anything else she could get her hands on) from the hospital. In this frame, Andy, the holy and pure co-worker, has discovered that she has tracks on her arm.

Our shows are all about providing life lessons for the kids.

It's odd how many scenes that night involved drug abuse in one form or another. Not normally a theme for us, they weren't particularly out of place. Just noticeably different.

Surprise Lines

Marika, Allegra, and Ben were given "train station" as their location. I think the surprise lines were delivered fast and furious, just like they should be. It was a good scene.

My favorite surprise line was "I'm 64". I just found it delightfully mundane.

Puppets

For me, this was the funniest scene in the whole show. It was physical, situational, and Neil played his positions with some wonderfully simply but appropriate lines. From left to right, we have our volunteer puppeteer Mark, players Scott and Neil, and our second volunteer Kelly. By this point, Kelly was lost in hysterical laughter and was basically rough-handling Neil around the stage. Scott continued to set him up, and Neil just played out lines that addressed the wacky poses Kelly was putting him in. I finally stopped the scene because I couldn't breath anymore.

Emotional Zones

This scene had the funniest single line of the night. In this shot, Teri is showing a cow's tail to Eric and Andy. The setup was a cattle drive, and Eric's character had been preparing steak for dinner. But, Andy's character was a vegetarian. Teri's character, trying to be helpful, said "...try this tail, it's almost a vegetable".

Hmm, it was MUCH funnier in the show.

Continuing Scene, Changing Genre

In this shot, Victoria, Scott, and Neil are playing their scene as a Film Noir. The setup was the location "amusement park". I love the way Victoria is just vamping it up. Look at that pose...and in sneakers!

This scene went on to be about incest. As I mentioned before, we are nothing if not educational.

Expert Panel

Sorcery was the topic for this expert panel made up of Justin, Allegra, Ben, and Marika. Neil did a great job as MC. In this frame, Justin is discussing finger painting and sorcery. Allegra's character is trying to hit on Ben's character, and Marika is contemplating being 300 years old.

My favorite moment during this scene was when Neil dealt with a question from the audience that was off track. He claimed there was a technical violation because the asker hadn't raised her hand, allowing him to avoid the having to get an answer to the question. Nice!

Open Scene

Eric and Mike were given "hairdresser" as a profession, and in this shot they are discussing the Parisian Finger Cut.

I liked the physicalizing that occurred during this scene. The chair helped a lot as both players got in and out of it throughout the scene. Eric was really expansive in his miming. It was wonderful to watch him dunk his head into a water bassin while washing his own hair.

By the end of the scene the two characters had switched roles, with Mike's character giving Eric's the haircut.

Step Out Musical

At this point in their scene, Victoria, Andy, and Allegra were dancing their way off stage in the final number of the musical.

Their scene had involved a mother that had "tried everything" to raise her kids, like abandon one and spoil the other. They finally came together at the end and this final group song was about teamwork. It involved a lot of stomping and train noises as they worked their way off stage. It really worked much better on stage than it sounds from this description.

Really.

Switch Dubbing

I'm sorry this frame is so blurry, because this was one of the cleverest moments of the night. Eric had timed the rhythms of my calling "switch" for this scene, and he set up a big kiss just before I switched him and Victoria into the scene. So he was celebrating his success before a big smooch on stage with Victoria. Nice.

Final Bows

Okay, in this somewhat blurry shot, captured from the video of our final bow, I've gotten at least a smidge of every player's face. From left to right: Patricia, Mike, Justin, Eric, Scott, Teri, Ben, Victoria, Allegra, Marika, Alan, Neil, and Andy. All are taking a well deserved bow at the end of a very successful show.

Class September 27, 2006

Wow! We just topped last week's attendance with 22 people in class last night, including me. Four of the players were brand new to improv, and they still jumped up and participated in just about everything. The camera got passed around a fair amount. There were at least 4 people that I saw taking pictures. I'm trying to keep the total number of pictures in a post down to a reasonable amount, so I'm looking into how I can provide a slide show utility. There are a lot of fun pictures, even after I throw out all the really blurry ones.

Victoria, Ben, Scott, and Marika are in a Continuing Scene, Changing Genre game. It probably goes without saying that they are in the middle of a Mystery.

Teri, Neil, Brian, and Dustin are playing the same game, but from the looks of this picture, they are performing as a Children's Show.

I like the expressions in this picture. Mark looks scared and Karla looks really mad at Eric's Dad (sorry, I don't remember his name). Mike just looks lost. The location was a drug store, but I believe that this segment was being played as a mystery.

This was one of my favorite moments of the night. I don't remember the location, but Betts, Jim, Patricia, and Allegra are performing this part of the scene as a light opera. It was a very fun piece and just look at those expressions.

Here, Andrew, Scott, Justin, and Eric (son of Eric's dad), are also performing in a Continuing Scene, Changing Genre (I had clear pictures for all 5 iterations of this game, so I was able to cover everyone in a picture!). I don't know if this is the part where they were performing an Opera, but that was certainly the most memorable genre!

Even though there were a lot of other great pictures from the night, I wanted to include this shot because I think it's just a sweet capture of these two very funny women.

I think we had a very full night, and we also had a chance to prepare for the Recital this coming Saturday. Don't forget, the show starts at 8:00, this Saturday September 30.

IT WILL BE FUN

Just Say It!

Once again, Bill Arnett at iO Chicago wrote up a great post about scene work. This time he discusses the problem with being coy about an object or situation in a scene. We've all seen the problem where some object in a scene is described in indirect terms: how amazing or disturbing it is, how desirable it is, or how important it is. But, defining it is put off to somehow "build tension". Instead of building the relationship between the characters, we spend time focusing on some thing in the scene. When we find out the big "IT", can it possibly pay off on all the build up? Just say what it is and get on with the scene. As always, Bill says it to much better effect. Check it out.

Santa Barbara Improv Website Status

The Santa Barbara Improv website is back up and running. We are now officially hosted at www.sbimprov.com, so be sure that your links are addressed correctly. I still have the members.cox site, but it should be directing you to the new home page. Just a quick note to warn folks that I'm going to be making more changes to the website over the next week or two. Some exciting things will be happening around the Santa Barbara Improv scene and I'm trying to get some infrastructure in place to support it all. This improv blog should be accessible with the latest announcements and updates, so keep checking back!