Class July 18, 2007

Robyn, Li-At, Mark, Justin, and Karla in a Ritual scene - sweet! The album of pictures from this class is posted with comments so head on over there. This will be another short summary post.

After our warm-ups, we did a few rounds of ABCs, and everyone kept the pace up nicely. Then came a series of Ritual scenes where small groups showed us how to celebrate several holidays that no one had heard of before (Broken Zipper Day?). Irish Drinking Songs were sung, and then we ended with a set of Switch Dubbing scenes.

Class July 11, 2007

Once again, a great photo with everyone having a good time. Pictured are Ben, Kenna, Allegra, Ben, and Dustin singing the Irish Drinking Song. So, it's been awhile since my last update and I have a few workshops to catch up on. I thought I was done with summaries, but circumstances overtook me, and I'll be doing a quick summary of the next three classes.

The July 11th workshop has an album available with the pictures taken that night, so check that out.

After our warm-up exercises, we started working on Zelig, and then moved on to a series of 5-Letter Word scenes. Next came several rounds of Worlds Worst. We all sang the Irish Drinking Song, and then the more advanced 3-Line Drills. We ended on some rounds of Freeze Tag.

Caught In The Act, Next Show August 4, 2007

The next Caught In The Act show will be:

Saturday, August 4, 2007

8:00 pm to 9:30 pm

Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street

$5 for tickets at the door

Class June 27, 2007

An Irish Drinking Song with an enthusiastic audience! Andy, Kathy, Ben, Jim, and Ben are singing for Justine and Susannah with Alan directing. Hopefully, this will be the last Workshop report that is just a brief overview of the night. With this entry, I'm finally caught up on the backlog. Don't forget to check out the album of pictures for the night.

We started with Counting Words scenes (well, the first scenes after our warm-ups). After that, we did something fairly new for us: 3-Headed Conversation. Six people play 2 characters, where each character consists of 3 people talking one word at a time (a la 3-Headed expert). It created some very interesting conversations.

We sang an Irish Drinking Song and then had a chance to try a set of Sound Effects scenes with random, prerecorded sounds. That went pretty well and helped me straighten out some problems from our last attempt.

We finished with a set of Entrances and Exits. There was a lot of great frenetic activity in those scenes.

And that brings us current on the workshop reports!

Class June 20, 2007

We had 19 people in class this night, and it's amusing to me that we consider that a small class. This picture shows Marika, Kathy, Dustin, and David in a Defining Environment scene. You can see Sol's legs behind David. Once again, for the sake of catching up on my backlog of workshop postings, I'm going to briefly summarize the games we did for the night. The pictures from the night are collected in an album that you can view.

After our warm-ups, we did a set of Define Environment scenes. I think everyone had a good time with those scenes, especially the one where Andy started off dancing on a stripper's pole. Lots of tippers in that scene.

Next was Attitudes in which everyone did well, followed by our singing a Ho-Down. That also went well.

The advanced portion of the night saw our traditional 3-Line Drill, and once again we were able to fit in a Montage.

Thanks again for another fine night.

Class June 13, 2007

This picture is from our warm-up, the 1-Word Story, with Mark, Adam, Sharon, Mike, and Tina. The pictures from this week's class (which are in an album) are a bit different. There were very few large group photos, and a lot of individual shots. I've gotten pretty far behind in the workshop reports, so I'm just going to recap the work that we did so that I can catch up.

The night's work was pretty traditional. Our scene work started with a set of 5-Letter Word scenes and then moved on to Counting Words. We sang a set of Irish Drinking Songs. We practiced a set of 3-Line Drills and then we had the chance to work on open scenes with a Montage structure. I was pretty happy that we got to the Montage because the more experienced players have been needing to work on their open scene skills.

And that's a brief review of the night.

Caught In The Act, Next Show July 7, 2007

The next Caught In The Act show will be:

Saturday, July 7, 2007

8:00 pm to 9:30 pm

Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street

$5 for tickets at the door

July 4th Class CANCELLED

Based on an informal poll of some of the class, I've decided to cancel the workshop scheduled on the 4th of July. I'm sorry we didn't get this announed earlier, but I just hadn't realized that the 4th fell on a Wednesday this year. We'll be back for our regular workshop on July 11!

Class June 6, 2007

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!

Class May 30, 2007

A bit late on the posting for this class, but the pictures are now available in the on-line album: all 140 of them! This shot was from the 1-Word Story warm up at the beginning of class. The night started off with a fairly standard set of warm-ups: Character Introductions, Pass the Clap, and 1-Word Story. Scene work started with a pretty good set of Tag Out Stories, and I think all the groups kept their energy accelerating through their scenes.

Next was a series of Superhero scenes. I thought the Superhero names were very clever (Black-Eyed Susan, Mismatched Lingerie Man, and Mrs. Grumpy Pants being my favorites) and everyone took their superhero name endowment to heart really well.

A series of Panel of Experts scenes followed with the topics Beekeeping, Vacations, Glass, and Sororities/Fraternities. Pretty good characters, and we need to work on getting those characters to have interesting history with and feelings about each other.

Also that night, we tried to introduce a song that's pretty new for most of the players - the 50's Do-wop Song. Let's just say that was a challenge for me as well as for all the players. What it pointed out (to me anyway) was that we've become rather accustomed to the Irish Drinking Song and need the challenge of a new piece to get us out of our complacency. We will revisit this song in later workshops and work out the kinks!

We ended the night on a Double Blind Freeze Tag. I like this version of Freeze Tag because it forces everyone into a scene, and forces everyone to call out a "freeze". Both skills are needed to participate in the more traditional Freeze Tag.

And that was the night!

Caught In The Act, Next Show June 2, 2007

The next Caught In The Act show will be:

Saturday, June 2, 2007

8:00 pm to 9:30 pm

Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street

$5 for tickets at the door

Class May 23, 2007

I don't know why I find this image so appealing, but I do. In the background, I'm setting up a Playbook scene with Sol, Mark, and Ben. But there's Mike, looking good for the camera. The other pictures from this class (127 of them!) can be found in the album.

We had a smaller and more experienced group this night, so we got in a few more smaller group scenes. After a warm-up of Pass the Clap and 1-Word Story, we started the scene work with some Last Letter scenes. My favorite scene in this set took place at the Renaissance Faire with Eric, Mark, and Andre. Mark, who was trying to play a woman in the scene, had a unique way of emphasizing his non-intuitive gender.

We then moved on to a series of Sound Effects scenes which I intended to be based on a set of random, recorded sound effects. For a couple of scenes this worked wonderfully. But then, the battery ran out on my ipod, and we were left with the more traditional, mouth based sounds. However, I think everyone agreed that the scenes with the technical effects were great - so we'll be trying that again.

We moved on to three person Playbook scenes (also known as Actor's Nightmare). There were some very intense scenes in that set, and since I'm sure that describing those scenes won't do them justice, I'm not even going to try. But I'm really glad those scenes happened.

We also got in a round of Irish Drinking Songs. Since this is an experienced group, I'm sorry we didn't try a new song. I believe it's time to bring back a few of the more difficult song rotations to keep challenging all the players.

We got in a set of 3-Line Drills, and then we did a few rounds of Montage. As I mentioned last week, it's time that we started using some of the skills we've been practicing and move into multi-scene structures. This week, we re-introduced basic scene transitions and sequences of open scenes. We'll work on these structures for the next few weeks.

That's it for this week!

Class May 16, 2007

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.

Class May 9, 2007

I like this picture of the class, taken during a warm-up exercise called Non-Sequitur. Once again, I've taken the rather large lot of pictures (102) from the class and posted them in a Google Album. I haven't labeled them all, but I think I've identified enough to name everyone that attended the class. There were 18 of us in the workshop, and we started the night with the character heavy, Story Intro. We followed up with Non-Sequitur and then a couple of one-word stories.

Scene work led off with a Hitchhiker rotation in which everyone participated. Then we got to Exaggerated Body Parts, which is a piece we haven't done in quite awhile. It takes some time, and I usually wait until we have a small class. Nowadays 18 people qualify as a small class. I'm glad we got to Exaggerated Body Parts because it's a chance to see what makes an interesting quirk, and how to make a quirk intersting. And, I think everyone did well with the challenge.

Then we moved on to the ever popular Irish Drinking Song. There are a lot of fun pictures from that exercise in the album, so be sure to check it out.

My favorite part of the night was a long-form exercise where everyone was assigned a profession. We don't often get to playing a series of scenes with the same characters being revisited, and so this was a fine way to apply some of the skills developed with the 3-Line Drill. We'll do more of these multi-scene pieces in the future

We ended the night with some Freeze Tag.

I'm behind in my postings, so I'll end this one here and just thank everyone for another fun class.

Class May 2, 2007

Lorien, Eric, Allegra, David and Scott are captured in full, coordinated swing during their Irish Drinking Song. Even Lorien, mugging for the camera, is in a leaning pose consistent with the others. It's a bit of stage magic to see everyone working together like this. We're going to try something a little different for this week's class blog entry. This will be the only picture from the class that I'll post here. The rest of the pictures (142!) are in an online album. I'd like to try putting the time I'd normally spend preparing the photos for the blog into adding some new content.

And now, a quick review of Wednesday night. First off I want to welcome David who came to his first night at the workshop. We started the night with our usual Character Introductions. We followed up with a quick Out Of The Box pantomime exercise, Zip-Zap-Zop, and then One Word Story. For stage work, we started with Gift Giving, followed by Alliteration, and then 185. I was particularly impressed that everyone got up to participate in 185, even though there was some initial resistance. Some of these pieces look particularly difficult, but once you actually step out and try them, they get easier with practice.

Next, we got to the ever popular Irish Drinking Song. This is another good example of a piece that looks difficult at first, but is actually a skill you get better at with practice.

We moved on to the 3-Line Drill, and everyone participated in that one also. We've been working on it a lot lately, and I think it teaches some valuable skills. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time to get through the whole class, and it leaves us without the chance to use those skills in some open form improv - so we may skip the drill next week, and do some open scenes. We'll see what the class looks like on Wednesday.

We ended the night with almost everyone staying after hours to do a little Freeze Tag. I love ending the night with that piece and I'm glad to see that folks clamor for it.

I'm interested in your thoughts on the blog changes, and directions you'd like to see it go. Feel free to leave a comment, or write to me, or talk to me after a class (or before if you're brave).

Class April 25, 2007

I really like pictures like this one. It captures the best part of the workshop: everyone having fun while performing. In this case, Mark, Li-At, David, Jonathan, and Angela are singing an Irish Drinking Song. We had a good sized class of about 20 people, and over 90 pictures were taken in the course of the evening. I've picked out 10 pictures to display in this post, but I'm making the rest available in a public album. This is the first time I'm trying to post an entire album, so let me know how it works for you and whether there are any problems. I'll post more albums if this one is well received.

We started the evening off with a Tag Out Story. Here, Mark, Scott, Mark, Ann, and Joanna are telling their story with the title The Warehouse. This exercise is normally done with all the players in the scene lined up behind the person telling the story. However, in this photo Scott seems to be completely distracted by Joanna's storytelling.

Here we've switched to a 5 Letter Word scene. Joanna, Li-At, and Angela are working with the word HORSE to construct their scene. I like that there's an argument going on behind Li-At as she washes her hands. It makes an interesting stage picture.

This is a Countdown scene with Li-At, Marika, Ben, and Jonathan. The setting is a kindergarten playground, and at this moment Marika, a teacher, is giving cigarettes to the kids on the playground. Let's just say that this wasn't a "role model" scene.

This is another Countdown scene, and Mike, David, Angela, and Jim are doing some home repair. The Countdown scene gives the players 1 minute to create a scene from the audience suggestion. Then, they have to replay the scene in 30 seconds. Then 15 seconds. Then 8, 4, and finally 2 seconds. It gets pretty hectic.

The third Countdown scene of the night has Scott, Eric, Mark, and Ann all on Noah's Ark. At this moment, they are shoveling manure over the side of the ark. As the scenes get shorter, the players have to look for fewer and fewer beats that can still reproduce the main thread of the scene.

In general, I really like the Countdown exercise because it forces a lot of physical action when the scenes get shorter. Here, Joan, Sol, Kenna, and Scott are farmers and there's a fire. You can see that by the time this shot was taken, the action was pretty intense.

The last Countdown scene of the night had Marika, Joanna, Mark, and Alan drawing at the beach. We did a pretty good job at being mellow in this scene. Even when we got down to the the 2 second scene there wasn't a lot of physicalizing.

Ah yes, the Irish Drinking Song with Scott W., Joanna, Ann, Scott S., and Jim. At the moment shown in this photo, it's Ann's turn to be singing her line. Once again Scott S. looks bored. But, in this case I know he's furiously thinking about his next line. Furiously. Thinking.

One more Irish Drinking Song, but for this one we had a couple of new players singing on stage for the first time. Tannis, Mike, Eric, Sol, and Joan are singing away, and although every one of them seems to be on a completely different beat, It was a fun song with a lot of good rhymes.

Again, I only picked out 10 pictures for this post out of the 90 or so I had from the class. You can check out the rest at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sbimprov/SBImprov42507

Let me know what you think.

Caught In The Act, Show May 5, 2007

The next Caught In The Act show will be:

Saturday, May 5, 2007

8:00 pm to 9:30 pm

Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street

$5 for tickets at the door

Class April 18, 2007

It was good to be back this week. Everyone who reported on Mike and Jim's class from last week said those that two did a fabulous job, so thanks to you both for filling in. I don't have pictures from that class, so we'll jump right in on this week's report. We'll start off with this picture of Li-At, Scott, and Dustin. They're playing a game of Touch to Speak, and in this scene they are astronauts. The basic rule is that anyone who wants to speak must first touch another player.

Here, Angela, Patrick, and Andy are also in a Touch to Speak scene, but in this case they are cattle wranglers. One of the interesting challenges you can give yourself in this scene is to find different ways to touch the other players. I particularly like the dual in this scene which allowed them to speak while standing back-to-back.

Victoria, Justin, and Mike are dog-walkers in this scene. Nothing subtle about this contact; they went right into a clinch.

This exercise also encourages a lot more physical work rather than pure dialog. And, if the scene wasn't enough encouragement, I tried to emphasize that aspect of the scene with a little side coaching ("less chatter!").

Here we've switched to Spoon River. This game is about narrative, and has very little physical interaction. I've always been fascinated by this scene structure, because it's about working together to create a gruesome, mass death. Jim, Sol, Mike, and Kathy are discussing how some scissors, a cat, and a ficus all came together to kill all four of their characters.

Another Spoon River scene with Dustin, David, Mark, and Marika. This one involved a surf board, a church, some holy wine, and a flaming Jesus statue. This was a tough Easter celebration, and of course all four characters died a gruesome, flaming death.

Now on to the ever popular Irish Drinking Song. What I always find amazing about this exercise is how much it is dreaded by people in their first few classes. But it is the most popular piece we do. Patrick, Victoria, Ben, Sol, and Justin are serenading us, although in this shot Victoria is the one singing her verse with a vengence.

Andy is captured mid-warble as he, Karla, Marika, Kathy, and Kenna are singing their Irish Drinking Song. Since I typically direct these pieces, I don't get a chance to jot down the topics, so I don't remember what they were so enthusiastically singing about.

The next few shots are from the night's 3-Line Drill. We don't get enough opportunity to practice with this drill, so I'm glad we got to it in this class. Here, Andy and Karla are practicing the first three lines of an open structure. I liked Karla's pose in this shot, providing a good physical reaction to Andy's line.

I liked this 3-Line Drill from Patrick and Mark because of the unusual vertical position. Getting away from two people just standing and talking makes for a much more interesting stage picture. Although for some reason, Mark started sniffing his shoes right after this shot.

Speaking of interesting physical physical work, here are Kenna and Justin in their 3-Line Drill scene. You can almost work out what the whole scene was about from their physical positions in this shot. Their attitudes are so well portrayed. The scene had something to do with American Idol, but it's their poses and expressions that make me want to know more about whatever is going on.

That's really the point of the 3-Line Drill. We are only performing the first three lines of what should be a longer scene, but the goal is to make those first lines so interesting to the audience that they want to see more.

This is the last picture from the evening, but it's my favorite shot. This is Kathy and Sol's 3-Line Drill. Sol just entered with a line about Kathy being pregnant, and that's what her reaction is actually about. However, their poses and the weird angle of the shot makes the scene look like some sort of warped Film Noir. I imagine Sol smoking a cigarette and Kathy having an aside to the audience about the Private Eye who entered the room. That's not the way the scene went, but it's a fun fantasy.

For the record, we had 19 people in class, and in addition to the games mentioned already, we also did a few rounds of Freeze Tag at the end of the night.

Class April 4, 2007

I think this picture, taken during an Irish Drinking Song scene, captures a lot of what improv means to me. Mark, Aydin, Justine, Kathy, Ben, Mark, and Dustin are just having fun. Yeah, there's structure and some pressure around performing, but as everyone gets comfortable with a game or pattern, you really find that the structures help you work with others to create wonderful scenes. And, they're just fun to be in. For a couple of reasons, I'm going to post more pictures than usual. First, we had another large class - 28 players this time. Second, I have a new camera, and the quality of the pictures is much better than what I've been working with. And third, if you hand a good tool to Andy and the other folks taking pictures, you get a lot of really cool shots. I've whittled the 79 pictures I started with down to the following few.

This is a Yes And scene with Scott, CK, Melissa, Ben, Dustin, and Jim. They were working on marketing Flavored Rubber Bands, although it looks more like they were practicing their dance moves.

David, Kathy, Justine, Li-At, Mark, and Marika are trying to sell Doggie Viagra in their round of Yes And. I think David is a little too excited about this product, while Kathy just looks disgusted.

Now this group worked hard at putting together a marketing campaign for Edible Shoes. Pictured are Ann, Mark, Aydin, Scott, Bob, and Sugely.

This next group got split into two pictures, so I guess they were twice as good. In this half we have Sol, Andy, Susana, and Lorien. The group is also working on a Yes And scene and they are putting together a campaign to sell Pickled Papers. Andy is just fascinated by Sol's idea, although Susana seems a bit frighted by it.

Misha, Justin, and Mike were also in the Pickled Papers scene. Clearly Mike is describing an idea that he thinks will truly sell more Pickled Papers than any other ideas - especially Sol's last idea. Misha and Justin look like they're just humoring him.

These three - Sharon, Melissa, and Kathy - are working on a 5 Letter Word scene. Ben was also in the scene, but missed being in this shot. Their word was WHALE. I really like the pose in this shot because it makes me want to know what they were looking at! Another example of how the physical work in a scene makes it much more interesting.

I really enjoyed this scene because the players committed to the absurd nature of it. Justine, Sol, Li-At, and Aydin are playing a 5 Letter Word scene, and their word was CHAIR. They're in a coal mine, and at this moment Sol is trying to resuscitate their canary - which has died. Only Aydin seems concerned about the death of a canary in a coal mine, whereas the others are deeply concerned about the fate of their pet.

Why is this man praying? He's not, really, but it's a wonderful shot of Jim in character. He's in a sauna, apparently leading an encounter group while everyone is suffering from the intense heat. I loved the requests made to "speak someone's truth". Susana, CK, and Mark were also in the scene, and my notes mention some some good physical work between the characters.

Once again I've picked a picture because I love the captured expressions. This is another 5 Letter Word scene, this time with the word FEAST. Mike, Kathy, Ben, and Justin are at a playground, and the three kids on the right are confronting the older man (Mike) about what he's doing there.

Back to the Irish Drinking Song, and this group consists of Scott, Ann, CK, Scott, and Misha - with,once again, my bald spot upstaging them all. I'm always impressed with how enthusiastically the song pieces are done. There are several new players in this group, and they gave it their all.

Another song, this time just showing Sugely, Justin, and Sol from their larger group. Sol looks like he ended up in the wrong scene, or is just wondering why everyone else is so enthusiastically waiving their arms.

Hmm, there were several pictures from this scene, so I'll end the post on this one. We performed several Entrances & Exits scenes, and here I'm playing a religious zealot who was finding spiritual enlightenment through the practice of Sumo wrestling. Okay, the scene made more sense (maybe) when you saw it performed.

Despite it being such a large class, we got quite a few games in. And by popular demand, we ended with Freeze Tag, which took us well past our normally ending time (no pictures of that, unfortunately).

Class March 28, 2007

Wednesday's class had 19 people, which allowed us to do some scene work with smaller groups. We also got the chance to do some long form drills at the end of the night. I'm going to try and keep that part of the evening in our workshops. I love this shot, where Jim and Kathy appear to be having a perfect moment together. In actuality, this scene is called Info Both, or sometimes Zelig, and the two of them are stuttering together. This is a quick scene where one player is at an information booth and the other enters with a strong emotion or characteristic. The player at the info booth takes on the offered characteristic.

Zelig is played as a quick rotation scene and now Allegra has entered the scene with Kathy. Until I checked my notes, I liked imagining what this scene was all about. Chickens? No, they're sailors on leave. The hands are holding some sort of a backpack. Sailors carry backpacks?

A few rotations later, we have Mark and Justin together. I believe Justin was tracking something. I love the cool pose Justin is in. Mark looks a bit dumbfounded by Justin, but I remember the two of them being fun to watch.

Here's a shot of Sharon and Scott in their Info Both scene. Scott entered carrying a gun and Sharon immediately pulled out hers. They became two ol' boys wavin' their guns. I'm not sure what this pose means, but look at the expressions on their faces. They match beautifully. This was a fun scene.

Mark and Mark are working together on another Info Both scene. Mark on the right entered with a box of cell phones that he found. I'm not really clear what the two of them were trying to do.

What I like about this exercise is its emphasis on taking on the character, not playing against it. It creates a lot of energy between the two characters.

At this point, I'd had it with Ben and decided to give him a piece of my ... oh, no wait. This is another Zelig scene and I entered really furious. Ben matched my inarticulate, stifled screams with his own inarticulate, stifled screams. We never established what we were angry about, but it was very satisfying in a cathartic way.

I like this shot. Marika, David, and CK have joined together to be one character in a two character scene. There are three players forming the second character in the scene. I call this Three Speak as One, One Word at a Time, Switch. I should probably come up with a shorter name. I'll explain it in greater detail another time, but suffice it to say the exercise left everyone with a sore head, and I consider that a success.

Kenna and Scott are working on their Three Line Drill. Kenna entered the scene frightened and hid behind Scott. They had a weak start, but on their second attempt it was a very compelling scene starter.

The Three Line Drill is another rotation exercise and is meant to work on the first three lines of an open scene. The exercise is a great way to learn how to immediately find a compelling scene.

At the end of the night, sometimes folks just need to let off steam, and here Aydin and Scott are working out a few issues. Sol, Jim, Andy, and David are looking on, although Sol appears to be getting ready for his turn.

Actually, we ended the night with a few rounds of Freeze Tag. That night we did it in a line form so that everyone had a chance to create a scene.

All in all, this turned out to be a very emotionally satisfying night.