The next Caught In The Act show will be:
Saturday, November 3, 2007
8:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street
$5 for tickets at the door
The first Animal Transform scene of the night with Jim (hamster), Li-At (woodpecker), Melissa (bull), Sol (cat), and David (giraffe). It became a fun scene at the company picnic with some great characters.
This workshop was a bit different, starting with not doing a 1-Word Scene, but instead practicing with Firing Line. The rest of the night, we focussed on some basic character work. Because there were a lot of single character pieces through the night, there were a lot more pictures. 261 photos were on the memory card from this night. I was able to whittle that down to 125, but I felt that was OK this time since so many were of individual players. You can see them in the album.
The first scene work of the night was Video Dating, using a couple of bins of hats which I'd brought. Everyone got in at least 4 different characters and many of those were fabulous.
Next, we did Trouble With A Small Object. This was the chance to show off work from our first homework assignment. Basically, I asked folks to pay attention to their physical actions over the week, and practice miming those actions. In class, I wanted to see a demonstration of using some small object, then running into a problem with the object, and finally solving the problem. If you didn't work on the assignment it was OK, I just asked that you demonstrate something.
Next we did a series of Animal Transforms. Those turned out really well. The characters were very different and yet clearly human. A nice stretch for everyone.
We still did an Irish Drinking Song with 3 groups of 5.
Finally, we did a set of 3-Line Drills, only this time I had everyone complete their open scenes after telling me their wants. That was interesting, and I think everyone got a chance to try 'what comes next' after the first three lines. There were a lot of great scenes. Next, we'll go back to some simple long from structures.
Finally, I gave out a new homework assignment. Look at your friends, co-workers, and acquaintances and try to identify what makes them a 'character'. In the next week, pick out one character and develop it. At the next workshop I'll give you a chance to introduce the character, and then interact with some other characters.
And that was the night.
Sometimes the picture that I'll choose for the lead in to the class posting is just too obvious. Here, Scott, Marika, Li-At, Ben and Kenna are in a School Picture to Scene character exercise with their assigned group being the Fencing Club. If you'd like to see more pictures from the class (with fewer of Scott nekkid') then check out the album.
A fairly large class this time with 21 players. We had a bit of a bumpy opening but got in some 1-Word Story warm-ups as well as a round of 3-Part Narrative.
The night focused on character development, and I think there was a lot of great work (other than the Jalan character). We started with School Picture to Scene and in addition to the Fencing Club, we saw the Rugby Club, 4-H, Track and Field, and ROTC clubs. It was a good warm up.
The next exercise was great. Last week's "homework" was to focus on a friend or acquaintance and identify aspects that can be used for a character - how they talk, carry themselves, interact with others, the way they sound, their obsessions, etc. This week, I gave each character a chance to introduce themselves and then interact with a couple of others in a scene. For those who didn't know about the homework (or forgot about it), they had to throw something together quickly. The point was to closely base the character on someone real. And wow, there were a lot of great characters. Interesting, compelling, and complete in the sense that they were able to stay completely in character during their interactions with other, very different characters. They were really interesting. Well done.
After those scenes, we got in several rounds of Irish Drinking Song and they were surprisingly toned down - less bawdy than usual. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad - but I generally enjoy different.
We finished with some Montage scenes. We didn't start with a 3-Line Drill, so I wanted to see how everyone did when they went right into open scene work without any "warm-up". And folks did pretty well. The more open scene work we do, the better.
I did give out another homework assignment. This time, I want folks to concentrate on "opening lines". Other than "hey Bill", how do you start interacting with friends and acquaintances when you first see them? How do those opening lines depend on common but unstated knowledge (we rarely narrate things we both already know)?
Since I've had to cancel the next class (Oct. 24) and I'll be out of town for the next couple of weeks (but there will be other instructors for the workshops while I'm gone) we won't get back to this assignment until the end of November (when I'm back).
Howdy Folks, The Santa Improv Workshop scheduled for Wednesday, October 24, 2007 is CANCELED!
The Unitarian Society has its annual Star King Benefit Rummage Sale, and the entire building is used to support that event. No rooms are available.
We will be back on Wednesday, October 31. I will be on vacation, but there will be others teaching the class while I'm gone, so be sure to stop by.
I'll be posting this notice on the website (www.sbimprov.com) and sending an email to anyone who signed the attendance sheets during a Santa Barbara Improv Workshop (and this is one of the reasons I asked folks to sign up on that list).
I'm sorry about canceling this class and I look forward to seeing everyone in November. Alan
P.S. It just so happens that on that Wednesday night, Scott Williams from the workshop is putting on a S.B. Real Estate Conference; you can check it out at http://www.scottwilliams.com/he/pages/section4/section4_Newsletter.asp
With Jeff watching from the sidelines, we've got Jim, Karla, Angela, and Marjorie in a scene from TV Clicker. Here, Karla and Marjorie are trying to prevent Angela from chopping off the head of Jim's dog character. Must have been an "After School Special".
The album from this workshop is now available. I was able to whittle the set down to 87 pictures. That's down from the original 234 (!) pictures taken. Yowzer.
We started off with a pretty small (for us) warm up group, but during the What Are You Doing exercise, we almost doubled in size. There were twenty people in in class by the time we worked on 1-Word Story exercises.
We started the scene work with TV Clicker. There were two groups and a whole lotta scenes. It was all pretty energetic, but let's try and forget the "Old Men Gone Wild" show - there are NO pictures from that particular scene!
We got in a set of Surprise Lines scenes and those were great. Good conflicts, nice character interactions, and the lines were worked into the scenes well.
We had our usual set of Irish Drinking Songs and then had a complete rotation of 3-Line Drills.
And we ended the night with an open set of Freeze Tag. Nice work!
The next Caught In The Act show will be:
Saturday, October 6, 2007
8:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street
$5 for tickets at the door
Lorien, Andy, Li-At, Angela, and Roberta in an Irish Drinking Song. The full set of pictures from the workshop is now in the on-line album.
We had four new players with us for the night, and they impressed all of us with their bold choices and willingness to dive right in. Welcome!
We started with a pretty traditional set of warm-up exercises, including the 1-Word Story. And, I debuted the new Improv 101: Yes & introductory talk. A door replaced the table and vase, and denial of relationship replaced denial of children. We'll see how much of that sticks.
Our first stage piece was the 5-Letter Word, and most of the scenes kept to the letters in their words, more or less. All of them were fun to watch.
Next we did a set of Dialog Separate From Activity exercises. We did these in large groups, and so there were a lot of elements to juggle. My biggest concern - that give and take would be abandon creating multiple, conflicting dialogs - was unfounded. The group discussions were easy to follow and interesting. Some of the physical work between players could be improved, so we'll do some work in the next workshop focusing on that skill.
The rest of the night had a more musical theme. We performed our usual Irish Drinking Songs and then did a series of Dubbed Opera scenes. The singers in the operas all had a delightful sense of the dramatic, and I think all the translators did fine jobs telling their stories.
We finished the night with Freeze Tag. Thanks everyone!
Scott, Nick, Alan, Sol, and Ben in a Sporting Event scene. I just like the looks on everyone's faces.
I've got the album on-line and captioned so stop on by and enjoy. It was a fun night (and I'm writing this up within a week of the class!)
We started off with a set of Story-Story-Die scenes. Everyone has become quite adept at this structure, and the crowd has to be pretty critical to get the players to die off.
Next came Last Letter scenes and this was more of a challenge. It's critical for the lines of dialog to be crisp with clear endings. Run on sentences or tentative statements makes it harder to start a follow up line.
We tried a new exercise called Sporting Event. This also proved to be a challenge, requiring us to be aware of what everyone was doing in the scene. When it works, it makes for some compelling scene work and it's a skill that's worth developing.
We followed up with our traditional Irish Drinking Song, and then got in a 3-Line Drill. Our time was a bit short, so we finished the night with Michigan Freeze Tag.
Well, there aren't any pictures from this class because I didn't get a chance to pick up batteries to the camera. It's too bad because there was some great character work in the course of the night. We started with our usual warm-ups. After that, our scene work began with a series of Counting Words scenes.
I brought a couple of bins of hats, and we broke them out for Panel of Experts scenes. This was the part of the night for which I most regret not having pictures. There was a lot of great character work using the hats as influence.
We did a set of Irish Drinking Songs, and then moved on to the advanced part of the night. Everyone did the 3-Line Drill and then we worked on a series of Scene On Scene structures. Hats were available for this exercise, and again they prompted some good characters.
I like this shot of Jim, Sol, and Victoria. It's very dramatic.
The album for this workshop is now available so head on over and check it out. You'll also see pictures of Neil (yay!), who had a chance to come to class during his quick return visit to Santa Barbara.
After warm-ups, we did a Speaks As One Dialog. This looks easy, but is really a challenge. It's hard not to have one leader, but the challenge of the scene (and the technique) is to avoid that. And the other challenge (apparently) is to avoid rocking back and forth!
Next, we did a series of Rhyming scenes which I thought were a lot of fun. And then, to keep honing the rhyming skill, we sang a series of Irish Drinking Songs.
We ended the night with a long set of 3-Line Drills. I need to start these earlier in the evening to give us a chance to work on our open scenes.
Linda, Aidan, Li-At, Kenna, Don, and Sharon belting out an Irish Drinking Song.
The album for this workshop is available now, so check it out.
After our warm-ups we got right into a couple of Tag-Out Stories. The energy was good and I think the stories were fun. A series of ABC scenes followed and we quickly learned who doesn't feel constrained by the traditional order of the alphabet. Who Am I was next, and it's been some time since we worked on these endowment/guessing game scenes. We'll need to revisit these scenes to keep in practice.
Everyone worked on their improvised song skills with the Irish Drinking Song. For the advanced part of the night, we did something a little different. We skipped the 3-Line Drill and instead went into scene work with Assigned Professions. I think everyone got quite a bit out of a more structured set of open scenes and I was pretty happy with the results. It's a good exercise that we will revisit.
We ended the night with a round of Freeze Tag in the line form - what I sometimes call Michigan Freeze Tag for reasons that I can't remember.
Ben Whitehouse over at the Improvoker has written an interesting article about comedy in improv. He discusses the difference between going for a quick gag in a scene vs. building up a truthful scene that is funny in a complex, emotional way. The sort of difference you'd find between fast food and a complex, gourmet meal (my poor metaphor).
The quote that most resonates for me comes from Anthony King, Upright Citizen Brigade's Creative Director in New York:
In my opinion, good improv should not be about winking to the audience or just focusing on laughs - not ever. However, it’s also not necessarily about being “real.†It’s about being “truthful.â€
I find the distinction between real and truthful to be a helpful one. I try not to get hung up on whether the setting or the offer is "realistic", but instead I focus on my character's (or my own) emotional reaction to the setting or the offer. Given the situation (however bizarre), and my character (however extreme), how would I feel and then how do I react from those feelings.
And the audience's reaction isn't always the best measure of whether what we are doing is good improv. I don't necessarily mean to ignore the audience (although I've had instructors who were contemptuous of the audience), and I'm certainly susceptible to an audience's feedback (it's tough playing to a quiet audience), but I think the quote in the article from Del Close is a sobering truth:
Just because they’re laughing doesn’t mean we’re succeeding
I know this photo is a little blurry, but I like the action and enthusiasm from Robert, Ann, and David. They're in a Hitchhiker scene, and David just entered as a rowdy concert goer. They all look the part!
The album from the workshop is now available. We started off (after the warm-ups) with a set of Hitchhiker scenes that were pretty physical. That got everyone ready for a full rotation of Puppet scenes which were also very physical - even though the puppets don't initiate any movement. Those puppeteers are busy.
We then practiced the Irish Drinking Song before a full round of the 3-Line Drill. We finished the night with some Montage (although the camera had run out of battery charge by then).
Have you noticed that the performers in an Irish Drinking Song start to look like they're going to punch someone. Here, Gina, Sol, Scott, David, and Christine are belting out a song, but because this is Christine's first song, she doesn't appear quite as mad at Scott as all the others do.
The album for this workshop is available on-line. We took advantage of the group being a little bit smaller to do some two person scenes. After our warm-ups, we got to a round of Mutant scenes and then a full set of Gibberish Switch. It's been awhile since we've been able to spend the time with these scenes, so it was great to see how well folks did with these 'old-timers'.
We followed up with our standard Irish Drinking Song, and then on to the 3-Line Drill. We finished the night with a couple sets of Montage, and I must say that the quality of the scenes are getting much better. Good work, everyone.
The next Caught In The Act show will be:
Saturday, September 1, 2007
8:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street
$5 for tickets at the door
Ah yes ... the ladies. All of the women in class gathered for a round of the Irish Drinking song. Later, all the men (including myself) performed together in our own drinking song. No question, the women kicked our asses. They sang beautifully, in rhythm and formed wonderful rhymes. I'm not even sure that all the men were singing the same song ... or at times whether we were in the same building. Sad.
You can find the rest of the pictures from this class are at our album. I didn't have the usual camera, so the resolution is a bit different on these photos. Actually, I didn't have a lot of the things I usually bring to class, like a lesson plan! So, we improvised the workshop, and in many ways it was one of the better classes (uh oh, this just encourages bad habits).
Also missing (I came to class directly from another appointment and was ill prepared) was my notebook, so I'm only working from my (very poor) memory - oh yeah, and the photos. I know we worked on a Repeating Scene, Changing Genre piece that was a lot of fun. Everyone did well with that one. We also had a gender based pair of Irish Drinking Songs. Did I emphasize how badly we (men) did?
The whole group did some 3-Line Drills and ended the night with quite a few rounds of Freeze Tag. As I mentioned before, this turned out to be quite a fun workshop.
Scott and Jim are the players in a Pillars scene, with Allegra and Andy as the word-providing pillars. More pictures from this scene as well as all the other pictures from this workshop can be found at the online album.
We had 18 people in class that night, and it started with the usual warm-ups, including a couple of rounds of 1-Word Story. After that, we started some scene work with a full rotation of Gift Giving. Next came Pillars as a rotation that everyone participated in, both as performers and as pillars. Then came Questions Only which we did in three groups.
At that point the pictures stopped, although I don't know if it was because of low battery power or lack of memory chip space. In my notes I see that we did a set of Irish Drinking Songs next, and then a set of Soap Opera scenes. I particularly like Soap Opera and hope to get some pictures from that exercise in the future.
Thanks everyone, for a very fun class.
Mike taught the workshop on July 25th, filling in for me while I was out of town.
From all reports, it was a great workshop, and I really appreciate him stepping in for me.
Thanks Mike!
Okay, this is a very silly entry about a personal bias in my own scene work. I found this blog posting which has pictures of some rather creative sandwiches.
It doesn't take many workshops to learn of my tendency to start a scene by miming the making of a sandwich. From now on, I will have these pictures in mind during those opening offers.
Now I need to find a site on digging holes.
VATS and the Livery Theatre are hosting an August Improv Festival with special shows throughout the month. Although several of their shows have already passed, there are still more to come.
The shows scheduled on the next two Saturdays are by visiting troupes. On August 18, the Unscripted Rep, featuring members of LA Theatresports and Impro Theatre, are performing. I've seen these performers put on an Unscripted Tennessee Williams performance and it was amazing.
And on August 25 the Cartoon Overload (also from LA) will be performing. I'm really intrigued by the description of the show and plan on attending.
From their announcement:
Saturday, August 18 Format: UnScripted Unscripted No script, no author and no clue. The players get the suggestion of a style of theatre or film (from you, the audience) and makes it up on the spot. Come and be as surprised as they will be!
Saturday, August 25 Format: Cartoon Overlord, Cartoons Created Before Your Eyes! Cartoon Overlord is a revolutionary new show in which cartoons are drawn, animated, voiced and CREATED BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES. Impossible you say? Come and see! Created by Joseph Limbaugh. <Cartoon Overlord website>
LABOR DAY WEEKEND: We'll bring you special shows on Friday and Saturday night, including the debut of our new, Steamy Southern Soap Opera! Details TBA.