Jam It Up

Everyone should go to improv jams and play.

If you're a beginner you need stage time, and you need to watch improv. You have to get comfortable out there, and that comes from flight time. Take every opportunity to play. Watch the more experienced actors, see how they react to tough situations. Note how they play and when they follow "the rules" or break "the rules" and how they do it. Be a sponge! Also meet people, get familiar with the scene. The best way into joining or forming a troupe is to play with people. 

If you're a journeyman you need stage time, and you need to watch improv. Jams are perfect for stretching yourself and trying new techniques. You'll hopefully get equal measures of playing with more and less experienced people. When with newbies, you'll exercise support in difficult situations, dealing with denial (god bless them) and making your scene partner look great. With more experienced players you'll hopefully get the support to play more adventurously than you would normally, or get pushed into doing something you've never had the opportunity to before. 

If you're an established player you need stage time, and you need to watch improv. It's really easy to get into bubbles when you're more established, playing with the same people or the same types of forms over and over again. Jams will shake you the hell up, force you off balance and out of your comfort zone. Playing with a bunch of people you'd never normally share the stage with can help break you out of your go-to rhythms.  Plus, watching new people play is fascinating, and often inspiring. Nothing is better at cracking up your calcified notions of improv than seeing a new person rock a scene doing things you never would have considered. Nothing energizes like seeing developing talent. 

And, for everyone, go to jams because they are fun and support the community. 

JUST GO.

Why I Love Improv and Hate This Blog

Overheard in conversation:

"Yeah Greg's blog, there are like seven posts from 4 months ago"
"Sounds about right"

Hey fuck you, I have like thirteen posts. Double digits.

I'm terrible at this blog for the same reason that I am so drawn to improv: I cannot stand 95% my work. It makes me cringe. Not just improv, everything.

I was in bands with good friends in and out of college and it took me years to grow the balls to present my songs.

For The Death Show, I run through dozens of poster ideas before I stop on the one I tolerate.

I have never been able to write more than a page and half before throwing it out.

 Am I unhappy with the quality of my work even though I'm just an amateur trying to get better. Oh most definitely.

I was and am totally a coward.

Except when I do improv now. This might be a function of having been doing for a while now, I certainly trust myself more than I did six years ago (or, hell, one year ago). But it is also because that when you're on stage there's no room for editing yourself.

I can stare at a notebook or a blogger post text-area for days erasing and rewriting the same stuff.  That luxury does not exist in scene. Everything is moving at once, no going back, just you and your partners building a car that's rolling downhill. And it feels amazing.

Improving At Something is predicated on letting go of things that aren't perfect or even good and moving on. I did this in improv because you can't not do it. Every scene is disposable,. There are not masterpiece scenes that you hone and dote on, everything is a draft and final product. It's perpetual practice, can't avoid it, baked into the system. Which is fantastic for a wuss like me.

I need develop the discipline to do work through being creative in other spaces fearlessly, but goddamn it I hate it right now. I know it gets better though

New Class Enthusiasm

Started teaching my first class of the year last night, and it is energizing. We did basic stuff, mostly physical (mirroring, object work, Machine, Make a Location) and some abstract focus work (ZZZ, pass the clap). For newcomers to improv the most important thing is getting people comfortable being ridiculous and being crazy together. I love seeing people given the opportunity to be silly, without ego or fear of judgement. Once people get that their safe there is a beautiful change.

Feels great.

Now, I am also champing at the bit to drop some scenic tool on their heads, and I cannot wait to see this group start doing scenes... but there is something really satisfying about this first, getting-to-know-you, wall-razing, school-yard stuff.

Also: In the exercises I ran there was essentially no talking, and it reminded me how much you can get out of the smallest interaction. How the most incidental minutiae can be entertaining if you're focused on it. How I talk too damn much on stage.

More Platitudes!

I have to be lifting this from somewhere, but it's in my head and I like it:

A scene is like a fire, you need to either make it hotter or help it spread, anything else is putting it out.

Anyone know needlepoint? I want to Etsy that shit.

I'm running out of excuses to not write comedy

I just heard on a podcast that the difference between improv and comedy writing is typing.

 Hard to argue.

A Improv Mantra

I just picked up a storytelling RPG called Fiasco, and I'm pretty psyched to try it out. It's tagline is:

A Game of Powerful Ambition and Poor Impulse Control

Powerful Ambition and poor impulse control sounds like a great way to approach playing a character. I'm keeping that one in my toolbelt.

Another round of house teams done

The latest round of house teams at the SCIT has come to an end. Sad times as always, Field Trip and Skunda were really fun, really interesting groups. I don't know if it's just me being able to notice things more but the SCIT house teams seem to be getting more unique as the rounds go on. That is to say there seems to be more group "personality" with each iteration.

This might be because we have more vets on the teams, or maybe the coaches are coaching differently now that people know Harold more... whatever it is it's great. I love teams that play in a way that is uniquely theirs. Not just the mechanisms of their set (openings, edit styles, etc. Although it's great that that has been getting more experimental) but in their "feel". 

I can't wait to see the next batch!