Detroit Day #2

Day two! After a rough night, Woody, Brian and I had some time to kill before the shows started so we went down to Mexicotown. We shopped at a wonderful Mexican grocery, and had way too much lunch at a place called Mexican Village. Then retired to the house for an afternoon of Herb Alpert, beer, and some terrible Mexican cookies.

In the evening more of the Pittsburgh crew showed up: Tessa Karel and Nilesh Shah from The Writers' Room, and Hotel Nowhere's Brad McNary and Tom Achkio.

I messed up Tom's face bad

The shows started at 8 and Brian and I,  Iguanatron,  were lucky enough to kick off the festival. The whole first show was duo shows: us, then Purple Monkey Dishwasher and finally Craig Cackowski and Rich Talarico. Great sets all around.

Next up was the 10PM shows which lead off with Detroit's own Hypeman. After them I got back up with The Writers' Room, and Tessa had a killer show. The evening ended with Holiday Road, a one-off show that had a really frenetic core game: a road trip source that branched out to a bunch of show-me-scenes: high energy and fun.

What as cool was that the evening had a mix of types and styles of shows.  Even the three duos in a row all had extremely different personalities. Given that lot of my improv watching nowadays is Harold-after-Harold-after-Harold  it's awesome to see so much variety at once.

The Writers' Room

Tomorrow: workshops and TJ & Dave. Can't wait.

Detroit Day #1

Woody, Brian and I rolled into Detroit at around six and I was genuinely surprised how big this city was. It was huge, flat and sprawling. With none of the hills in the background I am used to.

Our rental house in scenic Virginia Park, Detroit, spitting distance from a liquor store (convenient!) It's operated by a group called Detroit Loves You, and they're doing a great job with it.

We went to the opening night festivities and saw a high school group open up the festival. The group was from the Detroit Creativity Project, and they did a selection of short form games. Very enjoyable, and it was great to see such young kids doing the work. I'd love it if Pittsburgh had similar programs.

After them was a group called Celebrity Soapbox, a monologue deconstruction Armando type show, with local celebrity, Pulitzer Prize winner and Howe Gelb simulacrum, Charlie LeDuff. Mr. LeDuff did a no-holds-barred performance. His monologues were amazing. I wish I had the opportunity to play with his stories. That said, some of the younger people in the audience are going to have uncomfortable questions for their parents after the show.

Then Woody and I went out to Go! Comedy to check out their bar and meet up with some people Woods knew from LA. Technical difficulties with the point-of-sale system at the bar aside, we had a great time watching the Fresh Sauce improv jam. It's been a long time since I've been to a good ol'fashioned short-form jam. There were new games that are unique to Go! Comedy that were really interesting.

My favorite game was one based on eye contact and musical cues. You played a scene not allowed to make eye contact until there was a piece of background music brought up, at which point you had to maintain eye contact. It was instructive how much the scene felt flat without eye contact and how much things took off with that connection and an emotional perspective (foisted on them by the music).  The two players did a great job with the game too, a ton of fun.

After the show, Woody and I came back home to drink, talk and listen to distant gun fire. A fantastic first night, no kidding. I'm really excited for the rest of the fest and to get up and do some shows.

Detroit Style "Four Corner" Pizza... apparently
Enjoy it, Well Known Strangers!

To Detroit!

I'm psyched to go to Detroit.

Today is the first night of the Detroit Improv Festival and  Pittsburgh has a bunch teams going up: Iguanatron, The Writers' Room, Hotel Nowhere, Well Known Strangers, Hipsterpotamus. Congrats to everyone!

There is something very exciting and really effective about getting out of the familiar and learning in a new environment. Putting yourself on tilt, or making yourself uncomfortable, in little and big ways provide the environment you need to make breakthroughs.

I can't wait to make it up there and work, think and drink hard.

While I'm taking a breather

I'm glad to say that Brett Bavar has started his own improv blog, go check it out at: Spontaneous Theater!

Brett is the creator of Wunderstudies, a ghost in Nebby Spectres, Pittsburgh improv mainstay and pretty nice dude. Go on, check it out!

Group Games Are Made By Individual Moves

Ah group games. What should be the most fun, free, Yes and the And time in a show.

Then we get dinosaurs tromping on stage for 90 seconds before someone says "Hey guys! This is a library!" Then we get 5 seconds of quiet dinosaurs. Edit.

OK, that's a perfectly fine group game. But it happens all the damn time.

The formula

• 90% organic pattern matching
• 5% justification
• 5% Pay off (if we didin't end the scene on the justification, that it)

is weak soup.  The set up is too long for my tastes. We get stuck in a deadlock of diffused responsibility, no one wanting to "break" the game or no one really sure what the game being played is. 

Without an individual making a choice, putting some traction down, the game wastes time. The group needs a platform to heighten from. If that library line happened within 10 seconds of the dinosaurs stamping around, we have an awesome premise to play in. That's something crazy, interesting, and fertile. That's a group game I want to watch. That's a group game I want to play in.

When I was coaching some teams I would do Blind Harolds, a form where people would do a show "in the dark" using only their voices. It was incredible how creative, huge and hilarious the group games got.  People had to act and justify immediately.  And that's how it always should be. Play organically but make the discoveries strongly and build on them.

The sound-and-motion-pattern-matching thing is great but it can be a crutch. Be agressive!  Put grist in that mill. Just like in a scene, you need the context and specifics to grow. Group games should be the time to most take advantage of the fact that you're on a team with people who want nothing more than to make every idea look amazing. 

Trust and act, y'all.

On Leaving And Being Maaaaaaaaaaaaad

In a class recently the question came up of if it was ever OK to just leave a scene, to just walk on off.

My gut reaction and answer was "Yes, if you need to leave, leave. If your character wouldn't stay, go. Don't be dishonest about that.".

But then I thought: how often do you want to leave because your character wants to leave and how often do you want to leave because you're having a bad time up there?  Everyone has and will experience a scene where it feels like you're playing against a brick wall. That stuff just happens. You will be that wall someday. It's fine because there will always be more scenes. Learn from it and keep playing.

 But that said, when there's no traction, or no agreement, or there's deep confusion, or reality got fucked up, or whatever, it is an awful feeling. A cocktail of confusion, indignation, frustration , fear and embarrassment    It's easy to let the annoyance or frustration bleed into the performance. And that's dangerous territory. It's as heady as you can get.

At the risk of giving advice to go even more in head... if you are not having fun in a scene, you need to be vigilant about making sure that you're not letting your bad feelings affect your work. Don't bail on scene as a "Fuck You". That's awful stuff.  Even when you're pissed off, wait. especially when you're pissed off,  treat everything you're getting as a wonderful gift. Go into hyper-YES mode. Just getting mad and bailing will sink the scene and lead to that souring of chemistry that can leave a stink over a whole set.

Your answer to anger has got to be love.

But if your character has no reason to stay, leave. If there wasn't any relationship or dynamic between the players keeping them there well... what was the scene in the first place?

Improv Bestiary: The Empty Baker

The Empty Baker is an initiation pattern that I do all the goddamn time.

Player A's Brain

Uh-oh! Time to initiate a scene!

I don't have any ideas but I need to just go right?

Well fuck, I'm going then.

(Moves waaaaay downstage, to the edge, probably out of light, and begins: Making a cake, mixing bowl in hand / working on a flat tire with a jack / stirring and pouring a drink / typing furiously on a computer, occasionally wiggling a mouse )

Surely this elaborate object work will inform my "deal"!

Player A's Mouth

...

(7 seconds pass, which is forever when mixing batter, then Player B pops out from back line)

Player B

Uh, Is that cake done/ tired changed/ drink ready /report finished?

The Empty Baker makes a strong initial move, and picks and commits to an activity. That's great! 

What The Baker also does is put themselves in a position where all they can do / see / focus on is their activity.  Running and sticking at the edge of the stage, or flying to a corner, and immediately being heads down in an activity tells your team one thing: what your back looks like when you change a tire. 

I don't know why other people do it but I can say why I do The Empty Baker. It was comforting. 

When I had no idea in my head I knew I could just pick an activity and do it really really hard. Then hopefully something would come from that. That uncertainty, or  lack of trust in myself, is also why I always went really far downstage. All I had was a motion, so fuck it, I'm going to shove it in the audience's face. Shutting out my teammates from getting a good handle on what the hell I was really doing and why.

That "why" is what really counts. Without some idea of why someone is invested in doing something, or how the activity is affecting them you're practically begging your teammates to just ask about the activity. And that can lead to a scene about getting something done, which is boring. 

Without seeing or presenting your activity with some other kind of dimension (some emotion, quirk, degree of enthusiasm), it's a shallow offer. And these extra dimensions are all  most efficiently communicated through the faceparts. 

So to improve on The Empty Baker tendencies:

Be courteous with your blocking! Make sure the audience and your team can understand the what  and why of your activity.

Remember that the action is not your only deal, you're doing something for a reason and you're feeling something while you do it. Know it and show it. Make that emotional choice and demonstrate it! Decide what you want and channel it through your activity.  Broadcast assertively! Grumble at the tire! Laugh at the drinks! Cry in that cake!

The only reason we're seeing you do that activity is because it is informative of your character. We have no interest in seeing an invisible oil change.

h/t to the wonderful  Emily Askin who got me thinking about this one