Improv Advent #25

25 -

Merry Christmas everyone!

Ok great, that's done.

Now it's time for News Year's Resolutions

At least once:

• Do something creative that scares the hell out of you (Solo show? Musical? Write a book?)
• Seek out and play with people you wouldn't normally do a show with
• Watch yourself on tape, take notes as if you were your own coach
• Tell the people you love working with that you appreciate them
• Get involved in something that interests you that has nothing to do with theater
• Sit down, alone, and talk yourself through a few questions
• Why do I keep doing this?
• Who do I love watching and why?
• What makes this important?
• What would I say to someone starting out doing improv?

A few times:

• Read a book on theater. Not just improv (but do that too). Acting, directing, history. Anything.
• Go see non-improv shows
• Make yourself take a break if you're never stopping
• Make time to take a class or workshop

All the time:

• Reach out to new people
• Reach out to older people
• Spread you love and enthusiasm
• Be kind
• Be honest
• Be aware
• Commit
• Create

Also, stop going to Wendy's after 1 AM, you're going to regret it

Improv Advent #24

24 - New Languages 

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

- Charlemagne (apparently)

I'm taking this quote to encourage everyone to keep playing with new people. When you're very comfortable with another improviser, it's like you share a common dialect. You can grasp subtext and meaning from the smallest move, and you can understand far more because of you intimacy.

This comfort can breed complacency. There is something scary and refreshing about sharing the stage with someone new, especially in a format that is extremely focused like a duo. But it's in this environment that you can figure out new and interesting things about yourself and learn how to listen and play in ways you may have forgotten how to.

Take a chance. Ask a stranger to do a duo. If there's an improv jam available that lets you play with your own team, take advantage of that and make it happen. You may find your self pushed in new directions, and in that, you may find yourself growing.

Don't let you ego get in the way. Don't let you preconceptions of someone else get in your way. Reach out, be open, and you can discover something new an satisfying.

Or it can crash and burn.

But that's learning too.

Improv Advent #23

23 - Set Yourself Up For Surprises

 I had lunch with Karen today, and at one point we touched on a move that she's been doing lately that I love. Karen will start a scene by toppling a chair over on stage. The more I think about it the better this is.

It makes the chair very not chairlike  but it's still there one stage taking space, waiting to be discovered or endowed with meaning. The fact that's it weird, out-of-place, and "wrong" makes the eventual use of it all the more interesting. Is it a set of drawers? A bush?  We know what it ain't, so whatever it is is surprising and (hopefully) interesting.

In forcing a unusual choice, you can stumble out of your comfort zone and into some great scenes. It's like playing Switch in your head in a scene: occasionally just throw out the first gut reaction, and then just react some other way: maybe the opposite, maybe something completely different.. Follow your mouth, commit extra extra hard and see what happens.

It is natural to want to control as much as you can, it feels safer. But it's the moments that get out of your hands and into the space between you and your scenemate that are most magical and collaborative. Let your self have the opportunity to be off-balance, sometimes be your own spanner in the works.

Improv Advent #22

22 - No Sorry

Attention new improvisers, please stop saying you're sorry. With your mouth or with your body.

Stop saying it, stop doing it. They are poisonous.

I resolve in 2014 to yell at you for this if I'm in a position to.

You have to, have to, accept your actions as they are. Take your notes as avenues to improvements not as you being chastised. It's not personal. It's making what you do better, it's not about making you better.

If you continue to let yourself say you're sorry, you'll do it on stage. And that's breaking, and that's not commitment, and that's not support.

You did what you did, it's over, no take-backs and the intention doesn't ever matter. You have to own everything you do, you have no choice.  There's no such thing as a take two here.  You will make mistakes, that's fine. We don't care about you last scene, even when it's great, even when it's terrible , even when it's just ok. We care about the next. We always are looking for the next.

Don't say you're sorry. Listen, care, and work hard.

Improv Advent #21

21 - Short Form is Hard Work

I have no idea if that whole short-form vs long-form thing is really a thing. Maybe in our little hamlet it's not as big of a deal, given the strong history of short-form shows here.

But having just done a show with short form games, with little preparation it has reminded me:

 Doing short-form right ain't easy. 

I think the same skills that make for good long form, largely translate to short-form (agreement, engagement, commitment), but there's definitely stuff that exists exclusively in the short-form. Like...you have to work to make the game theatrically interesting... you have to really understand the constraints and how to play off them in a way that lets you do good scenework in addition to fulfilling the writ of the rules... you might just have to damn practice an idiosyncratic skill like rhyming couplets in order to even do it without looking like an idiot.... etc &c.

 Lazy short form, like lazy anything, is terrible. But when you see pros do short-form right, there's no denying that it can be really good improv.

Plus! Switching it up and playing some short-form, or even practicing it, might just stretch and strengthen the muscles you need for your long-form work.

That said.

I still hate Party Quirks. 

Improv Advent #20

20 - Sticking with your core beliefs

Don't use a character's belief system as an excuse not to change; look at these beliefs as a way to play characters with some consistency 

-From Acting On Impulse by Carol Hazenfield

The idea of consistency for a character can be very tricky in improv. You never know what kind of crazy endowment you might get from your partner. It can be incredibly stressful, if you're in your head, to try and make a call between "Am I denying?" and "I need to stay true to my character". 

Complete crazy bombs aside, things are going to go best if no matter what you keep to come core conceits of your character. They are what make you recognizable and relatable.

This is another, no-quick-fix reality of playing but it bear mentioning that staying true to what you believe you character is and not letting that go is not necessarily being selfish, it's being more honest.

Improv Advent #19

19 - Sprezzatura

Sprezzatura , noun-

studied nonchalance :  perfect conduct or performance of something (as an artistic endeavor) without apparent effort
-Also an album by Jimmy Pardo

What a great word! So much fun to do in an over-the-top Italian accent. Almost as good as "Mootz-za-rell" for mozzarella.

Anyway.

The concept of effortless for something that you're working hard on, is pretty much just what practice gets you, right? Improv has the same requirements and the same pay-off. The more work you do, the more classes and study you do the more natural you'll play. Call it what you want: muscle memory, trained instinct, sprezzatura: it comes from work.