Category Archives: advanced

Oct 8

Comfortable & Committed scene

Here’s a scene from a Pack show I did with Nick Leveski, a seasoned Chicago improviser.

This scene evoked a huge laugh from the audience. Like many stage-to-video improv moments, the laugh gets lost in translation.

But I believe I know what the audience liked. We didn’t explain the scene; we lived the scene.  When we as improvisers made choices, the audience could believe that those choices were the characters’ reality all along.

Nick and I had previously talked about avoiding audition scenes and scenes focused on “bad acting.”  The audience would rather see you try your best and fail than purposely be bad.  We knew I would never actually perform a monologue.  The scene is about two improvisers building a world moment-by-moment that the characters have been living since day one.

Aug 13

An improv stage can be anywhere. On it we can do anything.
You could be in a submarine on Mars raising talking chickens.
Often improvisers are good at labeling the moment.
But you need more than words; you have to be in the world.
This exercise focuses on attaching emotions to the scene’s active elements – what can be felt, seen or otherwise experienced on the stage – to foster reactions.

(more…)

Jan 24

Transformation Edits

In a long-form improvisational performance that is not a “mono-scene” there is a need to be able to communicate that one scene is ending and another is beginning.  An “Edit” is that move communicating a change in scenes.  At its core, a “successful” edit need only clearly communicate that transition, but beyond that there are myriad ways to execute an edit.  Continue reading →

May 1

1.0 – The 3lements

Improvisation: Making it up as you go along.

A group of players gets on stage without previously rehearsed lines or blocking and acts out. The audience understands that this show is constructed from nothing before their eyes. In these aspects, improvisational performance differentiates itself from any other performance medium.

Improvisation then is at its best when it leverages its monopoly on spontaneous collaboration before a live audience. When a group of individuals creates something out of nothing together on stage before their eyes, the audience sees magic. When improv is as improv does best, it is magic. Magic. “How’d you all do that?” Continue reading →

May 1

1.4 – To The Ether Games

TO THE ETHER Games

I like Frisbee.
I like hacky sack.
I like hitting this one stick I wrapped in ribbons with these other two sticks I wrapped in different ribbons.
I like the Grateful Dead.
I like acoustic guitar around a beach bonfire.
I like blowing into this diggerydoo I crafted in the company of native Aborigines during the Australian leg of my Peace Corp stint.
I like tie dye.
I like white-girl dreadlocks.
I like the hemp clothing, ropes and cleansing products I handmake and sell in open air markets and on commune tours with all profits going to Amnesty United.
Man, I just like being stoned.

In a To The Ether game, the progression of personal games establishes the pattern, and the scenic game is heightened in that pattern’s evolving repetition.

For focus sake, the pattern is emphasized over any need to contextualize or justify where the players are or who they are to one another. Players can literally deliver their lines into empty spaces without expectation of a conversational response. Thus, “To The Ether” games. Continue reading →

May 1

1.5 – Help Desk Games

HELP DESK

Two players meet in the middle of the stage and focus on figuring out the scene together.

I want to return this vacuum.
What’s wrong with it?

Or…

I want to see a manager.
Ma’am, he’s on a break.

Or…

I bought this and it won’t work.
I’m going to need to see a receipt.

Or…

That’ll be five ninety-nine.
Okay, I have ten eighty-eight.

I don’t want to see improvisers question, oppose, negotiate with or engage in transactions with each other. Even written, honed, acted and edited these scenes can prove tedious. But we can salvage these boring scenes with our good friend, the pattern. Continue reading →