Objective: To establish and heighten organic group games collaboratively as an ensemble.
Category Archives: class
Organic Group Games workshop
Objective: To establish and heighten organic group games collaboratively as an ensemble.
Kick The Duck Red Rover Full Lesson video
Here’s a video of me teaching the group the Kick The Duck, Red Rover exercise. It’s long, containing many iterations of the exercise by the group with lots of rambling by me in between those iterations. But talk about a progression! Watch them grow:
2.1 – “Two Person Scene” Practical
We’re going to build “two person scenes” on patterns of emotional behavior.
LET’S WARM-UP Continue reading
Confidence and Support class
Objective: Collaboratively building something out of nothing on stage requires Confidence and Support. An improviser needs to be able to make bold choices and to stand by those choices. An improviser needs to accept and embrace each other’s choices. Make your fellow player “look good” should be an improviser’s guiding principle. Continue reading
Listening class
Objective: If we are creating together we need to ensure we hear each other’s contributions. Focus out to hear. Project out to be heard. Continue reading
Playing In Space class
Objective: When we see, touch, smell and REACT to our environment, the audience can, too. If nothing else, be deliberate – your commitment to engaging the environment will enable the audience to accept any weird ass thing you do. Continue reading
Relationship, Stakes and Scene class
Objective: How we feel about our scene partners determines a lot of our scene. Emotional agreement is strong default. But our characters needn’t always align.
We love tension. We can do conflict. But we should be wary of argument, negotiation and head-butting.
Active scene elements, relationship stakes and a willingness to lose ensure our scenes move forward as they heighten. Continue reading
Reacting In-The-Moment class
Objective: A scripted actor’s whole job is to make an audience believe that the emotional reaction they’re rehearsed is real in-the-moment. In improvisation, we have a leg up; we are all experiencing what’s happening for the first time. So just react. Don’t be in your head thinking about how you should feel or why we should feel. Just react. React without words until the words come. React without why until the why presents itself. If you commit to your reaction, that’s all the “why” an audience needs. If you invest in your emotion, the audience will believe that you have a reason even if you don’t have a motivation in mind. Continue reading
Bag O’Tricks class
Objective: Myriad standard improv moves can be used to elevate established scenes (Walk-Ons, Cut-Tos, Tag-Outs, We-Sees, etc.). Intro Students should be made aware of these moves, their vocabulary and their execution. Continue reading