Beginning Improvisers are given a lot of rules about what not to do.
Don’t say “no.” Don’t ask questions. Don’t negate or negotiate imagined reality. Don’t do teaching or transaction scenes.
Why not?
Here’s a quick look at why improvisers are told to avoid these moves and how you can absolutely successfully do those moves.
Continue reading
It’s 2020, my friends. And my curriculum needed to get with the times. Goodbye, Dukes Of Hazzard. Goodbye, s/he, his/her, him/her, etc.
2020 brings new exercises, new insights, and new clarifications for teaching.
Links have been updated on the Class Materials page, but they’re also here. Enjoy!
Intro to Improv Curriculum 2020 (PDF)
Character & Relationship Curriculum 2020 (PDF)
Patterns & Games Curriculum 2020 (PDF)
Long Form Performance Curriculum 2020 (PDF)
Teachers Best Practices 2020 (PDF)
Big “THANK YOU” to those who submitted feedback on the site through the pop-up survey. ” It’s not super aesthetically pleasing” – I hear you. I have big hopes for this site’s redesign and at least a little hope of getting that redesign done this year. First step: Updating the Curriculum. Check!
Stay tuned for more!
Make a choice the moment you enter stage. Choose to feel. Feel something about something – an imagined object, mimed activity, and/or your scene partner. Allow both you and your scene partner to be dynamic.
Here’s the final scene from a class building out that progression and its value:
And here’s the class’ outline with video of me teaching it. Continue reading
Mmmm…what do these have in common?
When asked for a desired focus for a scheduled coaching session, a Duo sent me the following:
Mainly character stuff, fleshing them out versus building out more plot. Getting better at finding and sticking to the game of the scene.
What follows is some didactic and exercises that filled two hours.
DIDACTIC: How do You think about “Game” in improv?
Acknowledged ad nauseam here on Improv As Improv Does Best, the idea of “Game” gets thrown around a lot in improv.
At its most dumbed down, “Game” is “the funny thing, done more.” Though what the “funny thing” is is subjective.
At once both more sophisticated and more corny, “Game” can focus on the repetition of the cause and effect of actions. Short Form‘s blessing and curse is that its rhythms connect so quickly (helped by being made explicit) – the audience is rigged to react to anticipation but the rigging can be too tight and become stale.
Aiming for an universal answer this site’s materials are predicated on the definition of “Game” as “a sequence of actions related by cause in effect, heightening in a progression through repetition.” Holds true for baseball and Monopoly alike.
Regardless of definition, “Game” needs Emotion. Continue reading
I love Pattern Play. I love the way an ensemble, focused-outward on making each new move in the service of what they individually have seen come before, can make a group look like it has ESP.
I love “the moment.” I love the way an authentic reaction to a moment -that in no way could have been preconceived – can connect with an audience for a big laugh.
And I LOVE when concentrated pattern play incorporates “the moment” to be something uniquely Improv As Improv Does Best, connecting the ensemble and the audience in a previously-unknowable, perfectly-found moment.
“An ensemble of players gets on stage without previously rehearsed lines or blocking and acts out, making up the show as they go along. 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.”
– Improv As Improv Does Best
I have three examples from my latest 301 Patterns & Games Showcase show.
Continue readingBuilding a game out of heightening the pattern of an interaction isn’t just for improv.
It’s a creation tool. At least if you’re looking to create something coherent.
Both of these cartoons appeared in The Washington Post’s Sunday Cartoon section on September 30th. Read Jef Mallett’s Frazz and Tim Rickard’s Brewster Rockit below – but also just read them in general; they’re great.
How could they not remind me of our friend The Help Desk rubric group game?
In a Help Desk Game, the progression of the scenic games establishes the pattern, and that pattern’s evolving repetition serves to heighten a personal game or theme.
What’s just beautiful thinking about these comic strips as improv scenes using the Help Desk Dynamic, is how they get to call lights before they have to get to the punchline. By setting our expectations in the first interaction, WE – the reader or audience – laugh at following the second interaction in our own heads based on the first. Our Lizard Brain laughs at the recognition of the pattern – and that’s enough for your edit!
Patterns allow us to play confidently. Thanks for the illustrations, Jef and Tim!
And they were not “Yes, and.” Continue reading
“I love opium.”
It’s a fine line between a character evoking a plot and a character reacting to their reality. A very fine line. But I believe that attention to that line can mean the difference between a scene where improvisers force a sequence of events dependent on an audience’s satisfaction with a resolution and a scene where characters are engaged in the moment of their reality with an audience reacting to – and investing in – a character’s consistency regardless of “sense.”
The following is a series of exercises geared toward prioritizing characters in-the-moment over improvisers setting-up-situations-to-be-negotiated. Continue reading
A wonderful conceit about Seinfeld, explicit in the meta-dealings with Jerry’s and 
George’s sitcom pitch within the sitcom, was that it was a “show about nothing.”
Yet of course the truth is that, while maybe an episode is not be driven by plot, it is about “something” – every episode revolves around the way known characters react to “something.” Continue reading
“Silver.” “Eclipse.” “Model.”
Not a Word Association that would pass muster. How does the second move build on the first? How does the third Cement the pattern?
What’s the progression? Continue reading