Category Archives: example

May 19

Ah, Horse Apples

Hi. Been a while.

Just performed with Horse Apples – Me, David, Nick, Matt, and Barry.

We want to keep doing this because it’s fun for us – we’re all dads and at least 40, so really this is the fun for us. But we’re very sensitive to holding up a space in a community we’re so glad to see growing. We want to deserve our spot, not just get to ride out our wake.

Solution 1 – Get the Young Hungrys to open the show. They’ll bring friends and family. An audience is often more family and friends than random entertainment seekers. Even in the bigger cities if you consider “students and hobbiests” who are “there to see their friends,” “there to see their friends.” Our families and friends are asleep in our/their children’s beds. The Young Hungrys’ friends and family would show up, not yet exhausted by either the invites or the improv.

Solution 2 – Cultivate Opener with TLC. Leveraging “The Lottery” approach, marry outstanding students with establishment players/teachers in a group committed to multiple rehearsals and shows. Barry coached. Casts have been great.

Solution 3 – Do better improv. Can’t coast. Gotta step up. We needed to rehearse. We needed coaching – one voice that could matter more than our opinions and align us. At The Second City, star players were going to First Cities for sitcoms they could think of you for. Think of times when you just laughed at something funny and those times you wanted the person eliciting laughter to know you were laughing so you laughed a little harder. Horse Apples are the guys who moved to Third City, Richmond VA, for family. No one in our audience is motivated to show up or laugh for us; we gotta make’em laugh.

Solution 4 – Gimmick? Tenure in improv is immaterial when a child is infinitely better at improvising than an adult. But, maybe one benefit of our beens-around-the-block is owning being a museum. We’ll fill a wheel with named improv formats written on each pie piece. An audience member would spin the wheel to determine our form for the night and give us our suggestion and the show would start.

Tonight we spun the wheel for the first time…

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Sep 4

Return of the Pattern

It’s been a while since I posted. Got a new job. Got busy. Got so busy I had to miss Student Showcases, my most favorite of nights.

But I made it to the last Patterns & Games class showcase. Almost nothing in this world makes me happier than a good Patterns & Games class showcase.

And this one was good. And it was recorded.

And so… you get a new post! One with video examples and some thoughts on the lessons IAIDB’s rubric games teach. Enjoy!

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Jun 27

Post-Pandemic Pack – Worth The Wait?

“Pack” is Back, baby!

Nick Leveski (the “ck” to my “Pa”) and I had our first in-person show in over a year on July 23rd of 2021. We had a great crowd, eager to get out of the house and to laugh. We had a whole lot of fun.

But was it any good?

I run the classes program, to include writing the improv curriculum, at The Coalition Theater. Oh, and I have a website dedicated to dissecting Improv As Improv Does Best. Clearly I have thoughts about what constitutes “good” improv.

But while I believe in “my way,” it’s my way. In learning improv it’s important to have direction and goals and I believe my approach is useful to improvisers looking to learn. At the end of the day, though, to be worth a damn, an improviser needs to figure out their way of improvising.

The brilliantly funny, Rachel Marsh, told me post-show, “You all did all the things we’re told not to do – negating, transactions, teaching scenes – but damned if you didn’t make it all work.” Again, in learning improv it’s extremely useful to receive guidance that leads us toward choices that are fun for us and the audience and, conversely, away from choices that often lead to real slogs of scenes.

But of course, to really know what you’re doing you need to understand why certain choices are labeled improv “no-nos.” Then one plays within a world of possibilities, not limitations.

So…

What follows is a dissection of the five scenes that made up Pack’s 6/23/21 Show to answer the question: “Was this a ‘good’ show?”

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Mar 16

Black Box Beats warm-up

Lights come up on black-clad high school students standing on and around wooden boxes of varying heights.

You know what’s coming next.

Staccato sophomoric pretension. A wonder to laugh at, if you’re not in the actual audience and/or have to drive a performer home afterward.

Like with The Invocation, a structure of that kind of high-falutin performance can help us practice the different types of contributions we have available in service of Group Games.

Statements. Words. Sounds – emotional, mechanical, animalistic, etc. Callbacks, Call-and-Response, and Choruses. Each are available to us. Why not utilize the full suite?

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Dec 1

Zoom In On Help Desk

With its focus on characters interacting, Help Desk games are perhaps the rubric most conducive to Zoom.

As such, I found myself hewing much more closely to my typical Help Desk curriculum this class.

The biggest hurdle came in navigating Pivots and Split Screens. Appearing on a Zoom screen it’s certainly not easy to “tag out” another player. But as you’ll see, the class had fun figuring that out.

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Dec 1

Zoom In On Hey Everybody

“Hey, Everybody,” we say as our initiation in some form. Maybe it’s “Team, take a knee,” “Soldiers. Attention!,” or the Zhubin Parang special, “People, people, [important person] is ready for your questions.”

The potential for trouble in a “Hey Everybody, get out here” initiation is high. Players may rush out on stage to support the initiation with disparate reactions that then battle for dominance; chaos ensues and awkwardness follows. Or, though players may rush out on stage to support the initiation, they await to take their cues from the initiator who becomes the facilitator in a stiff and slow series of interactions that typically revolves more around thinking and problem solving than feeling.  Hey Everybody game mechanics allow a group to quickly build a focused direction out of disparate parts.

The Keys to success following a “Hey Everybody” initiation are:

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Dec 1

Zoom In On Organic Games

Students were taught the 4 Key Lessons for building collaborative improv games on Day One. In subsequent weeks focused one of 4 rubric group games designed to explore the power of each of those key lessons.

At the end of the day – which really is the class showcase – the audience isn’t looking to see a perfectly executed To The Ether game. They don’t know what the hell that is. The rubrics are tools for teaching the players’ tools. All the audience cares about is watching players collaborate in-the-moment to build something together. Players need to follow the ensemble’s moves wherever they go; this is about an ensemble playing their games, not mine.

So now it’s time to put all that’s been learned together in service of Organic Group Games.

Any questions?

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Nov 25

Zoom In On Patterns & Games

I taught my first Patterns & Games class through Zoom.

I had been nervous going into it assuming I’d have to tweak my teaching materials significantly to work within this new world. But as I learned when approaching Silent Games, the mechanics of collaborative pattern play are applicable however Group Games are attempted.

Need proof? Check out the class’ showcase –

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Nov 25

Zoom In On One Person Scenes

Agreement is awesome. Don’t you think.

In class number two, we focus on that first of our 4 Key Lessons: Seek Symmetries.

Bringing characters into group games brings new opportunities for chaos. 

Simplifying character-based group scenes with balanced stage pictures and shared emotional perspectives can help a team confidently navigate the chaos. 

Here’s how we did that…

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