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“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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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?
Continue readingWith 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.
Continue readingThe Patterns & Games class where we go over To The Ether games is always my favorite. This time was virtually no different.
Understanding the atomic structure of patterns can help a group collaboratively build evolving molecules which combine into complex compounds.
Continue reading“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:
Continue readingStudents 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?
Continue readingI 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 –
When I teach Patterns & Games in-person the first class is always Kick The Duck, Red Rover. I love this game. When I say “Go,” the class is to align behind a gibberish group game.
It’s always a mess to start, and then I begin laying in the lessons and with each iteration the group gels that much more. It never fails; by the end the group has built something cohesive out-of-nothing together as an ensemble – and have enjoyed themselves along the way.
The Zoom environment is not conducive to Kick The Duck, Red Rover, but I felt it critical to still have this first class expose students to the 4 Key Lessons that form the backbone of group game work as improv does best.
So this is what I did…
Continue readingAgreement 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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