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!
Continue reading
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 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 –
My latest Patterns & Games class embraced To The Ether style group games like no other class I’ve had. They had three To The Ether games in their showcase! It brings a tear to this guy’s eye.
I’m sharing 4 of them that I (obviously) recorded. They each showcase a nice lesson.
Continue readingI recorded the session of my Patterns & Games class at The Coalition Theater in which we tackled the My 3 Rules game I’ve previously presented as a warm-up.
One, the camera’s distance makes it hard for the viewer to really track the game in play.
Two, oh, man, looking for a drinking game? Watch me teach and drink every time I say, “Right.”
Three, My 3 Rules – like Kick The Duck, Red Rover – is a game played through iterations. With each iteration, students “get it” more and by the end are fully engaged in the mechanics and they’re laughing.
In the following post, I’m going to share some clips from that night’s video showing the iterative learning process. My hope is that it’ll serve as a teaching lesson, both through how I provide instruction between iterations and how students loosen up and learn as a result of the iterations. Continue reading
Watch this. Keep watching. Wait for it. Stay with it. There it is.
Following the simplest pattern saves the day. And gets a nice big laugh. Continue reading
Oh, man, this organic group game made me laugh.
It’s simple and fun. All Chapman has to do accept each addition with his character’s garbled, “That’s my thing…” The audience loves him for it! They know he’s getting put upon by his fellow players (literally by the end!) and they reward his acceptance and commitment with laughter.
Check out this fun, loose Hey Everybody game from The Coalition‘s Detective.
The team isn’t behold to the sequence of contributions – they allow their characters to react in-the-moment as inspired – but you can see the sequence is loosely maintained and it helps the overall flow. Improvisers clearly stick their character’s silos – Sarah’s corrections, Taylor’s obsession with killing Voldemort with a stick, etc. Improvisers play emotional characters – like Jesse’s gruff-voiced reactor. And the stage picture isn’t just a line or “bandshell of death.”
It’s a great example of a game that uses the tools of the Hey Everybody game but isn’t confined by them. Continue reading
