Detective, a house team at The Coalition Theater, created an Opening inspired by this scene from Black Dynamite where wild associative leaps serve to solve a crime.
The Opening generates a lot of Details for them to inspire future scenes. The big jumps showcase individual’s humor and building on one another showcases their ensemble. It’s high energy and frenetic with focus still being shared. Continue reading
Looking for a fun character-based Opening for your long-form improv format?
Try a Duologue or, like The Johnsons do, try several. Here are two examples –
Mikael Johnson, Jason Saenz and I are Best Friends. And our Best Friends format is one of my favorite.
This show was the only show we taped. And while it isn’t our best, it’ll suffice to document our Slideshow Opening and our Three Character Format.
Enjoy “Drunk Camping.”
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The embedded clip is an Organic Opening from a Harold.
In it, the group establishes a progression through three vignettes: Frat Boys, Freshman and Senior Sorority Girls
They engage the environment and make interesting stage pictures.
They leverage verbal patterns of call and response.
And they follow each other.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more about the why and how of Openings in long form improvisation? CLICK HERE.
A fun show from The Johnsons, highlighting their focus on emotionally engaging active endowments and their ability to support the group with patterns and games.
The Johnsons are Scott Beckett, Garret Collins, Shawn Hambright, Townsend Hart, Jon Hilowitz, Johnathan Nelson and Lauren Serpa
A solid show from The Johnsons. They do a To The Ether Opening followed by 4 first beat scenes (though the 4th tends to have a group game quality about it) and then a run of scenes leveraging old material and focused on patterns and games.
In this clip, The Johnsons of The Coalition Theater in Richmond, VA use a To The Ether game as their Opening. This one’s short and sweet. Following his fellow players after the suggestion of “Giraffe,” the third player references “toes” in his Cement move, following the giraffe down its body. The fourth move doesn’t follow that progression but follows the language while heightening emotion and physicality. And it’s thankfully funny enough to earn an edit so nothing has to follow it.
In this clip, The Johnsons of The Coalition Theater in Richmond, VA use a To The Ether game as their Opening. Notice that the progression of the language pattern is not consistent, but the progression of esoteric technologies through heightened engagement into mime is pretty consistent and that pattern earns them a strong laugh.
An Opening is the first piece of a long-form performance presented to the audience. Every show has one. Not every show uses one.