I can't believe that it's been so long already since I took my first improv class. Needless to say I didn't get to level 2 yet and because of gas prices travel to Chicago is quit beyond my pocket books capabilities. I have however been entertaining thoughts of getting something going here, locally that is. I just have to find some like minded people and see what happens.
I think it's only appropriate that I rename this blog as it isn't going to chronicle my teachings at iO any longer. I think I'll call it...
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Monday, June 26, 2006
L1C8
Sorry it took me so long to get to the last class post. It really wasn't anything special in fact it was quite a disaster.
We were told that we were going to jump right in and do a Harold and were given 5 minutes to warm up in any way we wanted and so we did and then we got a suggestion and crashed the opening, so we backed up and did it again and again. One person in particular had a hard time with not planning out what was going to happen and she got kinda mad at our instructor and we took a break and the instructor and said girl stayed and talked it out.
Then we came back and did an opening 3 scenes and a game with each opener selected before the suggestion was given. Comments were made on our scenes and then we did the same a few more times. I was less then impressed with my personal performance, but I think I did very well at fighting through my irritations and just keep going.
The biggest lesson I learned in this class is to not get hung up on the form of a Harold or any other game/opener. The key is to recognize the patterns created by your partners and expand on that idea. I know this will be a lot easier when working with the same people for longer.
I'm not sure when I'll get to level 2 but I do plan on going on, right now we're working on moving to MI for good so that has my summer tied up. I'm hoping I can get back to it in August.
We were told that we were going to jump right in and do a Harold and were given 5 minutes to warm up in any way we wanted and so we did and then we got a suggestion and crashed the opening, so we backed up and did it again and again. One person in particular had a hard time with not planning out what was going to happen and she got kinda mad at our instructor and we took a break and the instructor and said girl stayed and talked it out.
Then we came back and did an opening 3 scenes and a game with each opener selected before the suggestion was given. Comments were made on our scenes and then we did the same a few more times. I was less then impressed with my personal performance, but I think I did very well at fighting through my irritations and just keep going.
The biggest lesson I learned in this class is to not get hung up on the form of a Harold or any other game/opener. The key is to recognize the patterns created by your partners and expand on that idea. I know this will be a lot easier when working with the same people for longer.
I'm not sure when I'll get to level 2 but I do plan on going on, right now we're working on moving to MI for good so that has my summer tied up. I'm hoping I can get back to it in August.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
L1C7
We had our sub Paul again, he's very good at teaching.
We started with bippity bippity bop (a.k.a. bippity boppity boo). This game, for those that are familiar, works on the same premise as kitty wants a corner. A person is in the middle and wants to get out and to get out he/she has to make someone slip up. So, they stand in front of a person and says, "b..b..bop/boo" and the person they are in front of has to say bop/boo before the center person gets to bop/boo, and if they don't they are now in the middle and the once middle person take there spot in the circle. There are catch though, "truck driver", "little mermaid", "nancy kerrigan"(sp?), basically anything you would like to make up. When one of these is called the people on either side of the person it was directed at snap into action and for example in "truck driver" the side people are wheels and the middle person steers and honks. The 3 people have a 5 count to accomplish the task, if it doesn't happen in time the middle person becomes the center person. If you really want to know more about this game leave a question in the comments section and I'll tell you what you want to know. That goes for anything on this blog just let me know if you'd like some clarification or more in depth discussion.
Then we worked on conducted story, I'm not going to explain what this is you all should know this one and the title explains it enough. First we did this being conducted by the instructor and then we did it conducting ourselves and it worked quite well. One thing I noticed though, in the beginning we had the problem of folks not wanting to talk and now we have the problem of the folks not wanting to stop talking. The "take" is good but the "give" is crap. Oh well they'll learn.
Then we did and opening to a Harold and the first set of scenes. We did a build a picture kind of opening where your given a suggestion and a person walks out and describes and establishes an object and then the second person comes out and builds on it until all the players have created a picture. Then one person breaks away to different spot on stage and starts a new image in the same way. When that's complete a third is done in a different spot yet. Once the third image is finished the first scene is started. We did this twice and found out that we were editing the scenes to fast and were expecting someone to edit to soon. So to work on this we did long scenes so we could see where a "good" edit point is. It really help a lot.
We started with bippity bippity bop (a.k.a. bippity boppity boo). This game, for those that are familiar, works on the same premise as kitty wants a corner. A person is in the middle and wants to get out and to get out he/she has to make someone slip up. So, they stand in front of a person and says, "b..b..bop/boo" and the person they are in front of has to say bop/boo before the center person gets to bop/boo, and if they don't they are now in the middle and the once middle person take there spot in the circle. There are catch though, "truck driver", "little mermaid", "nancy kerrigan"(sp?), basically anything you would like to make up. When one of these is called the people on either side of the person it was directed at snap into action and for example in "truck driver" the side people are wheels and the middle person steers and honks. The 3 people have a 5 count to accomplish the task, if it doesn't happen in time the middle person becomes the center person. If you really want to know more about this game leave a question in the comments section and I'll tell you what you want to know. That goes for anything on this blog just let me know if you'd like some clarification or more in depth discussion.
Then we worked on conducted story, I'm not going to explain what this is you all should know this one and the title explains it enough. First we did this being conducted by the instructor and then we did it conducting ourselves and it worked quite well. One thing I noticed though, in the beginning we had the problem of folks not wanting to talk and now we have the problem of the folks not wanting to stop talking. The "take" is good but the "give" is crap. Oh well they'll learn.
Then we did and opening to a Harold and the first set of scenes. We did a build a picture kind of opening where your given a suggestion and a person walks out and describes and establishes an object and then the second person comes out and builds on it until all the players have created a picture. Then one person breaks away to different spot on stage and starts a new image in the same way. When that's complete a third is done in a different spot yet. Once the third image is finished the first scene is started. We did this twice and found out that we were editing the scenes to fast and were expecting someone to edit to soon. So to work on this we did long scenes so we could see where a "good" edit point is. It really help a lot.
Monday, June 05, 2006
L1C6
We had a sub, his name is Paul.
Warm up streching and circle pattern game tryin to run two and then three patterns at the same time which Jay has been trying to do from the beginning and having a different point of view teach us really helped I think and we acctually did it, slowly, but we did it.
We also played da do da do, which is a rythme form of word association. Person 1 says a word on beat then person 2 says a word, then every one repeats those words together followed by a da do da do. And the person 2 and 3 say words, and so on...
Monologs, givin a suggestion talk about somehting in your life and then try to make a realizion abouit yourself caused by the event/story. These went quite well even though I have a hard time making realization about myself, largly because I don't think that events, unless really moving, effect me much. Reguardless I need to learn how to draw conclusions about myself in order for monologs to work for me. I'll get better, eventually.
We then did scenes from the monologs and they went good too. We worked on getting a good iniation line and slowing down to let ourselves think. He also said something the people in my class really needed to hear, don't ask questions. Finally maybe I can do a scene and not have to be worn out because of all the questions.
Warm up streching and circle pattern game tryin to run two and then three patterns at the same time which Jay has been trying to do from the beginning and having a different point of view teach us really helped I think and we acctually did it, slowly, but we did it.
We also played da do da do, which is a rythme form of word association. Person 1 says a word on beat then person 2 says a word, then every one repeats those words together followed by a da do da do. And the person 2 and 3 say words, and so on...
Monologs, givin a suggestion talk about somehting in your life and then try to make a realizion abouit yourself caused by the event/story. These went quite well even though I have a hard time making realization about myself, largly because I don't think that events, unless really moving, effect me much. Reguardless I need to learn how to draw conclusions about myself in order for monologs to work for me. I'll get better, eventually.
We then did scenes from the monologs and they went good too. We worked on getting a good iniation line and slowing down to let ourselves think. He also said something the people in my class really needed to hear, don't ask questions. Finally maybe I can do a scene and not have to be worn out because of all the questions.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
L1C5
We open the class with birthday donuts and milk, it was a girls birthday and she brought that in.
After the snacking we got in a circle and played, what I'm going to call "Pass The Object". It started with a red ball, player 1 passes to player 2 and says "red ball", then player 2 recieves it by saying "thank you red ball". And so on passing it around the circle. Then balls of different colors were added one at a time. So we had red, yellow, white, green, and blue all going at the same time and the object of the game was to not loose any of the balls and pass as quickly as possible. Then we switched it up and walked around passing objects that were more complicated, plastic Richard Nixon mask, Toro leaf blower, replica Treaty of Gent(sp?) and others. The object now not only to keep all the objects but to retain there original name (i.e. plastic Richard Nixon Mask changed to plastic Richard Nixon and the replica Treaty of Gent became the replica Treaty of Kent). I liked this exercise, if kept in a circle it could be a really good focus game, but that's just me.
After that we working the invocation a lot! We started by working with somthing that was phyiscally there in front of us. Starting with the "it is...", physical description, once all players had a chance to speak the to "you are...", not physical but still a description (i.e. given quarter, you are worth 25 cents). Then it's the "thou art..." flowery description of the feelings and meanings of the object in life. Then it's the "I am..." set which is to be the broad meaning that have been created through the invocation.
We as a group were have "group mind" trouble so we laid on the floor with our heads in a circle and just listened to each other and copied the sounds we heard. We did this for a half hour. This is a difficult exercise when there are folks that have a hard time letting go of there fear of embarassment. Even though we did this for so long we still had people that wanted to drive the sounds, we need to do some crazy organic work!
After the snacking we got in a circle and played, what I'm going to call "Pass The Object". It started with a red ball, player 1 passes to player 2 and says "red ball", then player 2 recieves it by saying "thank you red ball". And so on passing it around the circle. Then balls of different colors were added one at a time. So we had red, yellow, white, green, and blue all going at the same time and the object of the game was to not loose any of the balls and pass as quickly as possible. Then we switched it up and walked around passing objects that were more complicated, plastic Richard Nixon mask, Toro leaf blower, replica Treaty of Gent(sp?) and others. The object now not only to keep all the objects but to retain there original name (i.e. plastic Richard Nixon Mask changed to plastic Richard Nixon and the replica Treaty of Gent became the replica Treaty of Kent). I liked this exercise, if kept in a circle it could be a really good focus game, but that's just me.
After that we working the invocation a lot! We started by working with somthing that was phyiscally there in front of us. Starting with the "it is...", physical description, once all players had a chance to speak the to "you are...", not physical but still a description (i.e. given quarter, you are worth 25 cents). Then it's the "thou art..." flowery description of the feelings and meanings of the object in life. Then it's the "I am..." set which is to be the broad meaning that have been created through the invocation.
We as a group were have "group mind" trouble so we laid on the floor with our heads in a circle and just listened to each other and copied the sounds we heard. We did this for a half hour. This is a difficult exercise when there are folks that have a hard time letting go of there fear of embarassment. Even though we did this for so long we still had people that wanted to drive the sounds, we need to do some crazy organic work!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
L1C4
We warmed up this class with a clapping exercise and word association; this went on for probably an hour as follows:
-The clapping game was done in a circle and one person would turn to their neighbor and synchronize a clap with them thus passing the clap and that person would turn to the next and so on around the circle. We'd keep this going and increase the speed for as long as we could, i.e. until a mistake is made.
-We then tried the word association around the circle saying the first thing that came to mind. We were supposed to try and match the same beat that we created with the clapping game but we were having trouble keeping it moving, so we kept having to start over. We worked on this for a long time until every one was getting supper tired of doing it. We had a lot of opposites and logical progressions, ex: hot to cold and red to blue to green and so on. So Jay, our instructor, told us to not do that and it just made things worse because every one started to over think it.
We then moved on to motivation in a scene. We were given a secret desire and were instructed to accomplish it with in the scene. This was fun for every one, it really help the people that were struggling with scenes. There were some really powerful scenes too! I think I scared my instructor in one because I screamed. My desire was for the perfect cheeseburger and his, my partners, was to have me stop him from killing again. We were in Las Vegas and playing blackjack and because of my hunger moved to a McD’s where the kitchen was closed and then traveling to another place, I was getting frustrated in not being able to find the perfect cheeseburger and he was getting more and more agitated and afraid of killing again, because I wasn’t really listening to him, I was hungry damn it. We got to the next place which was closed, so there was no one around and the guy finally got so angry he attacked me and grab me by the throat and backed me into the wall and I happened to hit a chair which made lots of noise and so I screamed because that’s what my character did and Jay, instructor, stopped us right away and asked if I was okay, I think he might have thought it was me screaming for real. I think it scared the guy I was in the scene with too, he was very apologetic. I assured them I was fine and all was well again. I, however, had a really hard time letting the energy created in that scene go. It’s awesome to have powerful scenes like that! It was one of those scenes that gets so real you hardly know it’s not real.
One thing I have a hard time with is not throwing in a joke, like when we were playing blackjack I was so hungry I tried to eat the cards. I didn’t think about it until after I did it that it might have been a cheap laugh. I didn’t really intend it to be that way but I think stuff like that comes so easy having done those types of things in Troupe for 5 years.
This week we do invocations, for those that have done this with Chuck, here’s a reminder and for those that haven’t here’s an overview. It’s the opener with the “it is…”, “you are…”, “thou art…” and “I am…” steps. Once given the suggestion the player says “It is…, after all players give a line they move to “You are…”, then to “Thou art…” and finally, “I am…”.
-The clapping game was done in a circle and one person would turn to their neighbor and synchronize a clap with them thus passing the clap and that person would turn to the next and so on around the circle. We'd keep this going and increase the speed for as long as we could, i.e. until a mistake is made.
-We then tried the word association around the circle saying the first thing that came to mind. We were supposed to try and match the same beat that we created with the clapping game but we were having trouble keeping it moving, so we kept having to start over. We worked on this for a long time until every one was getting supper tired of doing it. We had a lot of opposites and logical progressions, ex: hot to cold and red to blue to green and so on. So Jay, our instructor, told us to not do that and it just made things worse because every one started to over think it.
We then moved on to motivation in a scene. We were given a secret desire and were instructed to accomplish it with in the scene. This was fun for every one, it really help the people that were struggling with scenes. There were some really powerful scenes too! I think I scared my instructor in one because I screamed. My desire was for the perfect cheeseburger and his, my partners, was to have me stop him from killing again. We were in Las Vegas and playing blackjack and because of my hunger moved to a McD’s where the kitchen was closed and then traveling to another place, I was getting frustrated in not being able to find the perfect cheeseburger and he was getting more and more agitated and afraid of killing again, because I wasn’t really listening to him, I was hungry damn it. We got to the next place which was closed, so there was no one around and the guy finally got so angry he attacked me and grab me by the throat and backed me into the wall and I happened to hit a chair which made lots of noise and so I screamed because that’s what my character did and Jay, instructor, stopped us right away and asked if I was okay, I think he might have thought it was me screaming for real. I think it scared the guy I was in the scene with too, he was very apologetic. I assured them I was fine and all was well again. I, however, had a really hard time letting the energy created in that scene go. It’s awesome to have powerful scenes like that! It was one of those scenes that gets so real you hardly know it’s not real.
One thing I have a hard time with is not throwing in a joke, like when we were playing blackjack I was so hungry I tried to eat the cards. I didn’t think about it until after I did it that it might have been a cheap laugh. I didn’t really intend it to be that way but I think stuff like that comes so easy having done those types of things in Troupe for 5 years.
This week we do invocations, for those that have done this with Chuck, here’s a reminder and for those that haven’t here’s an overview. It’s the opener with the “it is…”, “you are…”, “thou art…” and “I am…” steps. Once given the suggestion the player says “It is…, after all players give a line they move to “You are…”, then to “Thou art…” and finally, “I am…”.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
L1C3
We started the class by walking around and stopping to say a few words of what ever came to our minds, kind of a lead in to the monologs.
Then we played a game which was a form of telephone. One person reads 2 paragraphs of a story the Jay made up and tells the second person everything they can remember and so on until the last person who takes a test to see how much of the story got transferred. Unfortunately the second person kind messed up by taking when he wasn’t supposed to and some time was lost. We only got a minute to tell the story to the next person. I think the point of this was memory retention and recall.
Monologs and Rants as a form of generating ideas for the scenes is what we worked on the most. A few people had a hard time with keeping quick transitions of the monologs and rantings between people so we worked that part a lot. Also, they were having a hard time getting the concept of escalating their rant, supposed to be getting angrier and angrier, so we worked this the most.
Then we played a game which was a form of telephone. One person reads 2 paragraphs of a story the Jay made up and tells the second person everything they can remember and so on until the last person who takes a test to see how much of the story got transferred. Unfortunately the second person kind messed up by taking when he wasn’t supposed to and some time was lost. We only got a minute to tell the story to the next person. I think the point of this was memory retention and recall.
Monologs and Rants as a form of generating ideas for the scenes is what we worked on the most. A few people had a hard time with keeping quick transitions of the monologs and rantings between people so we worked that part a lot. Also, they were having a hard time getting the concept of escalating their rant, supposed to be getting angrier and angrier, so we worked this the most.
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