Story Robot

I feel like I’m finally recovered from Improvathon. In the end I improvised for 12 hours on Saturday, which I feel was pretty impressive, though it pales in comparison to those who went for 30 hours straight.

I remember Keith talking about Micetro and saying the ideal situation was to play several Micetros over a weekend, as that was the best way to stop improvisers caring about winning and losing. I can certainly appreciate the idea now. I never felt any pressure to jump into a scene, and I never worried if I screwed something up. There was always going to be another chance later.

Can’t wait for WIT’s Improvathon.

Flying up tomorrow with a couple of other Jesters to take part.

It’s gonna be intense.

I sometimes write myself notes to tell myself what I think about certain things. Here are my notes on Pre-show warmups.

First of all, as far as I’m concerned a vocal warm up is mandatory. It’s not enough that an audience can hear you. If I have to take a moment to reconstruct your sentence in my head, then it’s much less likely that I’ll laugh at your joke. The moment will have passed.
Nothing too elaborate, a little can make a big difference.
Like Keith says ‘the voice has to be a whip to discipline the audience’.

By the same token, a few stretches wouldn’t go amiss. Or have you already decided that you’ll perform all your scenes tonight standing casually in the middle of the stage?

As for the classic improv warm up.
My number one rule. If someone in the group wants to do a warm up, I’ll take part (enthusiastically I hope). Improv is about being there for other people after all.

If there are some technical aspects to the show then I’ll want to work on those a little. If there’s going to be rhyming then a rhyming game will help. When we were doing a Shakespeare show we made a simile game that worked very nicely.

Other than that, I like to hang out with the other players, and being improvisers, it’s not uncommon for a game of some kind to develop organically which is always more satisfying.

Finally, a tradition we got from Patti Stiles. Just before going onstage give each person a hug and tell them ‘I’ve got your back’.

(courtesy of Best of Wikipedia)

Mamihlapinatapai is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes “a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

I’ve been in many an improv scene that started with mamihlapinatapai.

A little experiment to try and represent the (training wheels) Harold pictorially. Suggestions welcome.

Stumbled across this little video of Keith talking about the secret of acting

View Here

(I gave up on trying to embed it)

The Improv Handbook
Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White (from The Spontaneity Shop)

Why this book blew my mind.

1. The Improv Handbook is clearly written by people who do exactly the kind of improv that I want to do. Many other improv books I have read and enjoyed; Truth in Comedy, Art by Committee, Improvise, etc. All of these books I have read more than once and got a lot out of, but these books were not written for my style of improv.
(To clarify, my favourite kind of improv is fundamentally narrative based and Johnstone inspired, and that’s what this book is about).

2. I love Keith’s books. Love love love them. But I know many people find them very difficult reads*. This is a much smoother read, the layout is easier on the eyes, the sections follow a logical flow, the index is more useful, and (though this is a bit unfair) the pop culture examples are things that I know and like (I knew it was love when they used Die Hard as an example).

3. It’s filled with exactly the exercises I was looking for as a teacher. The one slightly demoralizing thing about the book is that I saw so many of the little insights that I had gleaned in my years as an improv teacher and thought my very own written down in front of me and put much better than I ever could have. The upside is that in the book I found the exercises that I probably would have eventually worked out for myself (or at least I like to think so).

4. Cross style discussion. I’d always wanted to know what Keith thinks of Del, and what what Mick thinks of Keith and so forth. So it was a treat to see someone asking those questions. Favourite Keith quote “I think what Del was trying to attack was to stop it being a total waste of time.”

You can read a sample from the Improv Handbook here.

*I enjoy the labyrinthine quality of Keith’s writing, it means I’m always finding something I missed last time through. But I certainly see where people are coming from.

One of the most surprising improv moments of the year;
The MC asks for ‘a part of the body’ from the audience.
Someone throws an artificial leg onto the stage.

I’m heading up to Wellington on Thursday for the New Zealand Improv Festival (hosted by WIT, who are awesome).

With so much good improv going on around NZ, I’m stoked to see some of it being brought together for a few days.

Will report back next week.

Here’s a guest post from Without Annette’s Francois Vincent, delayed slightly by me having my laptop stolen.

I like this post for two reasons;
a) it’s very short, and I like short things
b) I agree without it totally, and I like things that I agree with

Bad News
by Francois Vincent
————-

You need to fail. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t learning. If you are doing something without failing, then you’ve learned it.

You need to push your own envelope, to perform at the edge of your abilities, to go outside of your zone of comfort. And in doing so you will fail. If you aren’t failing, you haven’t pushed yourself beyond your capabilities.

You will eat that failure. You will fail and fail and fail and you will suck it all up. Then one day, you will do it. You will have
learned and you will do it. You will explore it, sometimes failing, sometimes nailing it. And then you will be good. Enjoy it and be happy because I have some bad news.

It will be time to fail again.