Another great NZIF done. One of the highlights was being able to work with Crumbs (Stephen Sim and Lee White). A couple of comments I’ve been mulling over since then. Lee talked about how improvisers have a tendency to use their improv powers to de-escalate situations. So if a character is angry then we tend to try and placate them (as we probably would in real life) when the more interesting choice is to anger them more. As he put it; “I’m an improviser. I can stop anything interesting from ever happening.” and a quote from Stephen “audiences will forgive errors in content more readily than they will forgive errors in rhythm.” Certainly when I’m watch my students perform, it’s the moments of hesitation that stand out most glaringly.
The thing that most impressed me about these guys was that what they taught and what they performed were totally in sync. It can be really demoralizing when you meet a tutor who talks loftily about the art of improv and then performs using nothing but gags, with Crumbs you could see them putting the techniques they teach into practice onstage.
Ah synchronicity.As soon as I start thinking about something, examples start to turn up all over the place. First of all Joshua Wolf Shenk has written a great series of articles on the ways that John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaborated. The introduction is here. It’s a little wordy but the essential idea is that in the past people and creators have been viewed as individual units, but now science is more and more viewing people through they way they connect and relate with other people. Improvisers have known this for a long time, for example in the classic Keith exercise ‘Sexy/Smelly/Stupid’ where each character is created by how they respond to other people (rather than an individual deciding ‘I’ll be the sexy one’). The Lennon/McCartney article starts here. One of the things that remains thrilling about a simple game like Word at a Time Story is where is the story actually coming from? One person says one thing expecting to take the story in one direction, the other person says something else expecting to take the story in another direction, in the end the story goes somewhere that neither person intended. That is I think the essence of collaboration. Then, today this turned up on TED In which Steven Johnson pretty much repeats the exact same point. Great ideas tend to come not from individual eureka moments, but from people with little bits of an idea talking to each other. As a bonus, here is the same point being made again. This time in the form of a discussion of who came up with the Star Wars character Chewbacca.
A great video from Jill Bernard. So much good stuff here.
This is probably my favourite
“You’re being vague because you think it’s respectful of your partner’s plans. But she has no plans, she’s improvising. So, name some sh*t so we can move on please.
Just discovered this wonderful comic. Art by Ethan Nicolle (age 29), with story by Malachai Nicolle (age 5).
This is extremely similar to the stories I would write in primary school (actually, it’s quite similar to some of the stories I write now). But what impresses me is the storytelling techniques at work. There’s routine breaking, reincorporation, and internal logic (for example, in the world of axe cop, any time you get someone’s blood on you, you gain their powers).
This is the next part of the Patsy Rodenburg talk I linked to below.
I think this is (perhaps) another way of looking at Keith Johnstone’s status work. 1st circle is low status, 3rd circle is high status, and 2nd circle is the status player (someone who can adapt their status to the situation). She also makes the connection that it is only in the 2nd circle that one has to be ‘in the moment’.
I probably should have mentioned this at some point.
My comic is now on sale online.
It’s actually pretty good, the narrative was improvised, and Saki’s art is amazing.
I probably should have mentioned this at some point.