chronogically inaccurate

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”  The Beatles

WARNING TO READERS

To whoever might read this. If you were a 101 student @ Cold Towne Theatre during late Summer 2009 (Aug-Sept) in Austin Texas, next to I♥Video on Airport Blvd. with Lisa Jackson who is an EE by trade, but doesn’t do anything related to EE now, and a fellow named Brett was in your class who was really funny, this page may be of interest. If you have a similar blog, send me a link. OR if you don’t know what a blog is and would like me to tell you, send me an email.

Props for Peers

Steve Donovan is very sexy and has a deep voice.  Check out his non-wordpress blog site @ http://brevebronovan.blogspot.com/ or just click on the embedded youtube video 500 times from 500 different computers in 500 countries.

Summary (for those w/out the time)

The following is a super short list of the things the trainers at Cold Towne repeated hundreds of times.

1. Make your partner look good
2. Cooperate and play nice
3. Listen, your partner might be endowing (either themselves or you).  Pay attention.
4. There are no rules. Guidelines are extremely helpful when starting out
5. Support you partner’s reality
6. Every instinct and action is Awesome
7. Get out of your frontal lobe, stop worrying about how you look, you look great
8. Mime things, practice miming daily.  Don’t make your action so complex.
9. Asking questions, or interrogating your partner, isn’t really that funny.  Develop your own character.
10. Be specific about your character’s hopes, dreams and aspirations.  Then magnify it by 1000.

Impressions and Lessons and Other Scattered Thoughts of Improv 101 at Cold Towne Theatre (so far, according to J):

1. It’s not necessarly about comedy, rather self awareness. There are about 1 jizzillion definitions of improv. In the end, it’s about making your partner look good. It is about accepting their reality.
2. People are coming to shows, with beer in hand, to laugh.  It’s not that hard. You are not failing if they don’t laugh. Art is about provoking thought. Be provocative.
3. Be yourself, dont be afraid. Especially if you’re in a workshop. “It’s a lab, try everything” says Brett.
4. At least one person in the audience is gonna think you’re not funny, so what.
5. It’s therapeutic. Explore themes that are familiar. Not only do you know them, but you can feel them. Don’t strive for resolving past hurts. Remember, this is comedy, but work in areas that you can relate.
6. There is nothing that is “wrong”.  Everything is right.  No need to argue or disclaim.  Practice experiencing the other’s reality.
7. Life stories have themes, themes can be branched off into opening lines.
8. Developing the “where” in a scene may come last. Explore the plotless improv. To “cooperate and discover” is another way of stating “Yes and …” Plotless improv begins with who you are and what you are. The plot, where the scene goes, naturally evolves. Concentrate on your point of view (POV). I am a bartender, these people work for me. I am a middle manager, I want to be more, I have people that report to me, so pressure is from the top and bottom.
9. Keep busy with objects, miming objects, if you don’t have anything to say.
10. Understand what you want to get out of it.  Each class, ask yourself, why the hell did I come here tonight?  Do I want to laugh at Brett?  Do I want to ask questions to John that I know he can’t answer?  Do I want to imagine myself as Steve Donovan’s fraternal twin?  Do I want to go on stage?  Just think about it.  Often know what you want before you do something, even if it is the same thing over and over and over and over again, ask yourself.  ”What the Flock am I doing here?”
11. Do vocal warmups that are silly like “A Fly and a Flea in a Flue, were imprisoned, now what should they do? Said the Fly “Let us Flea!!!”  ”Let us FLY!!!” said the flea.  So they flew through a flaw in the Flue

More Scatterings (notes from Plotless Improv taught by superstar Rich Talarico taken on my iPhone when I wasn’t laughing)

• Who and what.  If you are leading with this, plot will inevitably develop
• Establish and discover, together.  This cooperation and discovery is just another way of saying “Yeah! And …”
• Avoid plot, focus on relationships, things you are miming, shop talk, blah blah, it will quickly become obvious to you and your improv buddy where you are. Start with what helps, what comes natural.
• Who and where start with that.  What is in your hands, really work with it and feel it.  Establish a “something” that IS NOT complex.  If you miming what a lab technician does during lunch break, your partner and your audience won’t get it.  Make your mime simple and clear.  Let your interaction with the thing define who you are and where you are.  Why you are there and what is gonna happen is stil; up in the aid
• Shop talk when dialogue starts, what would a character that has been given your endowments do, what are they thinking, what are their hopes, dreams, aspirations and something else.
• Cooperate and discover another way of saying YES AND
• Thinking about suppporting someone elses point of view
• Do something for ten minutes of something every day MIME
• Half done is well begun.  Rich Talarico said this about 31 times.  It’s pretty simple, super accurate.
• Rich recommended that every take a look at the liner notes from the best selling Jazz record ever, “Kind of Blue”.  Certainly, many folks that do improv have read this.  For those who haven’t, I am only providing a piece, if your interested in the who version, look it up on a search engine.  Finding it was fun.  Anyhow, not only is it the greatest jazz album, it was entirely improvized.  Bill Evans, the pianist, wrote this in the liner notes, 1959:

This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflections has prompted the evolution of the … unique disciplines of the … improvising musician.

Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording.

Miles Davis presents [on Kind of Blue] frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with sure reference to the primary conception.

Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played.

• POV Exercise: Inanimate object’s and their point of view.   This was a lot of fun to watch.  The audience was asked to shout out things that you’d expect to find in a glovebox.  About 30 suggestions were identified.  The performers were then asked to select one of the objects and become the object.  In the glovebox, for example, the performers choose to be a flashlight, an insurance card, a cellphone charger and a stick of gum.  Then the scene began.  Each performer was then to develop the POV of their object.  The insurance card was statistical and matter of fact. The flashlight realized that his batteries were corroding and the troupe lifted his spirits be discussing other potential uses for a flashlight, like a blunt instrument for fighting.  The point, deeply consider what you are endowed with and create the character around it.  These developments in POV eventually lead to a plot, or maybe not.  Some other iterations included a Junk Drawer and Grandma’s living room.
• Keep busy with objects if you don’t have anything to say.  Quickly and clearly go out with something you are doing, to establish the character, for example washing dishes and shaking a mixed drink.
• A character’s Point of View (hopes, dreams, fears, aspirations) is naturally established through shop talk.  One of the character in a specific scene, was discussed in depth.  The middle manager in a WalMart.  What would that person’s hopes, dreams and fears be?  Knowing these qualities, how might they interact if they were sitting at lunch break with a senior manager.  What would they say?  What would the shop talk be if interacting with a subordinate?
• Follow your own thread once you establish POV
• At some point, someone asked something along the lines of “what is the reason for this exercise? It’s not as if we ever do this?” or “Can we include this ‘other’ improv technique while practicing this new one?”  Rich gave a response that is fitting for for any type of question of this sort.  ”A boxer in training jumps rope every day for several months in reparation for a bout.  Although the boxer never jumps rope when boxing.”
• 1000 pots.  Not sure when or how this fable/myth/story came about.  But Rich told the story of 1000 Pots.  I looked around for the actual story on a thousand differne t websites, but couldn’t find it.  Maybe he made it up.  A professor asked the students to create 1000 clay pots.  He divided the class into two teams.  The first team was directed to create one “perfect” pot.  The second team was asked to create 999 pots.  The students went off to work.  Upon completion, the professor’s hypothesis was proven.  After analyzing each pot with specific criteria, the “perfect” pot emerged from of the work of second team.  Through practice, trial, error and repetition that finer craftsmen ascend.

Exercises – Just of list of exercises to warm up and connect.

Note: In college, at least for the first 2 years, I studied Theatre Arts.  I performed in over 20 shows both professionally and as a student (alot less as a student).  The warms ups and exercises of a stage actor have a different outcomes than that of the improv performer.  The stage actor seeks to warm up the body and the voice with various tongue twisters and songs, etc.  Often these exercises are led by the director and the entire cast participates.  The intent of the warmups for improv performers is to clear the mind and connect with the team.  The stage actor warms the voice and body; The improv actor connects and clears the mind.

• My favorite – Where have my Fingers Been?  The chant goes … Where have my fingers been, I said where have my fingers been, SAY Whaat? (or Oh Noooo or Uhh Huhh!).  As you go around the circle, your right hand partner will endow you with a location … then you perform a scene between your 2 index figures in the endowed location.  Your index fingers are the characters.  You can do what ever the hell you want, but keep it under 30 seconds.  When done with the finger scene, start the chant, then endow a location on your
• Chezhoslavikia. Sha boom Sha Boom.  Yugoslavia sha boom sha boom.  let’s get the rhythm of the (hands, feet, hips, etc).  Simultaneously doing a patterned clapping thing to the rhythm of the chant
• Passing the Clap.  In a circle, as if you were tossing a ball, you make visual connection with someone, then clap.  Simultaneously, the recipient (the person you visually connected with) claps.  Then the recipient passes the clap to someone else in the circle.  connect with another
• Protest.  Four words.  Then chant like a protester.

More Randomness that May Seem Less Random

• Make references to come back to like “I learned blah blah”ha
• 2 people in reality is drama; 1 person in reality and 1 person in not reality is  comedy
• It’s ok too not try to be funny