Monday, November 23, 2009

Technique vs. creativity

I can't watch American Idol and have no interest in dancing celebrities. Watching real-life families struggle or people compete in races or survival contests? Meh.

Give me a show where people cook or design something: Chopped. Top Chef. Project Runway. The Next Food Network Star.

And The Next Iron Chef. (For which there will be serious SPOILERS in this post.) I was bitterly disappointed that my chef-crush John Besh lost to Michael Symon in the first competition, but Symon has won me over (it's mostly the giggle). Then there's this, from his evaluation of the competitors in last night's show:
"If you're creative and you fail, are you creative? Or are you a failure?"
It was all part of a bigger conversation—OK, argument: The show's regular judges dinged the guy they thought executed beautifully but played it too safe. The Iron Chefs dinged the one who took more risks but failed more often.

Because the chefs couldn't respect the guy who may have all the imagination in the world, but screwed up french fries.

I won't gas on about obvious links to improv—or any other art.
Creativity and imagination are vital. But you don't get far without knowledge.

****

Speaking of technique, my fabulously talented writer friend Bryn Donovan has a great post up on creating characters for novels that has lots of fodder for improv exercises.





Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Lunch hour brain dump.

So Hallmark brings in terrific outside thinkers—marketing folks, artists, branding experts, writers, even improvisers—to tell us what inspires them and share what’s new in the outside world.

Today, it was Jason Rohrer. From an article in Esquire:

A naked kid and a freakishly tall man walk in a meadow. The meadow is their front yard. It pokes up from among the sheared lawns of upstate New York's Route 11B like a Mohawk, purposeful and defiant. The kid's hair is long and blond and, on first glance, feminine. He wears orange rain boots, his uncircumcised penis free in the breeze. The tall man wears military-style cargo pants and a red T-shirt that says MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL GAME SUMMIT. He's barefoot. His dirty-blond hair is spiky from not showering.

(I assume he showered before coming here, but was far enough back in the crowd that I can’t be absolutely certain.)

He’s a video game programmer whose most famous game, Passage, presents a lesson in mortality in five minutes. I downloaded it for my iPhone while he was talking and played it at my desk—and though it didn’t make me cry, a lot of what he said got me thinking.

To sum up: There’s a lot of discussion in the video game world about whether it can be art. They’re compared to movies as if that’s the standard—if a video game seems almost like a movie, that must be good, right?

His definition of “art” is tight enough to mean something but “weak” (his word) enough to open up the discussion (paraphrasing, here): Art explores the human condition, leads you to insights about your life and the world around you, and makes you think about it after you’ve experienced it.

He wonders why video games should want to be movies when they grow up—why they can’t be their own thing. Why would you want to invent a movie? They already exist.

Talking to my friend Amy on the way back from his chat, we both admitted that Hallmark’s creative resources are often just as inspiring to us in our outside worlds as they are at work. In our day jobs, we’re cogs in a much bigger machine, so our contributions can keep things moving—even influence the direction they go in—but we’re not big or strong enough to affect holistic change.

But in my improv life (and in her jewelry-making world, Applescraps), I can change things. Whether it’s bringing an idea to a group or adjusting the way I communicate or deciding what kind of projects I want to be involved in, I can use new information immediately.

And I want to do something with this idea of not trying to be something that already exists.

For our show, Erik and I have talked a little bit about more theatrical work—something beyond toilet-paper, something worth writing down. OK, hang on…

A quick aside to say I’m past the days of any interest in self-indulgent experiments with art-for-art’s sake. Improvisation, as I use it, is about entertainment—that means it should offer SOMETHING to an audience. And if it’s advertised as a “comedy” performance, that something should be laughter. But I think there’s a middle ground between trying to put on a show that makes a statement and playing Spelling Bee.

…and we’re back. Now I’m interested in pushing in a different direction. There are folks who take “that scene was so good it seemed like it was scripted” as the best improv compliment you can give or get.   

But if what we’re doing is improvised, that means it can be affected—from moment to moment, scene to scene—by everything. The audience. The environment. The mood. We talk about that a lot in terms of work within the scene, but not the form or the show itself.

The closest we get here (there’s more organic work going on in other cities) is suggestion-heavy, audience-participation driven shows. But is there something else? Something that taps into the energy of the room and the space and the crowd?

How do you create work that truly exists only on that night, for those people?  

OK. Lunch hour’s over. Time to get back to work. 

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Be careful what you wish for.

I set this as my goal on 11/23/08: At least one rehearsal a week, and at least two shows a month.

Uh...done. Up to three or four a few times this year, even. So now, just like last year, I'm looking at my schedule for the first quarter or so of 2010, and it goes something like:

Shows:
Rehearsals:
  • Sundays with Erik
  • Tuesdays with Exit 16 (shows monthly, too)
  • Monthly with Omega Directive
  • Pre-show with Tantrum and Spite
  • A few before Thunderdome with Team #9
  • And coaching Nifer, Julie and Chante's Thunderdome team with the ladies of Spite
Sustainable? Who knows? At some point, I'll probably want to have a weekend that doesn't involve improv at all (or, say, lets me see improv in another city). (If you listen, you can hear Josh giggling.) December will give me enough of a break that I'll miss it, though, so I'm not too worried about the first three months.

*****

Got to play with Erik again tonight.* We're getting to know each other better and better, and pushing each other out of our comfort zones more and more. Random notes:
  • My characters all have had the same diction (sentence length, word choices) and reactions to things; tonight, I tried higher status, more confident and more...um...well, less asexual characters. Not necessarily all at once.
  • As we get more comfortable with each other, we're willing to make our characters more vulnerable and more interesting things are happening.
  • We're having fun goofing around with forms (french braid/stripped-down Harold, La Ronde) and different ways into scenes. We're tending to play longer scenes, but it's hard to know if we're finding the turns or missing the beats.
  • So yeah, we're ready for a coach. We'll have one more session without one, then bring in the fabulous Nikki DuPont, who we're confident will call us on our bullshit. (And, we're hopeful, not have to find a way to explain that we're only funny to ourselves.
  • Playing at home continues to force us to play some level of appropriateness. We can get weird, but not loud weird. So characters are typically grounded enough that no one calls the police.



*BTW, if you haven't seen a CounterClockwise Roast, go when they come back next year. I giggled all the way through their take on The Bodyguard last night. Erik is surprising and smart and goofy; Ashley is highly observant and absolultely adorable; and Bess is hilarious when she revels and rolls around in the pop-culture muck.)






Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Two down, one to go.

This week started with Erik, and a rehearsal for our as-yet-unnamed duo.

Jill had given us an assignment—a positive-fixation exercise—which worked incredibly well to help us get at characters who actually like each other. Along with some mirror-your-partner's-character scenes, we used it to continue working on grounded characters. As we work together more, we're starting to see some patterns/bits/habits/outs to work around; my take is that they mostly tend to be defense mechanisms. When characters get to the point where something interesting might happen—you know, they might have to reveal something or be vulnerable—we have our go-to devices to lower the stakes.

So it's time to bring in a coach. We're 95% comfortable with each other (if we were 100% there, there'd be no stake-lowering) and we know the basics of what we want to do with our show. Now it's time to start crafting it into something performance-ready. I'll admit, I'm going to kind of miss the pure exploration; without a show scheduled or a director involved or any kind of results-orientation, we've been able to just play. Which, not surprisingly, is kinda fun.

Rehearsal #2: Exit 16. After a lackluster show and a great rehearsal (thanks again to Jill), four of the 10 kids played a ridiculously solid show at the Corbin last Saturday. A 90-minute show by four kids could be a scary thing, but they were fired up and ready and playing in front of a friendly crowd. They used everything we worked in rehearsal, hit the stage with huge energy and sustained it for the whole show.

Tonight we worked on some new games: Character swap and Evil Twin. We played three versions of Character Swap:
  1. Girls in one line, boys in another—everyone takes turns continuing the scene in the same character
  2. Two teams of four, swapping out all at once to continue the same thing
  3. Same as #2, but with a Talk In Turn adjustment (they could only talk in a pre-determined order) to help focus
Notes from the session:
  • Make your character distinct enough that someone else can take it on
  • Add new information with every switch
  • Heighten the emotional connections/interactions/reactions with every switch
  • Watch details—environment, character traits, dialogue
Evil Twin was interesting because I've never seen, coached or played it. It's always interesting to try to figure out the games within a game in rehearsal—and learning to coach it while the kids played it adds a twist. They count on me to know what to say, so I have to adjust their expectations when I'm figuring it out with them.

Rehearsal #3: I'll be taking Tantrum through the same stuff we did with Exit 16 last week. As much as it'll suck to (mostly) not play, it should be a whole lot of fun. Every now and then, I'm just fine with stepping out of player mode and just being the coach.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The answer is "yes."

At the end of last week's Exit 16 show, I just wished I could make them feel better.

And that's where being a workshop whore gives me power. Yeah, taking workshops every chance I get makes me a better improviser. But even more than that, it gives me toys to pass on to the kids.

Two weeks ago, I had a refresher course in Jill's Fireball Theory—which turned out to be just the thing they needed. I told them her theory about Boomer and outrunning the voice that says "you suck." And we did some of her exercises, some of Dave Razowsky's, some Annoyance stuff....and we talked about exactly what the voice was saying. And I asked them questions and let them talk even more than usual, because Jill reminded me that's how people learn.

Sometimes this stuff is so obvious I look right past it.

When I've been new or haven't been comfortable in troupes, I've either felt like the giant gas-guzzling steamroller that crushes everything in its path or the idiot newbie who really should just sit down and shut up and maybe learn something, moron.

And, as it turns out, those feelings are the ones getting in the way of the kids making strong choices. The experienced ones are afraid of being stage hogs. The new ones are worried about staying in their places. So they're being incredibly polite.

All the trust falls in the world are no substitute for telling each other everything they do is right. We forget to tell our partners...

I need you to be confident.
I love it when you're fearless.
I want you to be big and loud and powerful.
I won't judge you when you try something different.
It's OK when you grab me, push me, poke me, climb on me, and do all that stuff we wouldn't do to each other in real life.
If you edit my scene, I won't resent you.
If you change my idea, I'll have another one.
If you don't get what I mean, it's no big deal.
If we step on each other every now and then, it's just because we're going somewhere.
I've got your back. I'm going to play like you've got mine.

Tonight, I think the kids found out all this stuff. It's more than a toy or a tool—it's truth. I can't wait to see them play this Saturday.

Comedy On The Square
Featuring Exit 16
The Corbin Theatre, 15 N. Water on the Historic Square in Liberty, MO
8pm $5

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Is there such thing as an improv Band-Aid™?

Dude.

The kidlings did NOT have an easy time of it tonight. Small crowd. Small cast (we were down two). Their hosting was strong, and the show structure was fine...

...but they were missing the fun. And they knew it. And, God bless 'em, they tried to bring it with them every time they went on stage, but it just wasn't there.

Because we haven't had help in The Expensive Sound and Light Booth, I've been running both from just off stage. Which means I spent the whole show trying not to wince, and to say supportive things as they went out for the next scenes. We did some high-energy scene-starts at the break, and everyone knew exactly what they needed to do.

And that's the tough part. They're new improvisers—even though, in their lives, it probably feels for the seniors like they've been doing it forever. The ones who've been doing it longer have a pretty good idea of what they were missing; the newer ones, even, have a sense of what happened.

They just don't have the tools to get themselves out.

Hell, even experienced improvisers can't always extricate themselves from a horrid show. But we have more tools. If I'm mired in a sucky scene, I have quite a few ideas for how to get out of the quicksand—by myself, by grabbing onto someone or something. And I'm on stage with experienced players who know when to throw me a branch and when to fire up the Jeep and toss in the cable.

The kids—they're just lucky to keep their heads above ground. Which they did, making me insanely proud. Everybody has a not-great show every now and then. Theirs came after just one real rehearsal in a month. In front of a smaller-than-usual crowd. Nobody's making excuses—least of all them. Next Tuesday, we'll work on what they think they need. Because they know a lot about what that is.

Monday, October 26, 2009

ImpFest 2009, part 2

Ooof. Stayed home from work AGAIN today, and slept most of it. Stupid cold—though I guess I'm lucky it's not the flu. We'll see how much of this I can get through without dozing off...

Saturday
Workshops with Jill
Omega Directive, Coma Chameleon, Improv-Abilities
One, Dictionary Soup, Brownies Don't Lie

Jill taught her Fireball Theory class, which I've taken once and watched her teach the kids. It was interesting to take it again with a different—and much larger—group, and to hear their takes on the work and their improv issues. Her Fix 'Em Up session was terrific; we gave her our issues, and she put together exercises to help us work on them. Exhausting, but a great warm-up for our show.

A little thing about the make-up of the class: It was mostly John's Roving Imp students, plus a few local improvisers. One of the things John's doing is instilling a love of the craft in the folks who work out of the Imp. Every local group has a vibe—whether it's one they intentionally seek and foster or not—and theirs is full-on improv geek, in a wonderful way I love being a part of.

We finally have Ryan back in Omega Directive, which is wonderful. I love playing with those guys. It's not just that I don't have to do any of the production-side work; John has put together a fun, strong, really interesting mix in this cast.

I'm not proud to say this: Somewhere around hour 15 of the ImpFest, I hit a wall. The cold, being tired, doing shows, taking classes...it all took its toll and I missed a few sets while Jill and I walked around and cleared our heads before our show. I would have loved to have not missed a minute of the festival...but to get ready, getting out for a while was really important.

Plus...well, Jill and I have only done the show once, and hadn't had a chance to rehearse for the one we had coming up in a couple of hours. So we got some down time: wandering around the Dollar General, walking around downtown, browsing a great little Mexican convenience store I didn't know existed, and getting in a good (if really, really quiet) warm-up in the green room and out on the back deck. (From what we heard from backstage, the sets before ours rocked. I don't think anything all weekend made me much happier than hearing Julie get loud, enthusiastic, sustained, well-deserved applause.)

I would be lying if pretended I didn't spend the first scene and a half all the way up in my head. The monologue: "Holy crap. What's going on? I'm not getting it. I'm not connecting. This isn't working. I'm totally blowing a chance to play with Jill. ARRRRRGH." Then: "Fuck it. Let's play."

In our third scene, I climbed up on a box and hid in the nook at the back of the stage, and played the first third of the scene in total silence, just playing some subtle stuff and trusting that it would be plenty for Jill to mess with. It was, and after that I totally relaxed and just played. We played the kind of long scenes we did in our first show—strong relationships, multiple turns and an inside joke or two (rrrawwwrrr).

Sunday
Coaching session for as-yet-unnamed duo
Making Connections class (teaching)

So Erik and I got a couple of hours with Jill to work on our show, and it made me realize just how invaluable to work with someone who's seen, performed with and directed multiple two-person shows. We started with warm-ups, and her advice that any group warm-up can be a two-person warm-up. (Aaaaah, Big Booty...)

Then a series of questions: Have you said "I love you?" Have you kissed? Have you slapped each other? Are you portable? All designed to make sure when that stuff comes up on stage, it doesn't freak either or both of you out. (We may have to work on the slapping thing. I'll have to convince Erik he can hit me at least a little harder. And the stage slap won't work, because I always turn my head the wrong way—plus, the loud noise startles me more than a real slap.)

Next, more questions, this time to get at an aesthetic for the show. Stuff like favorite books, movies, TV shows...what kind of improv we like doing...what we feel like the show absolutely should have in it...what skills we have outside of improv.

Um. This is where the one-dimensional thing really sucks.

Here's the surprising thing, though—turns out we're both pretty physical, so that could be something fun to explore. That never in a million years would have occurred to me; I used to have to work really hard at making physical contact on stage. I'm not completely without issues or self-consciousness, but thanks to two-plus years of three-a-week workouts with a trainer, the physical stuff doesn't scare me anymore. Not being picked up. Not climbing on someone. I've done a few dozen push-ups on stage, know how to lift with my legs instead of my back, and have the core strength required to play a monitor lizard (see above).

As far as aesthetic, we both seem interested in the same stuff, which we knew: Rich, grounded characters in real relationships. (Pretty much the same stuff Jill and I do in Brownies Don't Lie, so that's handy—I want to do more.)

We spent the rest of the time on exercises—including one Jill had run with Tantrum in her Truth & Beauty session with us a couple of years ago. It's simple: A five-minute scene where one person talks, and one doesn't. It's great at building trust on both sides.

And then I taught a class—and Jill hung around. Um...eep. We talked beforehand about being students in situations where we were sometimes teachers, and vice versa—she did a very gracious job of jumping in with really insightful comments, but never, you know, rolling her eyes and stuff.

The class I taught was on making connections (described here). The goal: Help improvisers get more out of openings, whether they're monologues, stories, scenes, or single suggestions. The first two-thirds were mostly what we notice, why we listen and how we remember things; for the last part, we started scenes, just to explore different ways to use the stuff we remembered (from purely verbal to more character driven starts). It was a more intellectual class than I usually teach—and I had a ton I wanted to cover. So it ended up being more about giving people new ways to approach the work than it was about fixing or changing what they normally do.

Then it was off for more BBQ. And a loooooong freakin' nap.