Austin Improv

ColdTowne will typically put you in a beginning level even if you've trained elsewhere, partly because the different schools have different approaches to scenework and partly because developing a connection with your class is a big part of the experience. Even people who've graduated from schools ...

ColdTowne Level 1 sections starting Wednesday Oct 15th (6-8pm) and Saturday Oct 18th (11am-1pm): http://www.coldtownetheater.com/register-for-classes

The following are two-person groups I've played onstage with:

Straight Blades (+ Kareem Badr)
Pep! (+ Valerie Ward)
Felix (+ Juliet Prather)
Rarebit (+ Amy Carpenter)
Difficult (+ Joshua Krilov)
Cucumber Castle (+ Bob McNichol)
R&R (+ Rachel Madorsky)
No Left (+ Bill Stern)

On Wednesday Dec. 4th I'll be teaching a Hideout elective on non-narrative longform improv from 7 to 9. It's ten bucks.* You should come.

I have apparently decided that trying to get people to play scenes more realistically is too easy and instead will be trying to explain a half-century's worth ...

The community getting larger might actually be contributing to the decline, in that it now includes a lot of people who don't know each other. Just to use the example at hand, if I ask what people are seeing at OoB, I'm interested in getting that answer from my friends, not from random improvisers I ...

I have a metric shitload of moving boxes (okay, fewer than 20) that I need to get rid of. Email me if you want to come get 'em: fatliff (not a typo) art geemail dart com

Doesn't this mean that the people in the shorter line get to play more scenes than the people in the longer line?

Ratliff, that is exactly why I said we must make a distinction between "an audience" (the 25 folks who happen to see the show tonight) and "The Audience" (the massive collective we play to night after night)
...

But that's just the opinion of exactly the type of person you didn't want to hear from ...

I'm interested in the reactions of people who I know share my sensibilities. Since I have no way of gauging that in an audience, I tend to listen more to my peers who are doing work similar to what I want to do. (In fact, I pay them to listen to them.) There are very talented improvisers who are ...

For that reason, it always bugs me when I see people make sound effects for their actions from within the scene. Not because I care so much about the aesthetic choice, but because I'm worried that it's taking the improviser out of the moment.

Asaf has a great solution for this, which is to make a ...

Think about all the steps that go into making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, for instance. On the bread alone, you're going to want to undo the twist tie, open up the bag, skip over that end piece and retrieve two slices. It's those details like skipping over the end piece that really make the ...

Let's. As long as you didn't mix up those two rhyming words. The Randy Meisner at ColdTowne tonight at 8.30, everybody!

Ruby, you can have your thread back now.

Why, Ratliff, would you answer a question of the form "How do I do X" with "Don't do X" ?

I gave the answer I did because it seems like there might be some improvisers reading this forum who don't realize that it's okay to not have a preformatted show.

I didn't say not to do it. I brought up ...

trabka wrote:My "on the other hand" was referring to the hand holding the fact that marketing that kind of show has a higher difficulty curve than ones with a set format. Admittedly, that hand doesn't really matter.

... OR DOES IT?

Or ... let each show tell you what the format is for that show. Derive the format from the suggestion, or from the first scene, or from the first line of dialogue spoken, or the first physical action of the show. Instead of imposing a format on a show beforehand, why not discover it at the same ...