?!?!kbadr wrote:Nah, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a person with charisma.
Happy, Healthy, Sexy
Discussion of the art and craft of improvisation.
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- mpbrockman Offline
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In that case, sir, you are a tremendously talented actor.kbadr wrote:Nah, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a person with charisma.
Thedward Blevins <23@thedward.org>
I apologize if this has been said already - I'll admit I haven't read the entire thread.
Andy says it quite perfectly and I'll try my best to re-articulate it: There's no right/wrong, but we want to make sure everything is a choice versus a habit. Because negativity comes from a place of fear of the unknown, it tends to manifest itself as a default for improvisation. Therefore we isolate the "happy, heathy, sexy" muscle to make sure that we know it's there, we are comfortable using it, and then if we want to we can consciously choose to use it or choose not to use it.
The important thing is that at the end of the day it's a choice from confidence. Not a reaction from fear.
yay.
ruby
Andy says it quite perfectly and I'll try my best to re-articulate it: There's no right/wrong, but we want to make sure everything is a choice versus a habit. Because negativity comes from a place of fear of the unknown, it tends to manifest itself as a default for improvisation. Therefore we isolate the "happy, heathy, sexy" muscle to make sure that we know it's there, we are comfortable using it, and then if we want to we can consciously choose to use it or choose not to use it.
The important thing is that at the end of the day it's a choice from confidence. Not a reaction from fear.
yay.
ruby
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- kaci_beeler Offline
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THIS is what it's all about in improv and in life. Well said, Ruby.Ruby W. wrote:The important thing is that at the end of the day it's a choice from confidence. Not a reaction from fear.
I am just now beginning to be able to see the mood I have when I go negative at the beginning of a scene. I can see pretty clearly that I'm a little scared and I'm protecting myself. Often this will result in an aloof and unaffected character. Sometimes this is "annoyed guy," or "leave me alone guy." That is to say, Ryan who wants to improvise, but is dealing with his own anxieties about improvising at that moment.
If I am aware of this fear, I can choose to go positive. Often, this will shift the anxiety as well.
I think being aware of your mood as you warm up and before you ever hit the stage can help as well. I can sometimes shift the mood before things get going, or if I can't shift it I can just get aware of it so I can operate from choice and not fear on stage.
And, just for the record, I am at the VERY beginning of this awareness. (Six months improvising ain't shit.) I can pretty much ONLY talk a good game about this at the moment. I expect to have to play through some negativity stemming from fear for a while. In the meantime I'll keep trying to be aware and choose to be positive whenever I can.
Maybe I'll just make my default character "wow I'm happy to be doing this with you guy."
"The raft is used to cross the river. It isn't to be carried around on your shoulders. The finger which points at the moon isn't the moon itself."
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HHS
I started doing improv 11 years ago (with some long breaks and unusual training) and wish that someone had introduced this notion of "happy healthy sexy" to me at some point. In college we were given the pat definition "the essence of drama is conflict," which I'm seeing many people flatly contradict here.
I wish I'd had time to mull this over long ago and use it to look differently at what I was doing--many times over the years I've been cautioned about going negative--I've sometimes been the only one in the group that needed to be reminded. The answer was that our ENERGY was off or that we weren't having fun. And the reasons we were given in the past to avoid negativity was so that it would be enjoyable for us and thus for the audience. I guess I've got to say that that was something I never completely believed. The idea of placing restrictions on the tone and emotion of what we were doing made me feel "conflicted" about "controlling" how often I was controlling. It made much more sense that the issue would be tuning out the offers of your fellow player (and in extreme cases making a scene unpleasant for them).
I think this really is a good guideline to break bad habits as I've started over at the beginning with improv and now am at level 2. But I struggle with the idea that this is a limiting guideline, rather than giving you more to work with.
Andy and Ruby, you both apply HHS to what you're doing and the results I've seen has always been funny. But do you ever feel conflicted about collapsing the possibility of some of the scenes?
And outside of comedic improv--if one did something dramatic where humor was not the primary goal--would HHS have value beyond ensuring that players are really tuning in with each other?
Obviously I will (try to) continue remembering HHS in my scenes although this is one of the first things that has made me feel more at risk of being too inside-my-own-head. I'm sure that feeling will subside once HHS becomes natural to me.
I wish I'd had time to mull this over long ago and use it to look differently at what I was doing--many times over the years I've been cautioned about going negative--I've sometimes been the only one in the group that needed to be reminded. The answer was that our ENERGY was off or that we weren't having fun. And the reasons we were given in the past to avoid negativity was so that it would be enjoyable for us and thus for the audience. I guess I've got to say that that was something I never completely believed. The idea of placing restrictions on the tone and emotion of what we were doing made me feel "conflicted" about "controlling" how often I was controlling. It made much more sense that the issue would be tuning out the offers of your fellow player (and in extreme cases making a scene unpleasant for them).
I think this really is a good guideline to break bad habits as I've started over at the beginning with improv and now am at level 2. But I struggle with the idea that this is a limiting guideline, rather than giving you more to work with.
Andy and Ruby, you both apply HHS to what you're doing and the results I've seen has always been funny. But do you ever feel conflicted about collapsing the possibility of some of the scenes?
And outside of comedic improv--if one did something dramatic where humor was not the primary goal--would HHS have value beyond ensuring that players are really tuning in with each other?
Obviously I will (try to) continue remembering HHS in my scenes although this is one of the first things that has made me feel more at risk of being too inside-my-own-head. I'm sure that feeling will subside once HHS becomes natural to me.