What is your best sales pitch for the concept of improvisation? Let's say you get whisked away by a tornado and you get thrown into a tiny tiny country town that has never heard of the idea. Now you're stuck & you crave improv in your daily life but you cannot play since nobody else understands what it is.
What's your best sales pitch to describe what it is?
Added challenge: This town never had television installed. Or internet etc. So my normal sales pitch "Think SNL. Two people walk onstage and begin a scene. They don't know what the other person will say but the idea is to come up with a Saturday Night Live quality sketch on your feet." That pitch won't work. It's off the table.
So what is your best sales pitch? What parts of improv do you highlight or underplay? Do you mention longform or shortform? Do you mention anything that is behind-the-scenesy? How do you access the people of this tiny town? With the greatest impact.
Begin your pitches!
You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
Discussion of the art and craft of improvisation.
Moderators: arclight, happywaffle, bradisntclever
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- Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell Offline
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- Location: Austin, TX
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Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
do they have theatre in this tiny town?
Sweetness Prevails.
-the Reverend
-the Reverend
Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
Yes. They have church skits? I dunno, haha. I say just go for your explanation assuming there is some form of theater.
Try to explain it to them. They will let you know.
Try to explain it to them. They will let you know.
- Christine Crocker Offline
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- Joined: August 18th, 2012, 10:00 pm
- Location: San Angelo, TX
Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
I am currently in a small town...in japan...haha so I just pitched an idea...
Here's my thought process...Most people who know what improv is, which already is a small number, only know comedic improv and even in that some have only heard of "who's line is it anyways"...
So my pitch was to keep it light, and preface it with popular examples they may have seen. We'd start by getting some classes together to teach people how to do improv, both for those who want to perform or just help getting out of their shells and learning to be more comfortable 'in the moment' and 'going with the flow', its a fun way to interact and use your imagination and also just meet people. For those looking to perform, we would start getting comfortable with your fellow improvisers on stage and doing short very short scenes to help develop basic skills - learning to just say something, "Yes-And", that you don't need to be funny or a comedian, but just willing to try it and by the nature of improv funny things will happen. This provides entertainment that is "relatively" cheap to produce especially for small town theatre since you could really do it without a stage even, let alone lighting, costumes, sets - I think thats the biggest selling point from pitching to a theatre or trying to rent out space to hold performances. also time commitment - at least in the beginning to do basic improv short form games, rehearsing once a week seems less intimidating than having 3-5 rehearsals for plays.
Thats the basic pitch...then if you're looking for more long-term space to hold classes I went into a general description of how skills can improve, and by learning to develop character relationships on stage it creates a more dynamic relate-able scene which also boasts well for more long-form scenes and that shows could be so much more than improv games. And that improv can also be more than just comedy, but any style of performance.
All in all, we'd get improvisers set up with skills before tackling the more challenging long-form, "All you'd have to do is donate your space for a performance!"
End pitch lol
Here's my thought process...Most people who know what improv is, which already is a small number, only know comedic improv and even in that some have only heard of "who's line is it anyways"...
So my pitch was to keep it light, and preface it with popular examples they may have seen. We'd start by getting some classes together to teach people how to do improv, both for those who want to perform or just help getting out of their shells and learning to be more comfortable 'in the moment' and 'going with the flow', its a fun way to interact and use your imagination and also just meet people. For those looking to perform, we would start getting comfortable with your fellow improvisers on stage and doing short very short scenes to help develop basic skills - learning to just say something, "Yes-And", that you don't need to be funny or a comedian, but just willing to try it and by the nature of improv funny things will happen. This provides entertainment that is "relatively" cheap to produce especially for small town theatre since you could really do it without a stage even, let alone lighting, costumes, sets - I think thats the biggest selling point from pitching to a theatre or trying to rent out space to hold performances. also time commitment - at least in the beginning to do basic improv short form games, rehearsing once a week seems less intimidating than having 3-5 rehearsals for plays.
Thats the basic pitch...then if you're looking for more long-term space to hold classes I went into a general description of how skills can improve, and by learning to develop character relationships on stage it creates a more dynamic relate-able scene which also boasts well for more long-form scenes and that shows could be so much more than improv games. And that improv can also be more than just comedy, but any style of performance.
All in all, we'd get improvisers set up with skills before tackling the more challenging long-form, "All you'd have to do is donate your space for a performance!"
End pitch lol
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- Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell Offline
- Posts: 4215
- Joined: March 17th, 2006, 5:50 pm
- Location: Austin, TX
- Contact:
Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
"Hey, let's put on a play but without any scripts! Whaddyasay?"
Sweetness Prevails.
-the Reverend
-the Reverend
Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
Theatre not bound by another persons words (even when those words are brilliant); theatre guided by honest emotional reaction; theatre with a constant sense of discovery both for the audience and performers, and in that shared discovery is a bond that is closer than any bond an actor can share with an audience.
- jillybee72 Offline
- Posts: 649
- Joined: November 16th, 2009, 1:20 pm
Re: You find yourself in a tiny town. Improv Pitch!
Now that I've thought about it...
I think at first for several months I would just teach classes to local people who were interested and curious.
After a while when they felt we should do a show, we could call it something open, like "The Spectacular"! Having a blank tapestry would be exciting, we could just call it, "reverse-engineered theater" and have it treated just like any other theater show.
I think at first for several months I would just teach classes to local people who were interested and curious.
After a while when they felt we should do a show, we could call it something open, like "The Spectacular"! Having a blank tapestry would be exciting, we could just call it, "reverse-engineered theater" and have it treated just like any other theater show.