When: Tuesday Night, 7-10 pm
Where: Hideout Theater (617 Congress)
How much? FREE!!! (I'm a cheap date!)
Theme: You have to know the rules to break them.
We'll work on the purposeful breaking of rules and stagecraft to produce stronger, deeper, layered, and more subtle scenes.
For example, we always encourage people to cheat out, but what effect can you generate by purposefully cheating in? How can this be used to set a scene or define a character? How can avoiding your light change the way the audience feels about your character?
When breaking "rules" out of fear or confusion, this translates to the audience as clumsy story-telling. It feels weak. But when we do the same things on purpose, out of confidence, and with an understanding of their ramifications, it adds complextion, strength, and depth to our worlds.
Come ready to have fun!
Tuesday Night Jam 7/8/08
Listings of upcoming shows, classes, and other events.
Moderators: arclight, happywaffle, bradisntclever
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- Jon Bolden Offline
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1491
- Joined: March 19th, 2008, 11:16 am
- Location: Austin, TX
- Contact:
Thanks to all who came out. We got up to 22 or so, so it was a good crowd! We had some first timers for the jam and some new to improv as well. A few may even sign up for the Level 1 class. I pushed it hard to their mother who was watching and curious about it.
Brains were broken, games were played, skills were tested. It was a fun time!
For those of you that took them, stick to the pledge!
It's only 7 days, only about 10-30 mins a day. You CAN do it! I have faith!
Brains were broken, games were played, skills were tested. It was a fun time!
For those of you that took them, stick to the pledge!
It's only 7 days, only about 10-30 mins a day. You CAN do it! I have faith!
Thursday:
(approximately 15 to 20 minutes)
Today, I will read aloud five different monologues (of at least 20 lines in length each) with at least two being by the same character.
(Suggested plays: Doctor Faustus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Volpone, Man and Superman, Night of the Iguana, Glen Garry Glen Ross, Bus Stop, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Importance of Being Earnest, oe print some our from here: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/others.html (try not to read from the screen, you'll want to walk and move and use space as you read))
You can do it!
(approximately 15 to 20 minutes)
Today, I will read aloud five different monologues (of at least 20 lines in length each) with at least two being by the same character.
(Suggested plays: Doctor Faustus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Volpone, Man and Superman, Night of the Iguana, Glen Garry Glen Ross, Bus Stop, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Importance of Being Earnest, oe print some our from here: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/others.html (try not to read from the screen, you'll want to walk and move and use space as you read))
You can do it!
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- Marc Majcher Offline
- Posts: 1621
- Joined: January 24th, 2006, 12:40 am
- Location: Austin, TX
- Contact:
No problem, who needs to do work at work anyway?
Telepahty is an old business training game I picked up a few years back.
It's simple.
Pair up. Stare into one another's eyes. Communicate a concept or idea. You may only look into one another's eyes. You may not talk or make any sounds. You may not use gestures or even move your body in any way.
With strangers, it is all but destined to fail. However, it is a great game for troupes or people that interact a lot to use to develop group mind.
Thing is, even being told that you cannot communicate, people's bodies constantly betray them and a world of subtle facial and body tics, breathing changes, and other communications do in fact take place. You can learn so much from what people don't even know they are saying. Happy ideas tend to make people generate subtle smiles, negative ideas tense the areas around the eyes, food ideas may make lips curl or get brief licks, etc. I've seen people be as eerily accurate as knowing the other person was thinking of a picnic under a tree and be right.
One that really slowed people down was Last Letter Word Association. Play word association as you normally would (apple, red, firetruck, fire, ice, etc), only your association has to start with the last letter of their word (universe, everything, greed, dollar, Roth IRA, aging, grow, etc). The faster you play and the less you think, the better you'll actually do, though the instinct is to lock up and think too much. This is a great brain breaker.
We also did Wind Unwind at various levels - once around, twice around, thrice around. Then we did it around, mixed up the players, and tried to unwind (people tend to associate the word less with the pattern of words and more with the person who said it so these unwinds tend to fail quickly, or are only rebuilt by people saying "no, I was over there and I said x and you were next to me..."). Then we did a wind, broke to play other games for 20 minutes, reformed and tried to unwind. Chris Trew taught me that last variation and it'll do ya.
We also did some of those exercises with our eyes closed to force us to divest the person saying it from the word/offer being said. That seemed to help in most cases.
We also did the Dueling Conversations game (two people carry on unrelated conversations at the same time and take turns telling one sentence of their conversation, then responding to the other person, then theirs again). You have to talk and listen at the same time. Then when people were starting to get it, we put the pairs into pairs and forced them to talk across one another--so now you are talking, listening to one person, and ignoring the white noise of two other people.
We also did one I call a Small Talk About a Small Talk, another old business training exercise. Essentially you have one person come up and play expert at something they are not an expert in and give a 1-minute talk. Then you bring up another player who kinda assumes they'll be doing the same thing...only you make them give a 45-second talk about the 1-minute talk they just heard without adding any new information (i.e. stick to what they heard, not be a similar expert and talk about other things). Despite being told to listen to the first talk, you'll be amazed how little most people listen to other people (much less a problem in the jam than in business classes). Then we did the same thing only the second person had to rebut the previous expert for a minute, so they had to bring in parts of the talk, but add new, contradictory elements as well.
We basically did a lot of heavy active listening exercises, which I did so that we could then parlay the skill into games that only truly succeed when the players actively listen to one another, including Radio Play, where you turn out the lights and do an old timey radio play and the only stimulus you have from your fellow players is auditory.
And I will say, after all those exercises, while the players missed some of the "gimmicks" of Radio Play like foley artistry and the infused commercial (understandable as most had never seen it before), the two run-throughs we did were probably the most seemless I'd ever seen/heard as far as players listening to one another, not talking over one another, grasping vocal offers, and being attuned in that fashion.
There was some more, but I should get back to some work...
Telepahty is an old business training game I picked up a few years back.
It's simple.
Pair up. Stare into one another's eyes. Communicate a concept or idea. You may only look into one another's eyes. You may not talk or make any sounds. You may not use gestures or even move your body in any way.
With strangers, it is all but destined to fail. However, it is a great game for troupes or people that interact a lot to use to develop group mind.
Thing is, even being told that you cannot communicate, people's bodies constantly betray them and a world of subtle facial and body tics, breathing changes, and other communications do in fact take place. You can learn so much from what people don't even know they are saying. Happy ideas tend to make people generate subtle smiles, negative ideas tense the areas around the eyes, food ideas may make lips curl or get brief licks, etc. I've seen people be as eerily accurate as knowing the other person was thinking of a picnic under a tree and be right.
One that really slowed people down was Last Letter Word Association. Play word association as you normally would (apple, red, firetruck, fire, ice, etc), only your association has to start with the last letter of their word (universe, everything, greed, dollar, Roth IRA, aging, grow, etc). The faster you play and the less you think, the better you'll actually do, though the instinct is to lock up and think too much. This is a great brain breaker.
We also did Wind Unwind at various levels - once around, twice around, thrice around. Then we did it around, mixed up the players, and tried to unwind (people tend to associate the word less with the pattern of words and more with the person who said it so these unwinds tend to fail quickly, or are only rebuilt by people saying "no, I was over there and I said x and you were next to me..."). Then we did a wind, broke to play other games for 20 minutes, reformed and tried to unwind. Chris Trew taught me that last variation and it'll do ya.
We also did some of those exercises with our eyes closed to force us to divest the person saying it from the word/offer being said. That seemed to help in most cases.
We also did the Dueling Conversations game (two people carry on unrelated conversations at the same time and take turns telling one sentence of their conversation, then responding to the other person, then theirs again). You have to talk and listen at the same time. Then when people were starting to get it, we put the pairs into pairs and forced them to talk across one another--so now you are talking, listening to one person, and ignoring the white noise of two other people.
We also did one I call a Small Talk About a Small Talk, another old business training exercise. Essentially you have one person come up and play expert at something they are not an expert in and give a 1-minute talk. Then you bring up another player who kinda assumes they'll be doing the same thing...only you make them give a 45-second talk about the 1-minute talk they just heard without adding any new information (i.e. stick to what they heard, not be a similar expert and talk about other things). Despite being told to listen to the first talk, you'll be amazed how little most people listen to other people (much less a problem in the jam than in business classes). Then we did the same thing only the second person had to rebut the previous expert for a minute, so they had to bring in parts of the talk, but add new, contradictory elements as well.
We basically did a lot of heavy active listening exercises, which I did so that we could then parlay the skill into games that only truly succeed when the players actively listen to one another, including Radio Play, where you turn out the lights and do an old timey radio play and the only stimulus you have from your fellow players is auditory.
And I will say, after all those exercises, while the players missed some of the "gimmicks" of Radio Play like foley artistry and the infused commercial (understandable as most had never seen it before), the two run-throughs we did were probably the most seemless I'd ever seen/heard as far as players listening to one another, not talking over one another, grasping vocal offers, and being attuned in that fashion.
There was some more, but I should get back to some work...