Austin Improv

Huzzah! It's that time again. Meet me from 7-10 at the Hideout Theater on Tuesday Night for a hell of a good time.

People of all experience levels are welcome.
(And Christina and I would like to take our dance lessons in May, so if you were one of the people who said you'd love to step in and run a few jams to help out, I strongly encourage you to come on by, meet the new faces, and refresh yourself on how things work and the types of things people love to work on.)

I am hoping to do a lot of brain damage tonight, so be prepared to to be pushed to your mental (especially with memorization and story arc) limits! I also want to run some environment and spacework exercises.

Who's in?

Hmmm... Let me think... If there will be no conflicts, I will be there.

Also, since we're doing story arcs, memorization, and spacework, if we have the right amount of people, how about ending the jam on a narrative longform?

As all, m'lord

Oh god! Should I wear my thinking cap or my safety helmet?

Awesome jam!

For the warmups, totally nice job of screwing with everyone's heads, Wes! From Wind/Unwind to "Would you like to buy a duck?" to everything else, I believe we were all properly mindfucked. I also liked the fact that Zach started Story Spine in the same way Wes describes the opening of Star Wars, and then it leads to the farmboy's parents, in my words, "Finding his dead, cum-soaked body in a ditch, hacked into a million peices."

And for the show, we came up with a new longform format involving that picture book! And we might have come up with a new type of edit ("Has this ever happened to you?"), or even a few edits (overuse of reaccuring jokes can make good edits). Very nice use of reacurring characters and motifs.

Also, whoever Ann-Edited me, try to be a little more gentle. It felt like somebody really tried snapping my neck.

Heads up-- there might be some new Improv 101 heading over for next week's jam. I told them how friendly and welcoming everyone was.

Spaztique wrote: And for the show, we came up with a new longform format involving that picture book! And we might have come up with a new type of edit ("Has this ever happened to you?"), or even a few edits (overuse of reaccuring jokes can make good edits). Very nice use of reacurring characters and motifs.

Actually, I think we all failed miserably (in an excruciatingly painful and delightful way to watch) to come up with anything based on the picture book, which was a good inspiration mechanism. Also, those weren't edits as much as they were all of us beating a dead horse. In fact, I think we went back to it so often that we turned that horse into glue and dog food.

While I really liked the montage format because it's one of the most flexible long-form games, some of us agreed that we were stepping on each other's toes too often. Too many one-liners and quick jokes were happening and not enough individual scene build-ups.

Merlin, new people are good. We had a huge jam a couple weeks in a row, but it's diminished back down to about eight people for the last couple weeks. Old people are good too. People are good. We're people who need people. That makes us the luckiest people in the world.

Thank you all. That was one of the most fun and productive jams (for me) in a while. I hope you take a lot out of the mindfunk games beyond just the fact that I fucked with your head. I hope you all expanded your boundaries a bit. There's a reason to all those exercises and I do nothing without a reason.

Some 101 students would be a blast to have! Please send them along!