Austin Improv

Do you like Jam?

I know I do.

The jam is on for tonight. 7-10pm, as usual, at the Hideout.

I've got a lot of ideas for tonight. We're going to work on organic warmups, some environment-type exercises, paying attention to initial offers, and feeling out audience expectations.

And, of course, whatever you want to work on as well. This is just a rough outline of stuff I've been thinking about this week.

Also as usual, the jam will be broken up into a few sections... the warmups, scenework and games, and the mock show.

keeping it alive!!!

Good jam. There were around 9 people, I believe.

We mainly focused on solid scenework, so in some ways it was a down-to-business type of jam. I hope it wasn't too boring or whatever.

For the warmup, we mainly focused on trying to do an organic warmup, with mixed success.

We did the following exercises (play along at home!):

I am a Tree (with scenes):
You play I am a Tree like normal, but after the 3 people/objects are named, you do a scene snippet with them before moving on. This proved difficult because oftentimes everyone was playing inanimate objects or abstract concepts. In the future, I'd admend this to say that you do a scene snippet only if you feel like it, and it makes sense.

Where are we?
We'd start a scene and let it go for a bit, and then stop. We'd then all discuss where the scene was taking place, and what it looked like. We discovered that the mind will give us as much detail as we want if we only "look" at it. Most of the time, the audience knew instinctively that the kitchen, for instance, wasn't just a kitchen but a grimey, country kitchen. The challenge is in taking the time in the scene to vocalize what you know instantly.

Color/Advance
This segued nicely into Color/Advance. Two players did a scene. An external director could call "Color" at any time, and the player speaking would have to describe in detail (still within the scene) whatever they had been talking about. Again, the details mostly came effortlessly when asked for. A call of "Advance" would set the scene in motion again.

5 Seconds of Silence
Players did scenes, but were instructed to count to 5 internally before responding to anything verbally. They used this time to think about how they felt emotionally with regards to the last thing said.

Tater Do (aka Choose Your Own Adventure)
A scene is stopped periodically. The players are polled about what they think happens next, and the audience votes by applause. The scene continues with the most popular choice. We did this to get a feel for audience expectations. More or less, the audience likes crazy shit, but it has to be something that still moves the story forward. For instance, in a scene set in a sandwich shop, the audience was given the choice of the worker making a sandwich, the manager coming in, or a meteor striking the shop. The audience chose the meteor route, which caused the scene to develop a sweet game where the meteor struck employee still insisted upon working despite being near death.

During the show portion, we played: Pan Left/Pan Right, He Said/She Said, Stringing the Pearls, Radio Station, Fortunate/Unfortunate, and probably some stuff I'm forgetting.

I'm not sure why I typed all this up. Enjoy!

Roy Janik wrote:Good jam. There were around 9 people, I believe.
[...]
I'm not sure why I typed all this up. Enjoy!

Thanks for taking the time to write this up, Roy. I'm on standing grub duty most Tuesdays, and I've got a stack of other things waiting to take up my time if I'm not, so I rarely if ever get a chance to visit the jam these days. Reading a detailed summary like this almost makes me feel like I was there... kudos!