Austin Improv

Ok, so I had a class with Joe Bill. The stuff said was amazing. I've been thinking about it for 2 weeks. Almost everything he said was a jewel. Here's the good stuff:

* "Del said anything over 20 minutes is Harold." - HA! PROOF! Finally.

* One big theme of the class was speed vs. intensity. The point was that the tempo at which you play is more of a style choice. You can go as fast or as slow as you want, as long as what you produce (and the emotion behind it) is intense and focused.

* "Improvisors spend too much time worrying about moving objects, and not enough time letting the objects move them." - OK! A classic twist of phrase, but it's freakin' true. Really true. If you can truely see and feel the objects that you're interacting with on stage and you let them effect you... let them move you... you can get soooo much from that.

I think I posted the exercise that we did somewhere else, but I'll do it again, cuz it's so freakin sweet if you do it right:
Two people enter the stage. Each decides what emotion they feel before they go on stage. When they enter they either connect to a space object and really focus their emotion into that, or they look at the other player and start feeding their emotion through them. Then when they've got the feeling that they really understand how they feel they start the scene. It really doesn't matter what they say. It could almost be gibberish as long as there's plenty of real emotion behind it. Try it! You might be surprised!

* "Being in your head is when your primary conversation is with yourself and not with your scene partner(s)."

* Now for the hard core one: DON'T CHANGE! So, obviously making a change chan help a lot. But I think the important thing is not to change just to change if it doesn't fit with your character. If you change at the wrong time it can feel totally fake and disengenuous. Here was his example of the beginning of a scene where sticking to your shit is actually a way stronger choice then changing your tune for no reason:

Husband: (comes home from work angry) Honey this place is a mess.
Wife: I had a miscarriage.
Husband: THIS PLACE IS A FUCKING MESS!!!!

It's great. I love that example. It shows that playing your character with some honesty can really get a scene going. As long as the characters don't bicker about the mess or the fetus and stick to playing their feelings (directly or through subtext) the scene will be great.


Hope you enjoyed that. I sure did. I'll post something else when I learn something else.

DollarBill wrote: * Now for the hard core one: DON'T CHANGE! So, obviously making a change chan help a lot. But I think the important thing is not to change just to change if it doesn't fit with your character. If you change at the wrong time it can feel totally fake and disengenuous. Here was his example of the beginning of a scene where sticking to your shit is actually a way stronger choice then changing your tune for no reason:

Husband: (comes home from work angry) Honey this place is a mess.
Wife: I had a miscarriage.
Husband: THIS PLACE IS A FUCKING MESS!!!!

This confuses me.
How is continuing to care about the mess, and basically not care about something amazingly important like a miscarriage, not a block. How is placing the importance of a mess over the importance of a miscarriage making an even remotely strong choice?

kbadr wrote:

DollarBill wrote: * Now for the hard core one: DON'T CHANGE! So, obviously making a change chan help a lot. But I think the important thing is not to change just to change if it doesn't fit with your character. If you change at the wrong time it can feel totally fake and disengenuous. Here was his example of the beginning of a scene where sticking to your shit is actually a way stronger choice then changing your tune for no reason:

Husband: (comes home from work angry) Honey this place is a mess.
Wife: I had a miscarriage.
Husband: THIS PLACE IS A FUCKING MESS!!!!

This confuses me.
How is continuing to care about the mess, and basically not care about something amazingly important like a miscarriage, not a block. How is placing the importance of a mess over the importance of a miscarriage making an even remotely strong choice?

I think you missed the joke there.

It's kind of like that game of parallel universe where Lamb had his finger in his mouth during the switch and the partner says, "My water broke!"

Spaztique wrote:

kbadr wrote:

DollarBill wrote: * Now for the hard core one: DON'T CHANGE!

This confuses me.
How is continuing to care about the mess, and basically not care about something amazingly important like a miscarriage, not a block. How is placing the importance of a mess over the importance of a miscarriage making an even remotely strong choice?

I think you missed the joke there.

I see the joke there, but it seems like one very specific joke/game. If you always employeed this, wouldn't you be repeating the same thing in different scenarios?

That being said, the overall note that change for the sake of change can seem really forced is a good one, and one I'm guilty of. Being grounded in Johnstone, I often feel that need for a tilt in the scene after it's gotten to a certain point, and sometimes the only way I can think to make that happen is to have my character give in, or blow up... then I beat myself up later for always playing the indignant character.

I usually don't even think about having objects affect me. I could just as easily discover something in the environment that initiates the change/tilt of the scene (noticing an old photograph, hitting something with my head, getting bit, etc...) Of course, that would seem even more forced if done wrong.

The audience sees everything.

In the above scenario, the Husband IS having an emotional strong reaction to his wife's miscarriage. To him, the mess is a lot more important than his unborn son and his wife's suffering. Moreover, the anger he shows towards his wife tells me that he blaimes her for everything and probably punishes her when it goes wrong.

And there are other possibilities... you could read it that he's so grief stricken that he's in denial. There is way more going to in here than apathy if you read into it. That's what happens when you don't drop your shit, shit of course in the emotional/character motivation sense. Adjectives and aderbs rather than nouns.

I get bothered by scenes where two people come out with strong characters and a strong perspective and then one or both of them change it to go along with the other character's perspecitve (because they think they have to agree all the time). It's like, "hey, here's a really sweet set up... but oh well, never mind. We've reconciled and solved our problems. Now the scenes gonna go on for another 5 minutes and nothing's gonna happen. Hey, let's talk about this object I'm holding!"

Spaztique wrote: I think you missed the joke there.

I usually do.

If player A cares about the mess and is being told "don't drop that!"...then that means player B's instruction must also be "don't drop the miscarriage!"

Mess!
Miscarriage!
But...mess!
MISCARRIAGE!

I find this uninteresting.

Don't drop has very little to do with the nouns of the scene and everything to do with attitude, perpective and emotional traits of the characters we play.

Jastroch wrote:Don't drop has very little to do with the nouns of the scene and everything to do with attitude, perpective and emotional traits of the characters we play.

I agree with that much.

The example is a piss-poor example of that, though. Also, I am extra grumpy today. Don't mind me...

I'll fight you because I love the example.

Not to be contrarian here, but I think that example is damn great.

The way I read it (with the implied emotion behind it) is that the husband sees the miscarriage as a part of this messy house. As someone above mentioned, the wife becomes to blame for what the husband sees as a chaotic house/world. Everyone kept their shit and found the common group to explore their initial emotions and figure out how they related to each other.

Go beyond the literal.

OK, my brain glossed over this bit, which I agree with, and makes the example less offensive to me:

As long as the characters don't bicker about the mess or the fetus and stick to playing their feelings (directly or through subtext) the scene will be great.

Bob what you wrote was totally wrong.

I hate to say it, but I agree with Jastroch.

Bob, you gave up your shit too easily.