Austin Improv

This Saturday is the first of six Saturday morning jams. The jams will take place from 8:00 to 11:00 at six different parks around town.

The point is to find new and creative ways to break our routines a little bit and to try the craft we all love at a different time on a different day in a different place. To hopefully be inspired by our environments and to explore how our minds work to perceive and create reality differently with different stimuli.

This week's jam will take place at the Rock Island near the soccer fields in Zilker park. (We'll meet on the Volleyball court side.) {Map}
In honor of Zilker's role in both developing Austin's character by hosting ACL and serving as home to Barton Springs pool and for Zilker's role in playing host to a cast of famous characters (like Bedicheck, Dobie, and Webb), this week will will focus on Character Skills.

I'll try to bring donuts and coffee, but no promises. I'm not used to getting up this early either you know.

I'll post a complete list of the time, location, and themes of all six morning jams on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I'm there.

OOh, I wonder if I can improvise beyond what I'm eating for breakfast during the morning time. Fascinating!

*bump*


The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
--Benjamin Franklin
Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement.
--William Pollard
When you are through changing, you are through.
--Bruce Barton


Come do something different for your improv this weekend, change it up, and break free from your comfort zone.
No stage. No seats. Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Curusoe, it's improv as primitive as it can be.

Wes, can you describe with (more) words where it is, please?

Sounds like fun, but I'll be atoning for my sins (Yom Kippur people).

The Brigadier wrote:I'm there.

I thought I was there, but I'm not there. It's like 5 in the morning and I haven't gone to sleep yet.

Could not do the 8 a.m. My mind said "go," but my body said, "stay in bed, and have anxiety dreams for not going." I feel a lot of guilt, but not as much as a practicing Catholic.

(This is Teresa)

Well it will happen again next week, so hopefully you can make it then. Also, come at 9:00 if you can't get up at 8:00 (so long as enough people showed up at 8 to make it a go). But the point is that this is supposed to be hard to do, that's part of the exercise in it.


Thanks to those who did come out. It was a small group, but we had a lot of fun. We wound up only going for two hours because we didn't have enough people to stretch out some of the exercises or play games involving larger numbers of people.

We did a lot of things inspired by the environment.
--We played name volleyball on actual volleyball courts (and each simultaneously played 3 or 4 different characters on the court with unique physicalities and attitudes).
--We used the natural shade lines from the rocks and trees to play a zone game inspired by the scores of metal detecting dudes in the park (the shaded areas were the past and the light was the present and a metal detector would find something to start the scene then we'd make offers back and forth).
--We also did a series of watching people around us and making assumptions about their characters and lives and then played those people in a series of scenes.

It was definitely stepping out of my zone and I approached a lot of the exercises in ways I wasn't expecting myself to.

I really have high hopes for the rest of the series.

It sounds like a blast, and I will definitely try to make it out soon. I slept til 11am today (thanks to late night partying)... but sometimes you just gotta improvise some sweet sweet sleep-in dreams.

Cheers.

I think the party is what did most people who said they'd be there in. Several others PMed that they were hungover.

Thanks for running this, Wes. Was a good time, and I learned lots despite my drunken fog and some unruly volleyball players. Next time I want Hulk on MY team.

marck wrote:Next time I want Hulk on MY team.

"Hulk smash Kwanzaa Jimmy!"

Seriously, Jimmy is not amused! You'd better stop calling me Kwanzaa Jimmy!