Austin Improv

Here's a great little treatise by Bill Arnett, about how whenever we do improv we're doing two shows. One show is called “Haroldâ€

Roy, this pathetic attempt to claim that your troupe has actually performed 200 shows WILL NOT STAND.

200+

I keep posting stuff from Bill Arnett's blog, but it's just so good.

I read this a few months back, and the idea keeps coming back to me in rehearsals.

It equates improv scenes to quantum states, and I think it's a highly useful way of thinking about things:

I had a new way of looking at an improv scene. An improv scene is all possible scenes until the actors show us what it really is. When the actors give specific information about the scene they slowly open the box and let us see inside. The lesson? Don’t let your scene be a supposition of states, a blurry photograph. Is the scene in a gym or a cave? Both? Until you tell us, it is both.

Thinking in this way really helps me get motivated to clearer and more concise when acting in a scene. It's not that the audience couldn't tell where you were/what you were holding... it's that for all intents in purposes you were in all possible locations that fit what you'd established.

So by being clear and defining your environment, you're making the picture clear, and showing us one specific instance rather than all possible instances. Or something.

Anyhow, the post is here:
http://blogs.iochicago.net/bill/wordpress/?p=51

Roy Janik wrote:I keep posting stuff from Bill Arnett's blog, but it's just so good.

I read this a few months back, and the idea keeps coming back to me in rehearsals.

It equates improv scenes to quantum states, and I think it's a highly useful way of thinking about things:

I had a new way of looking at an improv scene. An improv scene is all possible scenes until the actors show us what it really is. When the actors give specific information about the scene they slowly open the box and let us see inside. The lesson? Don’t let your scene be a supposition of states, a blurry photograph. Is the scene in a gym or a cave? Both? Until you tell us, it is both.

Thinking in this way really helps me get motivated to clearer and more concise when acting in a scene. It's not that the audience couldn't tell where you were/what you were holding... it's that for all intents in purposes you were in all possible locations that fit what you'd established.

So by being clear and defining your environment, you're making the picture clear, and showing us one specific instance rather than all possible instances. Or something.

Anyhow, the post is here:
http://blogs.iochicago.net/bill/wordpress/?p=51

Damn, he's already been there. I was just thinking similar thoughts.