Austin Improv

from a blog:
______________

"there is a difference between artists and their chosen artform. i think improvisers are lazy people. the artform itself is not lazy, but if current trends continue, the public's general view of it may sour or continue to decline.
how many times have you gone to see improv and been unimpressed with the way the whole thing came off? part of improv's beauty is it's accessibility to performers. anyone can get into improv and with the right combination of people and places, anyone can perform improv. and in many cases can perform improv for many paying customers in a decent space. improv also allows the players to prepare less for the stage time they'll receive in turn. i would guess that the ratio of rehearsal to stage time for an improviser is something like 1:1. that's an incredible ratio and i know of several improvisers who never rehearse yet perform many times in a month. what other artform affords the artist that much face time? scripted theatre can go through a several month process before a play is even performed, and in the last week, labeled "hell week," the cast and crew are typically required to be at rehearsal for 4 or 5 hours a night up until opening night if not longer. feature films have a shooting ratio of roughly 22:1. that means they shoot around 22 hours of footage for every 1 hour that's actually used in the final cut. documentaries are around 33:1. a painter can spend hours, if not days, if not years to finish a painting worthy of a showing. and while that painting may be around for a very long time, the viewer may only spend 10 seconds looking at it. unless, it's a Bosch painting, then it's more like 10 minutes trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
i think people get into improv because they don't have the time, skillset, or inclination to perform some other way. deciding to put up a play with some friends is a very different animal than deciding to put together an improv show. improv can really happen anywhere and can require very little preparation. this is not to say that improvisers have no skills or determination but for most people newly getting into improv, it amounts to a turnkey business investment. that is to say, you can spend little or no money and time, and be producing benefits from it almost immediately. it is the get-rich-quick scheme of performing arts and that's part of what i love about it.
now allow me to call the kettle black while fully understanding that i am black as well. wait... no... what i'm trying to say is that i am guilty of this lethargy, too. i am, by nature, a lazy person. i can watch 13 hours of tv in one day and not think thrice about it. i am addicted to sleeping-in such that i have hit the snooze every ten minutes for up to three hours, just to stay in the womblike coccoon everyone else calls a bed. i am not proud of these facts and i'm trying to change these weaknesses but it certainly does indicate that i tend toward the lazy. this might have been part of my attraction to improv.
but now that i have been doing it for nearly ten years, having traveled all over the country (and to canada, or as i like to call it, USAnnex,) seen thousands of hours of improv, and worked in that 1:1 ratio, i must conclude that we are a lazy lot.
dudes standing around on stage in torn jeans and a t-shirt, going through the same hack topics they saw on SNL the week before. showing up to do a show ten minutes before start time. wearing shorts and sandals for a paying audience and trying to be legitimate? if this artform ever wants to stand a chance at becoming respected by the general public, it has got to start making changes.
actors wear costumes, and play on elaborate sets. whose to say that the improviser can't at least wear nice clothes as his costume? and while the idea of an elaborate set is too confining for a boundless form like improv that can really have a story set in any location in the known universe, it could at least use a little personality. something to inform theme, something to keep the space fresh, something to keep repeat audiences wondering what the set will look like the next time they come.
improv suffers from becoming stale. some people see improv a few times and eventually feel like they've gotten the point and move on to some other interest. this happens internally with performers who find themselves in unchanging environs. they tire of playing the same short form games just because they hit the best and keep money coming in. some eventually tire of doing longforms and i must say if i don't mix it up for myself, i feel like a zombie up there, too.
can you imagine the change an improv show would take on if the performers had a director, lighting designer, stage hands, and a "hell week" of their own. granted some do make changes. i myself have outlawed jeans and nasty shoes for the groups i run, as that is the change i could make, being as lazy as i am. but by and large 98% of improv shows are just thrown together. just because the artform is spontaneous, doesn't mean the preparation surrounding the production has to be, too.
and for god's sake rehearse. to the trained eye it really does show. good improv is about a strong group working together well. you wouldn't expect a football team could beat anyone if they never practiced. little kids don't just win the national spelling bee. they study for hours on end to even stand a chance. but with improv, if you've got the wit, you can get by. and it's that law of improv that is poisoning the future of what amounts to a newborn in art-time.

so, for all you improvisers out there in the blogosphere, come up with a format, get the space, build a minor set, hire a director, rehearse the crap out of it, wear a costume (a decent pair of pants fo cryin out loud,) and put up a show like a scripted company would. legitimize yourself. if we do it long enough, people might actually want to keep coming back. other people might actually give us money to keep the damn thing running. we might spawn talented and useful actors. we might earn a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T from the rest of the arts community. let's face it, they think we're all just jerking off anyway. let's show them we can all jerk off in a nice pair of pants and sell more tickets than them while doing it.

GET OFF YOUR ASS, IMPROVISERS.
DEMAND RESPECT.
or face losing your artform."

______

Whatever, hypocrite!

What a dip shit.

I've seen enough dumpy improv on the road in the last few months to understand where he's coming from. But seriously: I think most of us have spent countless hours taking classes and workshops and rehearsing our balls off and it shows. People with the 1:1 ratio do bad improv. Bad improv is painful to watch. In a perfect world, painful shows don't get audiences.

As far as costuming goes, I'll say this. Props and costumes don't have a place in improv. However, it's nice to look presentable on stage.

I like improv because rehearsal never feels like wasted time. I'm never going over the same scenes and blocking, never waiting for my scene to come up, never waiting for the one person we need to get started. If I'm not on stage, I'm completely focused on what's going on. Every rehearsal is like a little performance, and even better, every performance is like a rehearsal. Every moment of improv builds on everything that came before. In that sense, the ratio of rehearsal to performance increases with every single show or practice.

I love improv so much, I would marry it.

that's a great point, val. you have to be ready and paying full attention at every rehearsal and show, because you never know when you'll be needed. that adds a little oompf to the rehearsal process.

it raises an interesting question. what is your ratio?

In pure numbers- we rehearse about 2.5 hours per week. We have a thirty minute show every 2 weeks or so on average. so I'd say my ratio is at least 5:1.

beardedlamb wrote:it raises an interesting question. what is your ratio?

Improv for evil's ratio is currently around 30:0.

Yay for vaporware!

this is an interesting topic to me, jeremy.

i've had this conversation with a lot of people before and DO believe that improv suffers a perception problem in the general public for good reason - there is a lot of bad improv out there (i've certainly been part of it), performed and presented in a selfish way.

if you have a weekly show, i think you need to think about how to improve it - constant tweaking and reevaluation to create a better theatrical experience.

on a related aside, we just finished an OK show for whirled news last night, and its clear to the me and the cast that we: a. should get back on the rehearsal train, b. need to extend the show length slightly and c. need to tweak the format to best suit the austin production (vs. some direct distillation of the chicago production).

we'll see how it goes, but i think this gets back to being good stewards of your improv show. creating the best possible show for the audience and cast, while being careful not to become overly attentive to audience pandering. i really havent seen a lot of this type of thing ANYWHERE, and i think the form suffers as a result.

as for my ratio...i dunno - i just recently came out of a series of whirled news weeklies and intensives leading up to and coming after the opening, so (at this moment in time) i am probably at 4:1. pre-austin move, much higher...like 6:1. post-austin, much lower, like 1:1 or 0:1, with an understanding that i need a whole lot more *structured* rehearsal time.

and i do think that it is an audience perception issue as well. if you poll 100 audience members who rarely see improv and ask them why, you'll get different answers than if you ask 100 improvisers why they think people aren't showing up.
this has been baking in my mind all weekend and it's starting to drive me crazy. in a good way.

Keep in mind - Improv costs $7-10 per show. That's roughly the same as a movie ticket. (and if you factor in popcorn, well, the Hideout charges $3.50 for a coffee...)

How many movies have you seen in the past month?

Jastroch wrote:What a dip shit.
.

I agree. whoever originally wrote this is some kind of ass hole, I'll tell you what. Who does he think he is? In fact, I did a little googling, and found his blog. Feel free to go and give him a piece of your mind.

http://www.beardedlamb.com/blog.html


:)

i'm outed. oh, well.
i can't believe google picked that up so fast. they must have monkeys working around the clock searching blogs for snooty posts.

I saw an improv show for the first time in LA when I was out there going to college ('88-92). It was a very late night show, that I saw BY ACCIDENT as I was there to see stand-up. The troupe came on at the last minute, and after the worst of the evening's stand-up comics. I think it was at the Laugh Factory, or the Improv, or some place like that. Anyway, I thought the improv set was funnier than anything else I'd seen that night, yet I didn't know any of the people I'd seen performing.

Every experience I've had with improv has been similar to that first late night show in that... live improv is very FUNNY, and good live improv can be an amazing experience, BUT FOR WHATEVER REASON, IMPROV DOESN'T SEEM TO HAVE MASS APPEAL and is not generally, readily available. And therefore, most improvisers can't support themselves doing improv. They never get famous, until they leave improv for sketch or stand-up, or get into movies, or on a syndicated sit-com, or something like that.

And because of this, Improv doesn't pay well financially (if at all) and not many people can make a living doing improv. Therefore most of our community has to WORK before we can PLAY, and that can lead to a lower practice to perform ratio.

BUT listen up!!! If you've performed before a paying audience, you should know that you are now a PROFESSIONAL IMPROVISER -- whether or not you got a cut of the cash that came in from that show. AND YES, if you want your artform and our artistic community to grow, you must PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!

It's easy to be a hobbyist in improv, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Improv's popular appeal and easy access mean that lots of people can get involved on whatever level works for them. And the more people having fun and empowering themselves through improv the better.

BUT. But but but but but... for those of us who pursue improv on a professional level, who are practicing it as a full-time art form and/or expecting to make a living doing it, the unstructured nature of improv is deadly. The comparison to scripted theatre is more than fair. Imagine how phenomenal an improv show would be if we spent as much time rehearsing as you would a Shakespeare play -- if we took this art form as seriously as it deserves to be taken.

The Rude Mechanicals and Salvage Vanguard theatre companies just got a great retrospective write-up in the Chronicle for having built themselves up over the last decade -- for dedicating time, energy, intelligence, heart and soul to consistently presenting ambitious, quality theatre.

Whirled News has done a great job of stepping it up a notch as far as rehearsal process and production values go. It's a model we should learn from and build on. We've got more shows coming up later in the year (Law and Order, Gorilla Theatre, Start Trekkin'); my goal is to make those shows so sweet and tight that the Saturday 8:00pm show sells as well as Maestro has been. We'll be paying improvisers and rehearsing more than we have in the past.

There should always be room in Austin improv for all levels of involvement, but those of us who are interested need to keep raising the bar and pushing this art form to the next level.

Viva la revolution : )

beardedlamb wrote:i'm outed. oh, well.
i can't believe google picked that up so fast. they must have monkeys working around the clock searching blogs for snooty posts.

I actually tried to google it and couldn't find anything, and then went and read your blog on a hunch. I see right through you, Mr. Lamb.

Jastroch wrote: I'll say this. Props and costumes don't have a place in improv.

That's like saying that a flute or a string section has no place in rock and roll.

We work so hard trying to get long form improv accepted as an art form and you want to place LIMITATIONS on it!?! On IMPROV?!?! Tsk. Tsk.