Austin Improv

Tuesday Night Improv Jam!

When: Tuesday Night! 7:00 - 10:00 pm!

Where: Hideout Theater Green room (upstairs) located at 617 Congress Ave.

How much? FREE!!!!

I'll bring some fun games and exercises. You bring yourself, energy, desire, and friends if you can round 'em up!

We'll workshop some Maestro games and play Fun with Restrictions!
We'll work on seeing restrictive games as more liberating than oppressive. We'll play with games like the Alphabet Game, Questions Only Scene, 3 word sentences, and No P.

Onward to Victory!

Screw the rain! This'll be the driest place in town!

I don't know what that means other than come on out, even if it rains. And leave a few minutes early to avoid traffic!

A word of caution: the green room is being rented during the day, so there is probably a bunch of their stuff around. Please play around it.

I think they're only renting this week, so it shouldn't be an issue after this jam.

They're actually renting for three or four weeks.

Great jam tonight! Big turn out (20ish+) and lots of great enthusiasm. One or two unexperienced and then representation from virtually every improv theater in town! We had people who studied with Shana at the State, with Tom Booker, and at Salvage Vangard. And the Hideout level 1 class was there en masse (about 8 of them). It was awesome to see so much support from so many places.

Let's do it again next week!

As always, please send me or post any feedback about the pace, the games, the exercises, etc. I want to keep improving the way the jam works and flows!

On a side note, did anyone see or accidentally borrow my Creative Drama for the Classroom Teacher book? I didn't see it when I was leaving. Thanks!

Wesley wrote:On a side note, did anyone see or accidentally borrow my Creative Drama for the Classroom Teacher book? I didn't see it when I was leaving. Thanks!

I think I saw it on top of a table or something in the green room. At least I saw the word "Creative" in the title.

And let's remember: "Respect (Don't Rude)".

The current Level 1 class beez the bomb.

My blurry picture of the jam tonight.

Thanks, I went bck and found it. It just got knocked off behind that table.

Yeah, the class has a lot of natual talent and ambition. They were very good and willing to take on challenges well beyind their training thus far. Keep on rocking!

That was one of the nicest jams I've been to in a while. Honestly I was kind of worried about going last night after avoiding it for the last few months. The energy tended to lean toward the hectic stressful side, at least from my perspective, and led to a less than spectacular evening. Whatever happened since I was last there, be it magic, finding a good balance, infusing the green room with the pheromones of chronic optimists, etc.... I am so grateful!

The mini game format worked really well and allowed people to get in on the fun with out the noise and scattered attention of being in small groups. It also takes some pressure off the stage area because with players popping on and off every couple of minutes you know that if you risk failure (and fail) it wont be too memorable in the long run. Hehe... Economics? The more scenes there are the less valuable each scene is, and the less value something has the more likely we are to play around with it because its not a big deal.

Woo! Those are my thoughts. Thank you Wes for all the great tips as well as general leading. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to next week

Thanks!

I've done the jams for years, but it would be hubris on the level of Mark Spitz to say that I have it figured out yet. I've been playing around a lot lately with different pacings and set-ups and feedback methods and I'm glad this worked well. I think it was a good balance.

But that's not really why I'm here, I just wanted to post yet another Gary Glitter story since he came up so much last night.