Austin Improv

There are some exercises and warmups that I think I could do every day for the rest of my life and I would never get to the bottom about what I might learn from them about improv.

For me the three bottomless exercises are Ball, Word At a Time Story, and Count. Anybody have exercise like that for them?

The clap game is the game where I can't figure out what it does for improv other than energy/reflexes.

It actually got so bad that I protested against the clap game at a jam once by replacing all of my tenets for improv with clapping. The results were not pretty.

Word-at-a-time story is a game I get/like, where you cooperate on making a semi-coherent story, but I can see where you're coming from.

I can't seem to get enough of 'what are you doing?' There are so many variations.

Along those lines I really enjoy word association game with multiple words in the following variations:
movie titles
adjective noun
adverb noun
an emotion and a noun
television shows
edible items

Next on my list is 5 things... only I like the way its played in the Starter Kit. Where the number isn't the same for everyone. You could be asked to name 11 things, or 2... That's improv!

Spaztique wrote:The clap game is the game where I can't figure out what it does for improv other than energy/reflexes.

Connection and awareness. It has little to do with reflexes.

I think I'm one of the few people who really dislikes counting as a warmup, or end of a warmup. To me, it just illustrates whether or not you're already connected, rather than help you get connected.

I like playing woosh bang pow, especially blind. "French telephone" is great, too. And ball, if the ceiling's high enough.

I honestly never get tired of the name games when meeting new people.

Also, I LOVE "I Am a Tree". I think it's a great exercise in heightening and mini-narratives.

Jon Bolden wrote:
Also, I LOVE "I Am a Tree". I think it's a great exercise in heightening and mini-narratives.

i played "i am a tree" in my calc 2 class last week. but i changed it to "i am a taylor series". it worked pretty well. the best was when one student came out and said "i am conditional convergence" and another said "i am absolute convergence" and promptly beat the first student in arm wrestling. i love my students.

i'm confused, shannon. do you mean you'll never know why their good for improv, or you love them so much you're always uncovering new things?

my big one is bibbity bibbity bop. i could play that every day and sometimes did for a week at a time, and never get tired of it. so many lessons in that game with all the variations.

and which version of counting do you mean? the high energy pump ya up countdown or the everyone counts together without overlapping the next number?

What is ball?

I like doing scenes for a warm up. If I'm going to play a warm-up game though I like stuff that promotes high energy, connection, and not giving a fuck. My favorite is the way we used to warm up for stool pigeon by doing a bunch of games at once without anyone saying "ok guys, now we're gonna do this". Some times it wasn't the best warm up because everyone wasn't on board, but on nights when everyone was on board it was amazing.

I enjoy playing 7 things, but I don't think its tooooo effective as a warm up.

As far as exercises go, I really like ones that help people stop judging themselves so much. I like doing impressions of other improvisers. I love doing the worst improv show ever. I like doing speed harolds.

Aden wrote:I can't seem to get enough of 'what are you doing?' There are so many variations.

Along those lines I really enjoy word association game with multiple words in the following variations:
movie titles
adjective noun
adverb noun
an emotion and a noun
television shows
edible items

Next on my list is 5 things... only I like the way its played in the Starter Kit. Where the number isn't the same for everyone. You could be asked to name 11 things, or 2... That's improv!

I like all of these things too. Word association is something I could play forever and it's why I'm always trying to introduce new variations of it.

Jon Bolden wrote:Also, I LOVE "I Am a Tree". I think it's a great exercise in heightening and mini-narratives.

That's one of my favorite games and I don't play it nearly enough. It's such a great game for creating quick narratives, great non-sequiturs, random wackiness, and especially good for creating cohesiveness.

TexasImprovMassacre wrote:As far as exercises go, I really like ones that help people stop judging themselves so much. I like doing impressions of other improvisers.

I think a lot of people have fun doing that as part of their not-so-secret secret warm-up/game.

On an entirely other note, I wish we could update the frigging boards so we can get the multi-quote button.

Yes to multi-quotes, Justin.

Beard and all, sorry I didn't define my terms better. I'm not talking exercises that I always think are fun or that I merely like to do. What I'm getting at is these warmups, despite, or maybe more likely because of, their utter simplicity always seem to have something new to teach me about improv in general and myself as an improviser. Because of that, they seem mysteriously deep to me, as if they held in fratcal form inside themselves all of improv, even though in two of the cases there's not anything to them that remotely has to do with character or scene work or any of the other things we think about when we think improv.

As far as Count goes, I meant the group circle, eyes closed, count up as high as you can as a group without stepping on each other's number and if you do go back to 1.

Cody, Ball we learned from 3 For All, and they play it before every show. The group takes a ball and tries to keep it from touching the ground by batting it up into the air. The entire group counts with each successive bump. As long as the ball doesn't hit the ground it's still in play. It sounds retarded and it is, but in the best possible way.

I love soundball and still discover new things with it. I think that really any warm-up that involves passing is fantastic, endlessly malleable, and full of possibility.

shando wrote:Yes to multi-quotes, Justin.

I'd love to see these boards replaced by vBulletin. So much faster and easier to use.

What I'm getting at is these warmups, despite, or maybe more likely because of, their utter simplicity always seem to have something new to teach me about improv in general and myself as an improviser. Because of that, they seem mysteriously deep to me, as if they held in fractal form inside themselves all of improv, . . .

It's like Grant Morrison describing a new story he wrote about improv. You even look a little like him.

Spaztique wrote:The clap game is the game where I can't figure out what it does for improv other than energy/reflexes.

Pass the Clap is my current favorite warmup, especially with new students. It's easy to understand, it's hard to get in your head about, and particularly after it heats up you absolutely HAVE to be paying close attention every second for it to work.

I also like Go for the same reasons.

I love Hey Fred Schneider, but only because I like yelling in a Fred Schneider voice. I'm not at all sure it does anything for the improv.

shando wrote:The group takes a ball and tries to keep it from touching the ground by batting it up into the air. The entire group counts with each successive bump. As long as the ball doesn't hit the ground it's still in play. It sounds retarded and it is, but in the best possible way.

Level 3 at the Hideout starts with five to seven minutes of Ball with a different kind of ball each week. Currently we've got these fantastic Japanese paper balls, a Toy Joy inflatable ball, a cool slightly deflated Tasmanian Devil ball, a plastic ball like from those ball pits in Chucky Cheese, a balloon, and a space ball as the kicker. I want to get hold of one of those soft balls that the Three For All guys have, but no luck so far.

I like pass the clap, flying trapeze and pacing and smoking.