So last Saturday's training took two major focuses - one being 'to be positive', the other being 'Shakespearean improv'.
I'm going to stick with my original plan here to remain focused and today talk about...da da da da da da! You guessed it.
Loose Moose especially places a huge focus on trying to start - and where possible, keep - every improv on a positive note. My personal feeling on this is that this is because:
a) it's much more pleasant to watch people having a good time on-stage; and
b) it opens your options up for where the scene can go to (e.g. if you come on with a negative like "How dare you touch my stuff!" chances are the scene's just going to become a fight.)
Moreover, it's good to be conscious about this, as a knee-jerk reaction of some improvisers is to start off with a negative - I mean, you want conflict, right? Well...yes, but you still want to keep it on the positive end.
Hmmm, let me think of some examples. Oh yeah, okay, perfect example was the Saturday night Gorilla show. There was a scene where a couple were in the bathroom together, and the wife had never seen the husband naked (with the lights turned on) before, apparently for good reason which he was trying to hide. Now, while the audience waited to see how she would react once she saw him (perhaps thinking the obvious, 'oh, he's got a small weener', or 'he's a werewolf' and thus waiting for her to scream or recoil in horror), the always-fabulous Rebecca instead chose to burst out in uncontrollable laughter. Turns out he had a tattoo of Mister Dress-Up.
It rocked. It was funny. AND it surprised the audience.
"Am I sure?"
"I'm positive!"
Wacka wacka.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Improv Feedback
I have to tell you, after this weekend just gone I am more in love with the Moose than ever. Be still my beating impulse.
There's so much I want to spill about the way these guys do things, but I'm going to resist the urge to vomit it all out in one setting and try to at least bring a little focus to each of these blog entries. So I'm going to start with something I noticed first and foremost about working with these guys, that being the way that they give feedback.
Now, I should first qualify this by saying that I've previously only experienced two major schools of feedback:
a) Focus on what went wrong during the show (or scene, if it's training) without necessarily being specific. I think harder still is when somebody says something like "I think people are having a hard time with *blah blah*" rather than actually citing a specific example or calling a particular person out on it.
or
b) Ignore all the negative and just give very affirming, positive and uplifting warm-fuzzy stuff i.e. focus on what went right.
Hence my surprise at seeing how Loose Moose operates. I remember when I was at Second City in Vegas a couple of years back, chatting with a chick there who'd previously trained with Improv Olympic. IO, she told me, were so committed to moving the story forward, that if you got on stage and said even one line that didn't achieve that end, you had to go back and try it again.
I wouldn't say that LM are that militant, however they will stop a scene early on if there's been some glaring mistake made. But while I at first found this approach took a while for me to get my head around (and my ego in check for!), several months in now and I am seriously digging it. Namely because:
- stopping the scene mid-way and analysing exactly what's gone on, while it's going on (e.g. "you just broke the promise to the audience", "you just took the option which would make you feel safe, thereby killing the story") is such an obvious, but underutilised way of getting better!
- furthermore, you get the chance to continue the scene (time-willing) or start it again, thereby immediately putting into practice what's just been taught, so you have the chance to really internalise it.
Plus of course, you realise more than ever how while it's sometimes blatantly obvious to identify what's going wrong/right from the perspective of the audience (as that's exactly what we are when we're not physically playing), being up there and in the moment is very different!
That's just the feedback side of training, however. There's also the way they give notes post-show, which, rather than being 'Oh yeah, this went right, this went well, this not so much...' is also extremely specific and with follow-up. i.e. Everybody sits down together and the senior members of the crew give feedback for each and every scene performed that night. Any glowing trouble spots are identified to be followed-up on in training the following day (e.g. a troubled big-group scene on the Friday night show, led to us doing some focused work the next afternoon on big-group scenes. How's that for logic?!)
So there you go. I'd be very interested to hear if anybody else out there has any thoughts on the feedback side of things. One thing I find hard with the LM approach is to get out of my own head once I set foot on the stage! My personal hope is that I'll get to a point where I've internalised enough of the intellectual side of improv to just forget about it onstage and trust that it is engrained enough to come through. Time will tell!
There's so much I want to spill about the way these guys do things, but I'm going to resist the urge to vomit it all out in one setting and try to at least bring a little focus to each of these blog entries. So I'm going to start with something I noticed first and foremost about working with these guys, that being the way that they give feedback.
Now, I should first qualify this by saying that I've previously only experienced two major schools of feedback:
a) Focus on what went wrong during the show (or scene, if it's training) without necessarily being specific. I think harder still is when somebody says something like "I think people are having a hard time with *blah blah*" rather than actually citing a specific example or calling a particular person out on it.
or
b) Ignore all the negative and just give very affirming, positive and uplifting warm-fuzzy stuff i.e. focus on what went right.
Hence my surprise at seeing how Loose Moose operates. I remember when I was at Second City in Vegas a couple of years back, chatting with a chick there who'd previously trained with Improv Olympic. IO, she told me, were so committed to moving the story forward, that if you got on stage and said even one line that didn't achieve that end, you had to go back and try it again.
I wouldn't say that LM are that militant, however they will stop a scene early on if there's been some glaring mistake made. But while I at first found this approach took a while for me to get my head around (and my ego in check for!), several months in now and I am seriously digging it. Namely because:
- stopping the scene mid-way and analysing exactly what's gone on, while it's going on (e.g. "you just broke the promise to the audience", "you just took the option which would make you feel safe, thereby killing the story") is such an obvious, but underutilised way of getting better!
- furthermore, you get the chance to continue the scene (time-willing) or start it again, thereby immediately putting into practice what's just been taught, so you have the chance to really internalise it.
Plus of course, you realise more than ever how while it's sometimes blatantly obvious to identify what's going wrong/right from the perspective of the audience (as that's exactly what we are when we're not physically playing), being up there and in the moment is very different!
That's just the feedback side of training, however. There's also the way they give notes post-show, which, rather than being 'Oh yeah, this went right, this went well, this not so much...' is also extremely specific and with follow-up. i.e. Everybody sits down together and the senior members of the crew give feedback for each and every scene performed that night. Any glowing trouble spots are identified to be followed-up on in training the following day (e.g. a troubled big-group scene on the Friday night show, led to us doing some focused work the next afternoon on big-group scenes. How's that for logic?!)
So there you go. I'd be very interested to hear if anybody else out there has any thoughts on the feedback side of things. One thing I find hard with the LM approach is to get out of my own head once I set foot on the stage! My personal hope is that I'll get to a point where I've internalised enough of the intellectual side of improv to just forget about it onstage and trust that it is engrained enough to come through. Time will tell!
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Some interesting thoughts on musical improv
Just stumbled across this video diary on youtube, with some tips on musical improv. Though it's tailored towards ukelele players, it's still got a lot of good stuff for improvisers of the non-ukelele variety. I found it particularly interesting as this year I've finally started improvising both the chords (playing the keyboard) and the lyrics on-stage, which basically means adding a few more balls into the juggling act.
Anyhoo, hopefully you find it interesting.
PS For the next few entries I'm planning on debriefing some of the stuff we've been doing at the Moose of late. If you have any suggestions on stuff you want covered here just leave it in comments or drop me an email!!
Anyhoo, hopefully you find it interesting.
PS For the next few entries I'm planning on debriefing some of the stuff we've been doing at the Moose of late. If you have any suggestions on stuff you want covered here just leave it in comments or drop me an email!!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Episode 1: A Whole New Blog
Heya random peeps of cyberspace!
Welcome to the first entry of my newest foray into the blogging world. This is essentially going to be an outlet for all my specifically comedy and improv related musings.
A couple of years ago I had the incredible fortune to be able to spend almost a whole month training in the USA with the likes of Second City, an amazing solo improv coach by the name of Daena Giardella, a musical improv intensive with the genius himself Michael Pollock and some one-on-one time with LA's resident comedy guru, Steve Kaplan. During that time I also arranged to interview a ton of interesting people in the comedy and improv world (mainly improv, actually, now that I think about it!) including folks from Upright Citizens Brigade, Chicago City Limits, the People's Improv Theatre, Second City and more.
I'm currently hauled up just outside of Calgary, Canada, where I am extremely privileged and excited to be training regularly with the highly esteemed Loose Moose Theatre.
This little spiel is not intended to be a name-dropping fiesta, but simply a vivid demonstration that over the past couple of years especially, I have learned TONS from quite a number of different very amazing sources. So much, in fact, that I am still digesting - and continue to ingest more - the stuff that's come up.
Hence...this blog. It's partly selfish, in that I get to have an excuse to process different aspects of performance (which for the most part, I'm thinking at this stage, will be filtered through a comedic lens) but also to try to put some of this stuff out there in the hope that there are people out there who might benefit from it too.
We'll see!
Welcome to the first entry of my newest foray into the blogging world. This is essentially going to be an outlet for all my specifically comedy and improv related musings.
A couple of years ago I had the incredible fortune to be able to spend almost a whole month training in the USA with the likes of Second City, an amazing solo improv coach by the name of Daena Giardella, a musical improv intensive with the genius himself Michael Pollock and some one-on-one time with LA's resident comedy guru, Steve Kaplan. During that time I also arranged to interview a ton of interesting people in the comedy and improv world (mainly improv, actually, now that I think about it!) including folks from Upright Citizens Brigade, Chicago City Limits, the People's Improv Theatre, Second City and more.
I'm currently hauled up just outside of Calgary, Canada, where I am extremely privileged and excited to be training regularly with the highly esteemed Loose Moose Theatre.
This little spiel is not intended to be a name-dropping fiesta, but simply a vivid demonstration that over the past couple of years especially, I have learned TONS from quite a number of different very amazing sources. So much, in fact, that I am still digesting - and continue to ingest more - the stuff that's come up.
Hence...this blog. It's partly selfish, in that I get to have an excuse to process different aspects of performance (which for the most part, I'm thinking at this stage, will be filtered through a comedic lens) but also to try to put some of this stuff out there in the hope that there are people out there who might benefit from it too.
We'll see!
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