Summary of Improv Goals 013

My mother suggested that I buy myself some new clothes, so I started yesterday afternoon with the purchase of some new pants before I went to the Roving Imp Training Center. Of course, my sisters do not know the Sitting Lyra meme, and they have not seen the image below, so my emphasis was wasted on them yesterday, “I bought some PANTS. PA-ANTS!”

Source: lyra in pants by *egophiliac on deviantART

Last Thursday, John generously granted some rehearsal time to Matt and me, and coached us, because better performers make better performances. Our format largely consists of Matt and I being ourselves and breaking the fourth wall by addressing the audience and John, our technical director. We first watched a recording of our second performance. Matt recognized that I was not leading many scenes, and John noted the following: my dialogue was a loud monotone, I tended to remain in one place on stage, and I had a lot of conflict.

Before Matt and I ran our format, we counted up while changing the emotion in our voices and the expressions on our faces. I complimented Matt on his choice of activity for his ninety seconds in class on Tuesday: Matt sat on his knees and bowed three times while he raised his body and his extended arms, a practice of his Buddhist faith. John and Matt briefly discussed their shared faith, and I asked some more questions about the Rime Buddhist Center; we had begun to run our set before Matt realized.

Yes, I had actually found a way for me to lead a scene in our format. So many times I find myself lost in scenes, but I had shown interest and therefore cared about my fellow player; we were connecting emotionally! An evening when the Roving Imp had sold out shows, thanks to a group from a church, our set went well Saturday night, once we had made a consideration ahead of time.

“For our set, I have prepared a long opening statement, so be patient.”
“OK. Even though we are late show, let’s try to be as clean as possible anyways. Sound good?”
“Okay...”

Matt tries so hard to not curse during our show, and only slipped once, to his credit. Although I surely wanted to so do, I did not curse or go to any perversely sexual places. As of this writing, my memory of that show is not very good, but I can say that we successfully addressed the concerns that we had from rehearsal, and we had fun.

Now, under any usual circumstances, that would be fine place to end this post, yet I feel that this post should include a summary of my goals for my improv from class. I am in that way, particular, I suppose.

We had a new female student, ten years my junior, in class Tuesday. For introductory purposes, the exercises to warm us up were a little longer than usual. Three-line scenes (i.e., a statement, a reply, and reply) followed, and a scene between Greg and I was the first of those that evening to go longer than three lines.

Greg painted my character as a bug guy.
“Let us study the peaceful ways of the katydid.”
“Don’t let yourself get drawn in again, man!”
“Katie,” I sobbed.

John paused us. Neither Greg nor I realized that we were talking about a recent relationship that my character had had with an insect, and not a woman.

The class later moved to three-person scenes. In three-person scenes, the first person to speak and the first person to respond become the primaries, and the third person remains ancillary until addressed, or he or she interrupts with new information, often for comedic relief.

After a scene with Greg, Steve, and David, John asked the rest of the class for what they had noticed about the scene. I should have said that I also noticed that the conversation was between the outdoor, human-form sculpture Steve and his creator Greg. Darn my shyness. Matt painted that Steve was pointing his outstretched arm to a hillside portrait of the Mana Lisa. John drew attention to the weird in that scene: that pronunciation.

“Steve could have been The DA-VID.
In a later scene, we could have seen David as The Thunker.”

We then had three-person scenes that all began with the same suggestion: brain-dead; we had begun to run the long form. On stage, Chad, David and I all took seated positions either on blocks or chairs.

Describing some strange idea, David began the scene.
I said, “That will make a great story, Stephen!”
David named my character George, and continued.

John stopped the scene, and called attention to David that I had just painted him as Stephen King, who writes scary stories about unusual things. OK OK OK, I thought about a cut scene from Family Guy when I painted David, but I added a significant detail. David continued on an uninterrupted rant, and I could not help to laugh, and that became my character choice, because I was certainly emoting.

There were some call backs later, and we closed with a line game call Voice Mail. With the suggestion Stephen Hawking, one person instead said Stephen King, and I said Stephen Taylor, when I meant Stephen Tyler from Aerosmith. I thought that I had done well that I evening when I laughed at David on stage, and I completely forgot my goal.