Week 2 - New Faces, New Games

This week started with a new addition to the group.

Welcome to the Class

  • Vicious Vika

A few of us also changed our adjectives:

  • Mechanical Mike (Me)… Much better adjective than morbid
  • Kamikaze Ken
  • Caring Colm
  • Awesome Alan

And our teacher is now:

  • Brave Brett

Character Stretch

As part of our warm up we had to name a fictional character that we either relate to or simply enjoy. The answers were surprisingly varied:

  • Vika picked Donkey from Shrek
  • Colm picked Ziggy Stardust
  • Alan picked Peter Quill / Star Lord
  • Ken picked Superman / Clark Kent
  • Brett picked Bowser from Mario

I picked Mark Hunter from Pump Up the Volume.

Or as most people know him:

Happy Harry Hard-on.

New Games

The Three Headed Genius:

Three people become a single person. Questions are asked by the audience and each member can only contribute one word at a time, speaking in sequence until an answer emerges.

The result is usually nonsense. Occasionally it is genius.

Usually nonsense.

Professor Smart Brain:

You are given a completely random topic and must immediately become the world’s leading expert on it. Confidence is more important than accuracy.

Not really good an making things up like this, because of how inportant detail is to me.

You explain the topic in absurd detail and then nominate the next subject for the following person. I suspect half of the internet learned this skill somewhere.

Yes Let’s!:

One person suggests an activity. The group enthusiastically responds:

“YES LET’S!”

Everyone immediately commits to the idea.

A few moments later somebody proposes something new.

Then:

“YES LET’S!”

Repeat until completion.

The Machine:

Each person contributes a repeating movement. Every movement responds to the previous movement. Sound effects are encouraged.

The result is a giant chain reaction machine built from people. A strange combination of engineering and nonsense.

Boring Scenes:

One of the more interesting exercises. Despite the name, the goal is not to be funny.

The goal is simply to create a believable conversation and allow details to emerge naturally. Two people are placed into a location and begin talking.

The scene goes wherever it is led, No punchlines are actually required.

Concepts

ADHD Brain

Always be changing things up. If something becomes repetitive, introduce a new idea. Keep the scene always moving forward.

Mime World

Once something exists, it exists. If somebody creates an object, places furniture somewhere, opens a door, or establishes part of the environment… It stays wherever it gets put.

Everyone else should acknowledge that reality and interact with it as if it is a constant feature.

Face The Audience

Try not to spend the entire scene with your back turned, apparently the audience likes being able to see what is happening in front of them.

Peas In A Pod

Your character should generally accept the reality being proposed. Assume there is already an established relationship between the people involved.

Work together rather than fighting against the scene. The scene becomes much easier when both people are building the same thing.

Thoughts After Week Two

I’m beginning to notice that improv has a lot more structure than it appears to have from the outside.

Almost every game is teaching a specific skill:

  • listening
  • accepting ideas
  • building on ideas
  • reacting quickly
  • committing to choices

It still feels a bit like controlled chaos. But the longer we do it, the more I can see the systems hiding underneath.