Check this cool article which talks about Colbert, Stewart and Laughing Liberally. Colbert gives a big plug for "yes, and" improv too!
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Comedy
I'm super behind on posting from Chicago. Sorry about that kids. Classes are going great, but I've had to focus on some business stuff including taxes, booking and other ish. I will post my notes from Week 3 at the iO soon, but in the meantime, here are some mojos with your names written all over them!
A US study has found that one in eight babies are born premature. While this has caused concern in the medical community, parents are happy their kids want to move out sooner.
Rescuers in thailand helped a 50 year old elephant which had been stuck on its side since falling a week ago. "We had hoped Star Jones would land on her feet, but we can't say we're surprised," said an ABC spokesperson.
A study finds that one in four Southern states' residents will ignore government evactuation orders. The top reasons given:
1) they believed their houses were well built; 2) the roads would be too crowded; 3) they planned to steal their neighbor's shitFollowing a close and still undecided election, supporters of Mexico's liberal presidential candidate, Manuel Lopez Obrador, brought rush-hour traffic to a crawl Monday, with tens of thousands descending on the city's central plaza for his speech and shouting threats at reporters, alleging they were biased against their candidate. Note to Democrats in america: this is known as "fighting."
Israel's prime minister declared Monday there would be no cease-fire with Hezbollah guerrillas, saying "we will not give up on our goal to live a life free of terror." This would make Israel the first nation to successfully defeat terrorism while creating more terrorists.
Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving and admits to making anti-semitic remarks and threatening a deputy. So that's what Jesus would do!
photo by me via Flickr. Click photo for more
As I've mentioned before, Susan Messing is an i.O. teacher and co-founder of The Annoyance theatre. She's pictured above performing in her weekly two-man show, "Messing with a Friend." She's insane.
Susan designed the Level Two curriculum for i.O. Level two is focused a lot on creating environments on stage and using your body, not just your mouth. On Friday, she ran a special three-hour optional workshop for summer intensive students in "Story Theatre," where we narrate our own tales and fantasies, using our entire body and stage to create the previously-imagined. Susan had us fly people around, build cars and undersea schools of fish.
We even had the smallest fish in the sea return as a messiah and vow a fiery vengeance upon those who would fail to follow his example.
But back to Susan Messing being insane. All last week, our teacher, Rachael Mason, was as dirty and foul-mouthed as could be! It turns out, she was just channeling Susan. This lady has Noooo inhibitions at all, and is easily the most absurdly quotable teacher I've ever had. Here's a sample fun pak
"I do improv to get me off. If it doesn't get me off, it's not worth doing." "Don't be a wandering Jew." She said this to a student who took too long to find his place in the scenery. "You whore! Get your hair back." to a woman who hadn't tied her hair up or in a pony tail. "Have you ever almost cum, and then your mom calls." on following through with a sequence. "Thank you for giving me polio." one of the few places you can say something like this is in an improv scene. Polio might have saved it!So those were the outlandish ones, but I'm not doing the workshop justice with just some crazy quotes. Susan believes seriously in improv, and she pushed us to create and build in just a few hours. A few more lessons she dropped on us:
- When you're flying another player around on stage, don't stand directly under her. Always support the neck and head. Set her down feet first
- "half of improv is talking yourself into improv."
- "lead with people instead of plot." Plot will come after the people are established in a scene
- "you don't know where the product is gonna be, so enjoy the fucking ride." a metaphor for everything we're doing in improv. There's no script, just the players. The point will arise somewhere. Enjoy finding it.
- "speak in sentences, not paragraphs." It's hard for your fellow player (especially in Story Theatre) to respond to long-winded paragraphs
- "a game is anything that happens more than once." The idea of The Game in an improv scene keeps coming up. Susan's breakdown is simple. A "game" is something repetitive. I walk on-stage and ask for bread. Next player asks for a sandwich; next, a buffet; next, the castle; next, the world... That could be a game. Weird example, I know, but I'm movin on peoples!
- When in doubt, match your scene partner's energy
Firstlyness, I need to standardize how I refer to the days of this program. It's five weeks, five levels and four days a week. From now on, I'm gonna just refer to the overall day count, so there's no confusion about "which day four?" That being said, my last post was about how crappy I felt on Day 7, but as the teaser noted, day 8 rocked.
At the beginning of class we talked about the amazing TJ and Dave show many of us saw the night before. I need to set this up a bit. TJ and Dave are two master, veteran improvisors who have been doing their two-man show every week for about six years. The consistently sell out the show and collect rave reviews. There are so few shows I've seen in my life that impressed me to the point of simultaneously thinking, "I should abandon this performance business" and "that's what art can be." One such show is The Whitest Kids U Know, who have honored me by having me open their show with standup. Another is Black Folks Guide to Black Folks by Hanifah Walidah.
Seeing TJ and Dave (along with buying some comfortable shoes and getting a good night's sleep) is what pulled me out of my day 7 funk and fatigue. These two dudes walk on stage, take an audience suggestion and improvise a show for 45 minutes! This week, they began as motorcade secret service agents, and it was beautiful. If they ever hit the road or put out a DVD, I will definitely let yall know. So in Day 8 of class we started the day by talking about their show.
- They moved slowly. They didn't speak for 30-45 seconds at the top of the show, then one of them said, "So, first time workin the motorcade?"
- They transitioned into and out of characters very smoothly, using every tool they had. Facial expressions, speaking style and posture all changed as they morphed from character to character. They didn't rapidly juggle characters (the way Practice Scaring a Bear did amazingly well), but they made beautifully deliberate choices. They defined characters so well, that when TJ began enacting the Senator they'd created, Dave was later able to play that same senator while TJ was motorcade guy. Even though these two men don't look alike, they both looked like the same senator somehow.
- They didn't go for the easy nor obvious laugh. The laughter was a byproduct.
- They have huge balls, as Rachael said, because they didn't even solicit and audience suggestion!
- great energy
- "heart of gold." really, someone said this. I was so touched. Then I died, because while it's nice to have a heart of gold in theory, in practice, it's not so good at powering the circulatory system
- versatile player
- great with anything involving song
- great well-rounded performer
- beautiful smile
- very positive
- play someone serious. hard.
- use more accents
- play the straight man. don't provide the laughs. support the guy that does
Ouch. Yesterday was crap for several reasons. I didn't sleep nearly enough all week. My feet were killing me because I'd been walking miles in fashionable but poorly fitting shoes. I think I got tired of being "the black guy." And I wasn't having fun. As Rachael said, "if you're not having fun, you're the asshole." Yesterday, I was most certainly that.
We continued our work in building up characters through the use of environments, and we did sets of three-person scenes in which each character finds a movement to define himself. Once we settled on who we were, Rachael played a game called White Elephant in the Room. She tells us where we are and something about the room (in my case it was a dead body hanging from the ceiling). The trick is, we aren't allowed to explicitly talk about the object, but we have to acknowledge it. Its presence must inform our character's decisions.
I was playing a robot, so I went with being a frustrated servant-bot who couldn't fully clean the room's bad smell. The scene I was in was really hard to do. It's hard to throw robots into a room with dead bodies. Eventually, my scene partners and I started finding our way, but it was slow-going.
Another group was told they were sitting in window-facing cubicles where a man was about to jump from the ledge. They did a pretty sweet job with it, with one of the character's concerns being her obstructed view.
I don't know. The whole exercise didn't quite click with me initially. At first I thought we were supposed to ignore the object. Then I thought we were to be inspired by the themes it evoked. But it turns out, the object is REALLY THERE. We just can't talk super directly about it.
The Game
We finally got to what "the game" was, and unfortunately, I can't do a great job of describing it. Within The Harold, The Game follows a set of three scenes. It's shorter than a scene, involves all (or nearly all of the players) and is designed to expound further on the suggestion, opening or even the first three scenes. It's like one piece of an opening. If the original suggestion had been "honey," the first game could be all the players creating a beehive, with a queen, then they all sting a human and die.
The Worst Scene Ever
Rachael noticed that we were all kind of low energy and sucking. She had us go up in two-person scenes and try to pull off the WORST SCENE EVER. This was serious fun. We talked upstage. We talked over each other. We changed characters mid-stream. Still, we committed to these bad characters which itself was a GOOD thing to do. Lesson: it's hard to really suck. Lesson: we showed more energy doing those crappy scenes than we did all morning with the real work.
Racial Fatigue
Improv is incredibly white. Yeah, I know. Big surprise. Boston is really white too. And so is Harvard, and I've worked out fine in those places. Yesterday in class though, I really noticed it. People were making references to all sorts of shit I simply did not get. Mostly, it was music songs from "the 80s." Improv pulls on references from all over the place, but pop culture is a big pot, and it's assumed you're in the know. I can't say it enough. WHITE PEOPLE HAD A DIFFERENT 80s THAN I DID. I can remember 80s parties in college, and I was like, "what the hell is this music? this isn't my 80s."
So folks in class were building some kind of game or lesson around a Pink Floyd song, and I had nothing.
As a group, we've also been dissin each other pretty hard over just about everything. The Canadians get it the worst. No one's really messed with the lesbian too much. The UK folks also take some crap from us Americans. And as "the black guy" I get all sorts of crap about my innate dancing skills (which is not just a stereotype in my case. I'm actually a GREAT dancer :)), my various children, violence, etc. Something about my physical tiredness, hurting foot, frustration with the exercises and this parallel 1980s just got to me.
Back to What We Learned
The whole day wasn't a writeoff, however. We did some cool stuff in the afternoon.
We started with Narrative Fantasy.
One person is a narrator with a group of six or so players on the back line. The narrator gets to tell various fantasy scenes. We had been working on body movement and carrying people, so this was a great chance to test things out. During my fantasy, I called for the world's largest LCD TV. The group created it and even made TV sounds from Fox Sports Net. I had them change the channel to C-SPAN. I made a space shuttle launch and a piece of foam fall from its side. And other people created amazing scenes from their fantasies. This exercise continued pushing down the imagination theme I brought up yesterday. We really created these places!
At some point in the day, we did the one-word story game. I don't know if it has a name, but everyone stands in a circle. Someone starts a sentence, but they are only allowed to say one word. The next person adds a word, and so on until a sentence has been formed. Then the next person after that starts a new sentence. We have to be actively listening to make sure our word doesn't jack up the story. It also helps tremendously to keep things simple. It's gonna be hard for a scene partner to keep up with you if you're blazing away at three hundred miles an hour with a really complex idea that only you understand.
We moved on to Story Theatre
In story theatre, there is no designated narrator, but we combine the idea of narrative fantasy with the one-word circle game. One player on the team narrates what's happening between some characters. The characters act out and extend what they've been given until another player takes over the narration and pushes the story forward. In the end , the story is somehow completed or resolved, perhaps returning to that initial scene. I'm gettin mad long-winded in my posts, so I'm not gonna tell all the stories we created, but they were fascinating.
Give Yourself a Gift
We did "object work," giving our characters something to do, physically during a scene. My favorite was a three-person scene (we did this exercise three at a time) with one person cleaning a gun, another cooking and a third playing solitaire alone. Somehow, the improvisors made those three actions fit in one room with believable characters. The solitaire-playing kid had once again gotten straight As, making her gun-cleaning, non-booksmart father proud and her once-higher-education-pursuing-but-sidetracked-by-her husband mother who is jealous of her own's daughters success. Wow.
The lesson: give yourself something to do.
That's about it.
From class, the lessons were: have fun, be energetic, attack the scene, etc. etc.
From my day, the lessons were
- GET SLEEP
- GET NEW SHOES (which I did)
- don't be angry at white people :) (but apparently i need to watch a bunch of shitty movies and listen to shitty 80s music)
This improv thing is getting pretty deep philosophically. If I had to summarize with just a few words, I'd say I'm starting to understand why folks take this stuff so seriously. What we're really doing is unlocking the power of imagination we stashed away when society told us that was only for kids.
Building an Environment
As a child, I'm sure most of us can remember kids playing house or cops and robbers. We'd sit in a sandbox, but we didn't just see "sand." We imagined a vast desert crawling with armies or space shuttle landings or a kingdom. What we learned today was to create those spaces again, agree they exist and then perform scenes within the limits of the world we had created.
Rachael had us start by constructing a room (in our minds) on stage. One person described what was along a single wall; another person did wall two, etc. up to the four walls. Then a fifth person defined the floor and ceilings. Where are the doors? What kind of lights? What diplomas, awards, posters are on the wall? Is the paint peeling? Is there a ceiling fan? How big is the room?
It's important to remember where we've put things. If there's a mantle on the wall, we can lean on it. If there's a desk on stage left, we can't just walk through it when entering and exiting the scene. If we don't respect the limits of our worlds, the audience won't buy it.
The exercise is all about giving us and our characters tools to define a scene as we walk onto a seemingly empty stage. Rachael shared what I will call "The Trick of Three." When entering a scene, have in mind three possible environments and three possible motivations or directions for your character. Entering the stage with at least one is crucial so you don't flail around, but if your scene partner creates a reality which negates your first ideas, you have two to fall back on.
Folks, I can't overemphasize how hot this concept is philosophically. The rooms we build on stage are real as long as everyone agrees they are. That's how the real world functions! The only reason I'm able to walk into a 7-Eleven with a $5 bill and come out with a box of donuts is that the I, the merchant and the larger society agree that $5 bills have a set value and can be exchanged for goods and services. There's nothing inherent in the $5 bill itself which says "am worth one box of donuts." No, it's based on an AGREEMENT between all parties involved that the bill means certain things.
If the improvisers decide they are on a deserted island five square feet in area, and if they respect that creation, the audience will see the island and EVERYONE IN THE ROOM WILL AGREE IT EXISTS. We have the power to create anything we want!
DIE, DIE, DIE!
We did another exercise where we had to depict our own deaths (whether intentional suicide or accidental) without using words. We had to use objects we created in the scene to pull off the death. Karen had a really sick one. She was setting up a birthday party and accidentally hung herself when putting up the decorations. Leah had a suicide checklist, tied a rope around her neck and had a friend speed away in a car attached to the rape. I turned on four televisions blasting the Andy Griffith theme song, built a guillotine and chopped my own head off!
Why did we do this morbid thing? To create characters that were invested, scenes that were to the point all while using objects created in the scene.
The Organic Opening
I've referred to The Harold enough by now that I won't re-explain it every time. We've practiced several types of openings, but in this class we added the "organic transformational" opening. We take the audience suggestion and, as a group, create three interpretations of what that suggestion might mean. These aren't scenes but constructions of some sort, usually initiated by one person. If the suggestion was "Christmas," we might build a Christmas tree with our bodies as the first of the opening, then we might transform into elves on an assembly line and then into a group of crying children who complain that they got crappy gifts.
We played a performance game called "One to Seven. Seven to One." This was a challenge. Here's the deal
- There are seven players in the back line on stage
- One person initiates a solo scene (player A, scene 1)
- A new person enters the stage and created an new scene (scene 2, with player A and player B)
- A new person enters the stage, creating a third, different scene (scene 3, with player A, B and C)
- Remember, player A is a completely different character in Scene 1, Scene 2 and Scene 3
- We do this until the seventh player created scene 7 and finds some reasonable excuse for his character to leave the scene
- Then we return to some LATER POINT in Scene 6 until the player that initiated Scene 6 finds an excuse to exit
- The same applies to Scenes 5 through 1
- So the game ends with a solo player (player A, scene 1, later in the plot of scene 1)
- Another Rule (this is #6, building on the five we got on Monday): Use Your Actual/Real Emotions in Your Scenes. If you're nervous, use that!
- If you are listening for the audience to laugh, you are not in your scene. This rule came as a response to something Gabe said. I'm not sure it quite applied to his statement, but I get the point. If the audience laughs, great, but don't let the audience lead or define the scene. Let the relationship between the characters and/or the ongoing game define the next step. Sweet. I think I learned something!
- It's brave to be quiet in improv. Harold Pinter is a playwright who devoted about 40 percent of his plays to silence
- Use your environment. It gives you something to do if you have nothing to say.
- Go for three things in the transformational opening
- Listen, listen, listen
- Make eye contact with your fellow players
- Have fun
- Give yourself a gift, and maintain it throughout the scene
- The scene is about the relationships between characters, NOT THE OBJECTS YOU'VE CREATED!
So now that the car burglarization story is behind us, let's get back to sharing my Improv Olympic experience. This week we got a new teacher and moved up to Level 2, which is all about character.
We said goodbye to Teacher Jessica last week and welcomed Teacher Rachael. She's not quite as cuddly, but maybe we've outgrown the cuddly stage. Rachael is sirrus, yall! And we're learning a lot.
Rachael's Rules
We're spending time this week on tools to develop and create characters. What kind of players are we when we do this? Cerebral thinkers or gut instinct folks? The two-man scene is the best way to explore it. Also being given a genre (e.g. Western, Space Adventure) can inform our movements and dialect.
Rachael's teaching style is pretty different from Jessica last week as I hinted at above. She likes to take a lot of time in lecture and Q&A mode in between the games, exercises and scenes. She also lays down a lotta rules that we'll someday have the skill to break with purpose. Here are the five she threw down today:
- Agree. Don't Argue. Two characters arguing is not interesting to watch. With agreement, you can build an actual conversation.
- If You Don't Know What to Say, DO Something. We are not just talking heads on stage. We can use the space, our bodies and objects in the environment we've built (e.g. ironing, sharpening a blade whilst (shoutout Jessica) saying "I love you")
- If You're Not Having Fun, You're the Asshole. Always, always have fun. This rule is about judgement and avoiding it. Avoid judgement of your own moves in a scene and those of your scene partner. Accept it and move forward. Rachael: "JUDGEMENT IS THE ENEMY OF IMPROV"
- You, The Person, is Incredibly Important. Invest in yourself. Read. See movies. Know what books are on the NY Times Bestseller's List. This will contribute to what we can bring to our scenes and characters. I'm so glad she mentioned this one. I've found this helping so much as a comedian who talks about current affairs so much. I will watch crappy TV because I know my audiences do, and I need to relate. Pop Culture is a language (as is Science, Art, Etc)
- Don't Beat Yourself Up Over the Last Shitty Improv Scene. Related to #3, the show is much bigger than your last scene. Move forward. Someone else might pick up what you thought was shitty and turn it into something beautiful.
- Our characters have lives before and after a scene. They have secrets and emotions. Bring this information into the scene. It makes things more interesting. Give yourself the gift of this knowledge or trait
- Try out accents. It makes things fun.
- Ask questions about your character: young v. old, Barry White v. Barry Manilow
- Try not to lock in on your own idea going into a scene because no scene is ever fully your idea since you also have a scene partner who doesn't think like you.
- Don't play stereotypes or archetypes. Just play types. A scene with two gay men should not be flamboyant. Make it about a real relationship. I'd add that a scene about black folk doesn't have to be about Hip Hop or gangs (stereotypes) but can treat the characters as real people having relationships. Are the gangster's studying for a tough final exam?
I'll be emceeing the 2nd Annual MBAdiversity Symposium & Social in a few weeks in Chicago. It's for folks in business school or people thinking about going. The goal of the organization is to diversify the MBA world. I agree with that goal. White guys shouldn't be the only people indicted for securities fraud!
Photo by me via Flickr (click on photo for more)
I know that provocative title will get the right wing upset and my regular readers confused, and I promise to explain by the end of this post. Bear with me. Day 4 of my Improv Olympic summer intensive was beautiful. We pulled off a mini-Harold!
Improvisors make no money
We started off Thursday with a positively inspirational lesson from Professor Jessica: improvisors make no money. Great. Now I'm pursuing two forms of comedy that don't pay!
When improv teams perform at the iO, for the most part, they're not being paid. Here's how the improvisor maketh the loot:
- Start your own show, rent the theatre space, negotiate a cut of the door and pray
- Do corporate gigs. The Improv Asylum in Boston is a good example
- Perform on the Second City Mainstage (oh, ok! that's all??) since those players get paid
- Go on tour with Second City (again. knowing this makes life easy)
- Teach improv
- get a job, any job
Back in April, I was honored with an opportunity to perform with several other Boston comics for some talent folks at Comedy Central. Here's what they saw, broken into four, bite-sized clips for your enjoyment.
#1. MY NAME IS
#2. NIGERIAN FATHER
#3. BORN ON THE 11TH OF SEPTEMBER
#4. MOMENTARY JOKES (MOJOS)