We started this work in class this week and were introduced to the sorts of things we'll be doing and learning about over the course of this term. We started doing a bit of improvisation back in September 2014 when we started our course, and so we have picked back up where we left off.
Today with Rob we began looking again at improvisation. Our day started with being taken through our improvisation assignment brief and then discussing what would be required of us and what sort of thing we will be doing over the couple of months.
We talked about the staples of improv, what we should all endeavour to do when working in improvisation and what we should avoid when possible.
We also played a few other games today in our pairs which I found a little more challenging and fun than yes lets.
One of them was called physical offers. What happens in this game is that person A strikes a physical pose or gesture, and Person B has to start the improvisation based on that pose and what they could be doing. The improvisation only has to last for a few seconds and then they change roles.
Mara and I had quite a bit of fun with this, I actually found it felt more natural and comfortable than yes lets. Maybe this is because you are thrown straight into the physicality so you don't have to awkwardly try and put that into the activity you're doing. It's also interesting because it relies on Person B's interpretation. Person A could be frozen pretending to be baking and person B could see it as stirring a witches cauldron!
Basically one of you starts a conversations with a sentence beginning with the letter A, then the other continues with a sentence starting with B, and so on and so forth. This one was really funny, because sometimes you just can't think of an appropriate word starting with the right letter so you end up saying something that doesn't quite make sense and it sounds really silly. Another thing about this that had us all having a laugh was that you suddenly realise you don't know the alphabet as well as you thought you did! This game is really productive for building teamwork though, because you've both/all got to think of lines as fast as you can that will help the next person think of something else to say. Rob suggested that we come up with lines as long as possible, because this gives way for more possibilities and also gives you both/all more time. I found this actually really helped, especially because it made the whole thing sound more natural and cohesive.
"He said, she said" was the other one we tried. This is how it goes:
I actually found this one quite confusing, as a lot of the class seemed to. It is good because it challenges you, but I found on the whole that having to say "he/she said doing blah blah" really got in the way of the flow and made things more difficult. Perhaps if we get a chance to practise this though it will become easier and more fun over time!
All the games we played today and the aspects of improv we discussed were a great way to get started with this assignment, it feels like we've learned a lot already!
I've purchased the book "Impro" By Keith Johnstone and intend to read this as further research and education for this unit.
Tuesday 28th April 2015
College was absolutely amazing today. I had so much fun, it was really fun and just a day for experimenting and really getting into our improvisation.
We played tons of games this morning and this afternoon, many of which I really found took what we've learned so far much further and broadened my understanding of what works and what doesn't in improv.
We looked quite a lot at trust today, developing that mutual trust with your fellow actors and feeling confident to work together cohesively. To start this off we got into pairs and played "why, what, who?". I was in a pair with Amber today.
In "why, what, who" person A says one of the three words and person B has to quickly improvise a response to what they asked, making up a scenario as quickly as they can. Both of you then play out that scenario only for about ten seconds, until it naturally dies out and you move onto the next one.
I thought that this was one of the less interesting games, as there isn't very far you can go in that short amount of time, but I can definitely see the benefits of it. I think playing this keeps you really engaged and works on your focus and ability to think fast, and the speed of it, I found at least, means that you're coming up with ideas so quickly that you have to just totally throw yourself in and not think about it too much. I believe that's really important in improv because you should be flexible and willing to go wherever the piece takes you.
After we did this work in pairs we played games where we sat and observed together as a group while pairs and trios of actors went up to do different games.
We did a variation of games based on a similar basis, which is that the actors are given different environments, lines, and emotions which they have to work with.
This is interesting to watch, in fact I found some of these games even more insightful to observe than I did to play them. This is because, particularly with the emotions the actors have to play, you really get to see how one simple objective (to play that emotion) can completely change the entire drive of a scene. I thought back to the work we did on Stanislavski when watching my peers and acting myself, and I realised that his techniques can be really helpful in improvisation.
For example, "what if" and your "circles of attention". If you use the magic "if" in your mind, "what if I was feeling this", "what if I were in this place", then it makes it seem really natural and easier to just go along with the improv and feel more connected to it.
Your circle of attention is really important in improv, as Rob discussed with us, because if you are completely focused on the actor you're working with, a really strong connection can be built quickly and you find that the whole scene has a better flow when you're working together so closely.
One of these improv games with three actors I took part in was really good, although it was quite tough to get to grips with. We were given the environment "a treehouse", and there was a rule that we could each only say one word every time we spoke. This meant you had to think fast about what word would sum up the emotion you were trying to portray and the objective of your character. It was a laugh doing this, and I found that once I entered the scene it flowed quite naturally for me. As we went on, the one word rule became easier. It was intriguing to discover that so much can be conveyed and achieved within a scene in such few words. We didn't need full sentences, having only a word each emphasised the urgency of what we were each saying, and got so straight to the point that it helped the narrative move along quickly.
A game I observed today was "Goal keeper". In this game, one actor stands on stage and takes on the role of the "goalie." People then go up and start an improvisation with them, and the goalie has to go along with whatever that person's idea is.
I was totally impressed with the work I observed from the others in the class on this; everyone was so willing to leap straight in, and Shaday, who was the goalie, was successful in following the suggested narrative willingly and in a motivated way every time. I think this game is a really good one, especially as it seems quite a challenge for the goalie, and it builds on spontaneity and accepting ideas.
In the afternoon, the exercises we did were slightly more complex.
We paired up again and were given a couple of minutes to improvise any scene, any place, whatever we wanted. After we'd played around with it for a bit, we went up pair by pair and performed our improvised scenes for the rest of the class, being paused several times throughout and being given a new emotion to play within the scene.
I was in a pair with Jerome. Originally, our piece was just two people in a coffee shop, but it quickly took a different turn as we developed it in rehearsal. Soon, it turned into a tale of comic espionage. We were both spies, making desperately unprofessional attempts at terminating one another, and failing each time.
When we went up to perform, we were given the emotions embarrassed, frightened, and one which escapes me now. Although we had quite a clear narrative in our minds from rehearsing, everything was shaken up and the tone was changed each time we had to change our emotion.
Although they all coincidentally quite matched our piece, the emotions quickly changed how our characters appeared, to I think quite comic effect. This happened in lots of the pieces in this game, we got three different angles on each story as the feelings changed.
We looked at a quote from the "Impro" by Keith Johnstone, which we discussed and came to the conclusion that what was being said was this: "People who are not "creative" or have no imagination are scared of making a fool out of themselves."
After we talked about this I felt even more inspired to just go for it in our improv, because really you have nothing to lose. I feel my confidence as a performer and my flexibility too is really improving through doing this improvisational assignment, and today I felt really good about the exercises we were doing and eager to participate and develop our work.
We played a few more games today, which I'll write about now.
Party quirks: In this game, one person is the host of a party, and three other people are the guests. Each guest is assigned at random a "quirk" for their character, such as somebody who is paranoid about being abducted by aliens, for example. The guest arrive one by one, playing their quirk to the best of their abilities, and it's the job of the host to deduce what their quirk is.
This game is so funny, every time we play it it's a great laugh.
It's useful if you're playing a guest especially I think, as you're given the chance to totally over exaggerate characteristics and fully immerse yourself in a part, no matter how weird it is.
Foreign film:
This is where four actors enter the stage space. Two of them speak to one another in completely gobbledegook, and the other two "translate" each line into English, basically deciding what they're saying to one another. This is also really comical. It works productively on teamwork; you've got to try and interpret what one another are thinking and trying to say, and be willing to commit to the lines you're given. When it works, there's good chemistry on stage and it all flows really nicely.
Boris: This is a game where one of you in an interrogator, and the other a criminal. The interrogator questions the criminal about a crime, and when their answers aren't sufficiently believable, the interrogator calls in "Boris", and invisible character who comes in and beats up the criminal. Whoever is playing the criminal has to pretend to be knocked about by this invisible guy.
Honestly, I don't totally get the point of this particular game. To me, observing at least, it didn't seem as good as the others we did. That's only my opinion of course, though.
I feel like I'm learning all the time as we proceed with this unit.
These are some of the things we've discovered and discussed today which I've found very helpful:
Listening and reacting, and bouncing off one another:
As I think is always the case in acting, being in tune with your fellow performers is really important. Today we explored further through our exercises that listening and reacting is essential to bring to life a piece of theatre, and especially helps you to play the moment, which is of course brilliant in improv. As long as you are listening to what the other actors are saying and are reacting to them and playing off them, it feels like you can't go far wrong. It makes the performances really believable when you can see the actor bouncing off one another, accepting and developing each other's ideas, and being completely engaged with one another.
Don't keep it basic, explore and add: We've been learning to avoid linear story lines in our scenes and Rob has been encouraging us to go off on tangents and see wherever the piece takes us. As I mentioned on Thursday in relation to not playing it safe, the whole piece is more fun and full of possibility if you allow yourself to run away with it and don't get trapped in boring, generic conversations and situations.
Don't be scared to fail: Making mistakes is absolutely fine, it's good to try things, otherwise how can you even find out what works and what doesn't? A scene not working or fizzling out, or something not going well in an improvisation isn't the end of the world, not at all. Quite on the contrary in fact, it's through exploration, success and failure that I think you can really learn and develop as a performer. Try, try, and try loads of different things, that's certainly what I hope to do throughout this assignment.
I think it's a great opportunity for us to really have a go with whatever we want and really use our creativity and imaginations.
Added to this entry are some photos I took of the posters we're adding to our walls each time we have class on improv, on which we're taking not of what we're learning and different techniques as we go along. In them you'll see some of the things I have talked about above.
Thursday 7th May 2015
Today we did a few improvisation games that we hadn't worked on before as well as revisiting one we did in the early days of college.
The game we had played before is where you walk around the room, partnering up with whoever is next to you when we stop walking, and then improvising a conversation with them in which there is a particular subtext (such as they have bad breath or you have a crush on them).
This is a good exercise for building the skill of conveying subtext whilst also serving the more apparent narrative, I find.
Some of the more complicated or even just longer exercises we did were my favourites.
We teamed up into groups, were given ten seconds to choose a well known movie, and then had about five minutes to devise "deleted scenes" from them. In the group I was part of was Romaine, Ria and Melody. We had a proper laugh with this game, and I found it really good because it relies on building a certain relationship with the audience, in that they have to have or be given by you a clear enough understanding of the film for your made up bloopers to make sense.
We did the scene where the current day Rose is telling the camera crew about what happened that night on the Titanic, and we had a lot of fun just playing around with things like her forgetting her lines and the concept of them having to replace the actress again and again.
I think this is a good exercise for involving your audience with your improvisation and building a kind of repertoire with them where you both get the jokes without them having to be explained literally.
The next game we did, in the same groups, was one where you have a few minutes to create a piece telling the story of the morning that one member of the group had today.
Then, as you are performing, the genre gets changed a few times and you have to adapt your piece to fit that certain film genre.
This was interesting because it shows what a difference structures associated with different genres can make to the narrative of a performance. Even in keeping similar lines and continuing the same story, each moment gets drastically changed when you start acting it out to serve whichever "trope" you'v been given to play.
I found this exercise especially helpful with boosting spontaneity on stage, as suddenly we all have to work together to put 100% into whichever genre we've been given in order to make it clear.
Something that was quite difficult about this game however is that it can die out easily if you aren't sure how to continue your piece, and this happened to a certain extent with Romaine and I, although we were at the end of the piece we had all planned anyway by the point it fizzled out.
Watching the other groups do this exercise was really great, because I was able to observe how quickly the actors adapted themselves to fit the new style.
"First line - last line", sometimes called "bookmarks", is another exercise we took part in today. I didn't participate in this game, but rather observed.
In this game the two actors on stage are given two lines, one which must be used to start the piece and one which must be used to finish it. The whole rest of the scene has to be improvised, and the two actors must work together to make the lines fit in.
This is a very comical exercise, particularly when the lines given are a bit bizarre, and it's good to see the connection that the actors have to build in such a fast amount of time so they're on the same wavelength. This again relies at least partly on that concept which is ever relevant in improv where you have to accept and build on one another's ideas.
The final thing we did today was refer back to some short scripted scenes that we worked with when we first started improv last year.
We had to work in pairs and pick one of three six line scripts. Our task was to memorise it and then make up our own six lines (three each) to add onto the end of the piece.
I worked with Melody on this, although we didn't get the chance to perform our piece. This was the piece of script we chose:
Melody: Are you serious?
Me: Never been more so.
Melody: Well, that is surely quite a shock. Have you told anyone else?
Me: No, you're the first.
Melody: Not even (insert name here)?
Me: Especially not them!
Melody: But wait, what about if...
Melody and I decided this would be a story where one friend confesses they have killed somebody, and the other friend is shocked.
The lines we added went something like this:
Melody: But wait, what about if I told her instead?
Me: No, I don't think we should. She might call the cops.
Melody: She wouldn't do that; she's your best friend!
Me: I know she is, but why do you think I told you and not her? She can't be trusted.
Melody: I guess...
Me: I can't believe I killed him.
This was an interesting thing to device. I love being given such simple and versatile stimuli, it meant that we could be as creative as we wanted and had almost complete artistic license.
Something else about this task I noticed, which referred back to the work we did on Stanislavski, is being truthful to the moment: "acting is being truthful in imagined circumstances". As long as you are committed to what you're doing and are invested in the moment, you can really bring a piece of theatre to life. This rings so true in improvisation; you've got to believe for the audience to believe!
Although there were some things today that really worked well and
went well too, there were also some times when things didn't quite succeed, in my work and in the work I observed.
This was no bad things, though! As we've discussed, it's fine to make mistakes, and if something isn't working then it's okay to stop it and just say "this isn't working".
In fact knowing when something hasn't gone well is just as important as it going fine, because I think you can really draw on both to get more experience. As the saying goes, you learn from your mistakes.
Tuesday 12th May 2015
The first thing we focused on this morning was status. We did work on it with Sharon a few weeks ago and we explored in more detail today.
The aim of focusing on this topic was to study how status effects social situations, behaviour, both mental and physical, and how it can make a difference on stage.
Social status is something that we, for some reason, allow to make a big difference to our lives. One’s status often effects how they’re thought of, treated, and what assumptions are made about them. Within society there are a lot of stereotypical traits which we define status through, such as someone’s clothing or shoes, how they look/how well kept they are, what environments we see them in, how they behave, how they interact with others, what their job or current living situation in life is.
Although it isn’t necessarily good or right, people do get treated in different ways based on their social status, or even what others believe their status to be. For example, somebody who works as a cleaner may have a lot assumed about them based on that alone: stereotypically that they’re working class, poor, maybe even people would assume they weren’t very educated because they don’t have a better paying job.
The first thing we did to have a look at this was a very simple exercise. Romaine and Melody sat opposite one another, and their aim was to get the higher status without saying a word or making any physical contact. The rest of us observed, seeing what we could pick out that they were doing to try and gain power.
Once they finished the exercise, the class was split about who we thought had the higher status. Nearer the start of the exercise, it seemed Romaine had the authority. He was more confident, and for a while it really seemed like he had the upper hand… but then, by the end, it had been pulled the other way, and, in my opinion, Melody had the higher status then.
We discussed why we thought each of them was above the other in the exercise, and a lot of it came down to very similar things; eye contact/not making eye contact, use of space, posture, sitting up straight, crossing legs in a relaxed way, confidence, facial expressions, how comfortable they seemed, exhibits of disinterest and self-importance to the point of not engaging with those you deem lower than you.
Nuray asked a good question; was there any particular reason Rob chose Romaine and Melody? He said it was because sometimes Romaine displayed confident behaviour and took authority in the space, whereas Melody on occasion has exhibited less self-assured behaviour, and it is funny how elements of their usual behaviour was altered and adapted as they came onto competitive footing in the exercise.
Something I found interesting we talked about was how gender stereotypes affected our views. Even though we didn’t genuinely believe this, sexist constructs such the way some males feel self-entitled and are treated higher than women by some people, made a difference to our initial impression. Romaine being male seemed to give him an automatic upper hand, not because your gender actually makes a difference, but because that’s how we’ve been conditioned to think.
After this we all participated in a group exercise, but not with any actors, with props. There was a chair, a table, and a bottle of water in the stage space. It was our job as a group to go up and change the positions of the three items, positioning them in a way we felt represented the bottle had the highest status. After a lot of changes, we came to a conclusion, but the process was quite choppy. Some people worked with the concept of the highest status being represented by the bottle literally being the highest thing in the space, other times people centred the bottle in centre stage and put the other items behind it, sometimes the chair and table were knocked down and dishevelled while the bottle stood upright and proper. In the end, I put the bottle in centre stage and I placed the chair and table upstage right and left, creating an arrow shape with the bottle as the forefront and the point.
Then, a few actors added themselves to the scene, posing as if it were a photograph and each attempting to get the highest status. Jerome stood high on the chair with his hand in the air, Jennifer took centre stage, Toyo casually chilled on the upturned table, Divina joined Jerome on the chair and held her arm even higher, and then Romaine took the position Rob believed to have the highest status: the photographer. Everyone else onstage then became only the subjects of his photo.
We then played a game in two halves of the class where we were assigned numbers, our number representing our status, one being the highest. We were given an environment, not allowed to tell anyone our number, and then had to all improvise a scene acting as a person of our status. The other half of the class had to guess our status and line us up how they thought we were numbered.
The first group were in a backstage party environment, numbered from one to seven. I observed a lot of the same things we saw in Romaine and Melody. You could guess people’s status by how confident they acted, how they used the space, their body language, their posture, their voice, how loudly they spoke, what they said, the way they behaved, what they were doing, how they treated the other actors.
It is interesting that social stereotypes in terms of roles and jobs were also used to portray status; for example, if somebody was a low status number, they would choose a role such as dinner lady or cleaner to emphasise their social standing.
I felt we worked well as a group in guessing the numbers of the other group, as we got all right except two whose numbers we got the wrong way round.
When it came to taking part in the exercise myself, I was given the number four; there were nine of us in total and our environment was a school.
As my character I chose a student giving a tour to new students or people going round on an open day. I thought this was quite a good way to show that I didn’t actually have high authority and I wasn’t in a role of great power, but I was high up enough and had enough of an established role at school that I had responsibilities to carry out.
The other group managed to guess my number perfectly, which I was very happy with, as they picked up on most of the stuff I was trying to convey.
The next thing we took part in was an exercise in pairs. One person played the master, one the servant. The master had to instruct the servant to do several things, and it was the task of the servant each time to use their wit and cunning to come up with ways of sneakily getting one over on the master in performing the assigned task. It was a good game because it really engaged your brain and you had to think of things on the spot.
First I worked with Jerome. He instructed me to clean the floor, I proceeded to do so with his arm, he said to me to make a sandwich and I added a nasty chemical to it, he told me to carry him to the table, I instead dragged the table over to him. We played around with it quite a lot; it was fun thinking on the spot.
I also worked with Cache and we did some similar things to that I did with Jerome.
This game was an intriguing way to explore how somebody can twist their status or role to make them happy and give them the upper hand; even in a position as a servant there are ways of being spiteful and getting revenge on the unkind master.
The work we did on status I feel made strong links to our Waiting for Godot work, because the concept of status, in the case of Godot lower class, and even the statuses within that status (e.g. Vladimir acting as though he is slightly superior to Estragon), hold a fair amount of weight in terms of driving the narrative.
Improvisation using Godot as stimuli is what we worked on this afternoon; an interesting angle on developing the Godot pieces by using our imaginations to create pieces demonstrating our own interpretations of the play.
The first exercise Romaine and I didn’t get the chance perform, but I enjoyed watching the other pairs. The task we’d been set was to improvise a short scene which could come after the excerpt we’re doing from the play.
I think this is an effective way to improve understanding of the scenes we have, as it gets you to think about the repercussions and aftermath of the scenes we’re performing for the assignment.
I observed some very interesting takes on what might happen immediately after the scenes. The various actors who performed the improvisations had similar ideas in some ways; a sort of lethargic argument between Didi and Gogo, and a discussion about “where on earth is Godot?”
Exploring questions which I feel cross our minds as actors like “how long will they be waiting?” and “does Godot even exist?” through having the characters query it themselves was brilliant, and brought out this apparent level of self-awareness in the characters, which almost broke down the fourth wall in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.
Our next task in our pairs was to devise an improvisational scene between the two Godot characters, in which they have a short talk which turns into one of them telling a story. Jerome worked with Romaine and I as his partner wasn’t here, so we had to think of a way to incorporate a third person, and it seemed just perfect: as we tell the story, Jerome acts it out.
We thought of the idea after coming up with this that we could each tell our own version of the same story, giving different points of view on the same thing.
We started our piece just finishing the conversation about the four evangelists, at the end of which I as Estragon cut Vladimir off. Vladimir then tried to engage me in a few more stories, but each time I cut him off. Feeling bad for behaving so rudely, my character then decided to try and make amends and cheer up Vladimir by telling a story of his own, and this is where we incorporated the tale we had to make up and include.
We chose one where Estragon had been tricked by Vladimir into thinking he was dead. This was for a comical and ridiculous effect, but it actually, in a strange way, related to status. The reason Vladimir tricked Estragon in our devised scene was that Estragon fell asleep listening to Vladimir’s story, so Vladimir wanted to teach him a lesson.
This links to the idea of Vladimir being above Estragon and in a subliminal, perhaps even subconscious way, wanting to keep him in line; or, in his place.
It was inspiring to look at even more ways of exploring the Godot scene and the relationship between the men today, I feel that we’re really adding more and more layers as we go along and our comprehension of the piece is getting richer.
Today has also been a great way to use our imaginations and develop creativity in quick thinking, which is really productive in relation to our improvisation of course.
Thursday 14th May 2015
The exercises we did to warm up today were enjoyable ones which really required you to think on your feet as fast as you could. First we stood in a circle and put a glasses case in the centre. We then had to go in one by one and quickly think of something it could be, then use it as that in an improv for a few seconds. Everyone thought of completely different things for it to be; a phone, food, a golf club, or as I thought of a grenade. This warm up showed that the ability to create a scene can lie entirely in the imagination of the actors.
Next we played a game where we stood in pairs in a circle, one person on the inside facing out and the other standing facing them. Everyone standing on the inside of the circle had to think of an opening line, and then they used it to start a ten second improvised conversation with the person opposite them. Every ten seconds the people on the outside of the circle moved around one space, to the next person on the inside. The people on the inside had to use the same line every time, it was really up to their new partner to continue the story each time. This was pretty fun, as I moved from person to person wondering what their line would be! I found this game really helpful with accepting and idea and building on it, because you have no choice here but to elaborate on the line offered to you.
The work we did in pairs today was interesting.
The first task we were given was to create a short improvisation set in the morning, based around something that had happened to one or both of us the night before.
Jack and I worked together on this. We really liked the idea of having an improvisation where we didn't actually know what was going to happen, only one of us knew what had happened and the other didn't. We decided it would be Jack that something had happened to and me that had to get it out of him.
The comic concept which I've seen numerous times in fiction of somebody obviously wanting to talk about something but insisting they don't by saying "Oh never mind..." is something we found really funny, so we decided to use this. We set out the basic structure; I would be making breakfast, Jack comes in, tries really hard to get my attention, begins to act all coy while clearly wanting to tell me, then he tells me what happened.
The rest of it, the story of what had happened and my reaction, was improvised on the spot when we performed. I personally found this quite fun; it meant my reactions were spontaneous and we had to properly make it up on the spot to serve the narrative as we performed.
Something intriguing that some of the other pairs did however was to never actually tell us what had happened. There were varying degrees of revealing what happened in the different pieces, and the ones I found most effective were those that were very ambiguous and cleverly done so you wanted to know more. Given the chance to do this exercise again, I think I'd enjoy working with that idea!
The next improvisation we did followed similar lines to that I just discussed of subliminal messages, but this time it was with very sensitive topics. We had to choose one serious subject to use as stimuli, out of the following options:
- Self harm
- FGM
- Coming out
- Abuse
- Bullying
- Seperation
Jack and I chose bullying. We further developed the concept of him knowing and me having to find out, but this time it was far less comical. Although we added some sensitively used light hearted-ness to add layers to it, most of our scene was rather sad. It wasn't dramatic, we wanted it to be simple so it could be quite realistic.
The character Jack played was a young autistic boy with a prosthetic leg, who was the victim of bullying at school. I played his older sister who had to talk to him about it and try to comfort him.
I found this an emotional piece to do, and I found myself invested in the situation.
In our scene, Jack came home in a bad mood, and I had to try and talk to him about what had happened. But it was a difficult conversation, because his thoughts and behaviour was suggestive of aspergers, and he found it difficult to communicate his emotions.
I really liked our piece, I think it was sweet and it dealt with the situation gently. Jack added something at the very end which I think was a very nice touch, as my character leaves to make dinner, Jack's character just stopped me to say "thank you". Just that, nothing more. Thank you for talking to him and making him feel better. I think it was quite a tender moment, considering this child's difficulty with conveying emotion and understanding usual interactions.
Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to perform our improvisation, but I think that it was a good experience to observe some of the other groups and see the approaches people took to the subjects.
Today was very helpful to me because it allowed us to work on really developing ideas in improvisation; we had the opportunity to explore more depth in our scenes.
Thursday 21st May 2015
Today we looked at reinforcing our basic knowledge of one of the staples of improvisation, as well as taking part in some new exercises. One of the most important things in improv we talked about is making the other actor look good. Avoid attacking, don't make cheap jokes, and don't try to get cheap laughs at the other actor's expense. It is totally unhelpful and it is very selfish to hog the limelight; it should be about working together to serve the narrative.
Keeping this in mind, we played some improvisational games based in pairs and groups, focusing on teamwork to create a good performance!
The first game we played today was a game in pairs. One actor plays an expert in something of their choosing, but can only speak gobbledegook. The other actor has to play their translator, taking questions from the audience, asking the expert, and then making up what their response was and telling the audience. This is such a funny exercise, and it is a perfect example of using teamwork.
For example, the expert can really help out the translator by giving a long answer in gobbledegook to give the translator time to make up what the answer is.
The translator also has to be a team player by interpreting through the kind of gestures, facial expressions and body language the other actor uses what kind of answer they might be implying. Even the rest of us, sitting in the audience, have to help out the actors on stage; giving them interesting questions.
The rest of the morning was based on using historical events as stimuli for solo, duo, and group improvisations. We all had to write our name on one piece of paper, and a historical event on the other. We then put them into two hats.
One piece of paper was then drawn out of each hat, and whoever's name it was had to work with the historical event pulled from the other hat. They had to be someone or
something associated with that event and deliver a thirty second monologue discussing how they felt about it.
This was great, I feel like it really pushed people to work hard and use their imaginations. Having to develop an improvisation totally alone really challenges an actor because all of the focus is on them, and they have had no preparation - they are thrown in at the deep end. Everyone who did this performed really strong monologues, whether emotional or funny, and I think it highlighted the ability and potential within the actors in our class.
Next we were put into groups and each group was given a historical event to create an mime of.
Our group were given Columbus discovering America.
Knowing we had to convey the event through only mime and no dialogue, we used the knowledge we had of the event to pinpoint moments in the journey which could be physically clear; using a big map to plot the journey, going on a ship, searching with a compass, getting lost, then finally discovering "new" land and being overjoyed.
Ryan managed to guess what our scene was from the mime, so I think we must have made a relatively clear story. I think this was another prime example of the importance of working together in improvisation; if we didn't all put in 100% and work together, the piece would have been a shambles and we wouldn't have delivered a clear performance.
Today was a productive session on improv, I think especially as we could see the contrast in working alone and working with others, and how both your personal performance and your ability to work as a team are important.
So today, all of the work we have been doing on improvisation came to a head as we finished our unit with a morning workshop of improv games.
We played several we have already done and know relatively well, such as foreign film, party quirks and goalie, most of them focused on improvisation in pairs;
Today through lots of participation and also observation, I felt this was a really great way to end this improv unit, as we got to use everything we've learnt and apply it in one big workshop.
I observed in this morning's session that there was really, really strong work all round. Everybody was working together and putting 100% of themselves into the exercises; I could see serious effort and a fantastic level of understanding improvisation within the class.
I believe today was so successful because people mostly stuck to the fundamentals of improv that we've looked at so many times; don't block, don't attack, make the other actor look good, serve the narrative, take risks, avoid linear stories, be imaginitive.
There were only a few instances where people deviated from these guidelines; I did observe some blocking at various points for example. It's clear I think when watching that, even though it's usually unintentional, blocking can really get in the way and make the scene awkward. I find I can see the awkwardness on stage and there's a definite struggle to continue when an idea isn't accepted or is rebuffed... It really makes a huge difference.
It was also interesting, and I think very productive, even when things didn't work out. There were a few games in which the actors just don't feel it was working or it didn't go so well, and it was good to see people feeling confident enough to just say "this isn't working". It's an important part of the learning and building process I think, and there's really nothing wrong with making mistakes or anything.
