Monday, December 17, 2012

An Improv Weekend Part 1 Alvarez

First the weekend started with a rehearsal with Alvarez, my Magnet Circuit team. As I said in the last blog, as long as we have fun and just go crazy and make huge decisions we have a great time.

I remember one scene which Ben Jones gave us Bad Initiations that were written out. My initiation was, "I was supposed to meet Jerry here. But, I don't know who you are!" Lisa was my partner. I think my initial thought was "This is gonna get inventy" solely because it has to. Being a bad initiation means just that. I initiated and Lisa brought up the scenario that we were both meeting Jerry as okcupid dates. At that point I kind of started a bit of a fight, Lisa tried to make it like we may go out on a date instead. At some point, I just chimed in with the bad initiation. Oddly enough, I found myself at any point where we were possibly going to move forward, I insisted on doing the initiation again. Though in theory it's against the improv because the scene didn't really move, I feel that I am holding on to that weird initiation that was given. In a way, it was the game. Why not make it the chorus of the scene.

As for sets, as a group we went kind of off the deep end in an amazing way. I remember the first set being about oranges and the desert forests of Canada. Ian and Steven did a scene where they were lost in the desert/forest of Canada where they had just got the guinness record for running bare foot. I remember pushing the outside sounds, Bill turned it kind of chanty / indian style. I shot a dart into Ian's neck. The second beat was kind of a surrounded by savages thing and I just decided to make it disney and turn into pocahontas and start quoting songs. The second set had popes, dragons, and R-kelly. Ian did an amazing initiation as pope going up to his balcony saying, "As pope, I will defend you against the dragons", I kind of pulled him back and  said, "May not wanna do that". Eventually the dragons came and I was sent on a quest to destroy a ring. There was also a great group game where Joy ran out and started decorating a tree. For a good 3 seconds no one came it, it was group game time. I had a like a feeling that it was so funny that she was talking to herself alone decorating a tree and I kind of started narrating as if it was a Christmas story. Lisa started humming a christmas tune and the story began. It was GREAT fun. I love my team. Alvarez is awesome.

Louis Kornfeld said something during a two prov coaching, he said, "When you go into a scene, it's as simple as being a character that wants to be there. Just fucking wanting to be there. That's all it needs".  I feel like as an improviser, if you have a bad show or a bad feeling and you kind of judge anything, you're not having fun. You don't want to be there. And it shows. You have to want to be there.  Take that to improv level. You are a character that wanted to be there and interact for some reason.

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