Daily thoughts on improv

My name is Matt. I've been improvising for about fifteen years? Sometimes I have thoughts and I just want to have a big old discussion about them, but usually this happens in the middle of the night and my cat isn't as interested as I am. Feel free to ask me questions (the non-geographical location of Tumblr), or leave comments on any post by clicking on the title to get to the individual post page.

[letstalkimprov]

I am my body of work

We speak so often about how everything we create is disposable, ephemeral And it is but it’s also not We are creating Improvisors Each of us is a work in progress In development Refining what we can do and be We are creating teams Ensembles that work together just so Smooth well oiled machines Every scene and game and story and moment smooths an edge and deepens a groove The people and the combinations of people That is what we can point to and say Look We made that.

[improbserver]

Feel the fear.

For various reasons, I've been thinking lately about the physical changes that happen in your body when you feel afraid:

Your adrenal glands dump adrenaline into your bloodstream, telling your muscles to get ready for business.

Your heart beats faster to pump more blood to your large muscles.

Your pupils dilate to increase your field of vision.

Your senses become more acute to increase awareness of the world around you.

Brain activity increases.

With all the extra stuff whizzing around in your body, you sweat to keep cool.

Um, I don't know about you but all this stuff sounds INCREDIBLY USEFUL on stage, and especially in improv. So when people say "feel the fear and do it anyway", remember that you can feel the fear and USE IT.

(I know fear is more than a mechanical response, but becoming aware of these processes is a healthy step in learning to process anxiety responses, so I figure, why not try it?)

[improbserver]

There are shows where people are support characters and shows where we are leads. And you need to not equate a show where you ended up playing support as a show where you did not succeed. This is something we teach our beginners and it is something we need to remember ourselves.

— Timely advice from @letstalkimprov

[improbserver]

Personal style.

Ugh, long time no blog. I've been smashing my free time with The New Zealand Fringe Festival, about which more later.

Last night was the first PlayShop Family Time of the year, and I got to teach. I've been asked to skill people up in MCing, and so I thought we'd start by talking about our personal styles. I genuinely believe each performer is different, and so trying to copy someone else's performance style feels fake and ungenuine. Much better to learn what kind of person you are on stage and how to use that to your advantage.

My working theory is that in between the person we are in real life and the characters we play in scenes, there is a "performer character" who is a heightened version of a certain aspect of our everyday selves. And just like any other character, we can learn what works and get rid of what doesn't, without changing ourselves. We're also much more used to receiving notes on our character work than on our personal shortcomings, so I feel like getting to know these characters and giving notes on them will feel much kinder and we'll be more receptive.

In order to start working with these characters, we went around the circle one person at a time and talked about times we'd seen that person perform (as a player or as an MC). What makes them tick? How do they interact with an audience? What is their personality on stage? Then, rather than lump them into a category (the Sorting Hat approach), we came up with a unique name for that person's stage persona. I specifically did this so that the person could embrace everything about the persona rather than agreeing with some things and not with others, or having elements of multiple personas.

Some personas we came up with included:

The Double Agent: In an MC role, this player will be firmly allied with whoever needs their attention at the time. If the players need some love, the audience will be fine on their own for a moment. If the players let the show down (through lazy or careless play), this person will side with the audience to bring the show back up to standard.

The Cool Dad: This player has some crazy schemes, but somehow you can't resist joining in. They love fun but have the authority to keep the show on the rails.

The Birthday Girl: This player treats every performance like a party they've invited all their very best friends to. They want everyone to have as much fun as they're having, and we can't help it.

The Architect: This player is able to make precise, subtle tweaks because they see the overall structure of the show or the story (this is me!)

I encourage you to do this exercise with your team, but please don't use the personas above. Let me stress again how important it is that you fit the persona to the player and not the other way around. It's so rewarding when you find a name that truly fits someone's unique style. Everyone in the group goes "HAHA YES PERFECT!" and it's the best time.

The rest of the workshop was dummy intros for shows in our characters, and it was immediately apparent that no two people should run the same intro. When people fell back on the way they'd learned to introduce a show ("on the count of three, call out your name") it immediately felt borrowed. We loved the moments when people sat in their characters, like when the player we'd named The Cynic walked calmly out on stage and refused to do anything until the audience clapped for them (but rewarded us richly when we did), or when Cool Dad became fascinated with a kitschy toy keyboard they'd brought on stage.

Find your persona and play with them!

[improbserver]

This is a photo we took after our first show of AWKWARD THREESOME, our first NZ Fringe show. Can you tell who that is in the middle? It's amazing Nelson improvisor Laura Irish!

I can't remember if I've talked about this show much here, but it's SUCH a time. Basically we have a mystery guest each night and we don't know who they are until we meet them on stage. As you can imagine, this is a bit of a logistical nightmare, so luckily we have Brooks selecting the guests and Pippa helping out as stage manager, making sure we don't bump into anyone in the hallway.

Last night we improvised for an hour about wizards, schools, and wizard schools (so, lots of Harry Potter references). Even without the mystery guest element, this was the first time I'd done a whole hour with such a small cast, so that was a big thing in itself.

Can't wait to meet the rest of our guests!

[improbserver]

[Admen] Inside-coaching.

I had a kind of epiphany last night during notes for an Admen rehearsal. We were talking about whether, at this stage of the process, side-coaching would still be beneficial to us. Ryan was reluctant, since he won't be side-coaching during the performance, but we're still struggling with a few things that would be good to have pointed out during the run, when they can be directly applied, rather than at the end, when everyone is tired and hungry.

It occurred to me, though, that the thing we'll have on the night that we don't have at the moment is an audience to feed off. The energy of a room full (ish? we hope?) of people is such a key part of improvisation that we really feel its absence in the rehearsal room (how many times have you had the note "more energy"? Yeah, me too).

These things may seem unconnected, but I started thinking about how a key goal of any performance is to give the audience a good time. And without an audience present, the director becomes their proxy. So in a way, side-coaching fills the gap where we'd usually get audience feedback. We can pick up when an audience is bored, or confused, or shocked, but we can only do that if they're in the room, which is where side-coaching can help.

It's far from the only reason for side-coaching, but it's a good reason to keep it in your director's tool-belt even when you don't want to "spoil" your cast by giving them access to something they won't have on opening night.

[improbserver]

Crash.

I've fallen way behind on this, I know. My excuse is that in the lead-up to Fringe I have rehearsals 6-7 days a week, I'm still working a full-time job, and I have no time off because I used it all in December. AND YET. Jen and I open Awkward Threesome tomorrow and I'm SO EXCITED. I think I have something like 20 hours of almost entirely improvised performance between now and the end of the month, and tomorrow night I start ticking them off.

Still, all of this has meant I haven't been taking proper care of myself, and on Friday I kind of crashed. I had muscle pains everywhere, my back was killing me, my focus was scattered, my temperature was up a couple of degrees, and (sorry if this is TMI) my internal systems were not in good condition. My cat wakes me up at 5:30 most mornings (including weekends), I work from 8am until 5 in the evening, I go more or less straight to rehearsal until 9, and by then I don't have the time or energy to cook anything more than something extremely basic, or eat out, or get takeaways. And guess what? Even in restaurants, vegetables are out of fashion, at least in main dishes: after all, why give you vegetables on the side when they can charge the same price for a main and get another eight bucks out of you for a side of vegetables? Tasty, cheap meals full of vegetables are out there if you know where to look, but I have conservative tastes and an anxiety disorder (as well as an allergy to fresh fruit that means I can't just snack on a banana), I'm still pretty new in town, and the end of a 13-hour working day is no time to feel adventurous. Result: I've been eating a lot of carbs and protein and not much else.

This is a vicious cycle, because without proper nutritional intake, my energy levels will nose-dive, which means I have less energy to look after myself, and so on. Basically I just bottomed out on Friday and had to drop everything else and put fresh vegetables and vitamins into my body, which brought things around pretty quickly, but it was still a good thing I only had optional, skippable things on Saturday, which became a kind of decompression and recovery day.

I don't know what to do about this. Jen, in the same boat, asked on Twitter and got a bunch of "helpful" tips like "take time to plan your meals" (which assumes reserves of time and energy to plan and cook that we just don't have right now) but I think it's mostly just going to be useful as an object lesson.

Hey Matt, remember that time you tried to prepare for four shows at once and your body started literally shutting down? Yeah, that was a bad time. Don't do that again.

[improbserver]

[Lyall Baywatch] Hot-seating.

Did some hot-seating for Lyall Baywatch (which seems like a redundant way to start a post with that title, but hey).

My character is head lifeguard Blake Forrest, a man with deep convictions haunted by his dark past. Sometimes I struggle to connect physically with my characters, so for this session I tried something a bit different. Every time someone mentioned the past, I would look out to "sea". This helped tie me to the space, but also slowed me down and gave me something to hold focus while I brooded. I had to do very little to say a lot.

I think Blake still has quite a long way to go before I'm properly inhabiting the character physically, but this was a fun and valuable first step.

[improbserver]

[Admen] Don’t.

Yesterday we started running through the format for the show, which is starting to look clearer. But also! I made up a warm-up. It's called "don't".

Player A starts miming an activity. Player B says "don't". A then has two choices of response: "why?" or "what?" If they say "what?" then Player B starts a new activity and the roles switch. But if A says "why?", then B responds by mimicking and exaggerating A's movements and the roles stay the same. If you screw up, someone else replaces you.

I haven't ironed out all the kinks yet. But what I'm trying to get to is enough awareness of your partner's physicality that you can perform a convincing parody, but with enough presence that you can switch instantly to a new activity.

It might not be worth anything, but it was fun.

[improbserver]

[Admen] What we do in the shadows.

Second round of character generation/hotseating last night.

I was a bit bored/uninspired by the setting? Anyway, I wondered what would happen if my character was just secretly a vampire and it never came up.

That was a real fun time.

[improbserver]

[Lyall Baywatch] Origins.

First rehearsal for Lyall Baywatch last night, which brings my total rehearsals this week up to six. A little bit similar crowd to last year (Jen, Woody, Lyndon, Jed, Sam, Steve, Lori, Rosie) with some new friends thrown in (Kate, Dianne, Clare, Jonny).

Mostly we talked about the shape of the show and got to know each other a bit, and then we played some open scenes for a bit. Not really much to report, except that it was fun playing with new people for a change? Like, really fun.

Now working on my character, Blake Forrest, a dedicated lifeguard with a conscience.

[improbserver]

[Admen] What’s in a name?

Oops, forgot to post after yesterday's rehearsal. We started playing with the game of generating ad pitches, but in our characters, which is something I'd been worried about. To be honest, I'm still kind of worried about it: I feel like the two could pull in opposite directions and work against each other. But maybe they won't? We've only JUST started playing with the characters, anything could happen.

Speaking of characters, we've been talking about stepping into our second characters tomorrow night, and one thing we did yesterday that I really liked was we went around the group and told each other what we'd like to see in a second character. Things like "you often play very emotional characters: I'd like to see someone grounded in logic". I got "someone heavy" and "a villain", which is going to be quite fun.

Another thing I've been thinking about is names for characters. Names can often be quite hard and something we pick out of desperation, but I want prepared characters to have names that speak to their characters. For example, the name I'm thinking about for a no-nonsense legal counsel character is "Mike Whelk". It's short and clipped, and the K sounds rattle like ammunition (come to think of it, this is not a million miles off a name like "Louis Litt", if you're a Suits fan). For a more emotionally open character I'd choose a name with more vowels and soft consonants like M and N. (I started thinking about this after an episode of the podcast You Look Nice Today, in which Merlin Mann decided the best name to give for your Starbucks order was a nice clipped name like "Truck Spank").

Maybe have a think about characters you know from books or movies. Roll their name around in your mouth a bit. Does it feel like the character?

[improbserver]

[Admen] Group Scenes.

Much better feelings about rehearsal last night. I asked to take one of the warm-ups, which I think put me in a better space than 30 minutes of unfamiliar games with a group that knows and loves them? But also I was in a better place to connect with the work.

One thing we focused on was group scenes. A lot of our work is focused on two-person interactions, but the work we're doing now demands more. Ryan had a bunch of techniques for bringing these out, but a lot of the time we fell back into pair scenes and I found myself crashing in where I wouldn't normally have felt a need to enter, simply because I was trying to keep the group (myself included) working multi-player muscles.

My hot take on the reason three people is so much harder than two is that in a two-person scene, you don't have to be conscious of where your focus is, because it's always on your partner. When you start doing scenes with three people, you have to make deliberate decisions about where the scene is at any given moment. The scene might be between the other two characters: how do you connect to that? If you're the focus of the scene, how do you remain open to all the other players and allow them to feel included in what you're creating together? I've seen players (and of course I've done this myself) slink awkwardly off stage when a scene that was previously about them grows beyond a two-player interaction and then shifts in such a way as to not directly include them.

I want to think more about the idea that instead of making offers directly to our partner, I am making offers to the scene as a whole. In a two-person scene there's not much difference, but with three players, if I'm thinking about giving "my partner" what they need, there's a danger someone else will miss out. On the other hand, if I'm thinking about what the scene needs, and considering the other characters (and players) as part of the scene, and if we're all making moves that listen to and support the scene in a broader context than just whoever said the last line, we're more likely to move forward together?

This is pretty half-baked at the moment, but I think it's worth exploring?

[improbserver]

[Admen] Blocked.

Ugly rehearsal (for me) last night. We were supposed to come with character ideas for the show, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't do it. I don't mean I didn't want to, I mean I physically couldn't concentrate on the act of even making up a totally fake name with no stakes attached. This meant that I wasn't prepared for the session, which left people feeling let down and disrespected, like I thought I was better than them. Mostly inside I felt disappointed and anxious, which meant I was doubly unprepared to engage with the work. In retrospect, maybe I should have stayed home. Nobody was more upset with me last night than I was with myself.

Why did this happen? My best guess is that I don't feel like I know what the show is, and how a prepared character will be useful. In the past this has been a problem: for example, in Bänd of Röck, I completely threw away my character and started again after the first performance (obviously not something I want to repeat). This is a little clearer now? I'm still a little nervous about trying to do both a grounded character-based drama and a fun competition in an hour with the same characters, but I think this nervousness (together with my anxious non-participation) was construed as shitting all over the idea from a great height, which I don't think I was doing (at least not consciously). If it works, it works; if it doesn't, I hope we find out very quickly.

I have another chance at this on Tuesday. Hopefully things go a little better then.

[improbserver]

Blind Freeze Tag.

I think I've explained this before, but I was just posting about it for someone else, so I figured I might as well post it here.

One of my favourite warm-ups (especially when I'm teaching a new group) is Blind Freeze Tag. Two players are performing a scene; at any point, the MC/tutor (or the last player in the back line, if you don't have an MC or tutor) can call "Freeze!", at which point the first player in the back line RUNS into the scene, tags out one of the frozen players, assumes their EXACT physical position, and starts a new (completely different) scene with the remaining player. Things to keep in mind:

Don't analyse the poses before you pick one. Pick a pose, get into it, and be inspired from there. The longer you wait before starting a scene, the more pressure you put on yourself to be "good".

Play physically! Make lots of bold physical offers as a gift to players coming in after you.

New scene starts should be about inspiring your partner and helping them (and the audience, if there is one) to see what you saw in the frozen positions you walked into. Name things and make it absolutely clear where you are, who you (both) are, and what you're doing.

As usual, avoid "teaching" or transactional scenes. Go for relationships, strong action, and plenty of genre.

Because the scenes could be edited away at any time, don't hold back. Start in the middle of the action, assume a relationship with your partner, make strong advances, all that good stuff.

Vary scene lengths so players don't get into a rhythm and start expecting scenes to go for a set amount of time.

[improbserver]

My number one rehearsal tip.

In a theatrical form so heavily dependant on being in tune and building trust with those around you, don't be 30 minutes late to rehearsal.

That's probably my main note from tonight's improv? Yuck.

[improbserver]

When you don’t have to “yes, and”.

I saw something the other day that I've been mulling over, and I thought I'd share it here. I can't find the original post now, but the basic thing was: someone posted on Facebook about a show she was doing, and a fellow improvisor added a comment with a link to his own show that was on at the same time. The first person wanted to know whether she was alone in thinking that was a bit rude. Most people agreed that it was, but a really disturbing number of replies had this general format:

"Sure, maybe it was a bit off, but don't make a big deal about it. After all, we're improvisors! We say YES, AND!"

Fuck that. It is not our job as improvisors to be happy when people treat us like shit. That's our job as characters, as actors maybe, but not as human beings. Maybe this particular example is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I've seen this argument used to justify sexist or discriminatory behaviour, bullying, nepotism, and all manner of unpleasantness, and this just snapped something for me.

The next time someone upsets you and you hear "we're improvisors: we say YES, AND!", I want you to respond with "we're improvisors: we make our partners feel good".