#devisingexercises

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Bristol Improv Theatre Exercises

So, now that we know a bit about the creative company that is Bristol Improv Theatre lets try and talk about their exercises, don’t worry no jumping jacks are involved…for now.

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What are we looking at?

As part of my research for this blog I have studied and put into practice multiple exercises from Bristol Improv Theatres workshops, I decided when doing this that I would choose exercises that vary in difficulty. I chose to do this as some people I would be working with as part of my research group were new to this form of theatre, therefore it made sense to start at the beginners level to make them more comfortable with improv and then work our way up to the more advanced exercises.

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How are we alike?

As my research group was a mixture of two Improvisation researchers ,Dee and I, we were also working with three physical theatre researchers. As a group we thought it would be smart if we went through the differences and similarities when it comes to devising both theatre forms.

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Humina Ha

When looking at any devising technique it is important to warm up first, after the Physical Theatre researchers took us through a slow body warm up I created a vocal warm up called ‘Humina Ha’.

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Hymn Hands

After this we looked at exercises that combined both improvisation and physical theatre techniques, we specifically looked at an exercise called ‘Hymn Hands’. We felt this was great for combining techniques from both Theatre forms, as the exercise was completely open for interpretation and although it was physical you had to improvise your moment based on the last movement your partner had done.

The video below is an example of when I tried this technique out and like the girlboss I am, I killed it. 

I found this technique very beneficial as I think it opens a door to a side of improv that I had never looked into before. When conducting feedback with the rest of my research group the physical theatre researchers agreed that they hadn’t thought about how that side of Physical Theatre was based on improvisation and it showed them that improv is much more than just saying ‘yes, and’.

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Yellow Brick Road

After showing my group an exercise that involved their preferred medium of theatre to help ease them into the world of improvisation, I decided to show them an exercise called ‘Yellow Brick Road’. This is a slow exercise in which the group lies down and closes their eyes as the facilitator, myself in this instance, guides them through a storytelling exercise.  

The video below is footage of this ASMR-like exercise. 

As you can hear is the exercise some of the group said it was difficult to hone in on their imagine as others where shaping what they were thinking about. However, this is precisely the reason for this exercise as with improvisation you have to use your own imagination whilst also be able to mould your ideas to someone else's this way an improv performance works as a cohesive piece and doesn’t just seem like two different actors interpretations of the same topic. 

In the end of session feedback my group concluded that they found this exercise extremely helpful as hearing others' thoughts and ideas helped them delve deeper into their own imagination and expand upon what they were originally thinking. However, an issue we faced with this exercise is that although it helps a lot with imagination it doesn’t help greatly towards building confidence when it comes to physically performing an improv piece. I will note however, that this is from one of Bristol Improv Theatres beginner workshops so as a group we understood that this exercise wasn’t supposed to be a direct link to what you will end up performing onstage.

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Find a place - Last Exercise

Now that the group were feeling more confident with improvisation I chose to show them the Bristol Improv Theatre technique ‘Find a Place’. This exercise is a form of prompted improvisation, in which the facilitator will call out a starting scenario and/or location and the first two actors will have to find ‘their place’ within that scenario by acting out a scene. After the initial actors do this, the remaining actors can then decide to change the scenario by tapping one of the actors out of the scene. The new actor then positions themselves in the previous performer's position, but they have a completely different scenario and will completely change the scene. 

Here is footage of us slaying this exercise. 

As this was the last exercise in our research groups I wanted to use one of the more ‘advanced’ exercises that Bristol Improv Theatre had to offer, I felt as though this exercise tied all of the previous techniques we had worked on into one exercise. 

The feedback we discussed for this exercise was that it was very quick paced and although some found that challenging they also agreed that this helped them stick with the first idea that popped into their head. When we were doing the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ exercise this is what we were working on developing, following that gut instinct. I was very glad to see that this had continued into this activity. 

However, we did feel that with this exercise it took us a few rounds to fully immerse ourselves into the activity. I believe this was due to either the quick pace of this activity or because they were finding it difficult to combine their ideas/actions with the previous person's actions. Yet, as I have previously mentioned after a few rounds of this activity it ran really smoothly.

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Overall Feedback

After finishing our research into our chosen companies devising techniques/exercises we had a feedback session in which we discussed how effective we found the exercises we had practised. 

Overall the non-improv researchers in my group found the exercises I presented to be really insightful into how improv can be used to not only put on unscripted performances but to also help elevate scripted/physical performances. They mentioned that the amount of teamwork needed in improv is equivalent to the amount needed in physical theatre. I found after facilitating these exercises with my research group that improv is definitely a skill that can be used in and outside of theatre. Being able to work together imaginatively to bring a great outcome can seem hard but once you have built trust with each other through these exercises this teamwork becomes effortless.