We need to stay curious. It sounds like a stupid thing to say, but there is no single way to do improv. We need to see, absorb, steal and cross-pollinate. We need to keep seeing shows, and not just the shows you know you love, but also the shows you think you’ll hate. The shows that are weird, or if your show is weird, the show that is normal and conventional. And we need to encourage others to do the same. You don’t have to love everything; in fact, it would be strange if you did. But the more you know, the more you understand and the richer your work becomes. Some techniques and styles work for some shows and not for others, some appeal to some audience members and not to others. Getting too far into a single style can make you blind to another, so we need to watch as much as we can and get as close as we can to the naive eyes of a new audience member.
Exploratory tags vs Game Tags→
Avoid Mad Libs tags. Those are moves that just swap out a noun, be it a character or a location, for a different character or location, and then just do the same scene. So if its “Weird guy that wants to marry a giraffe in a restaurant”, no it’s “weird guy that wants to marry a giraffe in a movie theater.” That tag doesn’t give us anything new, it’s just the same scene with a different coat of paint. Those are the boring tag runs you describe.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BA4m9R3gDuv/?taken-by=mikarotunda
This is fun.
Improv Mid-Life Crisis→
They just need a lesson in the difference between play and game. With play, you can do whatever you want. With game, well, there is a structure with rules.
Was at a show tonight that had some technical issues (piano didn’t work), so they played an interim game of freeze tag. What I loved was the ask-for. “Can we please have an activity that humans can easily do but dogs cannot?” Instantly the players were in physicalities that were identifiable to the audience and into the game. Very clever.
Harassment and Sexism in Improv→
Mirror, Action, Object: An Exercise in Personal Active Stakes→
My Favourite Improv Advice→
I’m going to say this a lot when I see you do this, [..] I don’t want to see ShrugProv. Shrugging means you don’t care. When I decided to eliminate shrugging from my improv, I became so much more committed and engaged.
Colleen Doyle on commitment and lazy performance.