Tag: David Razowksy

David Razowsky: Improvising as an Actor Workshop – Day 3

Long-time Second City cast member, director, and teacher David Razowsky visited Australia in July 2015, and I was lucky enough to be apart of a three day workshop focused on his various techniques and approaches to improvisation. Here are my notes and lessons from that weekend:

  • No-one ever wants to start. You want to continue.”
  • Specificity: Add something to what you already have. It’s not just a pair of glasses, it’s a beat up shitty pair of plastic reading glasses.
  • “Either say the line and shut the fuck up, or say the line, repeat it, and shut the fuck up.” (Be efficient with your dialogue! We’re watching a finish product, not a first draft. Trust yourself, say less.)
  • “Dare to leave me dangling.”
  • Unfolded, unfurled, and evolved: How we treat a point of view. “And we don’t do anything but keep going.”
  • Listen to the exact words that are said.
  • “Funny trumps logic.”
  • “it’s not my obligation to explain what the scene is about.” We are acting in the scene, so act in it.
  • Exercise: Solo Exercise: Inspired by music, deliver a monologue.
  • Once you bring in the past, you have to keep creating it. That’s when you get stuck.
  • Be aware of the words you are saying, and be aware of the emotional content of the words. (This will inspire what comes next, as opposed to getting stuck and inventing what comes next).
  • “We have to go forwards with what we say and do. Don’t go several steps back.”
  • Being positive is work – unless it’s your inspiration.
  • The first line of dialogue doesn’t set the scene, the second line does.
  • “Specifics beget specifics. Once you have a few, it’s easy to find the rest.”
  • “We’re writing using the ink of our voice onto the paper of our partners ears.”
  • “You can say a lie, as long as you say the truth later.”
  • Listen to yourself. You don’t just say things, you say them for a reason.
  • Observe the scene. Don’t just “go forward.” Be mindful. The only time we say that we’re done is when we’re done. We don’t call it ourselves.
  • “Don’t be in a hurry to get there, because it doesn’t get you there any faster.”
  • If you fight it, no-one wins.
  • If it feels different to everything else, play with it.
  • Statement of truth – When you announce it, it’s done! (A statement of truth marks the end of a scene – good cue for an edit).
  • Don’t leave out the middle parts – we need to know details.
  • The audience can pick up subtext.
  • Your scene partner ends where they want you to begin!!!
  • “If you say one thing that doesn’t make sense, you can continue not making sense.”
  • It’s not about finding the first thing interesting. It’s about weighing up everything and choosing the most interesting thing.
  • When responding to your scene partner – is the answer yes or no? Then you will know how to respond to them. The obvious choices become clearer every time.
  • Object Work: Easier to do things, then define rather than vice versa?
  • “If you hold on to point-of-view – it can be written.”
  • “A major part of what I’m asking you to do is have permission to be silly.”

David Razowsky: Improvising as an Actor Workshop – Day 2

Long-time Second City cast member, director, and teacher David Razowsky visited Australia in July 2015, and I was lucky enough to be apart of a three day workshop focused on his various techniques and approaches to improvisation. Here are my notes and lessons from that weekend:

  • Stop starting your scene, and start continuing your scene.
  • Bring your awareness then call it out!
  • Hold onto your shit – and connect with that.
  • What’s really missing from a scene – this can be used for second beats.
  • “Take everything for its face value – take it literally.” Listen to what the words mean. It’s where the humour appears from. You can’t scoff it off. Play it.
  • “What are you missing because it’s a figure of speech.”
  • Repetition adds emphasis – gives your stuff energy.
  • “We don’t have to do that – we get to do that!”
  • “I wish to free you on the improv you do on stage and the life you live off-stage.”
  • You can listen to tones, weight, shape. You can give words as much weight as the way they are expressed in.
  • We know the scene isn’t over because the breath changes.”
  • “When you are honest you don’t have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain
  • “Once you start thinking, you start weighing shit out.”
  • “I don’t invent, I discover.” – Pablo Picasso
  • Use everything in your enviroment. Your point-of-view is what you just said and what’s adjacent.
  • Point-of-view’s brew from emotional content.
  • “What did you just feel in that moment?”
  • If you are doing something your scene partner enjoys, why stop doing it? Continue giving those gifts!
  • Once you have the epiphany, your scene partner can have it as well.
  • “I don’t know” is just as valid a point of view as anything else. It’s truthful, it’s the actuality of the scene.
  • All improv is a race between two people where it doesn’t matter who wins. You’re watching the chase.
  • Don’t like the lack – like what’s there. Don’t back away.
  • Respond honestly to the last thing that was said.
  • Hold on to your point-of-view and surrender your point-of-view. Don’t let your ego drive your point-of-view or take you out of it.

Group Scenes

  • If doing a group scene – align with someone, connect with someone. Share an opinion.
  • Alliances and allegiances: How we are connected to other people (not characters!)
  • We have to indicate to each other who we are aligned with.
  • Use pronouns – I/Yours/Mine/Me or Ours/Theirs/We/Us or by using shape.
  • If aligned, use names; especially if their back is to you. Little queues and show it fully and wholly!!

Change and Heightening

  • “You’re looking for the turn, the change, for the bubble to pop.” Once it does, you can drop what you had and it changes and affects you.
  • Just because I notice it, doesn’t mean I have to engage with it.
  • “Go for the thing that stirred my soul.”
  • We can’t stay ‘that’s tiny’ – it’s a change anyway you look at it.
  • Heightening is the actor taking information you have already introduced and adding until you find a breaking point in your scene partner.
  • Don’t get married to ‘the scene is about me.’ Surrender. “It’s very likely that this moment is for somebody else”
  • The onus isn’t on when I stop having fun, it’s when your scene partner stops having fun with your offer.
  • If you feel like leaving a scene, leave the scene.
  • “What’s the emotional temperature of the room?”
  • Use that to generate an opening line of dialogue.
  • You can make a small deal out of something big, or a big deal out of something small.
  • Your feeling doesn’t make something true.
  • Be something, then discover why you are playing the scene.
  • “Being nervous is enough. Being nervous about mailboxes is too much.
  • An exit is a line of dialogue. The scene goes from act one to act two.
  • “Make this as uncomfortable as you can!”
  • “A good scene look written but off-book.”