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.
Tag: engagement
Warm Up with Commitment→
An effective warmup ultimately comes down to whether people engage those warmups with commitment. Often the reason players aren’t ready to go after a warmup isn’t necessarily because the warmup sucked, but people’s commitment to the warmup sucked, or their commitment in general sucks. That’s not necessarily going to change if you do a better warmup. Often, the warmup doesn’t need to get better. The attitude and approach needs to get better.
For me, it’s playing a crazy warmup that gets me warm for a show – something fun, something fast, something that’s easy to generate energy. I’m Coming Over For Pancakes, Vroom/Click/Clap, Rotating Pattern Game with four or more patterns are all great. Running half-assed intentionally bad scenes makes me to do bad scenes in shows.
There’s sometimes psychological reasons people tell stories badly. One element of good storying is being emotionally connected to the words you’re saying, but if people are in denial about something, or suppressing the emotions involved, the story can sound somehow flat and affectless.
Alex Blumberg of This American Life/Gimlet Media talking about what makes stories work for radio. Replace stories with scenes and radio with improv shows, and well… More at Transom.