Links

A Tale of Two Shows→

Despite the grief we give ourselves for poorly timed edits and missed game moves, it’s the other show that matters more. The one about people just making things up as the go. The one about people pushing boundaries, taking risks, experimenting and being brave enough to follow the fun.

This isn’t sketch or theater. The audience knowingly came to see improv. They want to see both kinds of shows. A bunch of people making things up (and sometimes failing) isn’t a bad thing. It’s what makes our art form unique. And when everything comes together, it’s what makes improv seem like magic.

Why Isn’t Your Improv Theater Diverse?→

It’s really a simple principle, if you want black people to be a part of your theater, ask them to be a part of your theater. I’m not being glib. If your audience comes to a show and they only see young, straight, white males on stage, and they aren’t a young, straight, white male, they are less likely to sign up for classes or sign up for auditions. Hell, they are less likely to come back to see another show.

Edit: Some interesting discussion on the subject at Reddit.

That’s Racist!→

What I try to explain to UCB 201 students is that every subject should be able to be intelligently explored with comedy.  The key there though is intelligently.  The comedy should not be coming from the sheer shock value of the subject matter.  There needs to be a take on it.  In 201 students are working towards being able to reflect real life honestly and then look for the first unusual thing, the funny or interesting idea that they can build a Game from.  That means that you can portray a racist person because there are racist people in real life, but that alone can’t be the unusual thing.

Free Range Harolds→

One piece of advice I’ve heard multiple times is that a strong Harold is about the scene work, and players don’t have to worry as much about tying ideas back to the opening. Bill broke down the Harold in such a way that added some more clarity. Namely, the first beat scenes do not need to find or tie back to a larger theme, but the players can declare a theme later in the show by looking back at everything that has already happened. I’d like to call this a free range Harold.

YUMMY YUMMY YES

Talent vs. Skill→

You wouldn’t expect a class to just “get” a short form game without explaining the rules, just as you wouldn’t expect someone starting UCB to “get” game without having it broken down. That doesn’t mean some people won’t get it right from the start—whoop dee doo, they’re your Level 1 class star. Big deal. But there’s plenty of people who just need the steps explained and suddenly they’re killing it. On the flip side, they might never get those steps explained and, despite what you can see is a sincere engagement with the process, they can’t seem to do a good scene at a basic level. In my experience in the English and improv classroom, this is almost always due to the teacher not breaking down the process into manageable steps, or, if the process was adequately broken down, the student is trying to “skip steps” and get to the result faster because he thinks that having to work through the steps makes him “dumber” or “less funny,” respectively.

Hoo boy. A big fat yes to this post.

5 Things Holding You Back In Improv And Life→

Technical skill isn’t your problem. The fact that you could be better at finding game or connecting 1A to 2A in your Harold isn’t why you feel like you bombed. The reason that you feel like you bombed is you. It’s you and your desire to lose. It’s you setting yourself up for failure. It’s your desire to prove the world right – that you suck and should probably just quit improv anyway and go back to sitting at home watching Bob’s Burgers reruns.

With every practice and every show, you’re working on your technical skill. You are constantly improving. You can’t avoid getting better.

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.