Sup folks,

Josh Dean saw the blog a couple of days ago and liked what he saw. But he did say one thing that made me think. "Where are all the posts about improv?" Good point Josh, we should have some posts on improv, but just because you have your own sitcom doesn't make you right, but in this case, that's exactly what you are. So, for josh, and anyone else interested, here is a post about my thoughts on improv - "The art of making shit up"

There were a lot of nosebowl participants at chimprov last Saturday. I was glad to see that, because it was a good show to learn from. I'll tell you what I mean. During one scene in the second half, Kevin began by sitting down, Arlen joined him. Kevin said "Mum?", and a relationship was made. It was that easy, one word. Simple. Then Kevin said "I want to see the world" Bingo, we have a problem, and the scene is off and running. I've been teaching Nosebowl workshops this month and explaining this line of dialog without seeing it took me half and hour. During the first half, Crad and I did what is called a paper trail, a game where you write 9 or 10 suggestions on big pieces of paper on the stage before you start a 40 minute improv inspired by the words. It felt awesome. And it felt easy. But improv really is easy. We just need to keep it that way.

In order to craft a story, you need to create a hero and then torture him/her physically and mentally on the way to a goal. With this in mind, I say give the audience what they want. They know better than we do what should happened. For instance, Kevins character wanted to see the world, because his mother had kept him indoors his entire life. As the audience we want to see him out of the house, because that's what was set up. When he gets outside we don't just want him to walk around doing nothing, so he gets into trouble in some way. However, we've only given the audience half of what they want. So Arlen, as many characters, tortures Kevin. Kevin also tortures himself, by raising the stakes and making things worse for his lost little character. And as for the end, it doesn't matter as long as something happends. He goes back home, great. He dies and his mother mourns and says "I told you so", fine. He gets out of the house, finds an apartment and locks himself away again, Cool. Regardless, a beginning had been given, a middle was shown, and an end happened. Audience leaves happy.

The problem in teaching improv to highschool kids, or anyone for that matter, is we are educated to be obedient not creative. You can't spoon feed improv like you can a social studies curriculum. I can't give you an improv equation that will make it all easy. One that you can write on your hand and cheat off during a show.

But, what I can give you is this.

Being good at improv is the ability to think like the audience from onstage. When you start doing improv, your way behind the audience, they're too fast for you. Your thinking about the rules you've been told, the things you can't do and the things that may have worked before. As you get better, you can give them what they want, when they want it, with only minimal thought as to how you go there. After many years of practice, and maybe never, you know what they want way before even they do. And they're blown away because you were thinking what they were, before they knew it.

But even when you suck at improv, and everyone that has ever done it has, at one point. You can have one thing to hold onto. Failure is the only thing of value, because that's what we learn from. So when you fail at improv, or at a relationship, or at school, or anything else, pause and reflect on that last scene of the workshop, of the show, or of life and ask why it didn't work and what did. So that next time your on stage, you can give them what they want.

But I'm probably wrong.

'Night

Jules