Improv Tips

by josh

I think most improvisors who've been doing improv a while are uncomfortable giving notes or tips or anything. We don't want to seem full of ourselves and I don't want anyone every watching me thinking he's not following his own instruction. Fact of the matter is improv is hard and you have good shows and bad shows. I'm going to step out of my comfort zone and list a few things I personally try, though fail often, to follow.
1,Everything your partner(s) says is gold. You might think that it's actually crap, but it really is gold. I've watched great improvisors take lines I thought were awful and turn it into a hilarious scene. I no longer think there are any bad lines and it's only helped me.
2, Don't be defensive. If someone says "you're an idiot" then good news you get to be an idiot. Call it gifts call it whatever you want, but listen to it and think yes what if I was an idiot. Improvisors are so easy to defend themselves as if they were actually in real life. You can still be real in a scene an accept what someone throws at you to the n'th degree. "You're a loser" -its just as fun to be a loser as it is to be a winner. "I've never won a bar fight in my life" or some crap like that.
3, Feel some way. Have a want. How ever you say it it's important that you have a direction. Weather it be trying to get laid or trying to ask your son if he's on drugs cause you hate drugs just feel some way and stick to it. It's much more fun to watch action oriented characters than it is to watch someone with no emotion or POV.

That's all I got for now. Improv is hard so imbedding these things in your head takes time and its easy to fall back into bad habits. If you stay focused on doing good work then the payoff will be huge.

3/31/11

During notes after our show tonight, our new coach, the amazing Jet Eveleth, helped me "re-realize" something I learned in classes at iO: set up your teammates to succeed, not fail. In the middle of our show, I came out as a music teacher introducing a choir of 3rd-graders about to sing Christmas carols. So far, so good, especially since our suggestion was "Winter". We could have gone anywhere with that abbreviated intro, but I added the detail that they weren't very talented. This set us up to be inept singers, which my teammates graciously obliged in the following game. (Props to the rest of MP for honoring that.)

Why did I do this? If they were going to fail as these 3rd-grade singers, wouldn't we and the audience want to discover that together in the moment? I'm a sucker for details, but when it comes to establishing a scene or a game, I believe that dictating action not only forces things to happen, but also limits group mind and creativity. My "game-move" tonight reminded me of this:

"If we treat each other as if we are geniuses, poets, and artists, we have a better chance of becoming that on-stage." - Del Close

Next time, I want to set us up to succeed. Plus, it's a lot more fun!

Ben

Fly down, way down

by eric

This a quick little story of an improv experience I had while in college.

My friend and I, Mike Garvin, had a two man team which we dubbed "Date Night". In fact, we still do shows whenever I am back in Carbondale, the place of my college days and his current home. We played on a very intimate and cozy space named the Longbranch Backroom that holds about 40 when it is packed to the gills.

On this night, I can honestly say I can't even remember what year this was, we were doing a set in which Mike was wearing a suit and I was wearing a tux. You see, our theme was "classy improv for an un-classy world" and so we tried to dress nice on our "Date Night". (As you can see from the photo a fan took at that very show)

I remember we had to change into the suits at the theater behind a little blind. It was all very sexy. The certain pair of tuxedo pants I was wearing has an extraordinary long fly zipper, which I still posses to this day but haven't worn since. I don't know if that was the style back in the day, to have a super long fly zipper or if it was tailored to a man packing some heat. Either way, that chasm of a fly never made its way closed before the show, unbeknownst to me.

I don't know at what point I realized that the Grand Canyon in my pants was presenting itself to the audience, I just know that when I did I stepped behind Mike and made things right. The zip heard round the world they say.

I later found out that my girlfriend, and now wife, Tamira had been trying to flag me down from the back of the theater as she was taping the show. Don't start looking for the video of Youtube, it isn't there. But it is in my mind to this day and every time I take the stage, I do a little zipper check. If you ever watch me on the back line during a game of "freeze" or the "the dream" at iO Theater, you will likely catch me checking myself.

Doin' If For Yourself

While flipping through some old acting class folders from college, I came across an article that spoke to me as much today as when I first read it years ago. Back then, I applied the ideas of this periodical to stage acting. Now I apply it to improvisation. I especially like what the author says about fear, as that is one of the biggest hurdles in improv, especially for beginners. Even though this article is about athletes and sports, the same ideas apply to any kind of performance! Honestly, you can apply this article to anything in your life: work, play, relationships, etc. Here are only two excerpts of one great article:

"Doin' It For Yourself"
By K.C. Compton
I have to or else...I choose to because...Within each of those phrases lies an entire story about an athlete's motivation and possibly the of her long-term success. One phrase finds its source in fear; the other comes from and continues to produce joy. Any athlete knows fear--sometimes actual fear for her safety or well-being, but more often fear of looking stupid or fear of just flat-out being a loser. As a motivator, fear can be a doozy, at least for a little while. But it is fear's companions--burnout, limitation and suffering--that ultimately make it bad news for the athlete.
"When you are motivated by fear, your perspective is really limited because all you're trying to do is survive," says sports psychologist Virginia Savage. "you can only see one or tow options, when really you have many options. Fear sometimes works as a motivator, but only for the time being. You suffer because you're always judging yourself harshly, which creates burnout."
Kathy Cosley, a record-setting mountaineer who has climbed some of the world's roughest and most challenging peaks, says some of her worst fears come not from staring down Switzerland's jagged and awe-inspiring Eiger or Patagonia's daunting Cerro Torre peak, but from fearing she'll fail when performing under the scrutiny of her peers.
"I've had a lot of performance anxiety because I was afraid of looking bad in front of people I respect a lot," Cosley says. "It's just natural for those thoughts to pass through your mind. But I can't imagine being motivated for long by that. I keeps me from thinking clearly and makes it hard for me to keep my mind on how to do the best job i can. I'm in this for the fun of it, and if that's your central motivator, you'll keep doing it for as long as you can, no matter what."

(Back to Ben blogging)
Cosley's quote above about "performing under the scrutiny of her peers" really resonates with me. I often perform improv or sketch comedy in front of fellow actors, many of whom I admire. When I have fear racing through my mind right before a show starts, I'm leaving very little room for creativity in the performance. It's like the race has already started, but I'm still at the starting block thinking about who is in the crowd. It's not a lost cause at this point, but doubly hard to catch up to where you'd like to be. When I find myself nervous about who is watching and whether or not they'll like what I do, I remember this simple thing: These people WANT to see me shine. They WANT to see something that makes them laugh. Why would I be afraid of making one of my improv heroes laugh? I've done this, and I know why: fear. Fear of not looking good or worthy in front veteran improvisers, friends or even strangers that will form opinions about me. The most intense fear for me happens if I'm dating a girl and she sees my show for the first time. Now there's an opinion I care about!)
I used to concern myself with that slippery slope much more than I do now. I won't lie, I still care if people think my improv is funny. I just don't worry as much if they don't, and that makes for more fearless performances, which is what we strive for in anything, whether it's improv, scripted shows, or sports. My favorite improv shows are with Michael Pizza when I was less concerned with fear and far more focused on having fun with my boys on stage.

Do you tell yourself that you have to be funny in a show or else people won't like you? Or are you choosing to do it for yourself?

-Ben

Ben and Brett as Stavros and Nikkos...

So Charna Halpern, the owner of the iO Theater, sent Ben and I on an audition for a movie on Friday. And wouldn't you know it, Ben and I actually got the f'in thing. Apparently, the part was originally written for the Sklar brothers but they dropped out; so Ben and I picked up the scraps like a couple of bottom feeding bristleworms. We auditioned Friday morning and were on set shooting by 5am on Saturday...

The movie is a romantic comedy called "One Small Hitch". Our characters are Nikkos and Stavros, two brothers with a wedding catering company. When the big shit hits the big fan during the main character's wedding planning, we step in and try to save the wedding. It was really fun and I think we did a pretty decent job. They even let us improvise a few takes. I won't know if they use any of our improvised lines until I see the movie, but it was fun to try either way!

I'd say the biggest thing I took from the whole day was surprise at the amount of people involved. I've done a few commercials, a couple of music videos and Michael Pizza has done some sketch stuff, but none of them came close to this. It's pretty intimidating to know that, if you mess up, everyone has to reset. The grips, the boom guy, the actors, the camera people; everyone.

Anyway, it was a real fun experience and I hope it turns out great! If not, let's make fun of Ben and say it was his fault!

I'm off to shoot an industrial for Phillip Morris that I was just hired for. I guess that when it rains it pours. If you feel a sudden, overwhelming desire to smoke a cigarette, I'll know that selling my soul to promote smoking was totally worth while!

-Brett "Nikkos" Elam