Knowledge

Josh-




I saw Stubs last night, starring Brad Morris and Dina Fackalis. Brad Morris played this guy named Hiroaki Aoki, the guy that started Benihana. Aoki was giving a demonstration on cooking while swearing up a storm. Not only did Brads Japanese accent crack everyone up but he seemed to display so much knowledge about Benihana. I was pretty sure he was just fudging all the info about the restaurant, but to my surprise it was true. That's the actual name of the guy that started Benihana! How did he know that?

This brings me to my point. You can make up anything in improv. Its hilarious when people say that the plane weighs 50 tons and go into some bull about how the jet engines work. But it's downright amazing when people have actual knowledge on something. In Ben's last blog he mentioned how I like to learn. I do. The world is interesting, but another reason is if my scene partner decides to make us soldiers I want to be ready with some cool facts to detail our scene.

During one of Bill Arnett's classes he told us that sometimes when he walks around he likes to look at people, guess what they do, and then give a couple lines of dialogue as that person doing their job. He also had us do an exercise where we went around in a circle, someone would give the next person an occupation and they had to give five lines of dialogue speaking as that person without coming out and saying what occupation they were. For example; if dentist was given- "Your bicuspids look out of order, this practice wouldn't be shit without the sexy hygienists, if I whiten your teeth for free I'll have to do it for everyone, I'm only gonna take four bite wings and then you can get outta here, the DDS stands for honor.




















Here's a real cool website that has a terminology data bank for all sorts of occupations.
http://www.uwasa.fi/viestintatieteet/terminology/special/

The best improvisers are also the smartest people, so if I want to be within that realm I've got a lot of catching up to do. Eric like to bust my balls because what I consider a tough day he considers relaxing. On Sunday I watched 24 hour party people, read a couple plays, listened to a few albums and then saw Family Tree House Boat Accident. That's a tough day to me.