Sunday November 10th filled me with pride. My 301 Patterns & Games class performed their showcase. And it was great. Their energy was high. Their support, unwavering. And their commitment to building collaborative patterns using the rubrics' guidance led to hilarious moments. Those rubrics? The One Person Scene. To The Ether games. Help Desk games. […]
GUS, the delightful and talented team from The Baltimore Improv Group, opens its sets these days by asking the audience for "Three non-geographic locations." Asked to come up and lead a practice, I brought this exercise with me. We had a lot of fun with it. You will, too. Have you ever been in The […]
Make a choice the moment you enter stage. Choose to feel. Feel something about something - an imagined object, mimed activity, and/or your scene partner. Allow both you and your scene partner to be dynamic. Here's the final scene from a class building out that progression and its value: [videopress L5WDXzrA] And here's the class' outline […]
When asked for a desired focus for a scheduled coaching session, a Duo sent me the following: Mainly character stuff, fleshing them out versus building out more plot. Getting better at finding and sticking to the game of the scene. What follows is some didactic and exercises that filled two hours. DIDACTIC: How do You […]
My latest Patterns & Games class embraced To The Ether style group games like no other class I've had. They had three To The Ether games in their showcase! It brings a tear to this guy's eye. I'm sharing 4 of them that I (obviously) recorded. They each showcase a nice lesson. The 1 2 […]
Gretchen Glaeser introduced me to Zane Adickes' "Damn, they call it like they see it!" warm-up tonight. And, well, I see it as a damn fine warm-up. Looking for an activity to practice individual silo-building through an emotional perspective as well as the pacing between individual contributions and group agreement? Try "They call it like […]
A quick, fun Help Desk game utilizing the Split Screen. The escalating pattern is fun but the commitment to emotion helps the pattern hit. [wpvideo DX4bsnVV] Listen for the laugh Adrienne gets just by reacting without words. Note the key to the end is that Ben actually feels bad for his allergy to murder. The […]
Personal Games are the focus of the base Mirror, Action, Object warm-up exercise. Engaged in either how they feel about themselves, how they feel about what they're doing, or how they feel about a mimed object, players build progressions of emotional reaction triggered by active endowments. As examples: A player loves his outfit, and as […]
Aaron Grant once took the stage across from me, making eye contact but planting his feet firmly just beyond the stage right wing. I mirrored him on stage left. He mimed the classic flirtatious fishing move. I played his fish but broke his line bashfully, the stage's distance remaining between us. I danced as someone […]
It's a fine line between a character evoking a plot and a character reacting to their reality. A very fine line. But I believe that attention to that line can mean the difference between a scene where improvisers force a sequence of events dependent on an audience's satisfaction with a resolution and a scene where […]