Anyone can talk about something on stage. Not everyone can react to in-the-moment stimulus on stage. The few, the proud, the brave improviser reacts boldly in-the-moment to make-believe and taps into the art’s unique surprise. The audience knows there’s no script to tell you how to react, so your reaction comes out of “your” perspective. […]
We want active emotions in our scenes, so we need active details to react to. If the doll your character is afraid of is actually on stage with you, then rather than just talking about how you're afraid of dolls, you can actually act afraid because that doll is actively making you afraid in-the-moment. If you endow […]
The key to sustainable, dynamic two person scenes that are most conducive to improv as improv does best is setting up patterns of emotional behavior. While in the Facebook age, the world defines their friends by who, what, where and when, we know we know a person when we can say, “That’s how he is.” […]
To be most effective our patterns must heighten, either in a concentrated progression or through pure repetition. In building a progression, we focus on the relationship of Offer, Set and Cement moves to define how we heighten as a group. The Offer is anything, an initiation. From the Offer's single point in space on a blank […]
Objective: The aim of group game work is to establish a pattern as a group and heighten in a unified direction. For the group to be successful, individuals need to be focused outward on all that others are contributing and committed to serving the group’s progression with their own contributions.
Group Mind: Having Group Mind is about immediate, enthusiastic acceptance. You need to show your fellow players that you respect and love their ideas, and trust that you can make a bold move and have your group respect and love it. “I trust you – I’m going to follow your ideas whatever they are, wherever […]
Simplifying and Clarifying: The sooner everyone is on the same page, the sooner we can heighten and evolve collaboratively. Our main tool of simplification is Agreement - the more players that mirror/agree, the less different stuff there is on stage to negotiate. The more people you’re playing with the clearer you have to be. Our […]
Objective: Understanding the atomic structure of patterns can help a group collaboratively build complex and evolving molecules. Devotion to pattern analysis will foster Pavlovian pattern recognition.
Understanding the atomic structure of patterns can help a group collaboratively build complex and evolving molecules. Devotion to pattern analysis will foster Pavlovian pattern recognition. Pattern – a sequence that can be repeated / a structure that can be reused Game – a sequence of actions, related by rules of cause-and-effect, that heightens with repetition […]
The fun of collaborative creation is confidently following wherever it goes. A commitment to making moves in the context of all that precedes them can help a group shape that creation without controlling it, focusing the group’s progression for maximum heightening and impact. To The Ether games are the simplest in terms of pattern components […]