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 […]
I love World Building in improvisation. With World Building in mind we can bring focus to our Organic Formats. The first scene of a show starts in a train; the rest of the show exists in that same train. The first scene of a show starts with Little League players. The next scene focuses on […]
Check out this Two Person scene performed by Shaheen Ali and Christopher May. In it the performers weave patterns of emotional behavior to link characters, relationships and environment in a sustainable scene. Enjoy! [wpvideo 3EOke0v5]
Jive Turkey is Chris Ulrich and Joe Randazzo. They've been working on a two-man format where all the worlds connect. There's certainly a through-line of a plot here - finding one character's spouse, trying to have a threesome with said spouses, etc. - but what I like here is that the worlds are more connected by […]
Want to see a Monoscene? Here's a good one. Greg Tindale, Jordan Hirsch, Amanda Hirsch and Sean Murphy of the Washington, DC based group Hijinx took one suggestion and built a great work of character and relationships out of it. Check it out. [wpvideo Q7ARBujL]
Your scene partner initiates, telling you, "You're terrible." Does that make you sad? Does that make you angry? What if your scene partner is just "some stupid kid"? Maybe he says, "You're terrible" and you just laugh; "Yeah, okay, I'm terrible." Making a choice about a relationship and relative status can help inform reactions and […]
Looking for an exercise/warm-up that will engage your group in tapping emotions between characters and leveraging those emotions in heightened subsequent beats?
Objective: To focus on strong initiations that heighten established games with new stakes, situations, characters and relationships.
Objective: To focus on strong initiations that endow personal and scenic games and leverage those quickly defined games with subsequent beat initiations that heighten characters and relationships.
Objective: How we feel about our scene partners determines a lot of our scene. Emotional agreement is strong default. But our characters needn’t always align. We love tension. We can do conflict. But we should be wary of argument, negotiation and head-butting. Active scene elements, relationship stakes and a willingness to lose ensure our scenes […]