Audiences love Musical Improv. LOVE it. They know you're collaborating in-the-moment to build something out of nothing AND YOU'RE FOLLOWING A TUNE AND YOU'RE RHYMING!!! Musical Improv is hard. It's hard to make up with songs in-the-moment. It's harder still to make those songs a backbone to a compelling story, with rich character and emotion. It's […]
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 […]
A "Blackout" is a short scene with one big punchline. In sketch, or in improv with a tuned-in booth operator, the lights would go out on stage after the punchline, designating the end of the scene and earning the name "blackout." Blackouts are fun. They can help vary the pacing of a long-form show. They […]
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]
I love improv and believe (when my heart and head are in it) that I'm good at it, too. Here are some other things I love and believe myself to be good at. They share some skills with improvisation. Am I good at improv because I am good at these things, or am I good […]
Watch this scene, starring Scott Beckett as "Mr. Johnson" and Jonathan Nelson as "Jeeves."
We want to fill our blank stages with imagined environment. We want to engage physically in that environment to help visualize the imagined. And - most importantly - we want to be emotionally affected by where we are and what we're doing. That's Improv As Improv Does Best. Our fellow player(s) and how they emotionally […]
Don't be the improver who initiates a scene by running to center stage and delivering a premise. Don't be an improviser in a scene where two players stand shoulder-to-shoulder, cheating-out, and talking about something not in-the-moment. Don't be a point in the arch of a group game where improvisers stand in a semi-circle and discuss […]
Feeling about active endowments. That's Improv As Improv Does Best. It ain't easy. That balance between making up imagined details and committing to feeling about imagined details is tough to manage. Already we're trying to see our world's details instead of thinking up details, but we also have to care about those details in-the-moment. Like […]
An improv stage can be anywhere. On it we can do anything. You could be in a submarine on Mars raising talking chickens. Often improvisers are good at labeling the moment. But you need more than words; you have to be in the world. This exercise focuses on attaching emotions to the scene's active elements […]