You know you’re an improviser when… You’ve done a rehearsal in someone’s living room. You’ve performed in a dusty cold room above a pub to an audience of 3, 2 of which left in the interval. You’ve slept in a room with 4 other people in Edinburgh. Edgar has forgotten your name at least 8[…]
What makes you a fun person to improvise with? At the start of the last Thursday improv lesson before Christmas I asked the actors a really simple question: “The people you enjoy performing with on stage – what is it that they do that makes you enjoy improvising with them?” I thought there would be[…]
Merry Christmas everyone! I’ve started compiling my impro highlights of the year. I’ve probably missed loads so feel free to add to them if you can, I’m just adding them in no particular order as they come to my head: Edgar teaching ‘be obvious’ in workshops, always bringing me back to the right point. “NO,[…]
Objectives Objectives are common things in scripted acting. When putting together the character the actor will go through finding the following or similar for the character: Super Objective – What the character wants deepest in their subconscious, perhaps connecting to the collective subconscious wants/needs of humanity, eternal absolute forms and values. Freedom, truth, beauty, justice,[…]
I’ve gone full circle again. This has happened a few times before. I first got into drama/impro/comedy stuff (apart from early school things) doing John Cremer’s drop-in nights in Brighton. I loved it and decided to explore all forms of drama, so did a two week course with A.C.T in Brighton to find what area[…]
Perform more I loved the Friday Night Impro Party, thanks for all who came. What was lovely was that for many people there it was there first ever time performing impro. It struck me as how important it was to perform impro in order to learn it. You could do loads of courses and workshops[…]
I was watching a few impro shows as an audience member recently. What stuck me was from their point of view it was just super simple things that stuck out when watching performers, namely: 1. Can I hear you? 2. Have you got your back to the audience? 3. Are you blocking the other actor?[…]
Got an impro show? Here’s some places to perform it. Are an improviser? Here’s some more groups/nights that might want you to perform with them. I don’t have all contact details but they should pop up on google. This is an ever changing fluctuating list so please let me know if I’ve missed any. Tuesdays:[…]
Being altered by small offers Came up with a new exercise at our Monday night class this week. It was part of a ‘Listening Workshop’. I’d already done lots of listening exercises, similar to those mentioned in a previous blog when I got onto the topic of active listening. It’s not about just being on[…]
How to use improv to write sketch comedy Yeahhhhh! Finally cracked it. I’ve run this workshop a few times before but never felt like it reached it’s full potential, but this Saturday sketch comedy course there were some amazing sketches popping up one after another – blam blam blam! Here’s a collection of things that[…]
Reality Workshop Notes This is one of my new favourite exercises. I seem to always start a blog like that, which I suppose makes sense because if they weren’t my current favourites they wouldn’t make it onto the blog. So last night’s Monday impro class was on reality. The idea being that having the mantra[…]
Solo Improvisation Workshop Notes Really fun workshop this one, with a healthy mix of improvisers, stand ups and actors. Some really cool stuff came out of it. The main tips that arose were when improvising with an audience were: 1. You are never really alone, the audience and room are always providing offers even when[…]