Narrative Workshop Notes These narrative long-form notes are made up a bit from notes from Saturday’s session in the Bedford, and a bit from a previous session as I didn’t take detailed notes of what we did on Saturday. I then ran a bit of a narrative session for Music Box on Sunday and then[…]
Genre Workshop Notes Whoahhhhh! That was awesome! I ran a genre improv class on Saturday and it produced some of the funniest, most compelling, exciting improvisation I’ve seen in ages. Yet again (like accents workshop) it started off as a skill I thought would be ‘tip of the iceberg’ but actually produced some incredibly cool[…]
Music Box and The Miller Just realised the ingredients that make a blog happen:1 show at The Miller1 pint of Becks Vier1 Northern Line train back to Morden1 lack of Evening Standards laying around to readCurrently lost ipod though so no David Bowie and Phantom of the Opera to keep me happy. I’ve got a[…]
Steve’s Top Tips to Budding Performers Just bloody well get on and do it you young scallywags there are loads of things out there so just get stuck in and don’t wait for anyone (especially me) to tell you “you’re ready” because nobody is ever ready anyway it’s just that some people do things and[…]
The Maydays Well that was a fun one. I’m currently sitting on the Northern Line again heading south to Morden. Why do you need to know that? Don’t know, it seems if I have two pints this blog contains pointless facts about my life, and makes it further away from the American style useful five[…]
Status We had a really great Status workshop this Saturday, many thanks to Mark Conway from Gonzo Moose Theatre for co-leading it (gonzomoose.co.uk). This is the second full day workshop on Status we’ve had and again I was struck with how effective it is. So much so that I now regard it as one of[…]
Making a living from impro Hot Baths Lots of people are asking me at the moment “How do people make a living from impro?” Actually, that’s a complete lie. Nobody has said that to me, I just put that in to make the blog I already planned to write more relevant and to make myself[…]
Best Impro is in Workshops The best impro I see is consistently in workshops. It’s hilarious, touching, unexpected and captivating. Not sure why that is, what happens when people get on stage in front of an audience? Why does something go? Or is it just the way shows are put together and introduced to the[…]
Things they don’t put in business books Britishness In Comedy The London Impro Theatre plans are coming along nicely. At first I was thinking of suggesting some kind of Second City style, but then actually I back tracked a bit on this and thought a kind of corporate impro/comedy land arriving slap bang in the[…]
Acting’s First Purpose? Commedia I’m currently reading “Commedia dell’Arte, An Actor’s Handbook” by John Rudlin in preparation for one of my Saturday workshops and I’m finding it really interesting. What’s really exciting about the book is that it contains more of a call to action to actually just get up and do things than most[…]
Carny Life I’ve just finished a great book called ‘Memoirs of a Sword Swallower’ by Daniel P Mannix about the true stories a sword swallower touring with a sideshow/freakshow in a carnival around America back in the day. Really excellent. Here’s the closing conversation between him and the Fat Lady (Jolly Daisy) at the end[…]
Variety, Casting, Negativity Another busy couple of weeks. One Friday we performed with Music Box as part of Theatre Delicatessen’s Theatre Souk – an entire abandoned office turned into a variety of performance spaces where the audience pay to see each show. Next Friday was Hoopla and The Scat Pack at The Nursery Festival –[…]