We recently finished a term of classes at Go U! which meant that I finished up my first time teaching Advance 1 - helping a group of students with their first foray into the world of long form, at least in a class situation.
Teaching long form in class feels a little more like coaching sometimes than it does teaching. In short form, you teach the game, you play the game, you discuss, and you move on to the next game. There is work both on the mastery of the game and mastery of skill - but learning how to play the game shares the stage with learning how to be a better improviser. And let's face it, sometimes knowing how to play a game well doesn't necessarily mean you have strengthened your improv skills.
For example... last night I played the game "The Difference" for the fist time. On Stage. In front of a nearly sold out house at Go Comedy!. OH BOY was I in my head. SUPER in my head. This happened after I had what I felt was an awesome scene with Cari Sue Murphy in the game "Confessional." It wasn't until after the show that I got a really great note from Doug Kolbicz on HOW to play The Difference. Good to know for the next time. .
Knowing how a particular game works, or can be played, may not make you a better improviser, BUT, I will definitely argue that being a strong improviser helps you play virtually any game. Just as being a good improviser can make you a stronger actor, a stronger listener, a stronger leader, etc. It is a valuable skill set.
So teaching long form enables us to spend more time focusing on the skills of improvising. By the time a class has made it to the Advance program at Go, they've got the basics under their belts. Yes, And, do not deny, don't ask leading questions, listen, share focus, etc. Short form teachers help you understand things like... this is why that short form moment worked for you, you do this really well. And this is why you're in your head, you weren't doing this. In Long Form, we can take a little more time to expound on that, to do excersises that help us develope those specific skills - beyond learning a game.
One of the things that was a constant in nearly all of my notes to my students this term was the idea of a character's point of view. I'm big on stopping a scene to ask an improviser why their character feels anything at that moment. Why are they there, Why is this important to them, Why do they care about the other people or person - or why don't they care. Why Why Why. Once we discover that, I always find that the work grows. To answer the question of WHY we have to determine the character's point of view.
Point of view is how a character sees the world. One time I was talking to a student about point of view and I asked him about his own point of view, how did he see the world? He was stumped, and as a teacher I was both struck and a little inspired at the same time. It made sense.
Ask virtually any professional acting coach, director, artist, etc and they will tell you that it takes a good level of vulnerability to make a strong actor. To truly touch the heart of a character, to know what makes them tick, to answer the whys about them, we have to have at least a base understanding of our own character, of our own point of view. We have to take a moment to understand ourselves. What drives us, what makes us curious, what makes us frustrated, and why is it that way.
You are your best resource. A script actor can dive into the words that have been penned by the playwright to guage his character's point of view. An improviser must rely on her own experience to levy onto a character in a scene in a second. Knowing your own strengths, yoru own weaknesses, your own vulnerabilities and why they exist will ALWAYS make you a stronger improviser. And, I truly believe this - it will make you a better human being.
Saturday, August 05, 2017
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Scotty's take on Directing NEWSish
While the world was going through the 18-month long version of Dante's Inferno, otherwise known as the 2016 Presidential Election, Tim Kay and Jess Loria asked me to take on the task of directing them in Go Comedy!'s most politically charged production (to date), NEWSish. The monthly (well, almost monthly) 45-minute scripted show melded together the formats of The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. It was one of the most stressful, mind-wrenching, challenging things I've ever done and I couldn't be more excited to be returning with a condensed version of it this summer as part of a political sketch show coming soon.
When we started working on NEWSish, we knew it was going to be a challenge. The first show took us three months to pull together. We put out a call for special guests, story ideas and video segments. We got a handful of responses and polled people we believed could do a good job, giving out assignments and working on segments. And we started writing. Lots and lots of writing. We learned quickly that having too many stories to fit into a show was far better than having to scramble to write at the last minute.
A typical 45-minute NEWSish program will have between 30 and 50 segments or stories. This makes the show much more similar to a broadcast news program, rather than a sketch show. At the start of each cycle, I would lay out a schedule of deadlines, casting and stories. We quickly learned that putting it all together was too much for one person, so we brought on another spreadsheet loving improviser, Chris Fortin as Assistant Director. About a week before our show, he and I would sit down with all of the stories and put them together into a running order.
Working on a show that's dependent on current events means that you are subject to changes in those current events. With last year's election chaos, every month several of our stories would change or be out-of-date by our last rehearsal. So a NEWSish show would have about 20-30% of its material written within 36 hours of show time. Thank God for the most patient and wonderful stage manager in the world, Pete Jacokes, for being able to roll with us through it all - including the 30-40 slides and videos that made the show work.
Finally, at the end of all of that organization, comes content. As satirists, I believe our job is both to entertain and enlighten. Our culture's current state of information overload has left us fairly numb to the facts (or lack of them) in the news. It takes the power of laughter, irony and satire to break through the hazy day-to-day barrage of things flooding our screens and ears. And that's how I felt we had to approach NEWSish. We had to push a story to its "did we go too far?" limits. And we had to find ways to make the audience laugh in uncomfortable moments to bring light to stories, situations and realities we miss every day. I think we did that, often enough. Sometimes we struggled to maintain our voice and our humor. At other times we got caught up in our point of view and missed the mark. But in the end, the work we put up was something everyone at Go can be proud of. It pushed our political boundaries and definitely made our audience, and us, think differently about our world. And that is always a good thing.
When we started working on NEWSish, we knew it was going to be a challenge. The first show took us three months to pull together. We put out a call for special guests, story ideas and video segments. We got a handful of responses and polled people we believed could do a good job, giving out assignments and working on segments. And we started writing. Lots and lots of writing. We learned quickly that having too many stories to fit into a show was far better than having to scramble to write at the last minute.
A typical 45-minute NEWSish program will have between 30 and 50 segments or stories. This makes the show much more similar to a broadcast news program, rather than a sketch show. At the start of each cycle, I would lay out a schedule of deadlines, casting and stories. We quickly learned that putting it all together was too much for one person, so we brought on another spreadsheet loving improviser, Chris Fortin as Assistant Director. About a week before our show, he and I would sit down with all of the stories and put them together into a running order.
Working on a show that's dependent on current events means that you are subject to changes in those current events. With last year's election chaos, every month several of our stories would change or be out-of-date by our last rehearsal. So a NEWSish show would have about 20-30% of its material written within 36 hours of show time. Thank God for the most patient and wonderful stage manager in the world, Pete Jacokes, for being able to roll with us through it all - including the 30-40 slides and videos that made the show work.
Finally, at the end of all of that organization, comes content. As satirists, I believe our job is both to entertain and enlighten. Our culture's current state of information overload has left us fairly numb to the facts (or lack of them) in the news. It takes the power of laughter, irony and satire to break through the hazy day-to-day barrage of things flooding our screens and ears. And that's how I felt we had to approach NEWSish. We had to push a story to its "did we go too far?" limits. And we had to find ways to make the audience laugh in uncomfortable moments to bring light to stories, situations and realities we miss every day. I think we did that, often enough. Sometimes we struggled to maintain our voice and our humor. At other times we got caught up in our point of view and missed the mark. But in the end, the work we put up was something everyone at Go can be proud of. It pushed our political boundaries and definitely made our audience, and us, think differently about our world. And that is always a good thing.
Friday, January 27, 2017
The Importance of NOW
I posted this to my other "Little Man" blog today and because it is 100% relevant, wanted to post it here too... and it seems like I was on this same idea a couple of years ago (see last published post) haha.
This morning I'm really thinking about the importance of what lies before us... of the now.
This idea has really been impressed on me lately as I've been teaching my improv classes. In any acting situation, the actor always strives to be "In the moment" with his scene partners and with herself. When an improviser is focused in the moment, nothing goes by in a scene without it being picked up, examined and devoured.
The best improvisers do this by habit. On stage they LIVE in the now. Your character is tying his/her shoes and misses tying the shoelace - "watch out, you're going to trip over that." A character sneezes - "You have a cold, Damn - I knew it stay away from me!" Not only are they in the moment, they are there with the strongest of emotional choices and imperatives.
This moment that has just happened is the most important thing in the world RIGHT NOW and we need to take action on it before we DIE.
A little dramatic, but the point is there. Don't miss those moments.
And so it is with life. We live our best lives when we are present in the moment - when we don't gloss over someone's emotionally tinted comment, when we listen with our ears, our mind, and our heart, and when we react to the thing that just happened and deal with it before we move on. Sometimes that means making tough decisions, or halting something else, or waiting for another opportunity. But we have to live in this moment because that is where our lives, our memories, our world is built.
This morning I'm really thinking about the importance of what lies before us... of the now.
This idea has really been impressed on me lately as I've been teaching my improv classes. In any acting situation, the actor always strives to be "In the moment" with his scene partners and with herself. When an improviser is focused in the moment, nothing goes by in a scene without it being picked up, examined and devoured.
The best improvisers do this by habit. On stage they LIVE in the now. Your character is tying his/her shoes and misses tying the shoelace - "watch out, you're going to trip over that." A character sneezes - "You have a cold, Damn - I knew it stay away from me!" Not only are they in the moment, they are there with the strongest of emotional choices and imperatives.
This moment that has just happened is the most important thing in the world RIGHT NOW and we need to take action on it before we DIE.
A little dramatic, but the point is there. Don't miss those moments.
And so it is with life. We live our best lives when we are present in the moment - when we don't gloss over someone's emotionally tinted comment, when we listen with our ears, our mind, and our heart, and when we react to the thing that just happened and deal with it before we move on. Sometimes that means making tough decisions, or halting something else, or waiting for another opportunity. But we have to live in this moment because that is where our lives, our memories, our world is built.
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