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Continue reading →: Three Steps to Improve Your Scenes and Your LifeI recently came across an article entitled “How to listen to the nudges of your heart” on a blog I follow. The author provides the following three steps, which I thought applied to improv as well. 1) Stop. Slow down. Starting out improvisers feel a lot of pressure to say…
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Continue reading →: Why you shouldn’t tape concerts…or graduation showsPart of what I like about improv is how transitory it is. A scene exists, and then it is extinguished, like a candle. That scene will never exist again. Your only opportunity to experience it is in that moment, and you have to focus on getting the most out of…
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Continue reading →: The Tools of CreationI just read the following passage in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, regarding creative blocks: If I think of the violin as an object to be controlled, if I think of the piano, the pen, the paintbrush, the computer, or my body as objects to be controlled by a…
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Continue reading →: 10 Things I love about improv (and stuff you might like too)I wanted to take a few minutes today to reflect on why I like improv so much. I enjoy watching it, learning about it, doing it, discussing it, and obviously writing about it. I proselytize shamelessly. I started a blog just so I could have another opportunity to tell people…
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Continue reading →: Games – Electric CompanyElectric Company is a word association game, named for the 1971 television series and parodied in this Nike Shox commercial. While in a circle, the group snaps to a steady beat. The first person starts by making eye contact with the person on their right or left and saying a word. That person…
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Continue reading →: Stop Blocking YourselfWhen you take improv classes, you learn a lot about yourself. Before I started improv, I used to think I was a great listener. Then one day in class, after doing a scene with my friend Jonathon about the Loch Ness Monster, our teacher Jan pointed out that Jonathon had…
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Continue reading →: Yes, And – Part IIIAlso see Part I and Part II To demonstrate the effectiveness of “Yes, And” and how critical it is to good scene work, we use the following exercise on the first day of a new level 1 class. First, we get two volunteers who are “ready to fail” to get up in front…
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Continue reading →: Intuition
Malcom Gladwell writes about intuition in Blink, and how a glance can gather more information in two seconds than a team of researchers can in months of collecting and reviewing documents that attest to a work of art’s authenticity. Rachel Klein writes about intuition in her tumblr post, The Four I’s of Improv.…
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Continue reading →: Yes, And – Part IIFor part one, click here: Yes, And – Part I The second part of saying “Yes, and” is the “and.” There is a lot of meaning behind that little conjunction. If someone says, “I made you a sandwich,” it is not enough to respond “Thank you for the sandwich.” You are saying…
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Continue reading →: Improv NonsenseMy friend Amy recently directed me to a tumblr by improviser Will Hines called Improv Nonsense. I think he has some really great content, and added his blog to my list of links. His two most recent entries are about teaching improv, something that speaks to me as I recently TAed…
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I’m Randall
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