Meow House Theatre

I had another improv class this weekend. It was so much fun you cannot believe it. It’s like recess for adults. Two hours of almost nonstop laughing. If you’re not laughing, you just gotten done laughing; or you’re about to laugh.

There are different types of improv but most theaters you learn at are all going to start out with pretty much the same thing, although they each have their own style and methods. Lots of them, no matter how much experience you have, want you to start with Level 101 because they have a certain way of training and they want you to learn their way and not be stuck in some other theater’s or troupe’s style. It’s kind of like when you start a job: even if you’ve done that job before, every place wants you to learn their way. I actually don’t mind this, in improv, because a lot of what you do in the earlier levels is so much fun that it’s not a downer at all to repeat it.

For this class I was pleasantly surprised to see that our substitute this week (our normal instructor has gone on vacation for a couple of weeks) was a guy I’ve taken a class with before. I hadn’t expected him to be there; the regular teacher had said it would be some other guy and I didn’t even ask her if it would be Dave. We played a few warmup games, which are probably the funniest part of the whole thing, because the goal is to not think and not hold back and just play. You end up getting sillier and sillier and laughing more and more. There’s one game I quite enjoy called “Waaaah,” which is a warmup whereby someone “throws” a “waaah” (by holding his arms above his head, hands together, and then flinging them straight at someone), who then catches it (by throwing his arms up, held straight out, hands together, over his head). The two people on either side of the one who caught the waaah then karate-chop him in the stomach (without actually touching him, using the same hands-together motion except going to the side like a chop), and then that person throws the waaah to another person. On each beat, you yell “WAAAAAH!!!” You start off a little slow and get faster and faster, with the waaaaahs coming on each beat; people also start to vary the length or pitch of the waaaahs and other people tend to emulate that until someone changes it again. It sound ridiculous but it’s hilarious to play. It’s really hard to get all the waaaahs out because it’s hard to talk while you’re cracking up.

We also played a game where each person had their name and an associated physical movement, a famous line from a movie and an associated physical movement, and a line from a song and an associated physical movement. What the game is that one of those three things–name/movement, movie line/movement, or song line (which you sing, not just speak)/movement gets passed from person to person in random order. If someone “throws” your movie line to you, you have to do your own movie line and then throw one of someone else’s three back to that person, who will then do his own and then throw to another person. I was quite pleased to discover that I think I had the best voice in the room, or I and the other woman, who was a lovely soprano, did. I am always nervous about singing solo in public but this wasn’t bad at all. This game is also quite fun because you have to remember 15 or 20 different things in total and get them out fast. You also have to know a fair bit of “info” such as movie lines or song lines in the first place; I can see that people who never read a book or watch the news are never going to be good at improv. You need to be able to pick up on things people reference and if you are not well read, it will never work.

We also did mirroring, which is when someone takes some kind of physical position and another person jumps out to mirror it. This can be an exact mirroring, as though you’re standing in front of a mirror; or you can have a mirror on the side of the person or in back. We then moved into complementary mirroring, which is when the first person strikes their pose and instead of mirroring the same thing he is doing, you “mirror” the intention of his actions. For example, I pulled my hand back as though I was about to punch someone in the face and someone immediately understood what I was doing and jumped out and cowered in front of me. It’s fun when the intentions are immediately obvious, which is pretty important in improv. But, we also had instances of a person making a motion and someone thinking he meant something else, and then the second person “mirrored” the action with a totally different response than what Person #1 intended and yet it still worked. E.g., one guy took the position of someone about to hammer something but another guy though he was bent over with the strain of pulling on something and so he “mirrored” by making the impression of a man behind the first helping to pull on a heavy rope or chain. That wasn’t the first guy’s thought at all but it totally worked. In improv, the first guy would “give up” that initial idea he had and go with the pulling-up-an-anchor idea to continue the scene.

For scene work, I was partnered with a guy and we were told I was to be angry and he was to remain neutral, and the setting was we were out to dinner at our 20^th anniversary. Then we just made up the rest. It was really fun. It’s kind of frightening in a way because it’s so different from regular acting; there is no script to follow and you don’t know where this scene is going at all. You don’t know what the other person is going to say and you can’t really plan ahead what you’re going to say, because each of you is supposed to build on what the other person offers. It went really well though and we got a lot of compliments on the scene. Everyone did really well. There was one that another pair did where the guy did most of the talking and the woman said barely anything, but her facial expressions and body movements completely conveyed exactly what she was thinking to us, the audience. It was not “one-sided” at all; there was no “what is that woman doing and when is she going to say something??” She just let the guy talk for the most part and reacted with her face. And it was hilarious. They were supposed to be on a date–a first date–and he was “sad” and man he started going on and on about how his dog died and his long-lost twin showed up and the woman was just “ohmygod what the hell did match.com do to me, get me the fuck OUT of here!” with hardly any verbalization of those thoughts, yet we all knew exactly what she was feeling.

One woman tentatively asked if it was okay to swear in class and Dave was all “shit, man, fucking say what you want [flips the bird to everyone].” I was so relieved because I think we all know how much I like to say, and do say, “jesus fucking christ.” Now I can be relaxed in knowing that nobody is going to all offended when I do so.

Jesus fucking christ [rest], jesus fucking Christ [rest]. I feel so much better now.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.