Tootfinder

Day Five in the Improv Narrative house, and we're in the format I like most really. A few instructive games in the first half and a couple of longer narrative stories in the second half.
The island game was supposed to teach something about not deliberately getting obstructive.
A scene where your players are told they are on one island and must end up at some point all on the other one the other side of the stage.
Set a scene, make some characters, but nobody said it was supposed to be difficult to get from one island to the other.
Yet barriers are deliberately thrown up, actually imaginary barriers since the whole thing is imaginary after all. Why should there be sharks or a quest for a boat or the sea deep and cold.
You can just wade across. You can just have a boat. You can just levitate yourself over with your hive mind psychic abilities.
Unsure about this.
There must be conflict and peril and challenges which are mastered in a story, you can't set up a hero's quest only to have the hero just happen to have a holy grail in the stationary cupboard. Already got one you see. Use it for storing pens.
Still. Finding the crowbar doesn't have to be a quest. There can just be one in the boot. Don't let things get bogged down in difficulty.
Watched a story about a lazy fellow falling into a life of crime and villainy because of his tardiness and fulfilling his teacher's prophecy that he would indeed end up as a criminal if he didn't buck up his ideas. Good repeated themes of characters making lists of his failures and nice stage-focus work when everyone was on stage at once.
Played a preacher organizing a wedding in a story about friends running a hotel.
Fun to have Reverend Priest finding sin everywhere again. Easy wipe-off sin in this case. We may have come to an end too early. Perhaps not enough obstructions put in the way. 😆
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

#lotus #improv

Back to doing some improv, with a 8 week course on the mechanics and structure of story.
Seem to be a nice bunch. Everyone with the right energy and fearlessness. Nice diverse range of people.
Steve Roe leading the course. Him and his friend co-founded Hoopla 20 years ago and now its the biggest improv training school in the UK. Seems like a good teacher as you'd expect.
There will be a show on 19th of March. That'll be about the fifth one I've done. Its nice because you get to do some acting type stuff without having to learn any lines 😆
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

Half way through the Hoopla Improv Story narrative course and we actually attempt a couple of 20 minute stories.
One pretty confused one about a voyage to find unicorns which ended up about time-travellers due to mixups.
And one about the child of a missing astronaut seeking his father by joining a space mission.
Edits are what made the main difference here. Shouting "Cut to the jail" left half the players thinking they were in a flashback and the other half thinking they were in the consequences of the previous scene. Thus one ending up being a time-traveler.
A more coherent edit might have been "Flashback to jail", and these more coherent edits are key to what made the second story less chaotic and more whole. "Cut to the training test" or "Flashback to school where a teacher is impressed with the protagonist"
I like a game with a narrator. The narrator can give the story structure and theme and act as a director of the action. But we can do that without a narrator if the edits are well thought out and shouted clearly enough to keep the actors on the same track.
Mind you, the chaos is the funny bit usually.
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

Apparently last week's improv class, which I missed, did indeed talk about a story spine, a template I first heard from a Pixar story course:
Once upon a time there was... And every day they would.. Until one day... And because of that... (repeat 'because' till end)...
And this week was concentrating mostly on the first bits: Playing out some scenes introducing characters, setting up their normal routine.
The nature of improv can be tricky here. Things spiral out of control quite fast. Things start happening immediately, without time to build that normal routine which you then break.
Take for instance the scene tonight at an airport. Lady rushes in: "Get me on a place as far away from here as possible, right now".
Its a great offer, but hardly a normal routine for a person. Can you really have a person whose daily routine is to fly to the furthest place they can get to immediately?
Perhaps a flashback to their normal routine then? Or perhaps make the staff the protagonist and their daily routine is to deal with crazy customers.
Character is key in the early scenes of a narrative really. Get the audience to identify with a protagonist. Who are these people, how do they know each other and what's their normal life like?
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

Because because because because because. Because of the wonderful things he did in the last scene.
Improv teacher Steve Hoopla in today's 'story' course guided us through some "Because Games", in which scenes are to be causally connected. Each following on from prior scenes. Because that happened, this happened.
He didn't explicitly mention Pixar's "Story Spine", but the main loop in Pixar's story template is "...and because of that..." looping over and over between the introduction, call to adventure, and conclusion.
Causality is what strings a story together, gives it structure an avoids it being just a disconnected dream sequence. This scene is only happening because of the events in the prior scenes. It gives the string of scenes meaning and relevance.
So good fun to drill some of that stuff with the team and end up with sheep infestations and santa claus robot wars among other laughs.
Gonna miss next week's session due to a prior engagement, but the team is gelling well. Pretty sure we could do this show without much further guidance really. Everyone's very good.
#london #improv #hooplaImpro