Tootfinder

So we did the improv show.
Entertained a room full of people, made them laugh, played some games, told some stories.
It was a good time.
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

With the eight week improv course ending last week, I timed it well to start a new group with a new set of eight sessions this week.
The Free Association seem more serious than Hoopla. They have 50% longer classes for a start. Three hours rather than two.
More instruction and notes rather than just positive encouragement. Clearer aim even from the early levels. More like a classroom than a playground.
First couple of sets of eight at Hoopla are just aimed at getting you to lose your decorum and allow yourself to be free and spontaneous. All really short form games, lightning rounds. Parlor games rather than theater.
But the Free Association's aim from the start is to get you building scenes and then stories. Their first set of lessons is titled "intro to long form". This one "Scene work".
Not so much the one minute parlor games, more focus on acting and characters and drama.
In vague terms at early stages that is. I mean, they have more in common than different. Plenty of short games in warm-up at FA and I just finished a whole set on drama and story with Hoopla.
Three hours is pretty long though. Starts half an hour earlier, ends half an hour later. Good thing it's also much much closer for me. Ten minute walk instead of 40 minutes on the bus.
We did lots and lots of first-scene head-to-head, mostly concentrating on trying to get specific. Check that after two minutes the audience knows where you are and who you are and how you know each other and what you're doing and none of the players are unsure either. Make it all specific as soon as possible, ambiguity is the enemy.
And everyone got that and exercised it pretty much flawlessly right away. So good group.
#theFreeAssociation #improv #london

Final Improv session before the show this evening and mostly just practice for the final event.
Steve Hoopla threw in some extra chaos with the half of us assigned 'audience' each time given cards to shout out immediate things that need to happen: A declaration of love, a sudden death, an appearance of a lost love-child etc.
In theory this means that final rehearsal is more chaotic and deranged than the final show will be. The lesson is that we can cope and continue even if somehow everyone dies in the third scene.
Stories about office romance and intrigue and bullying bosses, and about an art super villain determined to murder the whole world's inner-artist.
Both of which would indeed have gone more smoothly without the audience demanding sudden entrance by men with guns or that we find an excuse for a love child or impulsive marriage proposal.
So thats it until the show. Come along see it going more smoothly than that next Thursday in London if you want.
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

Series two lesson two of Free Association's improv course is about a thing they call "grounding".
For a scene to be believable, it must be grounded in reality (or in a fantastical scene at least grounded in an emotional truth).
Improvisors can often jump quickly to the bizarre or the outlandish to try and get a laugh, but especially in early in scenes the audience needs to first know who these people are and what is going on and why they should care about any of it.
Three hours of scenes deliberately drilling practice of to have nothing strange or out of context happening, scenes in which everything goes according to expectation and nobody tries to be funny.
A useful skill to drill perhaps, but you can see why Free Association get a reputation for being too serious and not laughing enough.
Three hours of scenes where mostly nothing happens might be the most dull improv evening I've had.
#improv #london #freeAssociation

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