TCS Improvazilla School of Improv
over the course of the year, we will cover The following topics and more:
OFFERS- Physical and Verbal offers you make to your fellow players. The very foundation of improv.
SECOND CIRCLE- Patsy Rodenburg’s concept of connection and presence.
ACCEPTING AND BLOCKING- How to recognize when you yourself are blocking and how to work on an attitude of acceptance.
SPACE WORK- Creating objects out of pure space and making the audience and your fellow players really see them.
MOVEMENT- How to work as a group to create stage pictures and action sequences that delight you and your audience.
ENDOWMENT- How you treat other people onstage determines who they are in the scene. Do they scare you? Make you happy? Inspire devotion? Takes the focus off of your own character and builds a web of relationships the audience finds fascinating.
STORY BUILDING- Creating interesting and compelling stories by building on previous offers and fulfilling promises made to the audience. The funny comes naturally when you do this.
CHARACTER WORK- At first, ways to be you, but a different version of you. Later, ways to be someone completely different!
TRUE EMOTIONAL RESPONSE AND ACTING- Humor is tragedy plus time, and we strive to find the truth in comedy. No silly responses, just the truth.
STATUS- Something we deal with on a daily basis at home, work and in the street. The basis for comedy and drama.
THAT’S IT!, IF A, THEN WHAT ELSE?, THE RULE OF THREE- Finding the key to a scene and extending it into a game or pattern- so much fun!
GIBBERISH- How to do a scene without words but replete with meaning and emotions. Helps the verbally gifted to inhabit their bodies and shows the tongue-tied how important body language is.
GENRES- Ah, the icing on the cake! From Film Noir, Science Fiction and Shakespeare to Westerns, Fairy Tales and Documentaries, genres spice up any scene.
Here are some of our main exercises:
Fosse Dance: A movement exercise done to music in which a group of improvisors create a modern dance piece by using awareness of the entire group, the stage picture, lighting, music, and mood, all while keeping a straight “fosse face” and moving with total confidence as if the whole thing were perfectly choreographed and memorized.
Initiation Circle- A and B exchange four to six lines, quickly establishing who and where they are. Then B and C do the same, and so on around the circle.
Repeat and Respond, or R2- Each person strives to repeat a bit of the last thing their partner said, then adds to it with a true emotional response. Keeps you listening and eliminates thinking ahead!
Le Ronde- A small group in a circle do pair scenes one at a time, A&B, B&C, C&D, etc. Each person plays the same character throughout. The viewers say “new scene” when the two actors have established CROW: Character, Relationship, Objective, and Where. Then the next pairing begins their scene. Can be done once around and then again, or you can start to mix the pairs to see what happens when new character pairings occur.
Scene Work: a scene with no “game” to guide it, just improvisors trying to discover the main theme of the scene and the game within the scene they can play.
What Comes Next?: In pairs one improvisor asks WCN? and then finishes the action and asks WCN? again. Divide actions into small increments. Anytime the offer isn’t something you like, you can say “No...” good-naturedly, and then your partner will ask you WCN? and you can tell them what you wish they had said (if you know). This goes back and forth as you tell the same story.
Extend & Advance: One person tells a story while the audience/director asks them to “Extend” on specific details until they are satisfied and say “Advance” to move the story along.
That’s It!: Scene work in which the audience yells “That’s it!” whenever something happens or is mentioned that they feel could be the core of the scene. Helps improvisors realize what people really find interesting.
Braided Scenes: doing Le Ronde, but onstage and structured like a little play.
And a ton of games of all sorts- you can find a list on the meetup.com website, along with a glossary of improv terms and a great essay on Agreement, and my Basics of Improv list.