Improvisation and introversion

It had been a good, fun show in a cheap room above a popular bar. Chatting with an audience member after, they suddenly said, “You must be an extrovert!” I was surprised at the time, but I’ve heard it enough since that I can now be all cool about it. It is a common assumption that performers are all extroverts. It makes sense. But as you probably know, many, many performers are the opposite. We’re introverts.

The stereotypes are that extroverts are all attention-seekers and introverts are all recluses. These are definitely extreme and narrow views. However, even the standard dictionary definitions of the words don’t do either side justice:

Extrovert: noun: an outgoing, socially confident person.

Introvert: noun: a shy, reticent person.

It gets worse when you look at the synonyms:

Extrovert: outgoing person, sociable person, life and soul of the party, socializer, mixer, mingler, social butterfly, socialite, party animal

Introvert: recluse, lone wolf, hermit, solitary, misanthrope, outsider

You’re either a mingler or a misanthrope!

Graphic by Allison Plume.

The common psychological definitions are somehow better and much less concrete:

Extrovert: A person predominantly concerned with external things or objective considerations.

Introvert: A person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.

The original definitions, popularised by psychiatrist Carl Jung, were about where we focus our mental energy, and again a bit fuzzy:

Introverts direct their psychic energy inwards and extroverts, outwards.

Really, introvert and extrovert are best defined, as I see it, by answering this: where do you get your energy?

Extrovert: A person who gets energy from being with other people.

Introvert: A person who gets energy from being on their own.

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So an introvert can be happy in crowds, be the life and soul of the party, but they will go home for alone time to recharge, whereas an extrovert will get energy from being at the party and will get more quickly bored of being alone.

That is not to say people and parties can’t energise an introvert or that extroverts don’t like alone time. As we see with many human classifications, things are not defined as being completely one thing or another. We all have introvert and extrovert sides to us, but very often there is one end of the spectrum we tend to be. People you meet will never be entirely at the end of the in/extrovert spectrum as the extremes are actually disorders.

In a very unscientific poll of improvisers I made, the numbers of introverts and extroverts were pretty close, but over half the people identified as in the middle or ambiverts, having both sides in more or less equal amounts.

We’re currently experiencing a huge test of ex/introversion: the lockdown challenge. Those people coping very well, and even secretly enjoying lockdown more than they feel they should, are almost certainly introverts. If you were tearing your hair out after 2 hours, you are probably an extrovert.

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it’s very difficult to tell who is an introvert or an extrovert on stage. Especially with seasoned performers. But you might get an idea at an after party, but even then, not for sure. Plenty of introverts love being at parties; some will be the so-called life and soul of said same party. And it’s possible to be an extrovert AND shy and retiring.

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In the so-called “West,” we seem to favour extroverts. You are expected to be fun at parties, overjoyed to be part of a large crowd, and sparkling at interviews. And whilst you don’t have to be the life and soul of the office, it is frowned upon if you miss too many of the unnecessary meetings, social events, and teambuilding ordeals.

Improv, despite the fact a large number of performers are introverts, is really no different.

In fact improvisational theatre is often described in very extrovert terms. I was always told my energy should be outwards when improvising. It is definitely about focussing on other people. And of course we all know being in your head (a classic introvert move) is bad for improvising. All of which implies improv is for extroverts, even though a lot of us introverts are pretty good at it.

And offstage, there is a very social aspect to improv. It sometimes feels as though it is frowned upon if you go to very few social events and don’t hang out too much after shows. Of course, you should do some of that social stuff and many of us introverts enjoy it. Up to a point.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at improv festivals. I love festivals, but they are often framed as very social endeavours where there is an expectation that you will be there for every social activity, after party and meal. I do pretty well at festivals because socialising that much is a novelty and actually fun for a few days. Fun, but totally exhausting.

Now, it’s a fact of life that going to social events improves your integration into a community. There is probably no way to avoid this without devaluing human contact which is not my intention. I am all for human contact. But at some point, as an introvert, you’ve had too much of it, and you need crawl off back to your cave.

It does seem that extroverts rule the world, but that’s not surprising cos we’re pack animals and consequently social creatures and have built a society where social confidence is highly rated. Plus as an introvert I’d hate to rule the world. Far too many meetings.

My purpose here is not to vent; my only purpose with this post is awareness. (All right, maybe a little venting, but mostly awareness.)

It’s often hard for us to understand what goes on in other people’s heads as we tend to assume the other’s brain works the exact same way as our own, just with a different set of experiences. But given we had to program our own brain from scratch since the day enough cells fused together to make half a dozen synapses, it would be weird if two people did think alike.

What I would like ultimately is awareness that if someone leaves an after-party early whilst not being tired to the point of near death or so drunk they need to immediately check into a rehab clinic… or if they stay but are quiet or hard to talk to… they should not be considered anti-social, boring, reclusive, a bad member of the community or snooty.*

They might need to recharge their batteries.

Note: * Of course they might be one of these things as well or instead, but never assume. Be kind.

 

Sources

• If you want to read more about what makes an introvert an introvert, there is an excellent book on the subject called “Introvert: The friendly takeover” (“Introvert: Den tysta revolutionen”) by Swedish author Linus Jonkman.
• I found several useful articles on psychologytoday.com and psychcentral.com and the dictionary definitions are on lexico.com.
• And naturally, we leave the last word to Audrey Hepburn: “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.”

Genre Guru: Tips for Playing Horror

It’s the season when many a good improv group says to itself, “Let’s do a horror show!” To help you scare responsibly, here are a few tips.

Take your time at the beginning. Most horror movies have a slow build. There is also a bit of time before the scary things start happening. Use this time to set up your characters and relationships and only hint at the horror. After all, the more we care about your characters the more we will want them to succeed and the more we will feel the wrench if they get sliced.

Start small and build. In most horror, there is a real build in not only the level of things happening, but the tension. The first scary things that happen (such as books falling off shelves, a dead bird being found, etc) are barely noticed by the protagonists. Practice building tension. Tension is hard to maintain in a comedy show as laughter is a big releaser of tension.

The same is true of the protagonists fear. Obviously they must be afraid otherwise the horror has no impact, but it can start small and build. Your character will be terrified, but you don’t have to be so from the start. It’s tiring for the actor and it’s tiring for the audience.

In movies, there is often a scare at the start: a kind of prelude to the coming horror. But the main reason for this is otherwise, there is 30 plus minutes with very little horror which is hard on a movie audience who wants the horror now! Unless you are doing a 2-hour show, you don’t need to worry about doing this, although it is an option to have a little taster of what’s to come.

Scepticism is allowed. Normally being sceptical or not believing what is happening or being said is a real killer for improv scenes, but it’s okay for the protagonist to be sceptical in the early stages of the horror. It is very much in the genre for the hero to not pay attention to the books falling off the shelf, or to attribute weird sounds to everyday occurrences. In fact, there’s a built-in game of scary thing happens and giving it increasing implausible explanations. Of course, at some point the protagonists must realise the horror is real.

Allow characters to die or disappear. But again, don’t rush this and remember this is a big moment.

You only need one type of monster. Improv stories tend to have too much of everything, and improvised horror is no exception. You don’t need to have a vampire and a werewolf and a zombie and haunted clock; you only need one.

Sometimes it’s scarier not to show it. Makers of low budget horror movies have realised that they can’t compete when it comes to special effects. But they don’t have to compete. Some of the scariest movies have hardly shown, or not shown at all, the monster. It can be more effective to show someone scared of the gorgon or someone recoiling in horror at the sight of the gorgon than have the reality completely destroyed by someone pretending to be a gorgon. (See especially The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity (2007) and Night of the Demon (1957).)

Do not play just for laughs. There has to be some jeopardy and some fear. Depending on your show, you might go more for the jokes, but you need characters to be scared. If it’s all jokey, then it’s a lame parody of horror. Given that most improve is dedicated almost entirely to getting laughs and little else, the more scared you allow your characters to be, the more like a real horror show it will be and the more your show will stand out. My advice would be to rehearse pure horror cos your team probably doesn’t need to practice the funny and when you have an audience the funny will slip out of its own accord.

The evil can be defeated. Finding a way to kill it, remove it or send it back to whence it came is an important part of the story. It gives the remaining characters hope. It doesn’t mean you do kill it, it means you can try. In many stories, you will succeed, in others you fail. However, even if you succeed, you might do so only to find that was just the tip of the iceberg or you merely angered something bigger and scarier.

Have fun. Enjoy playing a scared character. Enjoy being frightening. Enjoy being part of a rich story-telling tradition.

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Peter is performing two horror shows in the coming month and has a super mega genre workshop coming up real soon. Contact him for details.

Rutger Hauer on choosing a character

'Good guy' or 'bad guy', hero or anti hero; doesn't matter to me, what role I play, only the character have something magical. -- Rutger Hauer

Performing for a Foreign Audience

You are very excited because you have been invited to play at the Fargleskarg International Comedy Festival. You're all rehearsed, you know your format or set, you have your tickets. Could there be anything else you need to think about? Actually there is... It's worth taking time to think about how well you will be understood.

This blog has come from more than 10 years of performing and teaching in many countries. It will be performance-focused and will mostly be about improv, but much of it also applies to stand-up, theatre and other types of performance. At least with most of these others, you have a chance beforehand to review the text and see if there are things which potentially could trip you up.

It is intended for any performer or group intending to perform for a foreign audience in their own language or a second common language.
Whether you are performing in your own language to people who may or may not have a good understanding of it; or a second language, which you and the audience could be at different levels at, there are a number of issues that may arise. Even performing somewhere with the same official language as your own can be open to problems. Let's have a look at what a few of these things can be.

1. Speak Clearly

This may sound obvious, but a native-speaking audience will almost certainly be able to follow you, no matter how fast you speak, what accent you use, or how lazily you pronounce words. Not so an audience for whom it is a second language. If you speak quite fast, you might find you need to slow down a notch or two. If you tend to mumble or slur words, you might also need to pronounce them clearer. And some accents are harder than others to understand. I've done scenes in certain strong British accents and been told later many people didn't understand a word. If you have a strong accent, it's worth checking how well people get it in the country you are performing in. You might have to soften it. You might not want to hear that, but if you speak a (second) language you are not fluent in, you know how difficult it is when someone doesn't speak clearly and with the pronunciation you learnt it in.

Another side of this is grammar. Grammatically it is highly possible, as many of you will appreciate, to do highly complex things with the structure of what we will call, as most people do, a sentence. Even to a native speaker, that was a complex sentence, spoken to someone who doesn't speak English so well, it might be received by a blank expression. Better to keep it simple.

In improv it usually is better to keep sentences simple anyway. Add a small bit of information at a time and together build something that will become complicated enough. British improvisers, especially, often pride themselves on their verbally dexterous loquacity, and although this plays well to a home audience, it can lose audiences abroad. Be prepared to adapt.

2. Vocabulary

This is an extension of the above, but big enough a topic to get it's own section. Even if you are going to another country that speaks your language, there can be a differences in the words used every day. A lot of the time, this situation won't be a problem. Brits, for example, know a lot of American words and slang thanks to movies, and also Americans hear more Britishisms than they used to. But it is something to especially be aware of if your audience is not fluent in your language. They will most likely not know slang words, old-fashioned or rarer words, or the more complicated word for something where a simpler word exists.

Some of this can be obvious. If you are feeling your audience, you can often sense when something you have said is not clear to them. And it's always possible to fix it if you realise you have used a slang or complex term by saying the standard or simpler word, and/or by describing what you mean.

“Let us go to the refectory. I mean the canteen. You know, where we can get food.”

Maybe that was a little too much, but it is usually better to over-explain than to not be understood.
Of course, it's fine if an audience doesn't get a couple of words during a show and you don't have to second guess yourself with every single thing you say, but if they don't get words key to understanding the plot or relationships, that's a different matter.

Professor Stanley Unwin, eminent scholar and linguist 

(see cultural references)

Common expressions, sayings and euphemisms very often don't translate well and are not understood except by very good speakers of a language. I studied Dutch for a few years, and I can sometimes understand all the words in a sentence but have no idea what it means because they are using one of the many, many Dutch expressions where the literal meaning has nothing to do with what they are really saying.

“And now the monkey comes out of the sleeve.”

What monkey? Whose sleeve? Why was there a monkey there, anyway? (It means “and now the truth is revealed.”)

It's worth remembering that testyourvocab.com found that whilst most adult native speakers know about 20,000–35,000 words in English, non-native speakers have an average of 4,500 words. So you should be avoiding most of the fancy words you know.

Now of course, a lot of genres come with their own vocabulary. If you are doing a Shakespeare show, for example, there is an expectation of a few obscure words thrown in. And I say, verily, do so, but if your audience is not native, you can get away with doing it a lot less than you would for a show at Ye Olde English Society.

3. Cultural References

Everyday, you say things, do things, eat things that are culturally specific. There are facts you know without knowing you know. Facts that other cultures don't know or maybe even disagree with. You are usually so immersed in your culture that sometimes it is hard to imagine that people don't share the exact same experiences and set of knowledge as you all over the world. But people don't share them. Not every culture eats Wheatabix / hagelslag / Skorpor / Pfunchlacks for breakfast.

It's often a shock when you go somewhere and nobody understands your joke about Ant McPartlin / Gordon / Gunde Svan / Paavo Väyrynen / David Levy / Lazlo Philosovic. Even though it would almost certainly get a laugh back home. Every country has its classic comedy go-to celebrities. B-listers whose names you mention and that will nearly always get a laugh. These are rarely celebrities that are known at all outside of your own country.

This even goes for bands, films, etc. Some bands and movies are internationally known, but a lot aren't. Just because Frambleplank are huge in your country, doesn't mean they made it anywhere else. In fact, I learnt a long time ago, just because I think a band are awesome and one of the greatest bands ever, doesn't mean anyone else has heard of them. Even people on my street.

If you are going to make references to people, things or events, they have to be well known internationally. This can be hard to judge if you haven't spent a lot of time out of the country in the company of locals.

Madonna, Brad Pitt, the current US president (whoever that is at the time of publication) are all suitably international that most people in most audiences will know who they are. Others you don't really know until you try, and it can vary country to country.
Even local references can be problematic. You might want to throw in that you know who the queen of Denmark is and that will work fine if the audience is made up of Danes, who will nearly all know who their queen is, but if the audience is international (visiting improvisers or local expats (who are only there for a short while and often don't get too involved in the local culture)), it might fly over their head.

Lazlo Philosovic, probably.

Overall it is best to avoid a lot of cultural references (and not just at international festivals). They are a particular type of spice you can add to a scene, but they are almost never necessary. Scenes ultimately should be about the characters and the relationships in the scene. References anyway, whilst funny, often take the scene and the actor out of the here and now and into the head world. They are often anachronistic (meaning out of place), which again can be funny, but it is something else which breaks the reality of the scene and improv seldom needs more of them.

4. Do more than just words

So far we've mostly looked at things to avoid or be careful of, but what are things we can focus more on. Most of the complications as we have seen have been about words. Improv tends to be a very verbal medium.

One approach for festivals is to do away with language. Or at least learn to not rely on it. French and Italian groups are great at doing this. Partly because English is often not so well spoken in those countries but also because they have a very strong physical theatre tradition. They tend to perform very physical shows where emotions, characters, relationships, etc., are not explained but shown. (Which is, after all, what your improv teachers kept going on about anyway.)

Play clear, true emotions, physicalise your characters, heighten your relationships, find and play games that are not word based.
A good story is always about the characters and relationships. As the great Hollywood story guru Robert McKee says, “All stories are 'character-driven'” [Story, Methuen, 1999]. You should always be focussing on characters and relationships. References, jokes and word-play are sprinkles on the top, which are not necessary. If your scenes are all just confection on the top, your audience is going to get diabetes pretty quick.

Teatribu.

A clear character and well-defined relationship can also be something that is shown and not told. Sure, the specifics of a relationship might be hard to convey, but you can tell if two characters love each other, hate each other or whether one is jealous of another who doesn't even notice them. Likewise, we can usually see if a character is confident, shy, adventurous, thoughtful, romantic, fearful, etc, by just looking at them and seeing them interact with the world and others.
A great story can be told without words, and yet as improvisers we cling to words like they are everything.
In fact if you concentrate on the physical, the emotions, the character, the relationships, make it clear what's going on, you don't need words at all. I have seen groups struggling to express themselves in a second language who when allowing themselves to slip back into their own language or no language have suddenly freed themselves to really play.

The Italian team Teatribu often perform in Italian. They use simple Italian and use their great mime skills to make sure we can follow, and everything else is super clear. And the fact it is in Italian makes it all the more beautiful. It's funny that I know almost no Italian, but watching their shows I feel I am fluent. That should be your goal, to make sure the audience completely understands you no matter how well they speak the language you are using.

Conclusion

To summarise, the main points are these...

1. Speak clearly
2. Use simpler language
3. Avoid slang and expressions
4. Avoid references that are not universal
5. Focus on character, relationship, emotions and physicality.

The bottom line is, be aware of what you are saying and doing and be aware as much as possible of your audience. And this is not just good for festivals, this is good for all shows.
Do that and you'll keep the horse from eating the spanners.

Walk This Way: Walk-on Examples

My last post dealt with the subject of walk-ons and there were a few things I left out despite it being a bit long for a blog post. There are a couple of resources out there, which you might find helpful. There are also examples in a lot of movies (and plays, books, etc) that show this is not just an improv phenomenon.

To recap, walk-ons are a simple idea that can be a very effective tool. They can also easily get overdone or steer a scene in the wrong way.

Let's start by looking at examples in popular culture. I had a lot of trouble finding good clips because they are by their definition not hugely important, and usually they are not memorable. They are not meant to be memorable. You might remember the message they bring, but not the messenger. Which is mostly how it should be.

In movies, they are usually little more than a talking extra. The character that comes on and gives a report of what's going on is the classic. Or the character who adds to the terror by screaming "Oh, my god, it's huge. It'll destroy us all!"

In movies they don't actually have to walk on, because the camera can cut to them. But any character with who we see briefly and has one line, or only a few lines, is a walk-on.

A classic scenario for a movie is that an authority figure is approached by a second character, This second character gives a report of the current situation, is optionally given an order and leaves (or becomes once more a background figure). We'll take a look at a couple of a couple of examples. There might be spoilers, but mostly these are classic movies so if you haven't seen them yet, you haven't been trying.

There's a classic one in the original Star Wars movie, which is hard to find a good clip of, where an imperial officer enters and begins, "Lord Vader, the battle station plans are not aboard this ship! And no transmissions were made," and then pretty much leaves.

This is from the same movie and shows that it's not just humans that can do walk-ons, but also mouse droids. It's more comedic than explanational, but it is more than simply comic, it also highlights something of the characters we are following.



At the start of this next clip, from the classic nature-turns-on-man horror/thriller, The Birds, there is a walk-on which heightens the tension and unease of the main characters.


In Jaws, Harry, the old man on the beach character has a two-part walk-on. To first, heighten the tension and give us a false scare and then to give us some character exposition about the main character.


The final clip is a classic joke button at the end of a scene type walk-on (or in this case a CUT TO). In fact it's probably the most famous punchline end to scene by a walk-on character in the history of cinema: “I'll have what she's having.”



Some people might point out that the character is briefly shown earlier, but this is fine. Walk-on refers to the characters role in the current scene or moment, not their function in the whole piece. Here the character went from being background to being a walk-on.

Having an established character do a walk-on is perfectly fine, and happens a lot in movies and TV shows. The Simpsons is full of established characters who do walk-ons all the time. One of the clearest examples – and most used – is Herman Muntz and his iconic "Ha-ha!"

As they said in the movie Walk-On Club: “The first rule of Walk-On Club is you do not walk on unless it is absolutely necessary.” The second rule of Walk-On Club is once you've done the thing you were doing, walk the feck off stage.”

Other Resources

I got a lot of inspiration for the videos from The Greatest One Line Movie Roles from the Overthinking It channel.

Here's a great set of succinct list of questions you could ask yourself before doing a walk-on from Jimmy Carrane.

Walk On By: The Subtle Art of Walking On and Walking Off Again

This topic came up as a recent discussion on everyone's favourite data-mining site, facebook. It set my brain off so here's some of its thoughts on the subject.

Before I start properly, I will state that my brain can't decide whether it likes "walk-on" or "walk on." (It already objected to “walkon.”) I'm going for the former as this seems more widely accepted and is clearer in some circumstances. If I offend any grammarians, then I'm am sorry.

I'll start this piece by defining what I mean by the term "walk-on." A walk-on is where an actor goes on stage during a scene and interacts with the scene (usually in a way that adds something) and then leaves. This can either be as a character who enters the scene or as a "director" pointing something out (scene painting, explaining, etc).

"Waiter, there's an extra person in my scene!"

It seems simple enough but it's fraught with danger and it can easily become something else. For example, if the actor doesn't leave, it is not a walk-on, they are adding a character. If they walk on and somehow take too much focus from an already established story that didn't require it, this is stealing focus. Walking on to edit a scene I do not consider a walk-on as we are discussing here, it is it's own separate thing.

There is also a walk-through, which is slightly different, but in the same ball park. It's where, for example a couple of characters cross the stage not interacting with the scene itself, although possibly referencing it. Once they actors have crossed the stage, that bit is over. It's like an INSERT in a movie.

Walk-on: Or a short flashback on Family Guy!

Again if the actors start a walk-through, but stay on stage, it becomes a split screen.

Walk-on: Oh, the jargon!

99% of the time in a walk-on, the actor physically enters the stage (usually by walking, but not exclusively), but, a voice from off-stage adding some details is also technically a walk-on.

"Sire, I bring you good news from off stage."

There are several reasons why walk-ons can be a good thing. They mostly come from the fact that actors on the side can have a better overview of the scene / story than the actors in the scene. They can usually better see what a scene needs or what the actors want.

Walk-on: So let's hear some.

Some reasons to do a walk-on:

• Clear up confusions; explain things.
• Add a helpful detail to enrich the scene, characters, atmosphere, etc.
• Further a game.
• Raise the stakes.
• Highlight an offer that is more important than the actors in the scene realise.
• Solve a problem which is distracting the players.
• Helping the story along when it's time to do so.
• Add some element of fun.
• To throw in a joke, make a call-back or add a counter-point.
• Ending a scene. Although this is almost a separate subject, but if you come on and add a line that gives the scene a good end (or "button"), then this is also a specific kind of walk-on.

Again these things can all be done, but should only be done if they are needed. If you are not sure they are needed, they are probably not. Keep watching the scene and see if something feels missing or needed.

Walk-on: You will spend a lot of your time in improv standing on the sides and watching.

Now a lot of people are wary of walk-ons for some good reasons. Here are some of the pitfalls...

• Sometimes the actor providing the walk-on doesn't leave, either because the actor thinks there is more to add or the other actors took this walk-on as another character - this can especially happen when the actors in the scene feel it is going badly and latch onto anything they can and are horrified that this new character might leave them alone.
• The offer brought by the walk-on steers the scene unnecessarily in a direction it wasn't going. Walk-ons can nudge a story on track, most notably when the actors on the side can clearly see this is a story about one character's desire for revenge but somehow they characters are getting bogged down making coffee. But sometimes the actor on the side wasn't paying full attention or is obsessed with an earlier offer they think the story should be about.
• The scene starts to be about the walk-on character when this isn't necessary.
• The walk-on comes on as a character that the audience loves and this takes the focus. In general, come on for a walk-on as a minor character, do what you have to do and leave, but sometimes, you hit upon a great, funny character and they audience responds well to it. My advice here is still leave. Still serve that scene and help it. Because you can almost always bring that character back later in the show, which will probably have more impact, anyway.
• The walk-on was to do a joke which ruins the atmosphere or takes away from what's happening on stage. A lot of  judgement is needed as to whether this is the time for a funny walk on. Sometimes the funny gets in the way of the story and although you might have a great gag that you know would get a laugh, if this is a touching moment, it might not be right at all, as you'll stamp all over the story and ruin a chance for improv to be more than just a bunch of joking nods to the audience and call-backs. Sometimes you can save it for the right moment (a touching scene followed by a great, funny line is good comedy) and sometimes you have to let that little birdie go (there will be other jokes, trust me).
• An actor just wants to be on stage. I think we have all cringed at shows where there is one actor who somehow manages to be in every scene whether they are needed or not. And many of us have cringed when we have realised that actor was us that evening.

Walk-on: Hi everyone!

As with all these things, we can analyse them until we are blue in the face, but they only way to really learn the parameters is to do them. Rehearse with your team, practice walk-ons: do a montage-type longform and say beforehand, “we will do as many walk-ons as possible and then see / feel which ones work.” Play games where, say, only new information can be added by players outside the scene. There are more exercises, I'm sure.

And don't be afraid to evaluate and discuss after. "When you walked on during the egg scene, I didn't understand what you were bringing." Don't be afraid to ask yourself or fellow players, "was that needed?" Understand that it is hard to lean the balance of when to go on and when to not, and we will go too far sometimes in our enthusiasm, but that's how we learn. And sometimes it is a matter of opinion. As long as we are open to questioning ourselves and learning we can find that perfect balance point where we only enter a scene when it truly needs it and then, if this is a walk-on, we get the bejesus back off stage.

Quiz for the keen: There were several walk-ons during this piece. Can you determine which were the helpful ones and which were not? There will be a follow-up post with some examples soon.

Walk-on: As ever feel free to comment.

IMPRO Amsterdam 2018 - Gotta get down on Friday

On Friday I took a workshop on hip hop improv because one should always push oneself. Plus it’s a workshop with a beatboxer in it, and pretty much anything without a beatboxer is lame. I won’t even go shopping these days without someone beside me laying down some dope beats.

The night started with Friend Friend, where two friends, Amy and Anna, channel their love for each other to portray a heart-warming array of characters. There is so much charm and calm joy on display here. You get drawn into the worlds they are themselves discovering and feel you’ve just watched a show of two people giving each other lovely gifts.

I'll Be There For You. (Photo by Marwan Youssef)

The second show was Stuck in the middle. In this show, one of the players is selected to be “stuck in the middle” which means they are on the stage the whole time and it’s up to the other players to start scenes with you, to look after you, and to mess with you. I was blessed enough that day to be the one selected.

You know that feeling when you are in a toy store and one of the staff comes up and says “here’s a large scale millenium falcon, play with this” and then when you’ve had a little fun another comes up and says “here’s a lego castle, play with this” and shortly after another appears and says “here’s an classic Atari console fully loaded with Ms Pacman…” (Let me know if my references are dated at all.) Anyway if you can understand the concept of this then you understand what it’s like to be the chosen one in this format. A gang of talented performers give you a selection of awesome gifts and the main thing you have to do is react  I’m still a little hyper from it all.

We'll be there for you (Photo by Marwan Youssef)

After all this fun, there was more fun. A choice of fun. There was The Final Gig, a duo show showing the final concert of a legendary, nonexistent musical pairing, with great singing and high emotions.
The other show was Decibel, a Franco-Finno trio who combine mime and acrobatics with their improvisation. And I really do mean acrobatics, I’ve never seen a group, climb, carry each other and tumble with such ease. They also do the one of the seemingly most difficult improvisational skills: not speaking. Also they had beatboxers guesting because, well, if you can you really really should.

This is the last time we'll be here.