The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Cristalle was a little grumpy when we trooped into the theater; she didn’t like our first row seats. We would have to crane our necks to look up the stage, she groused, and we can’t get a good view of the whole stage.

It was apparent that she was wrong as soon as the performance started. It was a small intimate setting, three performers, much audience interaction. By that I meant that the actors actually jumped down the stage, ran up to Peirui and Cristalle, hugged them, and dragged Cristalle up to stage for her debut role in Ophelia. Great fun!

I was laughing so much and so hard that I started coughing again. Now this is good theater! Not just the usual bag of cheap tricks and lame slapstick jokes, but truly excellent and intelligent and witty scripting and dialogue! What a refreshing change.

Cristalle was one happy girl when she left the theater, having gotten a hug, her 5 minutes of theater fame, a motley but bright pink bunch of flowers, and a picture with the three actors.

Improv Everywhere: Surprise Wedding Reception

Hehe found this randomly online. This is soooo fun! Watching the clip and reading about their other improv experiments just put a smile on my face. It’s heartwarming that there are people out there who just want to make a stranger’s day.

And this! Haha.

Felt!

It’s been a while since I last attended an improv show; don’t think I’d been to one since I stopped my improv classes. So it was like a breath of fresh air watching the Felt puppet improv show at the IO again (promotional trailer here). Puppets can get away with the silliest things! Think Avenue Q, Team America, even Seasme Street…

The opening act by the human improv group was one of the funnier ones I’ve seen too, and made me kind of want to take up classes again. Doubt I have the time though, with so many other things going on right now, including having to start studying again for the CFA. Ack.

View from the rearview mirror

And so we stand, at the last day of 2007. This has been a fairly placid year. Though not uneventful, I’ve not marked any major milestones nor struck off worthy goals. That is not unnecessarily a bad thing, considering that I all I’d really set up for myself this year was to lead a “full life.” At the start of 2007, I said this: “This year, I don’t have any new resolutions/goals that I particularly want to set for now, except maybe this: work hard, but play hard, with an eye towards the longer term. It’s high time I start seriously thinking/planning in five year increments.”

To that end, this has been a good year. On the job front, I was given a more senior title and have comfortably adjusted to a reporting to a new boss a few states away. On the fun front, I have:

1. Climbed hard this year and have begun to ease into leading more difficult routes
2. Tried my hand at improv and enjoyed the challenges of it
3. Fed my growing passion for opera
4. Taken my first big trip abroad in 2 years with one of my favorite travel companions, TPR;
5. Completed a 65-mile bike ride
6. Tasted many, many bottles of good wine and formed strong friendships with my wine buddies
7. Kept up and even rekindled the friendships I’ve made over the years

But while I tried to think/plan in five year increments, the thorny visa problem refused to go away. The issue has reared its ugly head again, derailing some of my laid plans. At this point, I’m adopting a wait-and-see attitude, and hopefully, will be able to think with a clearer head by mid-year 2008. The trotting along this year was enjoyable, but it’s time to pick up the reins to urge the horse forward at a more of a gallop in 2008. Oh, and cook more.

Improv C II & III

Improv C II

Didn’t jot down my notes on last week’s class, mostly because it was draining, hard and we sucked pretty bad. Heh. But here are my brief notes on that:

After a quick Blow-wind-blow game, Jason started the class with a mini lecture using Star Wars analogy to illustrate the ingredients needed for an engaging story, starting with the set up, the finding of the stairs, the walking up the stairs, the climax, and the breather before the end. He couldn’t stress enough how we had to jump right onto the stairs whenever we started a scene, and then keep walking up those stairs to get to the climax.

While in the first week we practiced object work and focus work, the objective of last week’s class was on the use of emotions to heighten a scene. And it’s hard, not to mention completely exhausting.

One of the games we played was Emotion Scale Work, where two people would go up on stage and take two emotion suggestions and a scene suggestion from the audience. They would then start the scene with those given emotions, gradually bringing the emotions up from a level one to a level 10. That was hard work; nobody got up to a 10, though Vanessa nearly did with her excellent characterization of someone terrified to ride in roller coasters, so terrified, she was literally shaking and weeping in her seat. Maddy and Robert also elicited many laughs for their hotel room scene where Maddy pretended to be a desperate woman who killed her friend’s mum. I had a scene with Dan in the horse stable, where he was whiny and I pretended to be silly by going as far as licking his hand.

We played a few more games that really focused on how we treated the others, depending on how we felt towards them. In one game which we played in groups of four, we each had to mentally decide whom we were going to like, hate, and not give a damn about. We then had to show our feelings towards those people in the course of the scene. In another variation, Jason gave us each a poker card. We had to treat the people depending on the number on their card. I played this game twice. In the first, we were in the middle of a war zone. Bridget and Maddy had the lowest number on the card, so we assigned them to the front line and them bade them to “die with dignity.” In the second, we were randomly assigned the role of President, Vice President, Senator, Reporter and Tourist, with the Tourist accorded the highest status.

Improv C III

I was tempted to just stay in the night to watch my latest Grey’s Anatomy DVD… Evidently, many others must have found other distractions they deemed more interesting, because only 9 out of 16 people showed up for class yesterday. I’m not complaining in the least, since we got in more practice time.

We started the class with Conductive Griping (which Jason hinted that he might use as one of our games). He made people toss out suggestions of everyday pet peeves; I suggested someone who smells, someone said people who won’t stop talking about their kids, another one mentioned people who keep chewing their gum when talking to you, and someone else said people who talk on their cellphones while on the train. Jason then made us take on someone else’s suggestion. It must be karma or something, but I had to gripe about people who talk on their cellphones while on the train, and surprise surprise, I was on the phone with Julia my entire bus ride down to class… Erm.

Next, we played the “I have a secret” game. We went on stage in groups of three, where each person had to think up a secret they had for each of the other person. For example, person A’s secret of B could be that he knew B dying of cancer and he felt sorry for B, but C was in the dark. A also knew that C had cheated on her husband, and loathed her for that, though he had no intention of telling B the truth. A, B, and C then had to act out a scene suggested by the audience where they would make the secrets known not through direct disclosure, but by their demeanor towards the other person, and their reactions to them. It was pretty funny – I was up on stage with Kathy and George, and my secrets were that Kathy was pregnant and I was terrified that she was not going to take proper care of herself, and that George had just won the lottery and I was miffed that he was still as miserly as ever and did not want to splurge. Our suggested scene was Oktoberfest –Kathy started off wanting to get some beer and I immediately vetoed the idea. Instead of merely just yelling at her to lay off the drinks and try some non-alcoholic beer instead, Jason suggested that I slap the beer mug out of her hand. And when George started griping about Kathy not buying rounds for everyone, I chewed him out, and told him that he could well afford to buy the rounds. What made the scene hilarious was that we had independently thought of similar secrets: George’s secret was that he hated that Kathy was rich but miserly, and Kathy was celebrating the fact that I had recently given birth and could thus drink again.

We then played a similar “secrets” game in which we had to try make our partner do something without directly telling them to do so. Vanessa and Lauren kicked off the game by pretending to be zoo keepers in the zoo – Vanessa sweeping the elephant cage and Lauren dicing bananas for the monkeys. Their scene centered around vying for the attention of another zoo keeper, where they made bets against who could first catch his attention. By waving the guy over to talk to him, Lauren won the bet and collected money from Vanessa: Vanessa’s secret action was for Laura to wave, and Laura had wanted to collect money from Vanessa. I paired up with Dan and our scene was: flying car. Because Dan was seating in the starboard side of the car, I started the scene with a quip: “I always knew that the British would be the first to invent the flying car.” Very Harry Potter, I know. Heh. I wanted Dan to take off his shirt, which I got him to by telling him his bright pink shirt would look really good trailing in the wind behind the car. Dan wanted me to cover my ears, which he achieved when I rolled down the window to throw the shirt out of the car: “Aren’t your ears hurting from the unequal wind pressure!?!”

A quick break, and then we practiced “finding the game,” a concept we used to find the theme/plot to our scene to “walk up the stairs on.” I paired up with Lauren in this game, and we were two friends on a beach. We started the scene trying to play volleyball, but Jason quickly told us to veer away from the actions of the game and focused on something else. So we got out some suntan lotion and started lathering it on ourselves. It was at this time that Lauren commented that she was excited to be on the beach because she’d just bought a new bikini that I said, “Yah, look at your nice tight ass.” Jason immediately took that as “the game” and told me to go along those lines, come on to her, as outrageously as I could. His other suggestion was that when she started talking about the hot guys playing in the water, I should nod and agree, but keep my eyes and actions focused on her. So I started comparing one of the guys’ lips to her full, moist ones. Jason stopped us there, and got Dan and George up to try enact our scene – gay scenes are much funnier than lesbian ones. Kathy and Vanessa had a funny scene at the record store, where their entire game was focused on snatching the one single record left out of one another’s hands as they took turns arguing who most deserved the record.

We went back to practicing emotions again after that. In groups of three, we had to re-enact a scene three times, each time with a different emotional range. Oliver, Kathy and I were the first ones up, and our scene was at the bus stop. Oliver started the scene by bemoaning that the bus was late, and I chimed in, grumbling that I was late for my doctor’s appointment and it was my fourth time, and thus unacceptable. Kathy then jumped in to talk about her dog, and offered us to pat it. The second time we redid the scene, we had to whisper, and consequently, greatly tame down our actions. Instead of a frustrated wringing of my hand whining about the lateness of the bus, I crossed my arms and resignedly stared at my watch. The entire pace of the scene was slowed down, and our actions greatly minimized. The third time we redid the scene, Jason had us really really mad, yelling at the top of our voices – he even allowed us to curse and swear while we were screeching about how late that godamn fucking bus was. And when I patted the dog, it was almost as if I was giving it a hard scrub down.

With 10 minutes left into the class, we played some more freeze tag.

Improv C I

After watching Qian’s Level C public improv performance on Sunday, I was doubly inspired and looked forward to my first level C class. Happily, everyone from my Level B class stayed on, and one more guy joined the class. We had a new instructor, Jason, and from the get go, we liked him already – he was loud, clear, and offered constructive criticisms, lots of it.

After a quick warm up game, we dived straight into object work, one of my weakest areas to date. Jason had us go onto the stage, one by one, and pick up three different objects in the kitchen, at least one of which has to be an object that was initiated by somebody else who had already gone up. Kathy started off the scene at the sink, where she washed her hands with soap and dried off with a towel. Colette then came on, and she initiated opening a fridge, plucking out a fruit and washing it at the sink before eating it. When Alex came on, he initiated walking to a trash can in the corner of the kitchen where he stepped on the pedal to open the can, and reached in to grab some kind of food and proceeded to munch into it. I went into the kitchen, opened the freezer, got out the tray of ice cubes, shook some loose, and dropped a couple cubes into the glass I next obtained from the cabinet to the upper right of the sink. Then filled the glass with water before walking out of the kitchen. Santi got a banana out of the fridge, peeled it, threw the peels away, and broke bits of the banana into a blender to make a shake. Lauren picked up a kitchen phone that was hung on the wall, and stretched the cord to the limit when she walked to the fridge to get something. Rob went into the kitchen, got a broom and a tiny little duster out of the broom closet that was next to the fridge, and started sweeping. George, the last to enter the kitchen, tied up the trash and took it out with him.

It was a good exercise. We focused on the object we were holding and learnt to slow down our gestures significantly, deliberately pausing before each change of motion to give it weight. It’s incredible how unconscious I am of my surroundings, of my actions. After I got home from class, I tried mimicking opening the fridge door, playing with the TV remote, taking off my clothes to shower, and I found that I could only accurately mime 50% of the actions I take for granted everyday.

We played Freeze Tag next, and I jumped out into a scene that found me kneeling on the ground, begging Colette for forgiveness while she prepared to whip me. Rob then tagged her out, and he became the golfer who was annoyed that I was in his way because I was begging him for change so that my son could board the bus for his first day of school. It’s still hard to jump in into the middle of a scene, especially since I’m always trying too hard to come up with an idea before I start, instead of trying to go with the flow. Or, in Jason’s words, letting our bodies lean forward until our feet naturally steps out to catch our fall. We found out that we had some bad habits of asking questions – Jason diligently stopped that and made us rephrase our questions until they became statements. Though we’ve played plenty of question games before in the past to drive home the point, it was infinitely more effective having him constantly interrupt the scene so we could strengthen the conversation. E.g. A: “What are you going to do about the spilt beer? Are you going to clean this up?” Jason, interrupting: “Answer your own question!” A: “You are going to clean up this spilt beer!” Our scenes were definitely a lot stronger after we reworked our lines, and our partners found it easier and more natural to respond, without having to rack their brains to come up with some clever retort.

In the next series of games, we practiced giving and taking focus from one another by going on stage in groups of three/four to act out a scene randomly suggested by the audience. For the first game, the catch was that we were given a water bottle to hold onto, and we could only talk when we possessed the bottle. That turned out pretty funny especially in the one scene where Vanessa, Colette and Maddy pretended to be brides-to-be fighting over bridal gowns at Filene’s Basement annual sale. Half the time, we couldn’t figure out whether they were reaching out to grab the water bottle to speak or a dress from someone’s hands.

We tossed the water bottle away the next game, but this time, we could only speak when we kept and maintained eye contact with another person in our group. Lauren, Colette and I were the first group on stage, and we had a tough time remembering to maintain eye contact with the person we were speaking to while we concentrated on changing tires/filling up gas in a pit stop. Consequently, the scene ended up being funny not because of our witty lines, but more because of our constant fumbling and repeating our lines to keep the eye contact. The acts improved progressively though, as each group went up. Maddy, Rob and Santi’s scene was hilarious. Their scene was inspired by Robinson Crusoe’s Treasure Island, and Santi was the resident Friday whom the other two ordered around to catch fish, and build a fire.

We took the focus level up a notch in the third game. This time, we could only talk when we had physical contact with someone. Jason allowed the first couple of groups to place their hands on one another’s shoulders and arms; afterwards, people had to initiate contact with another area of the body e.g. the stomach, legs, ass. My group, the last to go up, had to make contact without using our hands. Our scene was set in a Dickens novel, so I started the scene playing a beggar who grabbed Kathy’s legs, asking for change. Then Dan and Santi pretended to be long-lost family, reunited on the grimy streets of England, so they began hugging. Not knowing how else to interact, Kathy and I joined in the hugging, and soon we were all four people in one giant mess, all legs and arms and happiness at the great family reunion.

The next game was one of the harder games we played. Sitting in four chairs on stage, we had to pick a blank spot in front of us and stare straight ahead, and someone would start the game going by describing an audience-suggested scene. We had to pretend that we were watching the scene unfold from behind a glass wall, and therefore had no way of knowing who the characters in the scene were, their relationships to one another, and their reasons for their actions. We just had to describe the scene as it played out. What made that game hard is that we’ve all fallen into the trap of unconsciously labeling people, judging them, and assuming we know their rationale for their thoughts and actions. And partly as a consequence of that, we’ve neglected to drink in the minute details, forgotten how to fully describe a scene without the liberal use of adjectives, metaphors and similes. My group had to describe a scene in a playground, where a little boy sat playing with a ball. Jason made us go into the intricate details. Don’t just say playing. How is he playing? Don’t assume we know what playing means. The little boy is tossing the ball against the wooden frame of the sandbox he is sitting in. Describe the wooden frame. It has a rusty nail in one corner. The boy tosses the ball against the nail, and the ball explodes. How does it explode? Bits and pieces of the ball disintegrate in an instant, flying into the boy’s face. He is hurt. How is he hurt? He is bleeding. How? He is bleeding like he – no, don’t say like. Describe exactly: how is he bleeding? His face is scrapped, trickles of blood are coursing down his cheek. Slowly, he lifts a hand to his face. A pause, and then he bursts out crying. How is he crying? His eyes are squeezed shut, his mouth is wide open, and tears course down his cheeks. His mother comes running up to him. How do you know she’s his mother? A woman runs up to him. She picks him up, hugs him to her chest, and gently caresses him.

Did you know that when someone is talking to you and he looks at a spot towards the upper left corner of his eye, he’s telling a lie? But when he is looking at a spot towards the upper right corner of his eye, he’s actually recounting facts? That’s why Jason had us stare straight ahead, not left, not right. Interesting tid bit. George, who used to work in HR consulting, affirmed that it’s a pretty useful tool of the trade to determine of interview candidates were lying about their resume. Hmm. Good to know eh?

Before we knew it, class was almost up. Almost reluctantly, we formed a line at the back of the stage to play the last games: World’s Worst and History. For World’s Worst, Jason would toss out random suggestions of occupations and we each had to step out, say a line/mime an action that would suggest we were indeed the most ill-suited for that occupation. One suggestion was mortician. We’ve played the game before in Level A, with World’s Worst one-liners, sailors etc. Pretty short and fun.

What if the hokey pokey is what it’s really all about?

Sometimes, life throws a curve ball at you. And sometimes, you just have to be patient and wait on the sidelines. I think I’ll be fine; the news just took me by surprise, leaving me a tad unsettled that’s all. I’ll leave it at that for now.

And it must say something when, two days in a row, the two buses you take home (albeit on different routes) break down. Sigh, Chicago, it’s really about time you took a good, hard look at the transportation system. If we can’t rely on the trains and the buses, basic modes of transportation, why are you even setting sights to something as grand as the Olympics?

Tonight was the last Improv Level B class, and the theme, we learnt belatedly, was “hokey pokey”, where you “throw your whole self in,” no reservations.

After the usual warm up games, we formed a line against the wall: one person would jump out onto the “stage” with a chosen emotion, and commit to it for a while, until someone else would join in and play along with that emotion. And then, the two would try to carry on a conversation to justify the emotion. E.g. I walked onto the stage laughing (it feels foolish actually, to be laughing at seemingly nothing in particular for a good thirty seconds), and then someone else joined me on stage. Together, we chuckled and then giggled uproariously as we talked about how “that girl” had walked out of the bathroom – for the 5th time – with a roll of toilet paper stuck to her pants.

Then a fun guessing game. We’d go onto the stage in threes, one would exit the room, and the audience would suggest an occupation/character for that person. Thereupon, the person would re-enter, and the two people on stage would start to set up a scene for that occupation/character. The third person would then have to jump in partway, hopefully having guessed what he/she was. I went on with Bridget and Lauren. Bridget chose the go out of the room, and the class suggested she play a bikini waxer. Heh. So Lauren and I pretended that it was my first time getting a wax and I wanted to hold Lauren’s hand but didn’t want her to look. Poor Bridget was so confused at first. For a while, she thought she was a gynecologist and thus started giving me a lecture on the benefits of protection… Other fun characters: drug pusher, Martha Stewart, White Sox Coach (though I’d have never guessed, since I don’t follow the game), Snow White.

Next, we played the 60,30,15, 5 game. Essentially, the audience would give three people a scene, and they’d go onto stage to act it out for a minute. Then they’d shorten that same scene to 30 seconds, then to 15, and finally to 5. We really learnt how to pare it down to the bare catch phrases. Some scenes: foreman and his carpenters; Southern sorority sisters, Hillary Clinton’s aides (who spent the scene trying to come up with campaign slogans that matched Obama’s catchy title “Between Barack and a Hard Place.” Kathy had “One Tree Hillary,” Maddy suggested “Climb Every Hillary”); Brad, Lauren and I pretended to be at a landlord convention.

We also played a longer scene work game. This time – again in threes – we had to pretend that we were trapped in a small space. Lauren, Alex and Oliver went first, and pretended that they were trapped in a cave. This game went on for a longer period than the previous ones, and Judy had us focus more on the relationships and details, and lesser on trying to find jokes. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see the dynamics, and how funny scenes could be derived from not-so-funny situations. Erin, Bridget and I had this scene where we were trapped on a sinking boat – I started the scene frantically trying to scoop water out, while Erin calmly knitted and Bridget just looked on. Eventually, I gave up, seeing the others were so defeated, and ready to face their doom. So we started talking about how we’d actually envisioned ourselves dying. Another group’s game was “trapped in a subway,” and they had fun transforming the scene into talking about their everyday lives, and how being stuck on the subway affected them.

Improv B VI

Unrelated to the title – but I learnt yesterday that you don’t have to go climbing to get a good arm workout. You don’t even have to lift weights at the gym either. Just go buy bedsheets (600 thread count, on 70% discount, thank you very much!), pillows and comforters. They need not be heavy, just bulky, and way too big for you to hold your arms straight at your sides. It was brutal lugging it back to my apartment; I worked up quite a sweat doing so. My arms still felt shaky a full hour after the trek, and are incredibly sore today. It was interesting also, to note that none of the better dressed Chicagoans offered a hand, but two bums did.

Anyway.

I didn’t post an entry about last week’s improv class (Improv B V), due to my anxiety over my car breakdown. Well, due in part. It wasn’t one of my best classes too. My lines were flat and jokes, if I managed any, were pretty sorry. We did a lot of scene work that class, and played some heightening games – e.g. one game was called “That’s important!” During a scene (in which the audience picks the setting and the relationship), audience members can randomly yell out, “That’s important” to anything they want the improvisers to elaborate on. One of the more memorable game that class was a different take on the game “Broken Telephone”. In the standard game, people were supposed to pass on a whispered message and try to keep the gist of it, if not the message itself in its entirety. In this game however, we had to pass on a perfectly ordinary/boring story, deliberately embellishing it as we did so. Somehow my boring recount of a bike ride along the lake after work turned into an odyssey with encounters with the famed lochness monster. Another story of falling asleep on one’s arm turned into a nightmare involving fighting in the second world war (as evident from the old-style helmets) in which one’s arm was blown away, only to be saved by Darth Vader in a UFO spaceship.

Yesterday, I went for Improv B VI, despite feeling kind of blah about it after what seemed like a long and bad day at work. In the end, I’m glad I went though – it was one of our best classes ever. Not only was the energy level really high, but everyone seemed to be operating in full improv mode – all the impersonations/characters were spot on, and the skits were side-splittingly hilarious.

After the usual ball toss warm up (we used a new rubber ball this time, because I um punctured the last one playing with it the previous class), we divided into pairs to work on dialogues (The theme for that class was “Dialogue Rules!”) First we worked on negativity and explored how it kept the scene static – I paired up with Oliver on this one and I pretended to be a car salesman. He rejected all my suggestions on the make, color, and sizes of the cars. Urgh. Then we turned the scene around, and worked on positive emotions – this time, we  found that we could quickly agree on the make of the car, and started enthusing about all things Prius.

We then switched partners and explored the use of time and space in dialogue. I paired with Rob and we pretended to be pilot trainees talking about a shared past experience – days of drinking while trying to pass, for the nth time, our flight exams. Then we did another scene where we focused on talking about the future. After that, we did a scene focusing on the present. It really drove home the point how much stronger the scene was when we focused on the present because we could more easily/naturally incorporate object work. It was a pretty fun scene – somehow talk on pilot training diverted to Rob’s AA experiences, how he had to seek help to stay sober and finally pass his pilot test.

We switched partners again. Santi and I explored the mix of dialogue and object work, and how much more interesting the scene could be if we did not focus our conversation topic on the object work itself. Pretending to be office workers, we focused our conversation in the first scene entirely on the reports we were working on at that moment. I guess you could only gripe so much about how boring accounting is, before it starts to get boring? In the next scene, we kept to the same relationship and environment, but this time talked of things outside of work – about what we did over the weekend, which turned into goals and resolutions for the year, which turned into drinking habits.

In the last switch, I paired with Brad and we examined the use of emotions in scene work. I pretended to be an analyst covering his company (which is actually the case in real life!). In the first scene, we pretended to both be really blah about our jobs and how we related to each other. “So you did this? Ohhhhkaaay.” “Yahhhhhhhh. So.” In the next scene, we pretended to be super-duper upbeat and was pretty soon yelling and affirming everything and anything. While the second scene was definitely a lot more electric and energetic, Judy was quick to assuage us that indifference could work well in a scene too. She raised the example of an old Second City play, where a married couple is seemingly depressed about their 50th wedding anniversary.

Next, we played a Questions standoff game. We broke into two lines, with the front two people firing questions after questions at one another. You could only respond with a question, and if you were slower, you got booted to the back of the line. While most people managed to shoot off only a couple questions before they were stumped and had to go to the back of the line (I got in maybe 8? Hehe), Rob and Maddy blew all competition away. They had such a blast trading slurs at one another, and could seemingly go on forever with their insults until Judy, after managing to control her laughter, cut them off.

And then it was break time already. Haha, I was having too much fun howling with laughter to realize how quickly time had flown by.

After the break, we played an reiteration game: Two people goes onto the stage, and someone starts a dialogue. The other person has to repeat the second part of the first person’s sentence before adding his/her own line. Rob and Kathy started off the game. They were at the farmers’ market and had a pretty funny exchange about eating pears and not wanting to pay for it. This was a pretty strong game – I liked that we were afforded an extra couple seconds to think by having to repeat what the other person said. And it was helpful too, since it forced us to listen closely to what the other person was saying – I have a really bad habit of spacing out mid-conversation. At the same time, it was an easy way to keep the conversation flowing and even giving it a different tone. E.g. Person A, excitedly: “I’m going to the zoo!” Person B, incredulously, “You’re going to the zoo??” Some other scenes: Bridget and I were at the aquarium, Oliver and Maddy in a confessional booth, Erin and Brad in a motel room (Brad, “Let’s have monkey sex!”). I really liked this game – I think I’ll use this the next time I’m in a stump on what to say; just keep on repeating.

Our last game of the night was a blast. It was another improv game (of course), but this time, we could choose our own environment and relationship. The audience had then to guess the environment without our explicitly stating it (i.e. “We are in the library now, and we are going to find this book.”) Some fun scenes: Lauren and Dan on a motorbike – Lauren, yelling into Dan’s ear over the roar of the wind: “I don’t want to go see your mother! I’ve been meaning to talk to you, I don’t feel close to you anymore!” Dan, yelling back while steering precariously: “Well lean closer!” Chris and Rob as signallers – Chris: “Can I tell you something private?” Rob, shouting over the engines of the planes: “Tim, can you hear me? His headphones are on, go ahead, tell me!” And then they start to yell out Chris’s embarassing secret. Oliver and Kathy as teacher and kindergartner talking about Kathy’s huge dog and her Nazi mother. Bridget and Vanessa in Starbucks, with Vanessa as the irate customer who has to tell Bridget exactly what to do. Erin and Brad on a roller coaster, smoking a bong. I paired up with Santi, and we were cave explorers. I started the scene yelling, “Fucking A Sam! I don’t know why you made me do this. Fuck. Argh, I said I wasn’t going to swear for Lent, now look what you made me do!” Heh, I got away with the swearing, even though Judy had discouraged us from it. Has to do with the innocent looks you know? Anyway, it was a fun scene, and Santi was wonderful. Me: “Do you know where we are going?” Santi, crawling through a hole, “There’s only one line! Did I tell you I was afraid of snakes?”
 

Improv B IV

Focus was on relationship work last night. After the usual line up of warm up games, we kicked off the session relatively mildly with short pair work. One person would be seated in a chair (which we designated the fart chair, since, unfortunately, it tended to squeak whenever anyone sat down) and basically had to react to whatever the other person came in on the scene with. We did a few rounds of this game – in the first round, each person only had a line each to say; in the second, the person in the seat had to first wordlessly react to the other’s opening line, then reply in a sentence; in the third round, the person in the seat had to try further heighten the scene by adding a little more detail. In all three rounds, we had to round off the relationships by giving one another names, which really, is surprisingly harder than it sounds. Most of the time, we’d forget, and our sentences would go like that: Person A: “Hey, what did you get on your test… … Mary?” Person B: *pauses for dramatic reaction* “Oh, I failed. My mum’s going to kill me… … Tom.”

Next, we did more pair work – the audience would throw out a suggestion of “what” and “where” and in pairs, we’d try to start a conversation and figure out a relationship between the characters. In this exercise, the characters had to be on really, really, close and friendly terms with one another. Judy dubbed it the “sickly sweet” exercise. I partnered up with Lauren this game, and we had to act out a scene on a sinking Greek cruise ship. We quickly established that we were sisters. Initially, I pretended that we were workers on board the ship trying to save the imaginary passengers, but Judy quickly put a stop to that, and told me to focus on building a relationship with Lauren. That worked out really well, and we had a blast holding on tightly to one another, pretending to jump into the frigid sea, and then spending many frantic moments trying to forgive one another for the various misdeeds or pranks we’d pulled before. One of my favorite scenes that round was Kathy and Santi pretending to be Hollywood celebrities who hook up while walking down the red carpet.

We also did some work in threes, which I think is quite a bit harder than pair work since you have to be very aware of not just one person, but two, at the same time. And I quite suck at that, since I can barely remember the names I call people the moment they leave my mouth. “Psst, what did I just call you?” I was with Dan and Vanessa this round, and we were campers at Magic Camp. After some fumbling around, we established that Dan was trying to teach me how to saw Vanessa in half, and she tricked us with fake blood. One of my favorite scenes this game was Chris, Maddy and Lauren’s scene where they pretended to be at a marriage counseling session. Maddy, a svelte girl, ingeniously latched onto the idea that she was a 4’8’’ 300 lb woman who complained that she was having trouble with the housework though she insisted she did her share. Lauren, in her wise-counselor ways, gravely nodded and said, “Ok, we’ve established that you do pull your weight around the house.” It was a riot. And Judy timed the “Scene!” well, ending their act just as talk turned to problems in the bedroom.

At the end of the night, we stood in a circle and threw someone into the “hot spot” in the middle of the circle. Five different people would take turns to go into the circle and start a dialogue with the person in the middle – the catch was that the pairs always had to have contrasting emotions. These were short scenes, sort of like Freeze, since anyone could jump in and tag the non-hot-spot person out at any time.

Last night, we were asked to indicate our interest in continuing the class after level B. Everyone ticked yes on the form. Eep, I shudder to think that I actually have to put up a public performance at the end of the level C. I need to work on my emotions and acting repertoire. I have such a limited range of accents to pull off too. Well actually, I can’t even pull off the standard American accent, much less affect a Boston twang or Southern slang. Eep.

Improv B III

We focused on emotions this session.

One of our warm up games had us standing in a circle. One person would then walk around the circle, evoking an emotion suggested by Judy, then tag another person who would heighten that emotion. For instance, the first emotion was “happy”. The first person started off smiling slightly, and by the time we got to the last person, he was rolling around on the floor in glee. Other emotions we used were “sad”, “angry”, and  “seductive”. That would have had to come up eh?
After that, we moved into pair work. Two people would take turns to go on stage. The audience would then pick out two contrasting emotions, suggest a setting and a relationship. And the couple would have to each first pick an emotion, and trade that back and forth as the scene progresses. I paired up with Erin. Our emotions were “shy” and “outgoing”, scene was in a bar. I was the shy one first, and with each glass of beer, gradually emboldened until I was brave enough to offer her a lapdance. She was the outgoing girl who gradually withdrew into herself as she got drunker. There were other really good scenes – Dan and Alex got “seductive” and “violent” and their setting was a yoga session; Lauren and Rob got “horny” and “anxious” with a Great America setting; and this girl who sat in on our class and Collette got “cranky” and “lonely” – they were fishmongers.

Our next game had us broken up into threes. Before the game started, Judy took down a whole list of emotions for us to work on. The audience could then select a setting and relationship for each trio. I was paired with Collette and Lauren. We were fish tank cleaners at the aquarium who were expecting the arrival of a dolphin. We started off the game by setting the scene – talked about the dolphin, about how excited we were. Judy then randomly yelled “freeze” and gave us an emotion to express. One of the emotions we got was “desperate”, whereupon I began pleading with the others to take my shift. Other people’s scene were: toll booth workers who were disgruntled that the Ipass was making their job obsolete; traders on the trading floor who were horrified that the market had dropped a hundred points; motivational speakers giving a talk at a high school; three women firefighters, one of whom was knocked up. It was pretty fun, but it was definitely a lot easier to work in pairs and listen to one other person than to work in threes. At times, it was hard to follow the conversation because everyone was talking together at once.

Next, in groups of five, we played Conductive Griping. We’d played it before in Level A IV. It had been fun then, but we’ve really improved as a class – it was exhilarating to see how far we’ve come. Everyone was really in tune to Judy’s conduction, and we could gripe about our various pet peeves (suggested by the audience) at her will – either loud or soft, fast or slow. Some pet peeves suggested: color coordinated people, people with ugly teeth, people with disgusting toe nails, people who fart, people with hair (Brad got this, and he was bald), Urban Outfitters, the carnival. I got candy cane. Haha. And I went on and on about how a lonely old man must have invented that so people over the world could sympathise with his plight, but that it was sick because it’s not fair to subject little children to such horrors of old age. And that it’s digusting because there’s really no polite way to eat candy cane, all those stupid people who lick and lick their canes in front of me like I want to see their wet and slimy tongues, it’s not in the least sexy contrary to what they might think. Etc.

We also played Conductive Story, another familiar game. The audience would suggest a story, and assign each one of us with an emotion. Judy would then point to each of us at will and we would have to make up a story using our given emotion and continue it until she cut us off and pointed to another person. My group’s story was “Angela Rose and her Magic Nose”, hehe, suggested by Collette who is writing a children’s book with the same name. She was inspired by her nose job. I have to say, I’m not very good at listening to other people. Half the time, I was spacing out until I realized I had no idea what thread the story had taken. Thankfully, my emotion was “silly”, so I could act ditzy and pretend I had no idea what I was talking about. Aye.

It was a fun class – it’s a ton easier to play with emotions I think, than to do object work. We have spring break next week (!), so no class then. Hehe, which is pretty good timing, considering that Kerk will be in town! He’s already on the plane enroute from Japan as we speak.