Not Bad

Last night I had a decent improv show. The whole day was interesting. There had been an incident near the apartment. A guy with a gun had led police on a high speed chase and holed up in a house a little over half a mile way, and so the neighborhood was a little on edge. The matter was resolved in a matter of a couple hours, but jangled nerves healed slowly. This was some concern, since the location of the show was even nearer to where things had happened than my home.

As it was, one would not have known anything about it, as normally as the show proceeded. It was a student showcase, and several classes at lower levels went very nicely before it was the turn of my own. My roommate as well as other friends and acquaintances handled themselves nicely. I admit that I have some difficulty in paying much attention, and we typically have to miss some of the action while warming up for our own performance, but the other classes did well.

Three Deep

The LA Improv Fest, of which I wrote earlier, is now in its third day. The first was wonderful since I got to see things I wrote performed, not to mention some other cool stuff that happened. A friend asked me to help out with a performance of his that required a DJ, and then there were my friends who won the first round of a festival contest. The next night- last night- was practically as good. There were more shows involving friends, some of whom won and others of whom lost. It was good fun.

I was pleased not only to see and support friends, but to make new ones. I have an ongoing mission to progress every relationship I have, making people I don't know into people I know, people I know into people who know me, and so forth. This is commonly a difficult thing for me, and I accomplish it only in fits and starts, sometimes making no progress at all. This festival, however, amplifies the effect, and in the past couple days, I have managed more along these lines than is usually the case, so that's good.

Road Map

At last year's LA Improv Fest, we were given paper programs detailing the events of the week. That became my sacred guide and record. I marked every show I wanted to see, and then marked what I actually did see. When I was done, I had a pile of ticket stubs and a worn, heavily marked-up program. It meant so much to me. I honestly don't know where it is now, but I'm certain I didn't throw it away. It's definitely around the apartment somewhere.

Unfortunately, this year they failed to make a program available. I was advised, on picking up my pass, to simply keep up with things via the schedule as it appears on the website, and I nodded as if that was good enough, but of course it was not. The paper map was a tactile experience. It satisfied as no digital map could, just as skyping with someone you love cannot satisfy as being present with them could. Is that oddly sentimental? Maybe.

A Performance

I had an interesting improv class last night. I must remind myself to distinguish between improv class and improv practice. There is my team, which has practice on Saturdays. I chose to be with each of those people on a team, and I chose to learn from our coach. What I had last night was class. It is not up to me who goes and who teaches us. I do choose to remain a part of it, because it's great. It does have drawbacks.

Last night had the good and the bad. There were relatively few opportunities to perform since we have been joined with the next lowest level. Still, as I think I've said, I do like many of those people. Sometimes we get to perform with them. Last night we did not much.  We in "The Barrel" did our own long form. I entered the first scene, and it was dicey for me. My scene partner was giving good stuff, and I was not returning it well.

First Responder

You still learn things as long as you remain committed to the process. I've been doing improv for a few years, and there's a lot left to know. I have some natural obstacles to deal with, so maybe it's a longer road for me than for others. I know the fundamentals, but executing some things that go against my personality flaws is a real challenge. Becoming a better improviser will, necessarily, make me a better, happier and more successful person.

I picked up something in improv class a couple days ago that was interesting. I am an all or nothing person in some ways. I do well with things that I do every day. I struggle with things that I do not do that regularly. I suspect that it's an obsessive-compulsive thing. Sometimes that can work for you. I obsessively write for this blog to ensure that a post goes out every day. I write a minimum of seven tweets for every day, spacing them two hours apart from 10am to 10pm. That is set in stone.

Name Game

Improv team names are both important and unimportant. Having done improv for a few years in what I think can rightly be regarded as one of the hotbeds thereof in this world, I like to think I know something about what makes a good name. I've been thinking about it lately because one of my teams has been working on a new name to account for the fact that we are a very differently constituted team from the one that picked the name we'd been going with: "Mrs. Belvedere".

That's an important thing, that the name mean something for the people it represents. It should make you happy to say it in a show or to people in conversation. I had only ever been OK with the name, myself. When our composition changed, it no longer adequately spoke for the team any more than it ever had for me, and the motivation increased to do something about it. For that reason we had a little get together to pick a new name.

See Your Heroes

There are only so many things I see or hear about where I just have to make sure I do them. When I was a boy, there was a backpack designed to emulate a school locker, and upon a single viewing of the commercial, I went and found my mother, asking her for the backpack. I got the backpack all right. Things like that only come along so often, and a good example is an improv show that I attended last night.

I think it was Saturday night that, after a long, full day which left me exhausted, I read a tweet promoting a show at iO West called "Horribly Funny". The tweet advised the presence of special Heather Langenkamp, and that sure got my attention. You see, I'm a fan of horror movies. I have found that in Los Angeles there are many people more knowledgeable and more single-minded in their enthusiasm for the genre, but I really like horror movies too, and so I'm a big fan of Heather Langenkamp, who starred in several of the "Nightmare On Elm Street" films.

The Night Capped

The last couple days I have been recounting aspects of my Sunday. Monday it was my fantasy draft and yesterday it was my jokes that got into a local sketch show. Of course, I was not done yet after that finished. I was feeling pretty good, having had myself a little triumph there. If they'd cut my stuff entirely or heavily manipulated it, I'd have just wanted to go home. As it was, I wanted to keep the good times going.

Some other friends of mine (with whom I'd been on an improv team until recently) were there to host a two person improv show of their own, and I was very happy to talk with them a while in the bar after I'd spoken at length with other people involved in my thing. They asked if I would be going to their show, and I couldn't see why not. Of course, having a ticket to that other show, I could have seen all the shows on the main stage that night, but my friends were off doing their thing on another stage, and I wanted only to be there with them.

Just A Game

There's an improv game commonly used to warm up which I should do well at but don't. It's called "hot spot", and it's fairly simple. Everyone circles up except for one. That person gets in the middle and starts singing some ideally well-known song. It doesn't really have to be well known, because the point of the game is that someone else seizes on a word or phrase in the song and supplants the person in order to start singing a different song whose lyrics include that word or phrase.

I love music, and am into a lot of types of songs. Under ordinary circumstances, I can recall a fair number of songs and recite their lyrics with accuracy, or at least can recite enough to carry me until someone can begin with a new song. It helps if you can come up with songs people know, because they can back you up by singing alone or anticipating lyrics that you yourself don't know, and I don't have such a good command of known songs, but I should do well anyway.

Sitting In

I had a nice improv comedy experience the other day. I got an email from a friend who also does improv asking if I'd like to perform with a team of his the next night. I'm more given to saying yes these days than I used to be, so I quickly agreed. I didn't know at that time much more than the time and place, but I figured it would be a great thing to do, so I said yes and waited for the time of the performance to come.

A regrettable consequence of accepting the opportunity was that it came at the expense of other things I was hoping to do. I had to leave a roller derby game early, and I was left with too little energy afterward to go to a birthday party. Still, I find that it's always good to do things instead of being a spectator at things, which isn't to say that birthdays are less valuable, but there are times when a subsequent opportunity supersedes a prior commitment.

The Weather

The other day, I had one of my improv classes, as I do every week. I had a particular scene that developed in a rather interesting way. Without getting bogged down in the details of how this sort of improv works, I'll just say that I was playing a villain set against a populist hero in a manner designed to ape the "Braveheart" type of story. There I was, peering out at the peons from the window of my castle, when it happened.

I reasoned that a suitable demonstration of my derision for the pathetic class of poor villagers in this story would be to spit upon them from up high. I made that I was opening the window, and I puckered up as though I was spitting. In improv, you pretend to do things like disrobe or spit. Actually doing something is commonly impracticable and when you do one thing for real, it starts to look weird that you don't do the other things for real.

Contested

It was, last night, another night at the LA Improv Fest for me. It seems only sensible to spend as much time there as possible when there are so many special things going on and I retain a panoply of discounts and privileges. Of course, I would have been there last night anyway on account of certain good friends who were set to perform. There was a team featuring a couple of friends, one of whom has been an instructor of mine, but it didn't end there.

In addition to that first show I took in, there was a cage match competed in by a team featuring a number of friends and current or former instructors, all of whom are affiliated with the Monkey Butler program that got me into improv in the first place. A cage match is simple enough: two teams each perform the same form of improv, and a vote is held to ascertain which was the best. It naturally breaks down to which team has the most friends there most of the time.

Raison D'etre

Yesterday I wrote of the LA Improv Fest, whose first event I attended Saturday. Hours after my missive appeared online, my team had its performance. It proved to be an eventful one, and an eventful day. I had little to do during the day except write and find someone who could use my comp. A "comp", in case it's not as commonly understood as I think, is a free ticket extended to someone of a performer's choosing. I ought to have gotten to work on doling mine out sooner. At the last minute, it took some effort to deal with, but I did.

At long last, I showered and headed out to the venue, where I quickly came across one of my teammates. He and I waited a couple of minutes before a third person showed up. We piled into her car as she sought parking, which she found by a Jack In The Box. Having eaten nothing that day except an English muffin and coffee, I reasoned that I needed to put something in my stomach before performing, or else I would be in trouble. That I bought two chicken sandwiches was apparently odd and amusing to others. I worried that I had eaten too much, but it proved to not be a concern.

One Of Many

I've been doing more improv lately, some of which has been good and some of which has been bad. The sheer volume means that I'm getting better at a rate I never could just from practicing, but there have been some real clunkers. Then there was last night. My class team from Monkey Butler performed as the concluding act of a student showcase, and I have to say I think that it went fairly well. Maybe it even deserves a recap.

We have been working on a long form improv format called the "Improvised Movie". The idea is that the audience supplies three titles of existing movies. The improvisers pick one whose general theme is the inspiration for a performance. The audience then identifies two things that typically appear in that sort of movie, plus one that does not. Finally, they give a title for this newly-created movie, and at last the team is off!

Host For A Day

I've been doing improv for a while, and I've had a tolerable range of experiences within that. I've done a lot of formats and performed with a good number of people. Something I hadn't done was host a show. It was something I wanted to do, having done hosting-type stuff like that in Toastmasters for some time. I always thought it would be fun to host an improv show and that I could do some neat things, or at least do the same things in my own way.

I have hosted a burlesque show, but that calls for slightly different stuff from the host. I don't know that it went especially well. Certainly I wasn't asked to do it a second time. Anyway, I thought I could do an improv show well, and it finally came up recently. I jumped at the opportunity, although I already felt my hands were full with the musical improv performance I was to participate in during the same show. I just figured I'd deal with it.

Burlesque Night In America

I have mentioned the new improv team that I have joined, and I think I might have said something about some of the aspects of being on this team that are new to me, one of which is the regular scheduling of outings meant to foster esprit-de-corps. The first outing was salsa dancing, and I was content to participate only to fulfill my obligation to the team. I would not have gone otherwise, I assure you.

Happily, the next month's outing was to be planned by me. I gave it some thought and reasoned that I would bring something to the table that no one else would have. After all, that's why I'm on the team. I do things in shows that only I would do. What I settled on was a burlesque show. I've been to a few, enjoying them all tremendously. There is the obvious sex appeal in them, but there is music, dance, costume, character and story in them. I felt the team would enjoy it.

I, A Student

Last night, I had myself an improv performance. They are becoming more frequent, so while they remain notable experiences, they are becoming less severe as triggers of anxiety. Sometimes circumstances make them a little more or less so. In this case, I was in a somewhat different situation than I usually would be, as this was a different class in a different place. The people and the culture were a bit different.

A friend had ensnared me in the class he was teaching, and I decided it would be a very worthwhile thing do to, because even what I think I'm good at in improv is probably not beyond improvement. So it was that my late Saturday afternoons were taken up by this class and that I never caught the second half of a Florida Gators football game. Even preoccupied by their journey this season, I made some progress in class.

I'll Show You: Part Two

Yesterday I began the story of my latest improv show. Where I left off, a friend and I had just driven to the location in order to get there early after helping another friend move. The show was to be held at the same place as the beginning students showcase which preceded it by a month. It was a great space, and we were sorry to hear that this would be the last thing to take place there. It was in essence a cafe connected to a church. It felt like a very legitimate place to perform. As it was rather smaller than past locations but very much in line with big time improv shows, it was most conducive to what we were there to do. As always, our 'too cool for school' class from Sherman Oaks trickled in fashionably late, and I daresay that we were perhaps  intimidated by the passionate and energetic preparations already well underway on the part of the class from South Pasadena. They looked like the Cobra Kai dojo about to deliver a beatdown in the big karate tournament. After a fashion, we warmed up and got loose. I know that finally I'm beginning to really relax before a show. It felt pretty natural this time, nearly as though it were just another class. Keeping the same bearing is something I have had trouble with, so that was good.