Notes: Paul Grondy Workshop

/ Arcase Comedy Theater/

​Paul Grondy

Last Saturday (March 30), I left Ric Walker's workshop and high-tailed it to Paul Grondy's. ​I have been a huge fan of Paul's ever since I heard Kevin Mullaney talk to him about Harold on the IRC podcast.

​Some great quotes from Paul:

  • There is nothing funnier than the committed portrayal of someone else
  • You don't make comedy, the audience does.
  • Taking the comedy out allows us to slow down, take more time between line and response, and give yourself time to consider.
  • I don't want to be inspired by my own brain.
  • Just do acting work up front. You risk a boring scene but it leaves you room to trust in the comedy happening.
  • If you match someone's crazy, it's ok but realize you are doing a shorter scene. Otherwise, give the crazy focus and fuel it.

Paul’s priorities in an improv scene:

  1. Be somebody -- play that person realistically and authentically, and the audience will listen to your dialog in context of that character
  2. His scene partner -- helping build his or her idea
  3. Kick-ass object work
  4. A good location
  5. Then, saying some funny stuff

We played two versions of an exercise called "yes because." The first was about making a completely ridiculous offer into an honest and believable reality. The second was about taking a mundane offer and playing it honestly, resisting the temptation to take it to crazy town. They were very different but both really fascinating.

We finished the workshop with an Armando where the goal was to play normal people behaving normally. We were told that nothing was to happen in these scenes. I found it very hard to resist that built-in urge to heighten and play hard. But it was wonderful! The lesson (as I understand it) was not that one should never heighten but that these instincts can easily push us over the line into creating comedy or (dare I say it) trying to be funny. It was interesting how hard it was to play normal people behaving normally.

​Posted with permission from Paul Grondy.

Notes: Ric Walker's Speed of Response Workshop

/ Steel City Improv Theater/

​Ric Walker

I took two amazing workshops last weekend. The first was Ric Walker's Speed of Response. If you have the chance to study with Ric, I cannot recommend him highly enough. He has a very light and fun approach that I appreciate.

This workshop was not what I expected, but I loved what I got. What I took out of it was a a better understanding of how my brain works -- particularly how it learns -- and what I can do to help it learn better and faster. With the eventual goal being to improvise smarter faster.

Here are some high level (paraphrased) quotes that stuck with me:​

  • Throw yourself at the edge of failure
  • Asking why helps you learn. Adults don't do this as much and it causes brain calcification.
  • If you are struggling, rather than use filler (e.g. "uhhh"), just take a breath. This reminded me of Susan Messing's gem, "Umm is the pause for the thought that will never come"
  • Being good at argument is counter to good brain function (uh oh)
  • You want ego in the product and none in the process
  • Self-awareness is another thing that helps your brain function improve

Ric said at the top not to expect a huge improvement immediately, but that he would provide us with individual and group exercises we could work on over time. And he certainly did! Here are some of my favorite new ones or new takes:

  • Individual exercises
    • Jump Rope
    • Fast finger pointing
    • Ear prompter (to the radio)
  • Pair exercises
    • Hot hands/slap
    • Ear prompter (with a partner)
    • Simultaneous talking
  • Group games
    • Hamburger
    • Chiminy Chee

We did an exercise at the end that I really liked as well. It was about literally walking through these steps with each line/response in a scene:

  • What did he or she say? (my scene partner)
  • ​How do I feel about it? (emotion word, not in terms of narrative)
  • ​What am I going to do about it?

I use a somewhat similar exercise I learned from Kevin Hines' ​where the first player delivers a line, second says what she feels about that, then the first says what he feels about how the second feels. But Ric's add that extra layer of action which really had a profoud effect. I definitely want to keep exploring this with my own work as well as teaching.

Thanks Ric for a fascinating 3 hours!​

Posted with ​permission from Ric Walker.

Getting the most out of a jam

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I came across an amazing article this week from People and Chairs: 7 Tips for Surviving an Improv Jam.  Also recently, Greg Gillotti and I discussed his post: Jam It Up.  

A jam is a different sort of beast than a regular improv show. Different performers have different relationships with jams and those relationships evolve over time. I wanted to share my personal journey with jams, and some reflection on it.

» When I began improvising, I was going to free workshops offered by the No Parking Players at CMU. After the first workshop, I posted to their discussion group apologizing for how terrible I had been. I was playing with funny people and felt bad about myself. I didn't know anything about improv and at that stage, I just felt bad about myself. I don't think everyone is this way, but if you are there is no shame in it. This is a good time to just watch jams and play with groups you can rehearse with while you develop your sensibility. Kasey Daley has talked about standing on the back line at the PIT jam for weeks just to be on stage before jumping into a scene. I think it's all good. 

» My first real jam was the Pittsburgh Improv Jam when it kicked into gear around 2010. I now had years of short form under my belt and some long form. But I was for the first time playing with a whole lot of new people. My comfort and confidence with Irony City now turned to dust as I did shitty scene after shitty scene. Only in this stage, my solution was not to pull back but to dive in. The jam offered me a sandbox to learn to play with new people and live Susan Messing's words, "If you're not having fun, you're the asshole." It took years, and I still hated most of my work there, but I learned how to have fun at that jam, and I feel as though I became a better improviser for it.

» Throughout that time, I got to play at the jam with members of 2 Second City touring companies, SCIT founders Justin Zell and Kasey Daley, SCIT Artistic Director Woody Drennan, Arcade Comedy Theater founders Jethro and Kristy Nolen, Mike Rubino, Abby Fudor, and Randy Kirk, not to mention people I admired for years in the community. People sometimes tell me they are intimidated to play with me. I understand that, but at the same time I loved the opportunity to play with these amazing performers. They made me feel taken care of and helped me understand what it felt like to get through an amazing scene and be out of my comfort zone. 

» Now, I love jams. ​As a more experienced player, I try to create those experiences for others. I love moments at the SCIT Social where I do a scene with one of my level 1 students for the first time, and I overhear him or her say something like, "What?! I'm doing a scene with Brian!" They don't realize the pressure is on me! And usually they improvise circles around me because they are taking class, and I have to remember my basics. It always gets me thinking more carefully about the work.

​Again, this is not meant to be a prescription. Just a bit about my evolving relationship with jams in the hopes it informs others'.

​

Warming Up

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People have a lot of different opinions on warming up, even in as small a community as we have in Pittsburgh.​

​I don't find this as a problem. People (or more specifically teams) should warm up however they feel readies them for a show. But there is one style I see a lot that I don't particularly feel is that helpful. So I want to start some discussion about that and propose some alternatives.

Here are what I find to be effective ways to warm up:​

  1. Warm up the way you want to play. In Acting on Impulse, Carol Hazenfield talks about warming up the way you want to play. The Impostors is a great example of this. Our warm up is organic, different every time, connects the group together and gets us in the mindset of jumping on whatever idea comes up first and all supporting it hard. 

  2. Change your mindset. A valuable function of the warmup is to transition you from bank tellers and software developers to actors and improvisers. I use a mix of warm-ups I've learned throughout the years for this, but one great set of them is in this post by Barbara Kite. The important part is to connect with your breath, take off your mask, and open yourself to the work.

  3. Connect with your group. Some groups I play with are not into the Zip Zap stuff or the hippy dippy stuff. We typically just chat, bull shit, and riff. I find this also valuable. We are connecting with each other, personally and comedically. And typically a lot of what comes up before the show ends up on stage. The best example of this is in TJ and Dave's documentary, Trust Us, This is All Made Up.

The method I find least effective is playing games just because you're used to it. I see and have been on groups who learned warm ups from a teacher or coach (likely using the method #1) and play them before a show. They aren't focused on why they are warming up that way, just being silly and haphazard. If your focus is to play more silly, then great! But that can't be true of every group.

I see where this comes from. It is certainly an easy default, but I don't think it takes much extra effort to think through what you want to work on and get to #1.​

What warm-ups do you find most effective? ​

Take note: Take notes!

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I blatantly stole this clever title from my friend and collegue Bill Shaw and his post of the same name -- the most popular post the Summa Blog has ever seen. The point of his post was to take notes. Even small, simple notes can save a lot of time, confusion, and pain in the future.

So as you can guess, not enough people take notes about software. But I find that fewer people take notes about improv. In classes, in rehearsals, when getting notes.

In my experience, though, the same reasoning applies. I take a lot of notes. Workshops and classes are the easiest example. I write down insights I learn, exercises I find valuable, and quotes that stick with me.

All of this goes into Evernote. Taking notes help you to remember, but you will remember even more if you review. Before a level, I will review notes from the previous level. Before a rehearsal, I try to review my notes from the previous rehearsal. And I review workshop notes whenever I struggle with that topic in my own work.

​My system may not work for you, but I do hope you find your own. Without notes, we are all floating in a sea of learning as temporary as the scenes we perform. And it becomes that much harder to learn from our mistakes.

Care about something

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A few years ago, I took a workshop with Katie Rich (now on Second City mainstage). She was in Pittsburgh with TourCo and was delighted to take some time out and put together a class for a rag tag bunch of improv enthusiasts. She started the workshop by asking us what every improv scene needs (my apologies to Katie, but I am sure I don’t remember this correctly):

“Agreement”
“Character”
“Big choices”
…

Then she told us her answer,

“Two people who care about each other. Who have a reason to be on stage together.”

This has been fundamental to my views on improvisation. Even prior I felt this way, but that moment helped put it into words for me. As I performed short form, studied long form, learned game and Harold, played with genre or with montage -- my goal has always been to care about what I am doing and who I am doing it with.

And not only on stage. I believe in passion as motivation. There is a lot of elbow grease that goes into a creative pursuit. I would rather see people fail trying to do something risky and challenging -- pushing themselves to the limits of what they could do -- then see people succeed at a mediocre show that I’ve seen them do before.

And these Katie Rich moments continue to happen for me. I feel passionately about my opinions, but I still lead the way for them to change when I am shown the joy of another way (or possibility).

That is the purpose of this blog: to explore my own thoughts and to create dialog with other improvisers (to get at something I care deeply about -- continuous improvement).

So for all those who care, welcome.