Conservatory: the beginning

Today was my first Conservatory class.  As far as I knew, there would be no familiar faces in this group, and that proved to be correct.  Twelve of us convened at the DeMaat Theater and made small talk before our instructor, Tim O'Malley, showed up at the appointed hour and began to mold us.  (Despite his Irish name, I thought he looked very vaguely like Bertolt Brecht -- that could be on account of his glasses.)

We actually stretched at the beginning of class.  That was a first for me.  We then did some warm-up games.  Particularly, we did one that had a purpose.  It was a word association game, but the premise was that we had to pick words that agreed with what we had been given before.  (Example: if "black" were the word, then a term that might "agree" with that could be "charcoal" or "eye" (black eye) or "coffee."  "White," on the other hand, would not be an agreement.)  In agreeing with the terms given, we could go back to a word that had already been said.  This was described as voting.  It was a difficult concept to grasp when it was explained, but as we played the game, it began to make sense.  This drill ended in a cool moment where we began with the word "strawberry" and eventually got onto the topic of things sexual with the word "orgasm" being introduced into the mix several times before one of our troupe members followed "orgasm" with "YES!"  That first "YES!" was all it took; everybody else followed suit, and that was the end of the game.

This class involved more theory and discussion than I've ever had in an improv class.  This isn't a criticism.  It was a change of pace and an indication (to me at least) that Conservatory is going to be more regimented -- not a big surprise.  Our scene work involved no two person scenes; we did three and four person scenes. That was a change from almost every class I've had before.  It just occurred to me, though, that our true scene work during the audition involved three people. Don't know the significance of that yet, but it may become clear in a few weeks.  There was also more side-coaching than other classes I've had.  It felt more like directing.  Again, another indication that the purpose of this program is more focused and professional than the level A through E classes.

Again, I didn't know any of my class mates, although a couple looked vaguely familiar from the corridors of the Second City's Piper's Alley complex.  I'm pretty excited though, because they seem like a good collection of people.