Hit Me With Your Best Shot

We did extensive character work in Conservatory today.  In practice, this consisted of doing scenes in accents.  At least for this week.  Last week, we also did some character work at the start of class, but accents weren't necessarily part of the package.

Trying to improv a character is hard yakka.  It isn't necessarily easy when writing, but the risk of getting it wrong on the page is less immediate or painful than getting it wrong on stage.  In fact, the process that goes into writing a good character for a sketch is in many ways the opposite of improvising: it's calculated.  When a character is written for a sketch (or a sketch is written for an existing character), the character's foibles, wants, and needs are usually carefully and meticulously plotted out by the writer beforehand.  A very detailed character profile may include traits or details that never even find their way into the sketch, they just help the author add depth to the character that's in the scene.

In improv, on the other hand, we're encouraged to keep our mind open until the instant that we get on stage. We're meant to initiate our character or our scene after we step out instead of thinking five moves ahead before doing so. Again, it's tough.  The task is made all the more daunting when trying to navigate those channels in an accent that you may or may not be able to pull off well.  Of course, half the fun with accents in comic sketches can be when they're done poorly.  (I'm thinking of Andy Samberg's atrocious attempt at an Australian accent as Hugh Jackman -- when the real Hugh Jackman was onstage with him.)

In class yesterday, we had Australian accents, English accents, German accents,  Indian accents (as in the subcontinent), and southern accents.   A highlight was Siera and Casey's scene set in an English convenience store with Scott as a Yank tourist (complete with fanny pack) who had his banger pointed at by Casey's take on a homophobic English git.

We were encouraged/told/directed/ordered to bring energy and emotion to the scene because we owe it to the scene.  That recommendation comes with a word of caution: if this emotion or energy is too over the top, you will be scolded.

An insightful tidbit from yesterday was that scenes fall apart when one or more of the actors panic and think "this is comedy, I have to fuck it up."  Yeah, it gets fucked up, but all-too-often it gets fucked up in the sense that that it doesn't work.

We concluded with montage work and ended the class with a wedding scene involving the entire class.  the groom was having an asthma attack and his best man had to keep administering his inhaler to him during the vows.  The bride had a nasty bout of eczema afflicting her skull and her maid of honor had to keep scratching her head for her.  They lived happily ever after.