You ever have one of those times where you screw something up despite your best intentions? You know you're screwing up while you're screwing up, but the dominoes continue to fall.
That, in a nutshell was my Level Three audition. The "Dear John" e-mail I received at 1:30 a.m. was a mere formality: try again in two months.
At least I knew I had screwed up and why, so the result wasn't a shock. Only 36 people get accepted out of the approximately 75 people who audition. Several of my friends didn't make it on Friday. Several male friends. One of us posted the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer segment with the land of misfit toys. We may form our own troupe: The Land of Misfit Boys. Well, congrats to my friends who made it through.
Anyhow, a look behind the curtain: introduce yourself, do a three person scene, and then do montage.
It's over very quickly.
The three person scenes have you lined up alphabetically with your class members. So, in class it may have been wise to have sought out more scenes with the two people immediately after me in the alphabet to familiarize myself with these actors. Oops. Montage was done one of two ways: one class did sweep edits and had call backs in their montage. Our class and one of the other classes did walk-out edits with no call backs. The montage in our class devolved into a series of five person scenes. Five-person scenes are very cluster-fucky in a montage. It wasn't as bad as freeze tag during the initial audition, but that's not saying much.
You can also get your notes after the audition to find out what you need to work on. Me? My characters did not have enough detail, and I did not have enough emotional range during my audition. Fair enough, and I'm not surprised. I would've probably used the word "insipid" if I were to give myself notes. But, I digress, lest this become a pity-wank.
So, yours truly will be planning his next improv steps and looking forward to giving this another try in two months.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Something I learned Today
We had a double header. One, two, three, four, five, six -- count 'em -- six hours of improv. Loved it.
We began with some of our usual scene work exercises. As usual, it kind of went off the rails.
So, again, we came back to sharing stories of interactions that we had with people within the the past week or so. Sadly, many of us found ourselves scrapping to find an example, because it had to be a face to face reaction instead of e-mail, telephone, Skype, bathhouse rendezvous, etc. Gellman urged us to use these to initiate our scenes. That may seem contrary to the idea of making it up from scratch. It's not. One of the pitfalls is to try to be too "empty" when you begin a scene. Unless you are really at the top of the improv game, you probably can't be truly "empty" when you begin a scene and still be able to pull it off (i.e. produce a good scene). Having some lines stored up is just a trick of the trade. So we shared some of our personal interactions over the recent past, and began our scene work.
Again the fundamentals are stressed: emotional reactions to the situation, the other actors in the scene, and the environment. With respect to the interactions that we had, one may fall into the trap of assuming the role you were in when the interaction happened. The stronger choice for improvising is to choose the person on the interaction who is doing the action. A variation on that advice is to treat your scene partners the way that people treat you.
Dan and Kristen had a fun scene where he sought counseling from a friend who is not a licensed psychiatrist. She ran with it. Then he got pissed off with her diagnosis. Kristen had this funny Godzilla line -- complete with Godzilla claw motion -- that was directed at Dan.
The second three hour session was very much dedicated to Gellman drilling us on fundamentals to get us ready for our audition on Friday. (The audition to determine if we get to move on to level three and the remainder of the conservatory levels.) We worked on three person scenes (one part of the audition process) in the first of the second session (the third quarter?). We had ten people in class, so two lucky dogs got to perform two three person scenes. Yeah, I was all over that shit.
Scott, Zach (a Sunday session guy), and I played a fun scene in an airport. Our flight was delayed, and Zach's character was worried that his wife would flip out. My character was recently divorced and not happy about it. Scott's character was gay, and Zach and I agreed that he had it easier because guy's are easier to deal with and his partner Dale (not in the scene) was pretty cool. Scott had this great reaction line where he accused us of judging him with our eyes. He could see that we were just imagining he and his partner having sex every time he spoke. That was a fun scene to be in.
We had a bit of discussion afterwards about what works in a scene. Personally, I've been over thinking things way too much in my conservatory classes. In the past couple weeks, I've tried (with occasional success) to just have fun and not over think and over process a scene. Almost anybody who seriously pursues improv probably did impersonations and characters for their family and friends long before they ever took an improv course. And they probably made their family and friends laugh with these antics, an that encouragement maybe resulted in school plays, prank phone calls, being a class clown, or whatever.
I know that's how things played out for me, and when I'm impersonating a co-worker for other co-workers, or impersonating a relative for other relatives, or what have you, I don't over think it. I don't try too hard to be funny. I don't build up whatever I'm doing to be some great monumental statement. I just have fun and act the way I think that person would act with all the physical ticks, voice inflections, stock phrases, and whatever else enters my head. It's just fun. And it's easy to morph into these people because I've observed them. I've noticed the small things, spent time with them, and assuming their persona for a brief while doesn't feel like a huge stretch. The past few weeks, I've made a conscious effort to reconnect with that. I still stumble and fall into bad habits, but I've felt more locked into the process recently and simplifying things helps immensely. Paying attention to what the instructor says and has said for the past eight weeks also helps. (So glad I've been writing it down and regurgitating it into cyberspace; I can review my notes on my phone when I'm riding the Blue Line on a weekday morning. It sure as hell beats having what I think is a staring contest with the former fratboy day trader douche who wears his sunglasses for the entirety of train ride. But I digress.) The advice to have a line or even a character in your back pocket before you step out makes it less daunting. Ultimately, that's not too different from riffing with friends, except that you have some parameters to work with and ground rules to keep in mind.
On that note, Gellman told us that part of what we're being taught to do is to fuck around with focus. Fuck around with focus. What a great ethos.
The last portion of class was fucking around with characters and we were encouraged to get goofy, crazy, whacky, and bats hit. Shit got pretty warped -- as it was supposed to. I got to use my Canadian accent, which is always fun for me. (And not a great stretch because I have several relatives who live in various small towns east of Toronto along the 401.) There was a great scene where Kristen was a grandmother who had some form of dementia (I guess), two of her grandkids were trying to keep her from hurting herself, and she accused them of wanting her dead. Casey (the difficult third grandchild) just agreed with that accusation of wanting Grannie to croak, Grannie lauded him for his honesty, and the scene clicked into place after that.
There was so much great scene work that I'm not recalling at this late hour, but this was an immensely fun day of improv. Everybody in the class is immensely talented, and it's a privilege to play with them. We were joined by two awesome improvisers from the Sunday class: Zach and Ann Marie. It was a pleasure having them on stage.
Wow, after six hours, I wanted to keep going.
We began with some of our usual scene work exercises. As usual, it kind of went off the rails.
So, again, we came back to sharing stories of interactions that we had with people within the the past week or so. Sadly, many of us found ourselves scrapping to find an example, because it had to be a face to face reaction instead of e-mail, telephone, Skype, bathhouse rendezvous, etc. Gellman urged us to use these to initiate our scenes. That may seem contrary to the idea of making it up from scratch. It's not. One of the pitfalls is to try to be too "empty" when you begin a scene. Unless you are really at the top of the improv game, you probably can't be truly "empty" when you begin a scene and still be able to pull it off (i.e. produce a good scene). Having some lines stored up is just a trick of the trade. So we shared some of our personal interactions over the recent past, and began our scene work.
Again the fundamentals are stressed: emotional reactions to the situation, the other actors in the scene, and the environment. With respect to the interactions that we had, one may fall into the trap of assuming the role you were in when the interaction happened. The stronger choice for improvising is to choose the person on the interaction who is doing the action. A variation on that advice is to treat your scene partners the way that people treat you.
Dan and Kristen had a fun scene where he sought counseling from a friend who is not a licensed psychiatrist. She ran with it. Then he got pissed off with her diagnosis. Kristen had this funny Godzilla line -- complete with Godzilla claw motion -- that was directed at Dan.
The second three hour session was very much dedicated to Gellman drilling us on fundamentals to get us ready for our audition on Friday. (The audition to determine if we get to move on to level three and the remainder of the conservatory levels.) We worked on three person scenes (one part of the audition process) in the first of the second session (the third quarter?). We had ten people in class, so two lucky dogs got to perform two three person scenes. Yeah, I was all over that shit.
Scott, Zach (a Sunday session guy), and I played a fun scene in an airport. Our flight was delayed, and Zach's character was worried that his wife would flip out. My character was recently divorced and not happy about it. Scott's character was gay, and Zach and I agreed that he had it easier because guy's are easier to deal with and his partner Dale (not in the scene) was pretty cool. Scott had this great reaction line where he accused us of judging him with our eyes. He could see that we were just imagining he and his partner having sex every time he spoke. That was a fun scene to be in.
We had a bit of discussion afterwards about what works in a scene. Personally, I've been over thinking things way too much in my conservatory classes. In the past couple weeks, I've tried (with occasional success) to just have fun and not over think and over process a scene. Almost anybody who seriously pursues improv probably did impersonations and characters for their family and friends long before they ever took an improv course. And they probably made their family and friends laugh with these antics, an that encouragement maybe resulted in school plays, prank phone calls, being a class clown, or whatever.
I know that's how things played out for me, and when I'm impersonating a co-worker for other co-workers, or impersonating a relative for other relatives, or what have you, I don't over think it. I don't try too hard to be funny. I don't build up whatever I'm doing to be some great monumental statement. I just have fun and act the way I think that person would act with all the physical ticks, voice inflections, stock phrases, and whatever else enters my head. It's just fun. And it's easy to morph into these people because I've observed them. I've noticed the small things, spent time with them, and assuming their persona for a brief while doesn't feel like a huge stretch. The past few weeks, I've made a conscious effort to reconnect with that. I still stumble and fall into bad habits, but I've felt more locked into the process recently and simplifying things helps immensely. Paying attention to what the instructor says and has said for the past eight weeks also helps. (So glad I've been writing it down and regurgitating it into cyberspace; I can review my notes on my phone when I'm riding the Blue Line on a weekday morning. It sure as hell beats having what I think is a staring contest with the former fratboy day trader douche who wears his sunglasses for the entirety of train ride. But I digress.) The advice to have a line or even a character in your back pocket before you step out makes it less daunting. Ultimately, that's not too different from riffing with friends, except that you have some parameters to work with and ground rules to keep in mind.
On that note, Gellman told us that part of what we're being taught to do is to fuck around with focus. Fuck around with focus. What a great ethos.
The last portion of class was fucking around with characters and we were encouraged to get goofy, crazy, whacky, and bats hit. Shit got pretty warped -- as it was supposed to. I got to use my Canadian accent, which is always fun for me. (And not a great stretch because I have several relatives who live in various small towns east of Toronto along the 401.) There was a great scene where Kristen was a grandmother who had some form of dementia (I guess), two of her grandkids were trying to keep her from hurting herself, and she accused them of wanting her dead. Casey (the difficult third grandchild) just agreed with that accusation of wanting Grannie to croak, Grannie lauded him for his honesty, and the scene clicked into place after that.
There was so much great scene work that I'm not recalling at this late hour, but this was an immensely fun day of improv. Everybody in the class is immensely talented, and it's a privilege to play with them. We were joined by two awesome improvisers from the Sunday class: Zach and Ann Marie. It was a pleasure having them on stage.
Wow, after six hours, I wanted to keep going.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Words I Thought I Brought, I Left Behind
My notes are for shit this time around, so here goes (mostly from memory).
We began with a warm-up that was very much within my skill set: improvise as poorly as possible. Owned it. Clunky exposition. Talking about objects. Questions? Negating your scene partner's choice. Leaving. I told my my scene partner she had poop smeared on her forehead. Dicks were whipped out -- by women. Farts were mentioned. People were called gay. Sadly, we forgot to mention Hitler. Schade.
After that shit show, we got down to business. We did two exercises that allowed everybody to have three scenes. All in all, we had a solid class. The first exercise was two people with one of them doing an activity. An activity that takes concentration. Something you do not want to be distracted from, and your goal is to carry on with that activity for the entire scene. Your scene partner, is trying to distract you. Both actors were to strive to be a character. The exercise consisted of two scenes, with the same characters in each scene. In the second scene, the setting would change, and the "doer" from the first scene would be the distractor in the second scene and vice versa.
This was fun. Mario and Kristen did a scene where they were exes trying be "just friends." Yeah, right. Gellman pointed out a cool thing about their two scenes: they were both doing the same activity: moving around old shit (one time in an attic and the other time in a storage facility), which was also reflective of their dialogue. They were having a conversation that they had probably had had many times before when they were dating. Scott and Kris had a very fun scene where they were step-siblings. And they played and drew on Scott's activity from the first of the two scenes: building a house of cards.
This exercise marked the second time in Conservatory where I tried to perform a character based loosely on a good friend of mine. He's distinctive in his voice, diction, and personality. So that helps. It feels almost as if you're cheating when do something like that. There's another benefit too: the person I base this character on is extremely slow to anger and almost always sees the good in people. So, that helps with my anger issues during scene work. I was in the scene with Megan, who gave this overly agreeable nice guy persona great stuff to work with as the home-wrecking next-door neighbor.
A cool aspect of this exercise was that the second scenes were invariably stronger than the first. The second scenes were stronger because the exposition was already out of the way for us, so we didn't feel the need to set the table for the scene. It made the scenes stronger because it was believable that the two characters already knew each other, had a history, and the scene would just begin as if the audience is walking in on a conversation that was already underway.
The second exercise was quite the challenge: two person scene in which you can only speak when you touch your scene partner. And, no, you don't just get to hold onto your scene partner for the whole scene so you can talk whenever you want. This was a great exercise for making silence less uncomfortable and feeling its power while you're in the middle of it. You also have to focus more on your scene partner, his or her facial expression, movement, and location on stage. Really cool stuff. Scott and Elizabeth had an awesome scene where they were mother and son. Scott was a gamer with no friends -- with the exception of the eight people scattered all over the world with he plays his games.
Ultimately, the purpose of these exercises was to get us to do what we should be doing every time we play: be a character with strong needs and wants interacting with his or her environment with honest emotional reactions. Or something like that.
We began with a warm-up that was very much within my skill set: improvise as poorly as possible. Owned it. Clunky exposition. Talking about objects. Questions? Negating your scene partner's choice. Leaving. I told my my scene partner she had poop smeared on her forehead. Dicks were whipped out -- by women. Farts were mentioned. People were called gay. Sadly, we forgot to mention Hitler. Schade.
After that shit show, we got down to business. We did two exercises that allowed everybody to have three scenes. All in all, we had a solid class. The first exercise was two people with one of them doing an activity. An activity that takes concentration. Something you do not want to be distracted from, and your goal is to carry on with that activity for the entire scene. Your scene partner, is trying to distract you. Both actors were to strive to be a character. The exercise consisted of two scenes, with the same characters in each scene. In the second scene, the setting would change, and the "doer" from the first scene would be the distractor in the second scene and vice versa.
This was fun. Mario and Kristen did a scene where they were exes trying be "just friends." Yeah, right. Gellman pointed out a cool thing about their two scenes: they were both doing the same activity: moving around old shit (one time in an attic and the other time in a storage facility), which was also reflective of their dialogue. They were having a conversation that they had probably had had many times before when they were dating. Scott and Kris had a very fun scene where they were step-siblings. And they played and drew on Scott's activity from the first of the two scenes: building a house of cards.
This exercise marked the second time in Conservatory where I tried to perform a character based loosely on a good friend of mine. He's distinctive in his voice, diction, and personality. So that helps. It feels almost as if you're cheating when do something like that. There's another benefit too: the person I base this character on is extremely slow to anger and almost always sees the good in people. So, that helps with my anger issues during scene work. I was in the scene with Megan, who gave this overly agreeable nice guy persona great stuff to work with as the home-wrecking next-door neighbor.
A cool aspect of this exercise was that the second scenes were invariably stronger than the first. The second scenes were stronger because the exposition was already out of the way for us, so we didn't feel the need to set the table for the scene. It made the scenes stronger because it was believable that the two characters already knew each other, had a history, and the scene would just begin as if the audience is walking in on a conversation that was already underway.
The second exercise was quite the challenge: two person scene in which you can only speak when you touch your scene partner. And, no, you don't just get to hold onto your scene partner for the whole scene so you can talk whenever you want. This was a great exercise for making silence less uncomfortable and feeling its power while you're in the middle of it. You also have to focus more on your scene partner, his or her facial expression, movement, and location on stage. Really cool stuff. Scott and Elizabeth had an awesome scene where they were mother and son. Scott was a gamer with no friends -- with the exception of the eight people scattered all over the world with he plays his games.
Ultimately, the purpose of these exercises was to get us to do what we should be doing every time we play: be a character with strong needs and wants interacting with his or her environment with honest emotional reactions. Or something like that.
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