This week I was a week a improv where it was all about getting the fundamentals right in a scene – the who, the what and the where. Just like last week, there was a lot of new faces at improv and some that I hadn’t seen in a while (like for instance, one i hadn’t seen since i was host of Launchpad last year!).

We started off the lesson with a few warm up games – the first was a name game in the style of Superheroes, there is an Earthquake and we hae to say we are a certain superhero but cannot save the world because of a really stupid reason that your superhero cannot do with their skill. The skill you were given was by the person next to you. So For example:

K – I am jam man K but i cannot save the world because i am too sticky but maybe Flower Willow girl can

Me – I am Flower Willow girl Holly and I cannot save the world from the Earthquake as I am too pretty and it will not help the quake, Maybe Cow Udder man can

Mark – I am Cow Udder man Mark etc etc

The next warm up game we played was a game was  a two person scene where one person would do the who, another the what and another the where, so it was three lines of dialogue from both people to make a intro into a scene. It is a fun way to get into the style of improv for the newbies and also a nice little way to get into this weeks lesson.

This week the main aim of the lesson was to focus on interacting with the scene around you and making sure that you use what you build in the scene. We did something like this with Carleen before at the end of last year, but I remember I didn’t enjoy the lesson, not because of what we were learning but because I was with a person who was new to improv who would always block a scene and it had something to do with working at a clock factory. This time round I was partnered up with another newbie improviser who was completely the other end of the richter scale and was up for being in the scene and playing it out no matter how it turned out.

There is one thing that I tend to notice about improv, and something that always happens to me that  a lot of the time. In a lot of scenes in improv, you ask the audience to give the two people in the scene a relationship that they can work with. So this can be mother and daughter, boss and co-worker, siblings who hate each other etc I can bet you nine times out of ten i will get the scene where the couple have to pretend to like each otehr / be romantically involved. It happens so much. When I first started doing improv i hated these scenes and being that person on stage who has to be the flirt / be in a loving mood and used to feel myself freezing up doing them because its a hard thing to adjust to doing that sort of thing in front of an audience. Even when its all fake, it really can be awkward as hell.

Most of them time when I was in Newcastle I was put into these situations with other female improvisers – at first I found this even as a hetrosexual woman easier to do because to me it was a fake situation and far from the truth of who i am so you play the part naturally and  more easier. I used to hate doing these scenes in particular with guys because you can’t help it but you do naturally feel you’re being judged by your dating skills etc which OBVIOUSLY you are not but it can feel a little bit weird.. No REALLY weird. I think with improv, like any sort of comedy you over come that personal feeling barrier and think ‘sod it’ i am just going to jump in the scene and go for it. There was a time in improv when this came and I haven’t looked back. IT can be difficult though if you have to do a scene like this is you are with someone who won’t commit or just go with it.  

I have worked with new improvisers on scenes like this before and they are usually thrown into a situation similar to what I went on about above – the fear, the reality, the audience. I must to praise to new Adam this week as he did the opposite he just went into the role and went with how it played out. We were meant to be on a fishing trip and the plan was you were not meant to be talking about the fishin but make movements and interact with the scene around you to give the impression that we were after each other. 

IT must of gone well as we got laughs which was great. There are always moments in scenes like this when I usually feel a sense of stepping outside of my body and the laughter creeps in. I suppose the best way to describe it is the pint glasses theory from Coupling that Jeff discusses – something can start off really small and not very funny but if you abalance the glasses on top of themselves the point of the laughter will grow and the longer you hold it in the bigger the laughter will get. When they get so tall they will collapse and make you break into a constant stream of laughter. This happened to me – I said the line “where are the worms” and throughout the rest of the scene the laughter built up and throughout the rest of the scene all I could think of was this line and it built up that I ended up laughing at some random point and couldn’t stop. 

Case Study – Jimmy Fallon,SNL 

If there was one person that was renowned for messing up on SNL it was Jimmy Fallon.  He was famous for being “that guy” that would mess up scenes with his laughter and sometimes the actors in scenes with him would deliberately go further to make Jimmy laugh even more.

This is a reason why I actually enjoy being that person who ends up breaking down in laughter is because you don’t just enjoy the laughter yourself it also makes the audience laugh loads as well.

Jimmy is known for this characteristic and has made him one of the best SNL players and has lead him to become one of the USAs most iconic comedy presenters.