This week has been a fun week for all things improv – it started off with a show with one group and then had a really fun training session with my group, Punderstandably. So lets start with the show and then take it from there!

Show with Talking Dog

This week i took part in a set with the Longform Improv Troupe Talking Dog at the C3 Something night in Waterloo on a Sunday. The set was a 15 minute one and it was a mixture of two different forms – the Harold and the Montage.  The Harold is an Improv form which has three different parts – the first section which are three different scenes which tell three separate stories, the second section where you develop the three first scenes but in a different area of the story – so you either focus on one character or a different location, and then a final section where you try and interlink all three sections together.

A montage is when you keep tagging people in and out to change the scene, whilst also developing the stories of the people that the scene was originally about – so you can change the scene to their profession, or a jump in time, or even a scene that develops the story.

It was a fun set with stories about squirrel murders, bath tubs and television boxes, there was only 4 of us playing that night so the scene changes were quite frequent so that we could all have time to develop the stories.

Punderstandably HQ

This week our improv group got the chance to start practising for our new set of shows which we hope to be a part of in September. We  have four new members to our troupe who we are unveiling on our Facebook group this week but it means that with a whole bunch of new people means a whole bunch of new ideas and fun games.

This week was great as it brought some fresh and new exciting Ideas that we could bring to the stage. We worked on the themes tonight of sound and movement on the stage and new and exciting ways we could bring a character and a game to life for the audience.

The main games of today were based on audience participation to see how we could Integrate them into the Improv Towers format. We started off the evening playing some fun warm ups such as mind Meld.

We then went into games playing a game a lot of us haven’t played called pillars – this is when two improvisers do a scene and call two members of the audience up to the stage and they have to fill in the word when they get tapped in. A couple of the group aren’t a fan of this game but from playing it they started to find the fun side of it.

We then started to look at games that have a sound effect theme to them and played a few games they play on the television show Whose Line Is It Anyway where the improvisers have to react to the sounds the audience members are making. We really enjoyed this concept and from sitting down we came up with a way to incorporate it into a show.

This week was a really fun week for improv and had a lot of laughter and great ideas!

Case Study – City Lights

This weeks case study is taken from my favourite Charlie Chaplin film – City Lights. I find him a huge inspiration and from the age of 17 this film has been one of my favourites as i love the way that the action is put to music.

The reason I love this film so much is because is opened my eyes to just how much impact music can have in comedy and it’s been something that I have admired and looked to ever since. I love City Lights because the storyline is beautiful whilst also being so clever.

This week I have loved using sound effects in improv and I can’t wait for us to use it more. Even though it’s such an old idea – silent action to music is still ultra modern and so unique in the world that we live in. I am really excited as to how we are planning to implement it into our set and can’t wait to play it to an audience.