This week to end off my year of improv by attending a Saturday lesson with Suki Webster. These are always good fun as they are always full of lots of short form games and silliness. There was only seven of us so we got through a lot of games.We started the day off by doing lots of warm up games in the short form style including Die which is the story telling game and a quick game of freeze tag.

The main focus of the lesson today was all about the expert and the genre. The first half of the lesson was all about the expert, we did a variety of games where the main target is to make it certain you are knowledgeable and are confident in what you are speaking about.

We started with the game three headed expert which is always great fun to play. This is when three people sit next to each other and pretend to be the same person and the interviewer asks them questions about a topic they are meant to be an expert in. Usually when this is played, the three headed expert will talk about a random sport that they have taught an animal to play so for example Raccoon Long jumping, Gorilla Chess or Ant Lacross.

The next game we played was one that I was new to and enjoyed it very much. It was called Slideshow – what happens is three people act as statues in still photographs and two others act as the ‘experts’ the audience will choose a random topic for the duo to talk about and then the other three will go into poses and they have to justify how they relate to the topic. The slide ‘changes’ when the experts clap there hands two times in a row. It was really good fun and worked really well.

The final two games of this section included Helping Hands – which as you know from last week Punders recently performed in a show. This was great to do this game as I made sure I paired up with fellow Punder Caroline and getting coaching from a fantastic short form improviser like Suki was very helpful indeed. The next game we played was gibberish – this is a fun game this is when someone who is ‘foreign’ talks about a topic they are an expert in and a translator interprets what they are saying. I liked this game a lot because I loveeee being really physical in games.

The second part of the lesson was all about genre – this is always a great thing to learn about because in short form it always comes up. The first game that we played was one that I have played with Suki before – the Genre Party, this is when a group of people go to a party and they are all different genres and when they enter the room everyone changes to that same genre. If the genres are completely different then it works very well.

The next game we did is another game that I have played alot and that is a Genre Rollercoaster. This is when you start a scene normal and then someone will freeze it and then the audience will shout out a genre for the duo to continue the scene in.

The final two games we played were new to me and I am glad that we did them as it brought the who idea of genre to a new and different concept when in a game environment. The first one was called Genre Corners – this is when each four corners of the stage are different types of genre and you have to find excuses in your scene work to move around to these four genres. I found it very fun to do and adjusted to the new environment very easily. The final game was called auditions, this game each of the ‘players’ had to go into an audition room and pretend that they were getting ready to audition for a role in a play. To do this they each had to recite a nursery rhyme in a different genre.

I had a really fun day doing short form improv and yet again i learnt a lot from the fantastic Suki Webster and hope to be trained by her again in the near future.

Case Study – Suki Webster Guest Speaker

The other month I saw this show for the first time and absolutely loved it and the fact that last week was the last show for a while made me very sad to hear – because it that one night i learnt a lot. Not about the short form games but watching pros like Suki Webster at work you learn how to position short form games, how to present them to an audience and how to change them up.

One thing we pride ourselves about in Punders is that we take short form games and adjust them and we have been praised on numerous occasions for mixing up the format and bringing something fresh to the stage. I found Guest Speaker really inspiring as a format because sometimes when you do short form shows you feel sometimes self conscious or concerned that you may not be doing them right because the improv scene in London is predominantly Long Form and its a breath of fresh air to see other short formers.

The one thing I love Suki Webster is that whenever i see her in a show or in training i learn something new in how a short form game can be approached – even the simplest things such as an accent or a character can be forgotten about so easily so seeing a master of her arts at work really does help you focus and realise what you need to bring to a scene in the future.

This is the last Improv Diaries for 2017 but do not fear! we will be returning in early January of 2018! See you on the other side!