This week was all about the world of Punder admin! We have a lot of shows to plan over the next few months so this week we went to the Miller and planned all of our shows and worked out what games we were at certain shows. We had to do this as we have a few things that are pretty important coming up and also some very exciting announcements as well.

Improv admin is really important in a team as you have to stay organised and a lot of people don’t realise that it is a core part of being in a group. One of the ways of making it more easier to deal with is by making it planned and organised as you won’t always have the time and if you plan ahead it means you cause yourself less stress.

It is always great having these odd planning weeks with Punders because the creative juices are flowing you can come up with new and interesting ideas. When we have these planning sessions we end up creating lots of new games and this month did not fail as we have already come up with new twists on the games and show formats that we are aiming to put into good use.

Due to audience feedback and response we have realised they love Jake and Yiannis personas in greatest hits which they created called The Bob’s so we have taken that and they are becoming our hosts for the show of July which will be super fun and exciting to watch! They are so fun together when they play this duo!

There is lots of fun stuff and shows coming up int he next few weeks so will keep this weeks improv diaries short!

Case Study: Ryan Stiles and Brad Sherwood 

This week I decided to rewatch some old episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway – I tend not to watch it that often because I do improv watching it when your relaxing doesn’t really work. It’s funny watching it back now because all the games seem far to edited and super short which is so weird. However watching the old ones is great because as a short form troupe we get a lot of non improvisers coming to watch our shows and it’s great to watch why so many people fell in love with Improv in the first place.

Another reason why it is great to watch again is to watch Ryan Stiles and Brad Sherwood perform together. They have always been two of my favourite improvisers but it wasn’t until I watched back the old series that I saw how well and great they are together. A lot of the time you watch the more recent series or even the later seasons of the original, Ryan is always with Colin and Brad is always with Wayne so seeing these two team up was super inspiring.

There are many things I adored about the way they worked together – I think I have always loved these two because they don’t shy away from bug characters and committing to the wacky. Every scene they did as a duo really had these elements and heightened the scene. Watching those old episodes made me remember like a shock wave of nostalgia that I was a huge fan of Brad as a kid becuase he channeled a Jim Carrey about him and that is why I adored him because i was a huge fan of him.

Watching it back now another thing i truly adored was the object work – they don’t just do object work they heighten it, add sounds and really make the object work part of the play. In short form improv I feel you don’t really see this enough and actually watching on television and seeing how non improvisers and how they react really has inspired me to try and do this more in my scene work.