I uploaded another episode of my improv podcast today. This week’s guest is Jimmy Carrane. We talk about grounded scenework, the third choice, reality transaction scenes, commitment, silent scenes, side coaching and group therapy.

I’ve known Jimmy for a long time and known of him even longer. He was a founding member of Jazz Freddy, a show which amazed and inspired me as a young improvisor in the early ’90s. Later we got a chance to work together on Naked a show that Rob Mello directed and starring Jimmy and Stephnie Weir. I produced the show and was the assistant director. I was extremely proud of Naked when we put it up. The idea of the show was simple, two characters, one hour, one scene. It pushed the performers to be grounded and real in a way that few shows had before. Jimmy and Stephnie rose to the occasion again and again during the run.

If you’d like to take a workshop from Jimmy, his email address is at the end of the episode. You might also check out his Facebook page, Jimmy Carrane Improv. Also, Jimmy is the co-author of Improvising Better: A Guide for the Working Improviser with Liz Allen, one of the most useful books on improv that I’ve ever read.

Finally, episode #11 of the Improv Resource Center Podcast is ready and uploaded! Will Hines and John Frusciante from the UCB Theatre in New York discuss the game, improv training simulators, an improv sabbath and things to steal from Ian Roberts.

Will and John host the UCB Theatre Podcast and teach at the UCB Training Center.

IRC Podcast image

However, there was a problem. One of the things that I assumed it would handle was the image that you see on your iPod while it is playing. When you add a new podcast to the RSS stream, the script requires you to assign an image for iTunes. And when you search for the podcast on iTunes, you do see an image for the show. But that was not enough to get the image on my iPod. When you listen to the first 10 episodes of my podcast, you won’t see an image on your iPod.

I finally decided to research it today. The solution is pretty simple. You have to embed the image into the mp3 file before you upload it to your website. As far as I know, you must use iTunes to add the artwork. First you create the image using Photoshop or GIMP. It should be a square image. Mine is a 300 x 300 pixel jpg, the same size you use for the iTunes store image. Once you have the image, you should:

1. Open iTunes on your computer.
2. Add/import the mp3 file to iTunes library.
3. Right click on the mp3 in iTunes and choose Get Info.
4. Click on the Artwork tab and add the image.

Now the mp3 file on your hard drive is ready to upload to your website and be added to your RSS feed.

If you want some more detailed instructions with images, you can look at the original post where I found the solution.

Kurt is a teacher and performer at the People’s Improv Theater. He can be seen performing with Big Black Car and The Faculty. He is also a stand up comedian and performs at various venues around NYC. Several of his shows have appeared at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. He has also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his comedy partner, Kristen Schaal.

This interview was a little different than the others, because we ended up talking a lot about what it’s like to run the business of a small improv theater. I really like how Lillie talks about her performers. It’s obvious that she has a lot of respect for her performers and trusts them in ways that not all improv directors do. It’s not surprising that several years after she first held auditions, seventeen of her first hires still work for her.

She can be seen performing every Thursday at 10:30 in Messing with a Friend at the Annoyance.

This week my guest is Billy Merritt who performs and teaches at the UCB Theatre in LA. We talk about premise based Harolds (Pirate Harolds, Robot Harolds and Ninja Harolds) and his character based performance classes where he has his students to create a single character over eight weeks. We also discuss character wheels, the cube edit and the hawk edit.

I first started thinking about this because of Checklist Manifesto, a book by Atul Gawande. I have not read the book yet, but I’ve heard several interviews of him. The book is about how checklists for complicated procedures help minimize mistakes and save lives. He is a surgeon and he has seen how a simple checklist for a surgical procedure can dramatically reduce the number of complications. I don’t do anything as grave as surgery, but there are a lot of things I want to accomplish each day. I thought checklists might help and started using them.

My first checklist was a weekly one. Initially, I drew up a list of daily tasks. I realized quickly that I didn’t have enough time each day to do all these things. So I cut the list of daily activities to a minimum. However, there were plenty of other things I wanted to do, some only once a week, others several times a week. So I added those to my weekly checklist too. For example, I want to practice guitar every day, so there are seven boxes next to it on the list. Other items may have only one box next to it, like doing payroll for my mother’s home health care workers which I do every Monday. I have four boxes next to exercise. I don’t care which days I work out, as long as I work out three or four times during the week. My final task for each week is to review, edit and print my checklist for the next week.

After using that checklist for a month or so, I decided that I needed a separate checklist for my podcast. This is what I’d call a procedural checklist. It contains a series of steps for a single task or project. Usually the tasks should be completed in a particular order. The checklist for my podcast has been evolving over the past few episodes and it now has 28 steps, from the first email to ask someone if they will do the podcast, to backing up all the audio files when I’m done.

It may seem like I’m creating a lot of work for myself, but I think it’s really the opposite. I’ve found that if I do some preparation before the interview, the interview will go much more smoothly than if I wing it. I’ve also found that if I conduct the interview well, the editing goes much better and takes less time. Finally, by codifying the steps for promoting it, I get that part done quickly and painlessly.

Of the two types of checklists, the weekly “To Do” list and the procedural list, I think the latter is more effective and worthwhile. I don’t think there has been a single week where I have accomplished every task on my weekly checklist. Perhaps I have accomplished more than I would have otherwise. But I think checklists really begin to shine when you use them to walk you through a process you do over and over again. I am really happy with the result. A checklist helps me eliminate mistakes, keeps me focused on only the task I’m currently doing, and raises the quality of my work overall. It also provides me with a method to review my work and improve every time I do a podcast, by translating what I learn into new steps.

I think this might have a profound impact on my teaching in the future. I’ve always had a plan for my classes. Sometimes there is a curriculum to follow. Sometimes I come in with a number of options. Sometimes I figure out what I’m going to do on the way to class or drastically change course in the middle. I’m sure there are things I have learned when teaching something that are now long gone from my memory. In the future, I’m going to write out my plans more carefully, probably with branches and options, but definitely with steps. Each time I come back to a particular lesson plan, it will contain within the procedure many of the nuggets I’ve learned from the previous attempts to teach that lesson plan.

Over the last few days, I’ve taken what I’ve learned from the podcast checklist and tried to apply it to other things. I have a short procedure to go through when I sit down to practice my guitar. I’m working on some lesson plans for practicing improv by myself. I even came up with a procedure to write blog entries. This is the first attempt to follow that procedure and it seems to have been beneficial, keeping me focused and on track and producing a post which I hope is more useful than if I used my previous method: stare at a blank page, type stuff and edit until I have something I’m not embarrassed to publish. I’m convinced that using checklists would be beneficial for other creative uses like rehearsal procedures, show checklists, video projects, etc.

A checklist app for the iPhone and iPod Touch

I downloaded a checklist app for my iPod Touch. It is quite useful. It’s called Quick Checklists. This is a great app for those shorter lists that you might use often, like writing a blog post or working out at the gym. You can create a template for a list and easily make changes to it on the fly, or change the template for future use. It’s perfect for my purposes. I’ll keep my paper checklists for more involved projects, but for day to day stuff, this app is great.

My checklist for blogging

For those of you interested in my blog checklist, here it is (some of these only apply to WordPress blogs):

• Choose a topic
• Research via the web, books, talking to others on the subject, etc.
• Brainstorm thesis or basic point of the post
• Write outline
• Write post
• Take a break
• Edit for clarity
• Read aloud
• Edit for readability
• Title it
• Add links
• Find image or media to accompany it
• Insert the “more” code
• Choose excerpt
• Add tags and category designations
• Publish
• Plug it on Twitter, Facebook, etc

Caitlin’s work as a writer can be seen at omgoose.com and ucbcomedy.com (with her beta team Diamonds, Wow!).

And don’t forget to become at fan of the podcast on Facebook:

I’d like to note that we mention Susan Messing (Annoyance and iO) and Noah Gregoropoulos (iO) during the podcast but only mention their first names.

For more info on Tara, check out her website, TaraDefrancisco.com. And don’t forget to become at fan of the podcast on Facebook: