improv – Page 11 – Kevin Mullaney.com

Performance Class at Upstairs Gallery Taught by Kevin Mullaney

This is an eight week class for intermediate and advanced improv students with some long form improv experience. You will learn how to create fun, interesting, two-person scenes; explore different ways to create second beats from those scenes; and try connecting different threads at the end of your piece. We will work on games within scenes and how to build group scenes and group games.

Best of all, the class includes four performances at Upstairs Gallery in Andersonville. Each show will be hosted by your teacher and you will receive notes after the show. The following week, in class, will feature exercises to work on the specific areas of potential improvement identified from the last show.

Who is Kevin Mullaney?

Kevin Mullaney was the original Artistic Director for the UCB Theatre in New York. He was also the first director of their training program. Before that he taught at iO Theatre and directed their touring company, the iO Road Show. He is the host of the Improv Resource Center Podcast and most recently one of the Co-Artistic Directors at the Chicago Improv Festival. Find out more about Kevin Mullaney here.

When is the class?

Class meets Saturdays 2-5pm, June 9th to July 28th (8 classes)
Performances are Sundays at 8pm, July 8 to July 29th (4 performances)

Where is the class?

Upstairs Gallery
5219 N Clark Ave
3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60640

How much will it cost?

$175

How many students will be in the class?

Maximum number of students will be 14

How will teams be created?

For each performance, the teacher will break up the class into two teams. You will work with that team during the Saturday class before the show on Sunday. There will be 7 people on each team at the most.

What if I miss a class?

If you miss the class directly before a show, you cannot perform in that weekend’s show. If you miss more than two classes, you cannot perform in any remaining shows, however you are welcome to come to the remaining classes.

How much will tickets be for the show?

Upstairs Gallery shows are typically free with a five dollar suggested donation. The class will decide whether or not to ask for donations.

Who gets money from the donations?

The students do. The cost of renting the space for the show is included in the price of the class. Any donations will be split equally between the participants of the show.

How do I get into the class?

Students can apply to be in this class by filling out this form before Sunday May 20th. Students will be chosen from the pool of applicants. If you are chosen for the class, you’ll be notified by Tuesday, May 22nd. You will need to pay a deposit of $50 to hold your spot in the class by May 29th.

IRC Podcast with Paul Grondy

I’ve posted a new episode of the IRC Podcast. The guest is Paul Grondy who has been teaching at iO in Chicago since 1997. He teaches students how to do the Harold and so we talk about Harold structure, the principles of group work, being tender and heartfelt, knowing what you know, and group things.

Two links I mentioned in the intro:

Submissions are due soon for the Chicago Improv Festival.
Come see Kevin in Will Act For Food‘s production of Jack’s Precious Moment.

Chris Gethard on Teaching and Coaching Improv

If you are interested in improv and you do not already follow Will Hines blog about improv, Improv Nonsense, you are missing some great info. The most recent two posts are an interview with Chris Gethard, and it’s full of good advice for people who teach or coach improv.

For example:

Failure is a skill everyone has to learn. Get good at it. Encourage your students to get good at it by making your classroom a place where they know failure is ok. That being said, make sure they understand that integrity comes with failing for the right reasons. Don’t fail because you’re being lazy or unfocused. Don’t fail because you’re bailing on your scene to go for the cheap joke. Fail because you are pushing yourself to take chances you haven’t taken before.

Physical Theater, Masks and Clowns

3490500379_1bbff520db_o — photo by illustir from flickr.com

I’ve never really liked clowns. I’ve never really thought they were funny or interesting. As a young improvisor, I sneered at them the same way I sneered at short-form improv and bad sitcoms. I thought I was above it and didn’t even think that there might be something to learn from clowning.

I also remember being confused about Keith Johnstone including so much material about masks in his book on Impro. What could possibly be the value in spending so much time working in masks?

Things started to change a few years ago when one of my friends in New York, a woman whose creative impulses I greatly respected started talking about how the improvisors she knew needed to learn how to use their bodies more. I don’t know what kind of classes she was taking, but she ended up involved in the clown community out there. I was open to the idea that improvisors needed to do more than stand on stage and say clever things, but I didn’t investigate it much at the time.

Continue reading “Physical Theater, Masks and Clowns”

Thoughts about coaching and teaching improv

As, I tweeted a while back, almost every teacher and coach (including me) talks too much. We should all talk a lot less and let our students get more reps in class. If possible, we should give them a chance to try it again immediately after getting a negative note. If your students can keep track of how many scenes they have improvised in your class, you have failed as a teacher.

Research on the effects of cardio vascular health on neurobiology seems pretty clear. The fitter you are > the fitter your brain will be > the better you will be at learning and the better you will be at the kind of executive functions that make good improvisors. So get your ass out there and exercise every day.

Exercise also has immediate short term benefits in learning environments, which means I’ll be starting rehearsals that I coach with active warmups that get people moving and their heart rates up. Be ready for it.

Keep things simple and focused. Work one muscle at a time in rehearsal. Repeat exercises from rehearsal to rehearsal or class to class. A student must practice a given skill many times for it to become second nature and useful on stage.

Also, you can’t really practice two things at once and certainly not three. Let students practice something over and over and until it becomes at least partially unconscious, before you add other layers on top of it.

Let students practice things slowly. Too often we are pushing people to do things fast before they have succeeded in doing them slow. In fact, force them to go far slower than they are used to sometimes. Then speed them up. Then slow them back down again.

For the first time in my life, I’m doing movement/physical theater classes. It’s silly and ridiculous and queer, but it’s also fun and playful and ultimately quite useful. I recommend it.

Don’t Panic

Last Saturday, I sat in with the Barstool Philosophers, an improv group featuring some old friends from my early years at Improv Olympic. It was fun to perform with them, and I wanted to share what happened in one particular scene.

It was the middle of the show, and we had long since picked the low hanging fruit from the opening. Joe, an improvisor with whom I go back nearly 20 years, walked on stage and started making an action like he was feeding bread to ducks. I walked out and matched his activity. At this point, neither of us had much of an idea of where we were, or who we were to each other or how we felt about each other. He edited because it was time to edit, and I joined him because somebody had to.

Here was the part I loved. When we checked in with each other the beginning of the scene, we both knew that we had nothing. But I didn’t see any panic in Joe’s eyes. He was perfectly happy to be in a scene where we had nothing to start.

And so in the next few lines we calmly figured out what was going on and what we felt about it and each other and scene turned out pretty well. And it was because neither of us panicked. We were both completely comfortable starting a scene from almost nothing.

Sunday Punch (hosted by Joy Joy Tragedy)

Joy Joy Tragedy is back with a new show, Sunday Punch, a variety show with sketch, standup, music, clown and other solo performances and of course an improv set with Joy Joy Tragedy (Amrita Dhaliwal and Kevin Mullaney).

Every week a new spiked fruit punch to sample!

WHERE: Upstairs Gallery, 5219 North Clark Street, Chicago
WHEN: Sunday nights at 7:30pm, October 18th through December 18th
HOW: FREE and BYOB (suggested $5 donation)

The first week will feature Ever Mainard:

And then some music by Daniel Byshenk:

And sketch comedy by RAM Chicago: Matt Mages, Kate Cohen, Mike Girts and Robert Reid.

Joy Joy Tragedy returns!

My two person show with Amrita Dhaliwal, Joy Joy Tragedy, will be on for one night in September. This is your only chance to see us this month! We will be opening for Improvised Jane Austen at Stage 773.

When: Thursday, September 22nd, 9:30pm
Where: Stage 773, 1225 West Belmont, Chicago IL

Tickets are $10 at the door. Be sure to tell them at the box office that you were invited by Joy Joy Tragedy.

Joy Joy Tragedy opens for Improvised Jane Austen

Mullaney Chain, Tuesday, July 12th

For the first Mullaney Chain, I invited Lillian Frances. She invited Pete Parsons. He invited Pat Kent. On Tuesday night at 8pm we play at the Underground Lounge.