Category: improv

What is a Mullaney Chain?

I’m trying out a new show called Mullaney Chain. It’s a bit like Messing with a Friend, but instead of asking one friend to play with me, I’m going to assemble a team for each show. It will work like this: I’ll ask one person to sit in with me, they will ask a third person and then they will ask a fourth. I like the idea that I won’t be picking that third and fourth person. I’ll just trust that each person in the chain will ask someone fun to play with us.

The first couple of shows will be at the Underground Lounge (952 West Newport Avenue), Tuesday July 12th and Tuesday July 26th, at 8pm. I’ve sent out some invites for the initial shows, but I’m still working on lining up the guests. I’ll announce my guest performers here and on my twitter feed when I have them confirmed. I hope to do many more of these shows in the coming months.

Oh! And those shows at the Underground Lounge are FREE!

IRC Podcast with Megan Johns

The latest episode of Improv Resource Center Podcast is up. I interview Megan Johns, a teacher at The Annoyance and a member of the New Colony. We talk about improv newbies, hybrid improv classes, and using improv to write plays. Megan’s latest show with the New Colony is 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche which runs through the end of July.

What is Joy Joy Tragedy?

Amrita Dhaliwal
Amrita Dhaliwal
In my most recent class at Black Box Acting Studio, I met Amrita Dhaliwal. We were assigned a scene from The Memory of Water. We worked on it and ran it in class a couple of times. At break one day, she asked me if I wanted to perform the scene in a show. She talked about how it was shame all the work we would do to prepare a scene and never get a chance to do it in front of an audience.

Like me, Amrita is also an improvisor and she had a slot in a show that weekend to do some improv. Continue reading “What is Joy Joy Tragedy?”

Game of the Scene – an example

A therapist welcomes her patient into her office and asks him to tell her about his week. He tells her how he argued with his teenage child about a curfew. She tells him about her own truculent child. He tells her how he is frustrated with his spouse in the bedroom. The therapist sympathizes with him and complains about how her spouse refuses to sleep with her. The patient admits to getting too drunk at a work party. The therapist admits that she is drunk right now.

This is an example of a scene with a game.

The Game of the Scene is a term we use in improv (and sketch comedy) to describe what is funny and interesting about a particular scene. Continue reading “Game of the Scene – an example”

Who, what, where… the first three lines

I think that this whole thing about getting the who, what, where out in the first few lines is a scene killer. It may be this necessary building block for newbies, but when two moderately experienced improvisors are worrying about that stuff at the opening moments of a scene, it can be dreadful to watch and dreadful to do.

One solution that I’ve advocated for years is just do something, anything at the beginning of the scene. Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it, don’t make the scene about that activity. Just do that thing so that your scene partner can join you and you can blow past the who, what and where. Start talking about anything else. This tends to work reasonably well.

But when you can do that, there is a whole different set of muscles to work on. They are acting muscles. Continue reading “Who, what, where… the first three lines”

Get it into your body

I’m learning to play guitar. It is a tough, slow process. If I have a new chord to learn, it takes a lot of repetitions before that chord becomes second nature. I have to practice that shape with my fingers many times. I have to practice changing from chords that I already know to the chord I’m learning. The goal is to play that chord as quickly and as easily as I might say a phrase or sing a melody. But it doesn’t come with one lesson or with one or two practice sessions. It takes many sessions over many days and weeks and sometimes months for me to learn to play a chord with that kind of ease.

Sometimes I think we expect improv to work differently. Continue reading “Get it into your body”

Better

So I have moved back to Chicago. I’m renting a nice one bedroom condo. It’s definitely the nicest apartment I’ve ever had. It has central air and a washer/dryer in the unit. I feel almost spoiled now. I think it would be hard to go back to most of the closets I rented in Chicago and New York.

You might ask, why am I here? I’m here to get better. I feel out of shape as a performer. As an actor, I never really nailed down any particular process. I’d get a script, memorize it, go to rehearsal, try to absorb the blocking and direction, and try to figure out the best way to say my lines. It’s not a great process and it doesn’t seem to take advantage of all that early training which encouraged me to work off my partner. So the first priority was to find a studio, go back to class and figure out a process–a real process that starts with a script and ends with a full, dynamic, grounded and improvisational performance.

Continue reading “Better”

IRC Podcast with Joe Bill

The latest episode of Improv Resource Center Podcast is up. Joe Bill teaches Power Improv workshops in Chicago and around the country. He is one half of BassProv with Mark Sutton and one half of SCRAM with Jill Bernard. He also teaches at iO and has taught at the Annoyance before that.

I first got to know Joe Bill back in the 1990s. He was teacher over at the Annoyance when I was at iO. He coached Georgia Pacific, a very talented team at iO and eventually joined that team. Similarly he joined Inside Vladimir after some of the original members had moved on. I joined not long after that and it was then that we first really got to know each other. It’s always fun talking to him, because he has lots of experience and plenty of passion when it comes to improv.

IRC Podcast Live in New York

This past weekend, I was in New York for a visit. It was a fun whirlwind of events. I arrived on Friday in time to rehearse with my 3 on 3 team and play in one of the first round shows on Friday night. On Saturday, I taught a workshop and performed four times, once in a jam in the basement of a bar on seventh avenue, once at the Magnet Theater with Theory of Everything, and two more shows at the UCB–we made it to the finals of the 3 on 3 Tourney. Sunday, was all about my podcast.

Continue reading “IRC Podcast Live in New York”

IRC Podcast with Evan Linder

I uploaded episode 15 last week on Thanksgiving.

I first met Evan Linder after going to see 11:11 by The New Colony, a play that he co-wrote for the company. He also performed in the play. I asked him about their development process and what he told me surprised and delighted me.

The play was a good one, interesting and funny, but what I really liked about the production was how connected the actors were to the material. It was as if they knew what they were doing at every moment of the play. Every line made sense and had purpose. That’s not a small feat for a new theater company filled with young actors performing a new script. After Evan described the extent to which the writers collaborated with the actors through improvisation, it all made sense.

If you are in Chicago, be sure to check out their new show, Pancake Breakfast, which opened on Sunday. I’m going to see it tonight!