theatre – Page 2 – Kevin Mullaney.com

New Class: Improv for Black Boxers

Please help me spread the word. I’ll be teaching a special class for Black Box Acting Studio:

This is for students who have completed three levels over at Black Box. We will be using versions of exercises from the acting program and applying them to improvised scenes, as well as pulling in exercises from my years of experience teaching Improvising from the Gut workshops.

This should be a fun playful experience which should make you a better improvisor and perhaps a better actor too: Perfect for the black box actor who wants to try improv or the improvisor who wants to apply their black box skills to improv.

The class will be held on Tuesday nights Nov 6 – Dec 11, 6-9pm at the Den Theater at 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. No class week of Thanksgiving.

Using Kickstarter to Fund Your Theater Project

Dear friend,

If you are producing a show and using Kickstarter to fund that show, please have at least one funding option that is a deal. If your show tickets are going to be $20, offer a $15 gift level where I get a ticket. Better yet, offer a $25 level where I get 2 tickets. Give me a bargain and I’ll jump on it.

Instead what I’m seeing is a lot of Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects that look more like plain fundraisers where you are soliciting donations and giving token gifts in return. This is ok, I’m sure some of them will get funded, especially in cases where the company has a track record and lots of loyal fans (or friends and family). You can still have gift levels which are essentially donations: $5 for a thank you or $300 for opening night tickets and an afterparty. $1000 to get a producing credit. But if you really want to exceed your expectations, offer a deal too.

Thank you,
Someone who wants to give you money

P.S. This is not about your project in particular.

Line Learner, iOS app for actors

Line Learner is a great little app to help actors learn lines. You record your lines and your cue lines from the script. You then set it so that it leaves a silent gap for all of your lines when you play it back. It’s just like running lines with a partner giving you the cue lines. It’s very convenient and effective.

The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion

I’m going to be in another play. It’s The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion by Stephen Massicotte produced by Caffeine Theatre in Chicago. Our preview is tomorrow night and we open on Saturday, March 10th. I have a small part, but it’s a doozy. Let’s just say that I’m involved in gunplay.

“What life to lead and where to go, After the war, after the war?” In the aftermath of World War I, the poet Robert Graves and T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) languish at Oxford facing disillusionment with the war that still haunts them. Playing mischievous pranks on university administrators passes the time but soon escalates into a climactic confrontation that brings the Arab Revolt dangerously close to home. A Chicago Premiere!

I made a map on how to get there. There’s free parking just around the corner. That’s right! Free parking in Chicago. You can thank the Social Security Administration who owns the lot. Click the image to see the map full screen.

One of the main characters is Lawrence of Arabia, and it’s just off Lawrence Avenue on Leavitt. There is no one named Leavitt in the play. That would an awesome coincidence.

There will be an industry night on Wednesday April 11th (more details on that when I get them). Otherwise it will run at Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 pm and Saturday afternoons at 3 pm until April 14th. There will be no shows on Easter weekend, because the theatre is in the basement of a church. And churches are busy on Easter weekend.

You can get tickets on Brown Paper Tickets. That rocks because they are a non profit which charge really tiny service fees compared to evil companies like Ticketmaster.

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”

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?

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?”

Black Box Acting Studio – Review

Yesterday I finished B4 at the Black Box Acting Studio in Chicago. It’s the fourth and final level in what is a terrific program. It’s only been around for a few years, but the curriculum is solid and the teachers are passionate and smart. I feel like I’ve learned some new tools and sharpened some old ones, but most importantly I’ve now got a process for auditions and rehearsals. I also feel like I have a new home base, so that when I do get cast in a show and I’m running into roadblocks, I have a community of people I can call on to help.

What is the program?

Like a lot of programs in Chicago and elsewhere, they start with exercises used in Meisner classes. You learn to observe your partners behavior. You do repetition. Repetition is something that I’ve done for years. I thought this part of the curriculum would be old hat for me. But I certainly did learn new things.

Continue reading “Black Box Acting Studio – Review”

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”