Episode #6 of the IRC Podcast has just been uploaded to the site. This week, I talk to Caitlin Tegart, a sketch writer and director who teaches for the UCB Theatre in NYC. We discuss how sketch writers can help themselves by not worrying about how good an idea is, that instead they need to simply get their ideas onto the page. We also discuss the process of taking a bunch sketches and turning them into a show.
Tag: podcasts
IRC Podcast with Tara Defrancisco
Episode #5 of the IRC Podcast has just been uploaded. Tara Defrancisco is a former member of the Second City Touring Company. She performs and teaches for iO Theater and ComedySportz in Chicago. She discusses several exercises she uses in her classes and workshops. We start by talking about "What’s in the Box?" a short form exercise to help people make quick decisions and to yes and those decisions. Next we talk about an exercise where students initiate scenes as if they are expressing an important idea to a real person in their life. Last we discuss a couple of exercises designed to get students to make new and different character choices in their scenes.
IRC Podcast with Kevin Hines
Episode #4 of the IRC Podcast has just been uploaded. Kevin Hines is a performer and teacher at the UCB Theatre in NYC. We begin by talking about a couple of exercises he uses to get students reacting quicker and more realistically to twists and turns in their scenes. We next talk about The Macroscene, a show that came out of his last performance class. Finally, we discuss an exercise he uses to rehearse third beats for Harolds.
IRC Podcast with Matt Donnelly
Episode #3 of the IRC Podcast is up and ready. This week my guest is Matt Donnelly who shares a couple exercises he uses in his workshops. The first he calls History, Philosophy, Metaphor and it’s a way to deepen the beginning of scenes by asking students to take an underdeveloped detail of a scene and elaborate using one of three techniques. Next we talk about Bull, Matador a method of creating and playing games which asks which character is vulnerable and then puts the players in either the role of a bull or a matador.
Matt, currently lives in Las Vegas where he teaches with Improv Vegas. When he is in NYC, he teaches workshops at the The PIT.
IRC Podcast with Jill Bernard
Episode #2 of the IRC Podcast is up and ready to go. My guest this week is Jill Bernard from HUGE Theater and Comedy Sportz in Minneapolis. She shares some exercises she uses in her classes. She describes a warm up called Loser Ball which teaches students to embrace failures. Next she talks about an exercise where only one player speaks and the other remains silent. We also talk about an exercise, morphed from a Meisner exercise, where she gets her students to actually do something, rather than pretend to do something.
If you are interested in taking classes with her, visit hugetheater.com.
Announcing the Improv Resource Center Podcast
Yesterday I published my first podcast and added it to iTunes. It’s called the Improv Resource Center Podcast and it will live over on my other website (the Improv Resource Center).
I’ve been wanting to create a podcast for some time, but I wasn’t sure what shape it would take until a few weeks ago. I decided to make it very focused and relatively short, in the hope that it becomes a very practical resource for myself and others. Continue reading “Announcing the Improv Resource Center Podcast”
Updates – iPhone WordPress themes and podcasts
If by chance you are looking at this blog via a phone or other mobile device like an iPhone, you should notice something different. I have installed a new theme and plugin for WordPress called WPtouch. Basically it is a theme to make the site look good on mobile devices. It’s also includes the behind-the-scenes code that automatically switches your view if you access the blog using a small screen. If you notice any problems viewing this site on your phone, let me know. It looks pretty good on my iPod Touch.
Also, I’ve been working on the pilot episode of a podcast. I think it’s ready to go, but I want to wait to see how it looks through the iTunes store before I start plugging it. Come back tomorrow if you want to hear it. It should be ready by then.
Improv podcasts
Lately I’ve been listening to some improv podcasts from New York and enjoying them quite a bit. I’ve sampled two so far, the UCB Theatre Podcast and Improvised New York. Both are available through iTunes.
The UCB Theatre Podcast is the official podcast promoting the Upright Citizens Brigade’s New York theater. Continue reading “Improv podcasts”
A quiet week on the blog
It’s been a quiet week for me on the blog, but a lot of things are bubbling just under the surface. I’ve been working on a number of posts, but they aren’t quite ready. I’m working on a new audio clip that I hope to make into a limited series of podcasts. I have a couple of different versions of follow ups to my Dale Carnegie post. And I’m working on a post about improv podcasts. I’m trying to finish another book on diet and it’s giving me a new idea about how I could be losing weight, which I may eventually write about.
Up in the Air on Fresh Air
I tend to have about 60-70 podcasts on my iPod these days waiting for me to listen to them. One of the happy accidents of this is that I often hear interviews about movies after I’ve actually seen a film (instead of during the promotional run up to the film). So this morning, as I was doing my morning run, I got to hear two interviews related to the new movie Up In The Air..
The first interview is with the author of the novel on which it’s based, Walter Kirn. Recorded in 2001, Kirn talks about the genesis of the novel and what he thinks about “air world”, the setting for the book. The second interview was with the director, Jason Reitman, who also directed Juno in 2007. He talks about his own experiences with air travel, getting George Clooney to do the film and the interviews with real people who have lost their jobs which frame and punctuate the movie.
Here is one of the trailers for the film: