Making it up

This week for our class, we spent time looking at what improv is and playing some games so that we could learn the fundamentals behind it. I remembered hearing that last year’s winter musical was mainly improv (except probably the songs of course), but I didn’t fully understand until I tried to do improv myself just how hard it is to come up with something to say when you are put on the spot. One of the biggest points I remember from our lesson is that we can’t say no to anything a fellow actor says at us, because it ends the scene. So if someone were to look at me and ask, “Why is your hair standing up straight” I would have to play along instead of denying this and saying, “No, it’s not standing up.” Though I get how important this is, I still think it is very difficult because during one of our activities was basically interacting two different scenes, and some people would say things that were absolutely absurd and you had to go along with it. This was very hard because you had no idea what your partner was going to do and your partner had no idea what you were going to say, and once you turned around you both had to interact with each other in a way that made sense. 

The most challenging activity was the one with two people in a scene having a different objective. This was extremely difficult because while you were trying to convince them one thing, they were trying to convince you of another, and this got very confusing.

My favorite part of the improve was how funny some of the interactions turned  out to be, like when Dayna said “It’s not littering if we’re the only two people left,” and her reaction was so great that it looked like you could’ve pulled it straight out of a movie. The whole comedic acting was almost scripted, but the fact that it was just things that she was making up as she went along were what made it so much more genuine and realistic. Another funny scene was when I approached John asking for all sorts of toys, a pony, a puppy, and things like that for Christmas while also calling him Santa, and he responded asking me what I was doing in the men’s room.

Though many funny things can come out of improvised scenes, this has its downsides as well. Because you don’t know what to expect, you can’t prepare your reaction and not be surprised when someone says something hilarious. For an example, there was a point where Abby asked me a question that was absolutely hilarious and I just couldn’t contain my laughter.  I need to work on this because during an actual performance with an audience, such as what they did for Spelling Bee, you can’t break character or stop the scene. In the famous words of somebody, “The show must go on.” 

Live long and prosper

- http://www.startrek.com/database_article/spock