by Jen Rowe

by Jason Blackwater

Well, that was fun! I'm feeling excited. You are a brilliant person, Jane. For the purposes of this blog, Jane, you're name is Jane. Is that OK, Jane?

Jason Chin was over last week for bit of focussed work with the Maydays and boy did he hit the emotion button. Brilliant! I could not be further from being an emotional improviser so I was feeling the pressure. I got a great deal out of it, though. not least these insights.

Names

Names are so important, Jane. they really are. not only do they create a sense of personal knowledge between you and your scene partner they can be used, Jane you need to listen to this, to call back characters from other scenes. If you want to see a character the audience has seen before, call them to the stage. It's such a simple idea but so many improvisers, me included, are TERRIBLE at names in scenes. it gets to the point where a scene has gone on for so long people get so scared that another character has been named, by them or someone else on the scene, and that they've forgotten, that they daren't refer to them by name in case they get it wrong. Pro Tip: call 'em something early and call them that name a few times so they, you and anyone else on stage with you gets the point.

Relationships

Is the fire fighter in the scene who's just saved your house also your brother, or aunt, or boyfriend? An existing relationship between characters on stage creates a shared knowledge and history that can be referred to with ease without spending the first minutes of a scene introducing each other. I believe it doesn't have to be a deep personal relationship but maybe you've already been talking with that fire fighter for 5 minutes or an hour before the scene starts and you have that shared experience to draw on.

Emotions

How are you feeling, Jane? Alright? Annoyed because I keep calling you Jane and you're not called Jane, you're really called Julia, or Kevin, or Fitzgerald? Tell me. How do you feel? Feelings are key because if you base a scene on people reacting with feeling on stage then you will, if no games emerge, be left with an engaging, watchable scene. if you go out on stage without that and your wit fails you, you're left with nothing. Also, how you feel at a given moment is a great tool to fall on if you're stuck for something to say. "that makes me sad" "what are you trying to say?" "I wish you were my mum" You should also make bold choices. An appropriate emotional response creates drama. An inappropriate emotional response creates comedy. Both are great!

I feel like my passion for improv has been invigorated. both as a performer and an advocator of the art thanks to the past week. Not only because Jason is such a great teacher, and he is, but through realising that there is such a big hole in my understanding of the emotional side of my work and that I can always learn makes me want to learn more and for others to start a journey through improv. I'm going to Chicago to do more in the Summer. Maybe you should think about what your next step is. What do you reckon, Jane?

You with me?

We  have many people coming to our workshops who claim that they "Cannot sing". When  asked to do scale warm ups, they claim that they have a very limited range and they find it hard to pitch a note. In my experience, people can  find it hard to  sing at the right pitch, but it is very rare to find someone who really does have a limited range. All you have to do is listen  to them talking when they are animated, or hear them laugh. many people can laugh as high as a soprano's top note, up to two Gs above middle  C.

So there is something else restricting  the voice, which is usually self-consciousness. They way to free up the voice is to be able to sing in an environment where nobody is judging you. I clearly remember at  University having to play the violin in front of my class, and before my tutor who was viscious in his criticism of pitch and tone. As a result, I would sweat, clam up and fulfil his own prophesy.

We need to  perform in an atmosphere of joy and generousity. Criticism is of course vital to  improve, but it can be given in a non-judgemental way. The cliche of criticism being given between praise might seem overused, but it still works.

So  when singing an improvised song, it is crucial that the self-critic is turned all the way down. What would we rather see, someone singing a perfectly rhyming funny verse with no commitment, or someone singing with joyful abandonment? Musical improv does encourage people to just go for it. There is no substitute for opening up, connecting with the audience and just giving it your best shot.

It is the same in non-musical improv.  When required to do an accent, it is far better to give it your best shot, give a look to the audience and then keep going with commitment, than it is to half attempt it and then try to drop it without anybody noticing. 

I guess if workshops are rehearsals for shows, then shows are rehearsal for life.  It is a chance to explore and fail without consequences, without criticism and without judgement.  When those situations come up in real life, maybe we are more equipped to deal with them - I mean how many times have you had to pretend to be a traffic warden with a Brummie accent? Exactly.

by Jason Blackwater

Now, hold your horses! I know what you're going to say. I've heard it before. "How do you rehearse improv?" "I thought you made it all up?" "can't you just turn up and do it?"

No.

No, no and thrice no. Over the last three years of being a Mayday I have been fortunate enough to see some amazing improvisation both from my own company and from those around the world. I've also had to watch some truly dire improv and I get more and more infuriated by it with every passing show. There is one thing that appears to be a common factor in both sorts of shows and that is rehearsal. Do it and you may never be brilliant but don't and not being brilliant is a nailed-on guarantee.

Please be aware that I use the term rehearsal because no better word exists in my mind. I've called it class, practise, Monday (The day that The Maydays have met since time began), session, therapy and many other things in my time but rehearsal for all its faults fits best with me. "I've got rehearsal tonight" says performance and I, for the moment, don't mind fielding the same questions.

Being a football fan...well, Spurs fan...I have occasionally toyed with the idea of calling it training. It at least has a familiar. A footballer will turn up to training and he'll run drills. At no point during a football match is it required a player runs to a pole, round it and return to the starting point over and over again but maybe once in a match he'll have to react quickly and run back to where he came from. Without the drill, his muscles wouldn't be able to react quickly enough. Muscles, like the brain has memory. Spending all week with his team mates, our imaginary football star will get a deep understanding of their strengths and weekness that in the moment will be invaluable in making split second decisions on the field. Paul Scholes turned up out of the blue last weekend to play for Manchester United after 6 months of not training day in and day out and he was woeful. He had trained daily for 20 years and after 6 months away he wasn't in synch with his teammates.

As an improvisor you need to do the same thing. You need to run those drills. The warm ups you've done a hundred times before, the scenes off of the wall, the character swaps, the energy builders, the physical stretches, the brain workers, the vocal warm ups, and so on. Then you need to be working on the stuff you do for the shows that we all find so fun to get in synch with your groupmates. Just like rehearsals for a play, or concerto, or anything else, you need to be putting in way more work in private than in public so that you hit the right notes in front of your audiencemore often than not.

_ 1.       Osho Leela – This was our third year running our residential improv festival and the best yet.  5 days of Improv heaven hosted by The Maydays and Osho Leela. Apart from being immersed  in classes and shows, I love embracing my inner hippy. Veggie food and ‘Osho’ hugs are the order of the day. This year’s highlights in particular were being able to add improv on camera and Rachel Blackmans Body intelligence workshops to the calendar, doing a live internet radio broadcast and dusting off and performing the Improvability drive.

2.       The showcases  -  More courses than ever happened this year and I always really enjoy watching the end of term showcases that the students put on at the end of the show.  The Lewes Music showcase was pretty spectacular, especially during the Gospel number when Harvey got all the little old ladies in the audience singing along to the chorus, ‘Let’s say Fuck!’

3.       Improsium – This was the second Improv Symposium we have run in Edinburgh. After a looooong trip up the Scottish Capital in my flatmate Jessie’s campervan, Liz, Jen and I had a whistlestop trip to the festival, saw some amazing shows  (my favourite being Improvised Plays from Austin Texas) and hosted a panel talk at the Underbelly for all the Improvisers at the Festival. Our Fantastic guests were Nick Semar of Baby Wants Candy, Bron Edge of Comedysportz, Steve Roe of Hooplah and Pippa Evans of Showstopper and Fast and Loose.  Jules  and I also had fun stalking Phill Jupitus who promised he would come – we’ll get you next time Jupitus!

4.       Make-a-wish  Theatre Sports Cup – After openly slagging off competitive improv all year I am happy to eat my words and say that we had an absolute blast at the Spontaneity Shop’s 7th Annual Theatresports cup. Sometimes being down in Brighton it’s hard feeling so far away from the improv community so it was brilliant to pit our wits against London’s best and all for a good cause too. We came second in the end to short form maestros ‘Fat Kitten.’

5.       Team Matie – This year saw our first Improv Wedding! Matt and Katie Matheson who met on a Maydays beginners course tied the knot on  the 23rd of July and we were really honoured to do a show for them at their reception. Katie didn’t cry in the ceremony or during the speeches but she did have a good old blub when the rest of her and Matt’s troupe ‘Existential Pants’ joined us on stage and sang an Improvised song about their big day.

6.       Podcasting – I have discovered the joy of Podcasting with the genius of Joe Samuel my musical partner in crime.  You can listen on www.musicalimprovcomedy.co.uk   Feel like we have only just begun and looking forward to making more next year.  At the moment we are trying to convince our Dad’s to have a rap battle live on air. We may have to wait a while…

7.       Nottingham and the BBC – Following form our Podcasting, Joe and I were lucky enough to have two weekends away spreading the musical improv love. One weekend at the BBC Television centre thanks to Wanda ‘the biggest lungs in London’ Keenan which culminated in a musical about Pudsey Bear and the Taliban. The Second was in Nottingham where we ran workshops for MissImp and SIN. Big thanks to Lloydie for being a bloody brilliant host and for agreeing to be interviewed in a thoroughly gin sodden state. It also turns out that Nottingham  has the best North Indian restaurant EVER.

8.       Slapbash  - 2011 was a bit of a year of collaboration for us, meeting and working with more Troupes than ever before and the highlight of this for me was probably performing in Slapbash (the warm up for London’s Improv festival Slapdash) Lots of troupes who had never met before let alone performed together took the the stage of the Old Vic tunnels and made improve magic. There’s a little video here if you’ve got time http://youtu.be/4wOsKO9LtEU

9.       Hurst Fest and home shows – This was our first full year of 2 shows a month at our resident Brighton Theatre the Komedia and they just get more and more fun. All the audiences have been great and now thanks to Comedy Plaza we have some great footage too, some of which is up on our youtube channel.  It was also out first year of performing at Hurst Festival, so thanks to the people of Hurst for confessing to us!

10.   Delplanque – I think my personal highlight has to be the surprise return of Jason Delplanque, our South African ‘Awayday.’ John managed to keep it a secret that Jason would be ‘popping in’ to one of our rehearsals and when he walked in, I thought I was hallucinating! Alas we only had the pleasure for two weeks but it was good to know that group mind can remain even across continents.  Jason has now set up his own organisation ‘Improv Cape Town’ and we are all super proud of him.

Of course there are many more moments from shows and classes but with the chime of midnight tonight it’s time to let it all go and look forward to improvising more next year. What will 2012 bring? Thanks to Improv, it could be anything.

We learn through playing.
Okay, we learn through other methods also like practise, repetition,experience and tutoring, but play is surely the most joyful and, more importantly, sub-conscious method of them all. Playing is a broader term for me than sitting down with a board game, or playing tag in the playground. 

As I watch my children who are now 5 and 7, I see them playing, arguing, making and breaking rules, cooperating and fighting, all within the boundaries of play.  Very few of their conflicts or agreements will have any effect outside of the house, but they are all laying the foundations for future scenarios when they might need to make an intelligent choice of whether to aim for sympathy or obedience, strictness or compliance.

So it is a poorer learning environment, wherever we might be, that does not contain an element of play. When I am teaching piano,
I find it can give tremendous freedom to a student who is struggling with a piece, to let them improvise their own tune,or just play some blues for a while.  It frees up the fingers, unblocks the creative mind, and lifts the energy in the room.  All of these things are directly transferable to learning a piece of music, and can help with the attitude of “I cant play this” or “I hate this piece”, which mostly comes from a frustration of not being able to play it.

I use an exercise for learning scales on the piano in which I make the student play just 3 notes up and down perfectly, then 4, then 5 and so on.  If they make a mistake, they must go back to the previous number.  I cheekily call this “the scale game”, although it more resembles torture.  However, immediately the student will brighten up and see the exercise as a challenge and an achievement, rather than an exercise or just hard work, simply because I have called it a “game”.

Playing also allows us to make mistakes in a safe environment.  We learn so much faster from making our own mistakes than trying to learn from others’.  Again, watching my children, I can tell them a hundred times not to touch a hot cup of tea, but it is only when they do it that they really learn the consequences. Perhaps I should have let them play more with hot water when they were young?
Hmmmm.

Role-play is commonplace in adult learning, and this is an important aspect of play.  But for me, improvising is like role-play, but with joy and fun.  It does not have to be funny, but it should be more free and experimental than your standard role-play scenario. 
Improvising can infiltrate any area of life, and so far I have not found anywhere it does not enrich.  It has certainly livened up many a taxi ride for me! 


Let’s play, and play with joy, 
Learn while we are not aware of learning.
Then maybe we can grow without having to grow up.

The Maydays have been recruiting. Last night we held our most recent audition and with some success I might add. The strongest collective of auditionees I've certainly seen in my 2 and a half year stint as a Mayday and hopefully someone new will don the coveted grey shirt of destiny in the coming months.

There are a couple of inspirations for this post, the first being my recent theatre tour to the far east and the other, perhaps more importantly, was a comment made by one of the select band showing their stuff last night. allow me to paraphrase;
    
    "I like scripted stuff. I didn't think I'd enjoy improvisation because I like having a script but I do and it's amazing"

Now, I'm not going to try and discern whether throwing yourself into the unkown is better than the bard but it does raise some interesting questions

are they that different?

Shakespeare himelf is alleged to have allowed a lot of improvisation in his works, Some of his more prosey pieces may even have been less scripts, more transcripts. Mike Leigh, acclaimed british director, sets a framework for a scene and allows his actors to go from points A to B in whatever way they choose, working and reworking the lines until they both are natural and further the plot.

So why is it, then that there is a perceived difference? Is it not true that good theatre or film, the scripted, written stuff, is only trying to recreate, as truly as possible, the improvisation we all do in our every day lives? When was the last time you prewrote a conversation with a loved one, or sent the pages for your next work meeting to your bosses?

Must they be seperate?

As an improviser I have recently found my other work, "Acting", increasingly restrictive and liberating at the same time. While I often long to break away from the writers words to enhance a scene, it is also reassuring that they've given me my scene in the first place and the pressure is off to come up with something for it. I feel that each discipline feeds the other. Improv skills can give an actor the tools to keep scenes fresh and even find nuances that the writer or director themselves may not have seen. and the skills picked up as an actor can give your improvisational performances truth, depth and sometime more strikingly the ability to be seen and heard in the first place.

Me? I like the improv best but don't let that put you off, Mr Spielberg.

Posted by Jason Blackwater

I was teaching the Maydays Drop in class recently and two of the students who are recent converts to improv and now completely obsessed with the form (you know who you are you two!) cornered me afterwards and asked me,

 “How do we get to be good?!”

I gave them my best answer but came away thinking about it; How does one get good at improv? (barr experience and time) and here’s what I came up with.

Heather’s top 10 tips for how to be a better improviser

1. Do a lot – There can be no denying that experience is everything. I’m not saying new improvisers can’t be good but everyone experiences those wobble moments on stage and the more you do, the more you learn how to navigate your way out of them. Consistently the best show I’ve ever seen is the Armando in Chicago. Almost every player is 40 plus and the weight of experience is palpable. The audience knows they’re going to have a great time because they know they’re in safe hands. I think improvising is a bit like muscle memory in dance training so I’m sure the act of practising as much as you can helps you improve faster.

2. See a lot – Go and see as many shows as you can. Good and Bad. When you’re doing bad improv, you don’t necessarily know it. When you’re watching it, you do. Seeing those sticky moments from the outside is massively helpful in identifying how you can improve your own practice. Watching good improv is equally helpful, thrilling and inspiring. Like Katy and Rach say – like watching people fly.

3. Get a director – I absolutely believe that no matter how much improv you do, you’ll never get significantly better without someone kicking your arse. Without feedback you’re likely to keep the same bad habits all your improv life. A good director should identify your strengths and develop your weaknesses, like being a human top trump. Maybe your speed (let’s call that object work in this scenario) is 100 but your stamina (character work) is only 40. Your director should be working to get everything to 100.

4. Improvise with the same people a lot – Group mind is invaluable in improv. When there is trust on stage you can do magical things. A crude example of this is being physical. Us English lot aren’t very good at getting in each other’s personal space so when you’re working with a group you know really well it’s easier to do things like make people fly, become one being, play an intimate love or sex scene. It shouldn’t matter if you’re with strangers but it really helps when there’s an unspoken level of communication between your whole troupe.

5. Improvise with different people a lot – Equally, it’s great to get out of your comfort zone and improvise with people whose behaviour patterns you don’t know. Maybe you’re the dominant player in your troupe – go to an open workshop and maybe you’ll be forced into the role of supporter or any other role you don’t normally fall into.

6. Be authentic – Whole heartedly bring your life into your improv. There are two ways of doing this practically. One is to see the world as a scene, if someone calls out “Butcher” – don’t be generic, be your local Butcher Stan or a guy you were standing next to at the bus stop that day. Notice everything, use the real language of whichever profession you’re portraying in that show, do some research. “5 things a _____ would say” is a great game for this and you can play it on your own. Alternatively – experiment with putting yourself into the scene, if you’re feeling scared bring it into your character. If you’re feeling randy – hump everyone! It’s great to be imaginative but if you can start from a place of being real it can add a whole new level to your performance.

7. Learn stagecraft – I know some amazing amazing improvisers who are not so hot when it comes to performing. Get an outside eye or take an acting class if you need to. If people can’t hear you, people can’t hear you or your stage pictures look dull and sloppy, it doesn’t matter how good your scene idea was or how naturally hilarious you are.

8. Serve the scene and not yourself – Speaks for itself. Don’t plough into scenes or bulldoze other people. Make it your mission to make everyone else look good and you’ll look good. As Charna Halpern says “ Treat others as if they are geniuses, artists and poets and they will be.”

9. Read some improv books or blogs and talk about it exhaustively and obsessively – Well it can’t hurt.

10.Have a secret – This is my favourite thing to do. Pick something just for you to take into a scene, that no-one needs to know about. Have happy hands, be a lizard if a lizard was a human, decide to always stay 2 feet away from whoever you’re onstage with. Whatever you do, bring something to the table. It might never come out, it might get toned down and you should always be prepared to drop it if there’s a cross initiation but aswell as adding some depth – it’s fun!

So this week has seen the start of a (hopefully) beautiful relationship with improv for some, and the new chapter of improv for others.

On Wednesday, I waited patiently to meet my new Beginner Improvisers at the Evolution Arts building. I have lost count of how many courses I have taught in the main studio, how many unsuspecting people have become addicted to improv here or met great friends in this space. Indeed, later in July of this year the first Maydays-related wedding will take place. Now, for a course that condones listening, saying yes and committing, you can't get much more committed than that!

Once the formalities were over (i.e. me gabbing on about shows and course content) we got down to the serious business of trying to remember each other's names as latecomers arrived and had to be incorporated into the alliterative name game (Andy Arab, Melly Belly...see it works!). After a few group warm ups and John Cremer's favourite, 3-line scenes, I introduced them to Spelling machines and Park Bench. Maydays afficionado's will grin knowingly at this point but for the rest of you, you'll have to come and do the next Beginners course to find out more.....!

A good night, lots of laughing and creativity, followed by pub discussions. A great group and I'm looking forward to more of the same next week.

Meanwhile in Mayday land, the company got together today to iron out a few bits of our new show, Confessions! The format revolves around scenes and songs inspired by audience members. Discussions ensued about how we persuade the audience to share their sins with us, how to open the show and, of course, how to close it. This may sound a bit un-improv-y to the un-initiated but essentially it's nigh on impossible to have NO structure to your improv show. I think Katie and Rach is probably the improv show with the least formalised structure but even they have time constraints. I subscribe to 'limitation is stimulation', i.e. it's easier to be creative within a structure - even if the cast know when a show should end, it doesn't mean the tech does, or the audience - so best to signal these things so everyone knows where they stand.

Anyway, we came out of rehearsal with an opening and closing structure and, even more exciting, a new song style soon to be unveiled at this years Brighton May Festival. It now feels like we're ready to take on the sins of Brighton and, with the power of improv, absolve them.

Posted by: Jen Rowe

A fabulous night was had on Thursday as our Beginners Improv course showcased their comedic talents in front of a packed audience of family and friends at The Iambic Arts Theatre.
After just 10 weeks of incubation The Wit Nits emerged from their chrysalis to provide a night of riotous laughter from start to finish. Highlights included a fledgling love affair set in the exotic confines of Swindon, foul play at the Washing Up World Championships and Red Riding Hood discovering more than just the big bad wolf growling in the heart of Calcutta...!
The troupe worked brilliantly together; listening, supporting each other and delivering some cracking lines and characters that had the audience in stitches. Just 2 months ago these confident and charming performers were strangers in a room at Evolution wandering what the heck they'd signed up for.  Now here they were, having the balls to get up on stage with absolutely nothing prepared and create magic.
That's what our courses are about. The freedom to play, live totally in the moment and shake off the shackles of our serous lives as grown ups! Amongst all the silliness, hearing people report an improvement in their presentations at work, their ability to cope with the unexpected and increased self confidence make this both a very funny and deeply rewarding experience.
A big bravo to Alex, Fran, Helen, Parun, Nic, Dave, Rick, Emma, James, Chris and Anna.
 This is not the last we shall hear of The Wit Nits!

Our next Beginners Improv course starts on Wed 13th April at Evolution.