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!

One thing that I hope improv has brought to my life in the wider sense is the abilty to be open to anything so when John suggested that the Maydays spend the day with a spiritual Guru called Prasadam who he described as a cross between the Dalai Lama and Spike Milligan I knew I couldn't pass it up.  

The day began with Prasadam informing us that we were going to create a play, with John playing the "beautiful princess." We then spent an hour and a half with Joe's music accompanying us creating a totally surreal adventure through forest and castles, with Zen masters and African dance healers. In short, it was mental.  

I would be seriously surprised if we what we came up with was of any kind of performance standard, however it did make me notice something: In our normal Maydays rehearsals, (despite what we always say to our students about not being able to do it wrong!) we ourselves are constantly striving to get things right. While it's important to work on different skills within the practice of improvisation; when we're not on stage I wonder how much time as a troupe we actually spend just "playing" and not analysing what we are doing. Creating a free running structure with no emphasis on what we were creating had a totally different joyful quality and it doesn't seem like a coincidence that our show on the following night had the same feeling (see Joe's previous blog.)  

I won't here go into what the rest of the Prasadam adventure entailed but I will say that for me personally it gave me the chance to remember the simplest rule of improv, to embrace it's mindfulness and bally well have fun!

Happy Xmas everyone (yes i know it's a bit late but us Maydays always celebrate with a trip to Poynings in the new year). Today we've been treated to an amazing meal by Tom and John, penguin impressions from Isaac, a lovely walk round Devil's Dyke, and the company of ALL THE MAYDAYS and their lovely partners and children.

Yes it was muddy, but it was a glorious day for walking and as usual we pitted our wits against each other at the annual John Cremer book giveaway (prizes for guessing the name of original songs that have been turned into reggae numbers). We rounded off the day by sharing our highlights and lowlights from 2010 and listened to some classic Ivor Cutler.

It's all steam ahead now until May, with regular Saturdays at the Komedia, regular Tuesdays with Hoopla at the Miller, Poynings Village fair show and a spot for us girlies at the Komedia Funny Women show in Feb. 

Happy New Year everyone!