Character Exercises Hi everyone, these popped out of last Saturday’s character workshop. Some of them were originally learnt from Katy Schutte, from The Mayday’s, Music Box and Katy & Rach, so many thanks Katy. She’s teaching some workshops in London soon with The Maydays. I go into characters in various depths, but this time round[…]
Long-form, long-blog. Last Saturday’s workshop was awesome. One of those sessions where impro gets described as ‘magical’. The session was on long-form techniques, but was called Tall Tales for some reason. I think because I don’t like the term long-form. I like long-form, I just don’t like using those words to describe it. I can’t[…]
Improv books we can recommend We were chatting in the pub after a rehearsal of our new show (Imagine If You Will) and found that half the cast read loads of impro books, and half didn’t read any, with nobody really in the middle. Obviously the best way to learn impro is just to do[…]
Yes And I love the Yes And exercise. It’s such a core part of improv that I never regret doing it in a workshop and it’s great to always go back to as an exercise with a performing team. Yes And is at the heart of impro – I’m going to be on stage, listen[…]
Happy and Excited. It’s 4:43am and I’m still awake from the Hoopla Impro Party/Impro Jam. It made me happy and excited, and made me laugh lots. I loved it, proper love. Which got me thinking… When performing it’s probably best to pursue the things that make you happy and excited, ‘cos if you don’t feel[…]
Random things learnt from new shows in development Hello all, New Year has been really busy so far. Mainly because I’m now directing or producing a bunch of new shows, including Imagine If You Will (narrative impro inspired by The Hero’s Journey), Arthur (new short-form) and Zorbo Ironheart (youtube sketch show). Lots of random things[…]
You know you’re an improviser when… You’ve done a rehearsal in someone’s living room. You’ve performed in a dusty cold room above a pub to an audience of 3, 2 of which left in the interval. You’ve slept in a room with 4 other people in Edinburgh. Edgar has forgotten your name at least 8[…]
What makes you a fun person to improvise with? At the start of the last Thursday improv lesson before Christmas I asked the actors a really simple question: “The people you enjoy performing with on stage – what is it that they do that makes you enjoy improvising with them?” I thought there would be[…]
Merry Christmas everyone! I’ve started compiling my impro highlights of the year. I’ve probably missed loads so feel free to add to them if you can, I’m just adding them in no particular order as they come to my head: Edgar teaching ‘be obvious’ in workshops, always bringing me back to the right point. “NO,[…]
Objectives Objectives are common things in scripted acting. When putting together the character the actor will go through finding the following or similar for the character: Super Objective – What the character wants deepest in their subconscious, perhaps connecting to the collective subconscious wants/needs of humanity, eternal absolute forms and values. Freedom, truth, beauty, justice,[…]
I’ve gone full circle again. This has happened a few times before. I first got into drama/impro/comedy stuff (apart from early school things) doing John Cremer’s drop-in nights in Brighton. I loved it and decided to explore all forms of drama, so did a two week course with A.C.T in Brighton to find what area[…]
Perform more I loved the Friday Night Impro Party, thanks for all who came. What was lovely was that for many people there it was there first ever time performing impro. It struck me as how important it was to perform impro in order to learn it. You could do loads of courses and workshops[…]