Butterflies Are A Good Sign

I'm not 100% sure what's happened recently, but before the last couple of shows I've done I have felt surprisingly nervous. Jittery, excited, butterflies deep in my gut kind of nervous. What's weirder is that I kind of prefer it to feeling cool and collected before a show.

I like to feel as though I'm pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, and if I'm going into a show with an elevated heart rate that's gotta mean that I'm doing something right. If I feel a little scared to just get on stage, what's the difference between that and making a big, surprising and risky move in a scene? It's much better than going on stage and feeling fine and never getting to do anything out of the ordinary.

Tonight I'm going to do a show in an improv form that we've decided to call "Meat'n Three" and it's going to be absolutely absurd. The amount of freedom and room to play in the show tonight is very cool. We'll be doing some "meaty" scenes, some three line scenes, some nonsense, maybe some songs. Whatever comes up in whatever order. It sounds terrifying, but when I'm playing in it I feel as though I could handle anything that comes up. Because we're making this form up as we go, anything we do will fit perfectly into our show. No structure means no mistakes, and that's kind of awesome.

My stomach is flipping over and tying itself in knots right now, and I couldn't be more pleased about it. If butterflies are any indication, tonight's show should be incredible.

Two Improv Groups and What They're Teaching Me

I'm rehearsing with two different improv groups right now and the difference in experiences between them is startlingly pronounced. Group one (let's call them Pros) is experienced and professional and pretty laser-focused. Group two (let's call them Newbies) is relatively less formal and experienced but they grant me this overwhelming feeling of... liberation. The Pros encourage me to improve mechanically as an improviser (editing scenes properly, quickly generating ideas, avoiding common traps in scenes, etc.) and the Newbies allow me to really let loose creatively and do whatever I think is awesome at the time. They complement each other perfectly and I'm very lucky to have stumbled into this situation. The next thing for me to do is begin transplanting my lessons from one group into the other. I'll start with how I can use the stuff from the Pros to help with my performance in the Newbies.

I am already coaching and teaching the group of the Newbies, so my mechanics knowledge is already being rather forcibly injected into the group. My sense of professionalism in that group, however, is lacking. I'm late or barely on time most weeks, I tend to ramble between scenes, and the most grievous of transgressions: I found myself hitting one of the cast members as a joke in scenes. The first two are death by a thousand cuts style problems, but the third is probably the most abhorrent thing I've caught myself doing in a while. The cast-mate brought it up to me (in a very mature fashion) and I was totally mortified that I was behaving that way. 

I was really puzzled as to what would make me feel as though that  kind of behavior was acceptable. In Pro group, I focus quite a bit on making sure my scene partners feel respected and taken care of. Though I now that I think about it, I can recall my Pro directors chiding me for being a bit of a bully early on in my time with them. They told me that I scared my scene partners and that some people in the group were refusing to work with me. That deeply affected me and ever since then I've felt like I was walking on eggshells, just praying that I wouldn't mistakenly become an awful person again in all of my scenes. We create really fun, great work, but I place a lot of limits on myself because I'm terrified of upsetting someone and getting yelled at again.

 Newbie group subtracts all of those inhibitions, though, for better or for worse. I have a lot of fun and get to do basically any cool thing that I can think of. We have a tendency to start a little late and end a little early, but we do really exciting work in the time we're actually doing it. Last week we managed to go right up to time without having to artificially strain to get there. I also haven't done anything hella awful like hitting someone or throwing a chair in a scene since it was brought up to me, so that's... progress? Total creative freedom is really nice, but that doesn't mean you're excused from the professionalism and human decency expected from me elsewhere. Especially not at the price of squelching my teammates' ability to also do whatever awesome thing they want to do.

That was a little more delving than I expected to do here, but I will detail what I'm trying to translate into the Pro group in my next post. It'll either be that or be a post about how I just had a self-revelation that I am possibly a very mean person, and not in a funny way!

Thanks for reading!

Vulnerable Villainy

We were running a long form the other day where one player realized he'd been endowed as the villain, so he went full douche-mode. Earlier, I'd told him to fully commit to whatever position he was placed at in the story. So if he was a hero he'd be brave and if he was a villain he'd be horrible. He followed my note as it was given, and he executed with precision.

He and I spoke after the rehearsal and we both agreed that while his character was infuriating, there was definitely something missing from him. It was hard to think of a form of comeuppance for his villain, part of what made him so frustrating was that he was invincible. I wanted him to be like a putty from power rangers, with a little button on his chest for me to strike when I was done doing cool martial arts flourishes. That kind of vulnerability is an option, but is it actually a good option most of the time? How does he stop himself from being impervious to harm and create an interesting, fun character?

The answer, I've realized, is to begin with a feeling. The answer to why a villain behaves the way they do should begin with how they feel about the characters that they are antagonizing. Feel first, and ask questions later.

The improviser in my group played with detached emotion, he never had a revealing moment and he never made any excuses for his awful behavior. He didn't even seem to enjoy his awful behavior. He was clearly the bad guy, but we knew nothing about him and never got to learn anything. Because we knew nothing about him or his feelings, we had no idea how to deal with him.

Here's me starting with a feeling:

My character despises those guys. Why? Because he is above them. In what way? He's risen in station while they have remained the same. How did he rise? Hard work, clever wit, and betrayal. What does he want? To prove he is better, that anybody would backstab anybody else if the reward was right and the opportunity presented itself.

If a character feels an emotion powerfully enough, everybody immediately starts to wonder why he feels that way. They wonder what happened, but most importantly they know that something happened to make this character feel this way. Not only does that all-consuming feeling answer questions about the bad-guy, it fills in empty spots in the good guys' characters as well.

Perhaps most importantly, if we are able to get some of these feelings out of the antagonist we are able to resolve the story and overcome them. We can dole out poetic justice or give them a chance at redemption. We can even let them win if we know what their conditions for victory and defeat are. None of that is possible without the villain having feelings and acting on them.

Basically, if you want to create something powerful and human: begin with a feeling.

Spolin:A Basic Understanding

I've been looking for some more theory to have rattling around in my brain and I managed to get my hands on Improvisation for the Theater by Viola Spolin. Spolin is regarded as the "American Grand Mother of Improv" and basically all improv theory comes out of her work in some way or another. I haven't finished the book, so if there's a twist ending don't spoil it for me. Here are some

 of the basics that I've gleaned:

Voila! Viola Spolin