Location Change for 4 February Workshop

Just a quick note that this week's workshop (4 February 2009) will meet at the Parish Hall at the Unitarian Society rather than Jefferson Hall. There's a big rummage sale happening this week, and so Jefferson Hall (our usual location) will be in use. The Parish Hall is next door, on the corner. See you there!

Improv Class 28 January 2009

This photo just makes me laugh. It's from a Standing-Sitting-Bending scene with Joanna, Tova, and Patrick, and it just captures the movement in the scene. Of course Tova is flying through the air. Wonderful! The rest of the photos from the night (and there are a lot) are in the album. Our warm-ups included the 3 Part Narrative and the extended Whoosh-Bang-Pow as well as the 1-Word Story. We began the scene work with Standing-Sitting-Bending and then moved on to a series of Last Letter scenes. After that came Spoon River which is surprisingly popular. My favorite line of the night came from that scene, and I'll put it at the end of the post.

We did our usual set of Irish Drinking Songs, and then we did Three Person Freeze Tag. I like that exercise because it forces you to get through the hardest parts of the Freeze Tag exercises - getting in and starting a new scene with only the physical position as a starter. You can't wait for the perfect inspiration; with only three poeple you've got to get in there.

We ended the night with Open Freeze Tag, and I think the practice helped get more people mixing it up.

Okay, my favorite line of the night:

I was eating Twizlers and watching

Improv Class 21 January 2009

I like the range of emotions in this shot. We were doing a Story-Story-Not Die scene, and Lori, Justin, and Andy are pictured with just a hint of Joanna's arm. You'll find the rest of the photos from this workshop in the album. Our warm-ups included Lymericks and 1-Word Story. Then we moved on the the Story-Story-Not Die scene, which had some great moments. We tried the Rhyming Scene with 4 people at a time, and it worked pretty well. I think the forced rhythm of the scene kept it from becoming too chaotic.

We continued on with the Irish Drinking Song and ended with a Panel Of Experts. As a variation on our usual panel, each player was assigned a magazine. Their characters were reporters or editors from that magazine, and that helped to strongly define the attitude of the characters. It was really strong work.

Improv Classes 7 & 14 January 2009

Victoria rocks!

I'm sorry I missed the first two classes of this new year, but it's good that, from time to time, you all get a different perspective on improv from different instructors.

Victoria has her own theatrical style and a great way with characters. The more methods and techniques you are exposed too, the easier it is to find your own style.

Everyone spoke highly of the classes, and my only regret is that I didn't get to take them myself.

I think that this year, I'll plan on having others teach the class when I''m in town so that I can sit in. I could certainly use that different perspective!

New Years Eve Workshop Cancelled

Happy New Year everyone! I decided to cancel the class on New Year's Eve since an informal survey indicated that most folk (myself included) had plans for welcoming in the new year.

Don't forget that we're having a show this coming Saturday, January 3, 2009.

I'll see you all next year. Our first class will be Wed. January 7, 2009.

Take care!

Improv Class 24 December 2008

It seems like my ability to intimidate new players isn't as successful as I'd like to think. Leslie and I are in a 5 Letter Word scene, along with Delois who isn't in this picture. Considering the workshop is being held on Christmas eve, we still had a good sized class of 14 players. You'll find the rest of the pictures from the night at the album.

Our warm-ups included Whoosh-Bang-Pow and 1 Word Story. The we started our scene work with a series of It's Tuesday scenes. We moved on to 5 Letter Word scenes and then a set of Pillars.

About mid way through the night we sang some Irish Drinking Songs and then a couple of 185 exercises. And we finished the night with Freeze Tag.

Improv Show January 3, 2009

The next Improvisational Comedy Show from the Santa Barbara Improv Workshop will be: Date: Saturday January 3rd, 2009

Time: 8:00 pm until about 9:30 pm

Location: Jefferson Hall, 1525 Santa Barbara Street (near Anapamu)

Price: $5 at the door

Improv Class 17 December 2008

This shot is from a 1-Person Move exercise and shows Tom, Nancy, Guy, Brian, Lisa, Allegra, and Mark working on a common activity. We had 15 players during the night, and the rest of the pictures can be seen at the album. We started the night with warm-ups that included the give-and-take exercise 1-Person Move, as well as our usual 1 Word Story. Then we were on to Counting Words followed by Two Describes Third.

A new game for us was Scene From Pose, where each player was separately put into a pose before the scene started. Some great work came out of that.

We moved on to Irish Drinking Song, and ended the evening with 3-Line Drills.

Improv Class 10 December 2008

I really like the characters in this picture. Nancy, Mark, and Jim each have a different body posture and energy. This is from a scene in a Montage. The rest of the pictures from this night can be found in the album. This was another relatively small class with 14 players. After the warm-ups, we were able to get in Zelig, Sound Effects, Hidden Endowment, Irish Drinking Song, 3-Line Drill, and Montage. Most of these are performance pieces, and I want us to keep working on these. There were some good scenes, but we need more practice with some of these forms.

I'm particularly happy that we got in some Montage work. The open scenes and scene transitions are really helpful because they remove the crutch provided by the game rules in short form work.

Improv Class 3 December 2008

I like the way this picture captures the energy of a Tag Out Story. Roberta is about to tap out Zoe, with Molly, Nancy, and Brian anxious to take their turn. You can see the other photos from this night at our album. We had 15 players for the night, and we did the Tag Out Story exercise right after our warm-ups. Then we did some character work with Animal Transform scenes. I thought that exercise went extremely well.

Then came Irish Drinking Song, and we finished with 3-Line Drill To Full Scene. Although it takes quite a bit of time, I like that exercise because the strong starts from the 3-Line Drill and the well established wants for both players, makes the scenes really interesting to watch and a lot of fun to play. I thought these were great.

Improv Class November 2008

I want to thank Victoria and Mike for filling during the month of November. Even though I was on vacation all month, the workshop still met every week, and by all reports the classes were fantastic. I even got back in time to see the last Wed. night class. Mike was teaching and I had a blast.

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures from those classes. And so, this is a short entry.

Improv Class October 2008

I got a bit behind in postings, so I'm going to do a quick month's summary to catch up. Here are the links to our albums for the month of October, 2008. October 1, 2008

I knew this was the picture to represent the class: Victoria completely committing to her role. There are a lot more pictures in the album from this week.

We had a big class (25 players) and besides our warm-ups we did Slow Motion Commentary, Opera Translator, Irish Drinking Song, and World's Worst.

October 8, 2009

I was out of town for this week, and Victoria took over the class. Unfortunately, that means there were no pictures from this class, so we're left with ephemeral memories.

October 15, 2008

A big group of 115 photos in the album from this class, although it was a smaller group of players (16 seems like a small group nowadays)

We also got in games of Mutant, Playbook, Irish Drinking Song, and some 3-Line Drills.

October 22, 2008

This is one of the photos from our Art Museum game. All the photos can be found at this week's album. I have a large group of 25 players recorded for the night (including Li-At's brother!)

We also played the Repeating Scene Changing Genre game and the Irish Drinking Song. Unfortunately, I'm missing notes on how we ended the night (3-Line Drill?)

October 29, 2008

We played a game of Knots, which is one of those great non-competitive games from the 1970's (okay, I'm old). The other photo's from the night can be found at the album. We also played Who Am I? and the Irish Drinking Song. Once again, though, I'm missing notes on the other games we played.

Hmm. The problem with not getting the class notes posted right away is that they are often incomplete, and my memory doesn't last much more than a week. I'll get caught up over this next week.

Improv Class 24 September 2008

Okay, we hit some kind of record. There were 465 photos taken during this class. I wittled that down to 159 photos in the album, and out of all that, I chose this photo for the album cover. I loved the expressions on all three of them (Lillia, Roberta, and Li-At). After our standard warm-ups, we did a full round of Reason For Being Late. We followed that up with Last Letter Scenes, and then 185. A lot of folks hadn't had the...opportunity to paticipate in a 185 exercise before, and as I mentioned at the time, you just need to get out and do it. Volume is more important that quality.

We sang a set of Irish Drinking Songs, and then ended the night with a couple of sets of Bus Stop.

Improv Class 17 September 2008

This wasn't a 3-Headed Expert scene - just 3 guys (Andre, James, and Patrick - with Nacy looking on) who made a touching connection in this scene. This and other pictures are available in the album for this class. After our warm-ups, we started our scene work with a full rotation of Gift Giving. We followed that with a series of Phone Bank scenes. I like that exercise because it's good practice at taking and giving focus, and I think everyone did pretty well.

Then came Continuing Scene Changing Genre. There were some great scenes the made fantastic use of the given genres. A lot of very fun work.

We had a round of Irish Drinking Songs, but this time we did them as Day In The Life stories. Each group got to listen as I interviewed someone in the audience about their day. Then, the song had to incorporate what they heard, retelling that person's experiences in the course of the day. A nice challenge around pacing and listening for the beats in a story. Some great moments ("I only have 2 seconds").

We finished with a 3-Line Drill exercise, which we haven't done for a bit. I want to keep focusing on open scene work as a way to sharpen everyone's performance skills, so expect to see more of this exercise.

Improv Class 10 September 2008

No pictures from this class due to a problem with my camera (no batteries!). It was another big class with 26 people, but we got quite a bit of work in. After our usual warm-up exercises (Character Intros, Whoosh Bang Pow, 1-Word Story), we started out with a Yes And...Story exercise. This was new for everyone, and it's a good beginning exercise.

We also got a round of Create Objects To Speak scenes, which was a good challenge for everyone. We'll need to do more physical/pantomime work.

After a round of Irish Drinking Song, we did the Bus Stop scene for our advanced scene work. I thought that went pretty well, but I can see we need to also get back to working on our open scenes.

It's so boring without pictures.

Improv Class 3 September 2008

I don't say often enough how much you all crack me up. I enjoy the amazing complete pieces with interesting relationships and magic between the experienced players as well as the struggles and raw insights of the new players. I don't remember what happened during this 3-Headed Expert scene, but I remember being completely out of control with laughter. Thanks to you all for keeping me enthusiastic about showing up each week for this time together. You will find more pictures from the class in this weeks album. It was a big class with 25 players, and we spent some time going over more performance pieces. After our usual warm-ups, everyone got in a Counting Words scene, and we had a complete set of 3-Headed Expert scenes.

We sang the Irish Drinking Song and then worked on Scenes From A Hat for some more advanced scene work. Since everthing went so well, we included all of these pieces in the show on the 6th.

It was a good day to improvise.

Improv Class 27 August 2008

You know, I can't always articulate why a particular photo tickles my fancy. Ever since I started using the albums as a way to make a lot more of the photos from each workshop available, I try to pick out my one favorite photo as a representative of the night. There's something about these two grown men mugging for the camera that just summarizes my continued enthusiasm for improv. In some ways, it's a public service. Would really want these two out on the streets every Wednesday night? We were at another new location while our regular digs are going through their final primping. The Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center was gracious enough to let us use their training room for the workshop this week, and it was a great space. We had 16 players for the night. None were brand new, although we had one player there for her second night.

Our warm ups included a large group 1 Person Move exercise and a couple of 1 Word Story groups. After that, I wanted to make sure that we worked on some games that are typical performance pieces rather than just exercise pieces.

We got in a full rotation of Pillars, where everyone got a chance to play both a pillar and a performer. Then we did a series of Sound Effects scenes before singing the Irish Drinking Song. We ended the night with a set of Expert Panel scenes.

A good night, especially since it was a slightly smaller workshop than usual. Next week we will be back in our usual location, Jefferson Hall - 1525 Santa Barbara Street.

Temporary Location for Improv Class

This week (27 August 2008) we will be in a new location. Our regular site is undergoing some renovation and isn't available (but we will be back there next week). We will be a few blocks away at the Training Room of the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, 433 E. Canon Perdido Street (you can click on the picture or the street address to get a Google map). It's a nice space and there's loads of off-street parking. The building is located near the intersection with Olive Road, and the parking lot is right across where Vine Ave dead ends into Canon Perdido (the entrance to the parking lot is shown in the photo). I'll have signs posted up, but we will be downstair where the back door comes out onto the parking lot (far left in the photo).

I'll see you all there!

Improv Class 20 August 2008

We were in a new location this last week as our usual space was getting a face lift. Just a short flight up some stairs, we had more couches than folding chairs in use. And, as you can see in this picture, one of our 1-Word Story groups got a chance to work outside. More photos can be found in the album. Our warm-ups included Character Intro, Whoosh-Bang-Pow, and 1-Word Story. Then we moved into Tag Out Story, and then 5 Letter Word. And with the large group this week (21 players), we did a few rotations of Family Gathering to work on some group pantomime skills.

We continued working on the 50's Do-Wop Song this week. Andy again brought his guitar, which helped everyone stay on rhythm and pitch. It's still a challenging piece, but I think folks are getting the swing of it.

We ended the night with Switch Dubbing, which gave everyone the chance to practice their ... rusty (and often varying) accents.

Finally, I know we will not be in our usual location next week (it's still being upgraded), and the temporary location from this week will NOT be available. I'll post the new location once it has been finalized.

Improv Class 13 August 2008

Here's a group shot with everyone doing the Mirror exercise. Also in this week's class album, there are quite a few shots from the scenes using hats and costume props. The camera died early, but the pictures we did get are a lot of fun. We had 24 people in class this week, and we started with the Mirror exercise along with 1-Word Story. I brought a couple of bins worth of hats and props, and out first exercise using them was Video Dating. Lots of great characters were created, and I really liked the times there were two character scenes. Nice work.

We got in a set of Standing Sitting Bending scenes before our next big challenge, which was a new song (or at least one we haven't done in a very long time). For the 50's Do Wop song, Andy was gracious enough to bring his guitar and keep us all on-beat and on-key. And I think everyone was excited to be working on a new song, even if the pattern is a bit more difficult. We did pretty well for the 5(!) rotations.

We ended the night with a Character Pass scene. It was another chance to use the hats and create bold characters. It was pretty challenging to be changing characters throughout the scene, but it was a lot of fun.