Archive for July, 2008

2 Years at UCB

by Ben Whitehouse.

July 5th (when I started writing this) marked my second anniversary of taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade New York. It’s been a fast 2 years, but when I think back to even just a year ago, I am a amazed how far I have come. There have been plateaus, peaks, and a lot of different ways of looking at everything. You learn one thing, think you have mastered it, and before you know it you find you really didn’t know anything at all. Improv is both the most rewarding thing I have ever done with my life and the most frustrating.

UCB has been the center of my education (14 Classes) for the last 2 years and I still count myself as lucky to be part of such a warm and open community. No school is going to give you the golden key to improvisation and make every student into the next Bill Murray, but UCB is a place where if you want to make something of yourself, you can. It’s been frustrating, sometimes humiliating, and occasionally overwhelming, but it’s also been the most educational endeavor I have ever undertaken.

And so I thought I would write down, for posterity, the lessons that are currently bouncing through my mind after 2 years of clases. Hopefully next year I will look back and think “Oh, that’s what I was thinking last year?! Wow, that seems like second nature now”

State-of-My-Union

  • I’m not sure if I’m a slow exception, but almost 2 yeas to the day of starting classes, and taking them consistently, I finally understand game. That’s a huge thing in my improvisational career.
  • I’ve also started to feel like my work outside of classes in practice and performance is really starting to shine. I am consistently asked after shows where I trained and who I’ve trained with, which I take as a compliment.
  • My 4 person improv group is flourishing. We’ve played enough shows that I feel super relaxed on stage and truly feel that no one’s skills outshine any others. We need to write more sketch.
  • My performance in class still suffers from being too polite and shy to people I don’t know well. I sometimes feel like sociopaths would have a much easier time performing than I do, but feel lucky I’m not a sociopath.
  • The indie improv community is the healthiest I have ever seen it. New groups are starting to once again surface, which is reassuring that it wasn’t just my generation that had a group boom. I feel very lucky to be part of the indie improv community.
  • Longform Musical Improvisation is one of the best trainings for all of your improv skills and from reading Funniest One In The Room, Del knew it too. It has taught me more about the themes in life than any other class. Eliza Skinner elevates the craft to an art form. (She’s teaching two DCM workshops — take them! Sunday 2-5pm & Wednesday 6-9pm)

Current circulating ideas

  • Be truthful always — never go for the joke. Truth in Comedy is good, but Comedy in Truth is better.
  • Game is not about the unusual things, but rather your relationships to them. (relationship — noun — the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected). If this is true (about my character/behavior/relationship/environment/etc.), what else (about my behavior) is true?
  • Game is celebrating/exploring/wallowing in situations/problems/fun, rather than trying to invent/solve/move past them.
  • Never take any lesson from any instructor at face value — you must own it before it can be true for you. Discover why the rules are true.
  • Support everything, in improv, unconditionally always. Everything you or your partner say is brilliant — listen to that subconscious brilliance and figure out what it means.
  • “Yes And = Yes Why” –Anthony King
  • Always make your partner look better. You are always on stage to protect your partner, always take the bullet.
  • Game is usually in the first 3 lines of dialog, so pay special attention up top to everything you and your partners say.
  • Listen to yourself as much as you listen to your partner — you may not be aware of the games you are setting up.
  • Trust your opinions — your opinions make your improv different from everyone elses.
  • And! — Anding is how you make your mark on a scene.
  • “Perform each scene like it will be your last.” –Amey Goerlich
  • Never be polite — take, give, demand, and never apologize.
  • Tell your scene partner what you are feeling, don’t assume they are on the same page.
  • Take your time — perform in the same tempo as you live your life, anything else will feel foreign.
  • Make this be the day something happens — something happening doesn’t always mean something external.
  • Allow your characters to have wants for themselves — this can flesh out a character better than anything.
  • Always warm-up before a class or performance — remember exercises warm up different parts of your brain and body. Try to do a left brain exercise (7 things, Hot Spot), right brain exercise (3 characteristics, character wheel, made-up hot spot) and an energy exercise (Crazy 8’s, knife throw, moving in space)
  • Group mind, group mind, group mind.
  • You are brave for trying this — most people go through their lives never living to their potential, feel comforted that even if you fail you are still one of the few who are trying.

Where Have You Been?

by Ben Whitehouse.

Good question. As many of you are aware, I have been very busy lately. With moving my office, traveling, performing, hosting, birthday parties, writing a musical, and taking 2 classes — I haven’t had a lot of time to write much of anything. The stuff I have been writing is unfortunately very complex and I’ve been having a lot of problems editing my work.

Writing about game is trickier than I thought.

2 months and counting on just one article about game. The depressing part about the article is, I realized half way through, that an article about game is pretty useless. I’m still writing it, and you will all see what I’m saying, but at the end of the day game is only a small (yet important) part of scenework.

So, that’s just an update of things over here in improvoker land. I’m still very much alive and kicking. I feel better about improvisation than I ever have and I’ll be sure to write things that don’t require months of editing more often.

Much like this. Thanks for continued support.
–Ben