Posts Tagged “Eliza Skinner”

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.

My Musical Improv 101 class at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, taught by the incredibly talented Eliza Skinner, ended the other week. It was undoubtedly the most fun I’ve had in an improv class to date. Learning to sing improvised songs was a liberating experience, not only because singing is so much fun, but because it’s a class that you truly feel on the same level as everyone else.

I haven’t felt this free since 101

The mechanics of musical improv are undoubtedly a little different than that of scenic improv, but at their core it’s the same stuff. You agree, support, and play games in the same way, however because you are operating within a song, there is an added level of structure that plays alongside it all. Where a two person scene was once king, you now have to do all, most of the time by yourself, in song. It sounds far more difficult than it actually is.

The song structures in musical improv is fairly simple. You have two basic structures a tagline song or a verse chorus song. What I found so interesting is that previously, in 2 person scenes, I would be a very “one note” player. Rarely did I “if this is true, what else is true.” But in a song, the verse structure cannot move forward if you aren’t actively heightening your subject choices. Additionally in a Verse Chorus Structure, you need to pick a Chorus at the start to be the engine which will power your song. This Chorus has to be simple, memorable, and universal, but it also has to in some way represent what you are about to sing. So, where I once found myself trying to create and find games in scenes, now I chose the entire game from the beginning.

Wax On, Wax Off teaching

Interestingly, at the end of the class all my scenic improv skills, which I was using in practice and performance, had improved. The stuff that seemed unrelated were in fact improving by the lessons I was learning in musical improv. I was making bold choices up top. I was defining my characters wants and making those wants important. I was supporting everything strongly. I was listening to myself up top to find game. I was keeping it simple. I was having fun.

This made me think, maybe this idea of classes, much like the raw harold class focussed on support, that look at a particular facet of improv are actually just as important as Harold workshops. These classes show us something universal about the skills of improv. They strengthen in the way that lifting weights strengthen, by targeting distinct improv muscles that you can use in your everyday work. Sure you can still jump into the ring and train by throwing punches, but sometimes jumping rope can be just as useful.

Lessons Learned from Musical Improv:

• Make strong, want based, choices up top
• Be specific about what you’re talking about
• Have important, meaningful, wants for your characters
• Game is like a song — Keep your view consistent, Expand your views (if this is true what else is true), explore patterns, get out before it gets repetitive
• Explore your environment as if it were a stocked stage
• Use the stage, remember stage picture, and keep action active
• Keep your songs, wants, and initiations simple and memorable — Think about the universality of your themes
• Backline should support the ideas on stage and not pull focus with extraneous moves
• Support everything unconditionally — Enough support can make all the difference
• Look like you know what’s going on, give em’ your pokerface
• Remember that tragedy can be just as powerful as comedy
• Give your audience a musical worthy of the stage. If they paid $45 would it be worth it?
• Follow the fun — Play