It has Begun....

Th 9th Del Close Marathon got off to a banging start yesterday - as it always does.

The Gang's finally all here. Laura got in around 2pm and met up with us near Madison square park - where we did some improvising. We met up with an alum of our group Eric Leventhal, it was great to see him again. He's now working for a talent agent in LA, yet was sent up to the city on business (the lucky bastard).

We got to the theatre around 4pm for the tail end of the Press conference with the UCB four (well 3 as Mrs. Poehler was not in attendance). Some really great advice about improv and really pursuing this art form and overall a great way to kick off the marathon (though I miss the street ritual: hundreds of improvisers marching through Manhattan playing a giant word association game).

Some shows were absolutely amazing (Bassprov, Stepfathers, Death by Roo Roo, Satellites, ET AL) - Others not quite as great.
I actually noticed an interesting phenomena in the theatre - first off if the actors were not famous/well known (read: from out of town) they had to really earn any response from the audience (like a couple of the Chicago troupes, who rocked - got less response simply because their members aren't on comedy central, or MTV - and perform at a slightly slower pace).

Heck the way the schedule was designed some groups got terrible responses even though they were great - just because they were in between (or right after) a block of amazingly funny and fast shows.

After watching roughly 12 hours straight of different improv groups (from a lot of different theaters) I really got a chance to kind of examine the UCB theatre's style of improvisation. It's all about playing fast and finding the first funny/interesting thing and then heightening the hell out of it (it also helps that I did study there for an entire summer).
It's entertaining as hell I'll admit and leads to some really interesting scenes, however it really relies on the natural humor of the players. There seems to be an idea of finding the funniest choice (or the best choice if you will) in a scene or moment and I have some issues with that personally.

OK that's all I have time for at the moment. Now I'm off to get my ass kicked in some workshops.