iO Level One - Week Six

So the other night was the sixth session of my level one class. As we do at the top of every class period – we briefly talk about what improv shows people saw the previous week – almost always only a handful (today only two of us) have actually gone to see any improv, much less an io Harold team.
This wouldn’t be so surprising except we get into almost all the shows at the theater for free (and one of the best shows in the city is right after our class downstairs (admittedly that’s one of the few we don’t get into for free, but it’s $5). The most shocking thing it’s always the same people who go to see shows – nearly half the class has yet to see an improv show in the city (or at least admit to it) since the class started (6 weeks ago) – which boggles my mind – here you are shelling out hundreds of dollars to take this (and possibly other) classes, yet you don’t want to take advantage of one of the few perks (free admission to most shows) and see how it’s “supposed” to be done.

It’s part of a weird phenomena I’ve started to notice since being up in Chicago – one you’re surrounded by so much improvisation (really theater, the arts, and most things in general) it becomes very easy to take it all for granted.

Anyway we next had a quick round of 8’s (what I secretly call cerebral palsy...if you know the warm-up you understand, but still probably think just as poorly of me for thinking that) and then had half the class picks up where we left off last week.

Last week we learned the Invocation (see above post for details) – and ended the class with half of us performing an invocation then going right into the first two beats of a Harold (so invocation as the opening, three scenes, a group game, three more scenes).
We ran out of time before the second half of the class got to try it though – so they did it this week.

It was very clear a little bit into the invocation, that some of the group either did not fully remember how the opening went or did not understand it the first time around – either the start of it was great…then it got a little messy. The scenes in the first beat were ok, if lacking a little in the relationship department, while the second beat scenes were a little more strained – as with out strong relationships early on, connections between the various scenes were hard to make.

After the shaky repeat of the invocation (due to time) we had to plow forward in order to cover the lesson for today: The Armando. Now for those of you not in the know the Armando (aka Armando Diaz – named after the person who came up with it) is a show format where one individual is set as the Armando for the show – his job is to, based off an audience suggestion, begin a true (meaning a real anecdote from his life experience) monologue at the top of the show which will inspire a random number of scenes (I say random, because the number usually isn’t set beforehand). Then after a number of scenes the Armando feels is right (or after the info from the monologue has been bled dry for inspiration) the Armando steps forward delivers a new monologue (still true – only now inspired from the scenes which just occurred) and a series of scenes happen again (and as the second monologue was inspired itself from the first round of scenes – connections between the first and second beats often happen). The piece ends with either a scene or a final monologue – that really depends on the tech guy/Armando.

Now I love the Armando – it’s format is so lose that there’s an incredible amount of freedom and the standard inspiration is such that getting everyone in the ensemble on the same page is incredibly simple.
Now when I say “standard inspiration” here’s what I mean: the source is a monologue (basically a true anecdote/story from a person’s life – however there’s a standard way to dissect this for scene work (note as with any opening players are actually free (depending on the director) to take whatever inspiration they want (word, tone, theme, phrase, physicality of the presenter, etc): what my level one teacher calls commenting.

A quick tangent here: I learned how to do “long form” based off of the Armando premise (scenes from a monologue), was trained in this idea at the UCB theater in New York in their level one program, and have taught a number of workshops where I’ve talked about how to dissect a monologue for scenes.

The way our teacher described how to do it the first time made me go “whaaaa?” in my head. Now my level one teacher is incredibly nice and very talented and this is the only time in 6 weeks where I almost did a double take at something, but the first attempt at breaking this down was not the most efficient explanation I’ve ever heard.
It was described as such: “basically all the scenes in an Armando are comments about the monologue – in other words you should be commenting on something you heard from the monologue in ever scene.”
Now I can see what she was trying to say (at the time I was a tad confused), but it’s not the best wording. Eventually through a number of question asking on the part of some of the students and some explanation on the part of the teacher we got out the simplified idea: For an Armando, you don’t want to reenact the story (or situations) you heard – you want to figure out what the monologue (stories/situations) are really about/ what they are saying – and do a scene based on that (ok maybe not all that simple).

I language used when I was first taught was: take an idea (dare I say a theme) from the monologue and apply it to a completely different situation.

Where the word Commenting comes from is because in essence the ideal is that your scene will (or should depending on who you ask) probably voice an opinion (comment) about the idea - leading to a deeper message – I’m all for a piece having a message (and that is what teaching it under this method pushes for) though most of the time if you’re doing your job it will have one organically – you just have to be open to it when it pops up.

Honestly I can't really fault them too much for teaching it in terms of calling it commenting on a scene (heck I call crazy 8's or whatever, cerebral palsy in my head - though I'd never teach it that way) I just wonder sometimes about how much is being lost due to the way they have structured their curriculum and the sheer number of people per class, and I think this was a small symptom of it.

The scenes in the Armando were great for the most part (a few were a little rough – but that was mostly due to too many people being on stage at one time). I also did something a haven’t done since the first day – I made sure to go in the last group (those of you reading the post above must be shocked) however what I realized was that by getting up first every time (the way this class is) I ended up playing with the same 10 people almost every time… or at least mainly. I had never worked with almost half the class in the past 6 weeks –so since her are only two classes left I wanted to challenge myself by playing with the others. Overall a fun class and I managed to get in on two really nice character driven scenes in the Armando – and one amusing cluster fuck, which at least was… amusing.

That's all I have for now - told you I'd be more detailed... see