Annoyance: Level One - Week One

Today (yesterday now I suppose) I started the first level of improv classes over at the Annoyance Theater.

Lowdown on the Annoyance:
First off for those of you not in the know, let me run down a few details about the Annoyance.
It was started as sot of a reaction to the training at iO by a group of very talented improvisers lead by Mick Napier. They believed that iO was a little too form-centric in their approach. Their training center has 5 levels (and a few electives offered). Their theatre has only one stage (and one bar – not in the same room) and they have shows 6 nights a week (Mondays they sleep). Their shows are primarily scripted (or honestly at least 80-90% scripted, leaving some room to improvise). All their shows are edgy, and they love musicals (who doesn’t) & they have usually two or more shows a night (a few are pure improv, usually done by their best alumnae).
For more information go here:
http://www.theannoyance.com
Or check out the last section of Mick Napier’s book: Improvise
(Their history is really quite interesting)
Students here get into any show for free (unless it's sold out).

The Class Itself
Now before the class even started I found myself wondering about one particular aspect which separated it from the courses at iO: it was scheduled for only 2 and half hours instead of three. I had to wonder how much of those 30 minutes I’d end up missing – especially depending on the size of the class (at iO we’re lucky to get 2-3 scenes in three hours in level one). Well a few minutes into the class all my worries went out the window.
There were around 12-14 people in the class (already a good sign). After quickly introducing ourselves to each other and our instructor – we were given a brief rundown on what we would be working on: improvised scene work. Before we got started he gave us
Two things for us to keep in mind concerning all the work we’d do that day:
“Everything you do today is completely 100% right as long as you commit to it.”
And
“Don’t worry about being funny up there today. It’s not about being funny.”

15 minutes into the class we were all asked to hop up against the back wall and asked to simply begin a series of completely open two person scenes, which were edited by the instructor.
Now by completely open, I mean just that – he’d say two people up and we’d begin improvising (well which ever two stepped out that is). The only other comments were to call scene and ask for two more.

After a number of scenes (all of us got to go multiple times) he had us pause and gave us collectively one note. The note was to start each scene from now on with an immediate point of view (our character’s deal if you will) – this could also be an attitude/emotion (I’m angry, or sad, or I’m a badass, etc).
We then did a butt load of scenes with this idea as our only inspiration. Which had a lot more energy to them & kick to them.

One of the coolest things that happened in class came about as the result of a joke actually (which is amusing considering the teacher’s second piece of advice). Two ladies in the class jumped out as very high-energy characters. They both started bouncing around the stage – basically very bad dancing, as one counted off a rhythm. The scene itself was completely nonsensical, ridiculous, and had very little dialogue, and one girl almost took off her shirt – though it was amusing to watch.
After our instructor called scene he laughingly said as two new people stepped out (obviously as a joke) – OK now do that exact same scene. We all chuckled – low and behold though the pair immediately lapsed into a parody of the scene (they were two big guys FYI) bouncing around singing gibberish as one of them yelled, “look at me, look at me” while raising his shirt. The teacher died, we died – it was funny. Scene was called, then the next pair stepped out. After a moment they were asked to do the exact opposite of that scene.
This sent the next round of scenes into a pattern – we’d repeat the same scene multiple times, each time either we’d organically alter it simply by our reaction – or we’d be asked to alter it in a specific way (ex: same scene but now the two of you are related). Then we switched again running scenes all starting with the same line of dialogue – all completely different.

Somewhere in there (it’s all a blur, really) we took a short 10-minute break. Then after a few more open scenes our instructor asked us to start a series of completely silent scenes – where we had to convey out “deal” ASAP.
Here some people ended up basically playing charades as the scene’s went on heavily pantomiming what they were trying to say and upping up the physical activity to intense heights – the really interesting scenes though, were the few with just two people standing staring at each other (or sitting, or whatever, but calm, almost still) letting their body language and glances tell the entire story of what they were feeling.

Right after this we switched into just saying numbers instead of words in scenes. It was fun playing with how tone of voice and posture could convey just as much meaning if not more than words. From this another cool change happened (at least for me) I was in a scene where my partner barked out “one” and pointed at the floor – I sullenly replied “Two” and stood my ground. My partner then dropped and began doing push-ups, clearly ordering me to join him with his tone and gesture. I walked over, and repeated “two” and switched between a pleading and resistant tone.
We were then asked to repeat the same scene now using words. It became a good scene about a father trying to force his teenage son to change, on the surface physically but there was more under the surface.

After this we stopped and talked about what we had been doing so far. We had just perfectly illustrated one of the core principles of the theater through a happy accident (that repeat scene):
“How you do something is more important that what you do.”

We ended the class with more open scenes, this time around we were asked to think of people we knew very well who were very different than us, and use their attitude/point of view for inspiration.
All in all I did more scenes in this first class than I’ve done in the entire first 6 weeks at iO – and it was so welcome.

He left with a bit of advice on how to make the most of our time at the Annoyance:
“Treat this as an acting class, because it is.”

Things we took away from this first class:
It’s not about being funny
How you do what you do is who you are
Hold on to the gifts you give yourself
As long as you commit to it everything you do is right
Start off with attitude/character/point of view if you don’t, find it FAST