Annoyance Level One – Week Two

Class started off today with the introduction of two new members (and the loss of a few who apparently were just sitting in and are now enrolled in another section – there was exactly 10 of us, though a couple who were supposed to be there were not). The reason I mention this is because one of the new members is basically completely new to improv itself – he’s been a fan of it for a while (perhaps did a little in high school – I can’t entirely recall), but his main introduction to improv is through Mick Napier’s book Improvise (which basically covers the annoyance philosophy) so it’s very interesting playing with him and watching him play.

Before we began we were asked to be willing to play outside of our comfort zone today in class and that in class it’s far better to take some risks and “fail” instead of play it safe and “rock out” all the time. We started off right away with all of us getting up to “warm-up” with some completely open two-person scenes. It took a couple for us to shake some of the cobwebs off, but after a few we were all in a pretty god spot.
Our teacher then asked for half of us to grab a seat while the other group remained standing. It was a very interesting split – myself and four other guys headed to the chairs leaving up on stage the four ladies in the class and one guy (the shiest and perhaps most tentative one).

Once we were divided as such – our teacher told us hat for this round of scenes both players (we are basically exclusively focusing on two person scenes in this level btw) will, like last time, be asked to start each scene with an attitude or “deal” already established. However for this day our instructor will be assigning them at the start of each scene and both players will be given the exact same one.
The one caveat we are given before this exercise starts is to try and shy away from playing the “cliché” of whatever “deal” we are given.
It became rather apparent (even more so when our group went up) as scenes went on that he was custom tailoring some of the suggestions based on the players. Some examples we were given: “You believe you can kick the crap out of anyone.” - “You’re a fixer: you have an eagerness to fix things.” – “Militant.” – “Subservient.” “Sharing: you want to share something with others.” – etc.
After each group had done a few scenes where both players had the same “deals” at the top he began assigning separate "deals" to people as they came out – so you might see a scene between some who’s deal is “You believe you can kick the crap out of anyone.” & someone with “You’re a fixer: you have an eagerness to fix things.” And all kinds of different combinations that lead to some very interesting scenes.
As these scene continues our teacher began to add more abstract “deals” – asking us to focus on a bold physical choice, or (in my case one time) simply giving me the color “orange” and saying whatever character that inspires in me (after this scene he paused and said that it was an experiment he likes to try every once and a while in class in order to show how you can take anything as inspiration – it actually worked out fairly well).

Eventually our teacher took the blinders off again and we were asked to basically find our own “deals” once the scene began – encouraged to both pluck form any we had worked on or any we thought up ourselves. I really tried to focus on physicality, as it is something that I personally want to improve in (both varying physicality between characters drastically, playing with levels, just being more physical in scenes – using the space and my own body, etc).

After this we organically moved into basically a La Ronde: http://improvencyclopedia.org/games//La_Ronde.html - in order to play our characters in very different situations – and help us focus on what were the key elements to the characters we had developed. I always enjoy the La Ronde simply because it forces you to find a strong character – because otherwise you’re going to have it rough in later scenes.

The class then wrapped up with a series of open two person scenes.

There were a lot of really fun scenes (both to watch and to perform in) that came out of this. Two scenes I did I really felt rather good about and I want to mention because they illustrate really well what this sort of style can do in terms of initiations (my ego has nothing to do with it I swear – mwuahaha…cough).
The first I simply came out with the idea in the back of my mind that “I could beat the crap out of anyone.”
Just telling myself as I walked out completely caused me to alter the way I entered the space – I through my shoulders back, lead with my chest a bit more, and had a very confident air about me. Before I had taken two steps my scene partner started off the scene by telling me how much she was looking forward to our date. Without having to think about it for even a second I responded with something along the lines of: “Damn right you are.”
The scene flew on from there being incredibly easy to navigate as I had a perfect sense of my character (and so did my scene partner – we found out afterwards, as the teacher paused to ask us, that her “deal” was being incredibly enthusiastic). At no point was there a moment of “what do we do now” and I feel the scene could’ve gone on much longer if it had bee allowed to – simply because we both had very strong characters – inspired by rather simple phrases/ideas. Heck the scene even ended up in some weird territory with my first date question being “What’s your biggest fear in a relationship.” Which simply came from my first response to her – the very direct & straightforward “damn right you’re excited.”
The cool thing about this scene – at least for me – was the fact that from a single idea/attitude I instantly found a physicality and from there instantly found a broad outline for a character which could work in any situation: I’m incredibly confident and direct.

The next scene I had decided that I wanted to start focusing more on my own physicality – so when I stepped out I decided to try and be as different from my normal physical self as possible. This lead to me not so much stepping out on stage as leaping (well as well as I can) and landing in a crouch on my tiptoes – ready to bound up again at a moments notice. This rather bizarre and extreme physical choice quickly prompted in me the idea of being rather light on my feet and lead to me talking in voice a tad higher than my normal cadence, which quickly developed a singsong quality to it. The first words out my mouth ended up being rather cryptic simply because of the genuine look of surprise on my scene partner’s face when she saw me leap into a crouch. From there the scene took off as I ended up being a cross between Puck, the Cheshire cat, and a lot of general snarkiness as I flitted about on stage as a jester/imp always pausing in a crouch and eventually ended up speaking in rhyming couplets.
All of this – that entire weird ass character spawned from a physical choice – I didn’t think of how my voice should sound before I began speaking – the higher pitch and sing song quality came naturally from the way I was moving, and everything spiraled off from there.

The thing about these two scenes is that they highlighted – at least for me – two incredibly easy ways to find a full and rich character for any scene situation (which is really what this entire level is basically focusing on). First if you have an attitude you can find an instant character if you let it and secondly if you start off with a physicality you’ll also find an attitude and character if you let it. And as many, many people have said before me – it’s all about finding a character and channeling a point of view (and currently my favorite way to do that is through physicality, though only slightly behind it is through and attitude/point of view – since they are really interchangeable: if you have one you’ll have the other if you let it happen).
Hopefully this makes sense and the descriptions of the scenes help illustrate the idea.


A few things we took away from class:
You can find a character through physicality or point of view very easily.
Specificity in scenes makes for much richer more interesting work
Subtlety is the key when being inspired by attitude (unless you make an active deliberate choice to be unsubtle).
Challenge yourself – play outside your comfort zone enough and your comfort zone will expand.