iO Level Two - Week One

I meant to post this yesterday – but time just got away from me.

I started level two at iO Tuesday with the wonderful Susan Messing teaching. I have to say if anyone who reads this ever gets a chance take a class/workshop or see a show with this woman – do it (NB: if you are easily offended – she definitely will at some point though).
With her telling us how now we were entering the level she developed while high in her tub and cautioning the few latecomers to never be late to her vagina again the class started.

Throughout the entire class she managed to drop more pearls of improv wisdom than I had a chance to right down, but she started off the class with the advice that in a lot of encapsulates the theory behind iO’s style of teaching: You succeed if your friends succeed.
We began by sitting on the stage in the Del Close Theater and starting a simple name game – we’d go around the circle and each person would make a gesture while saying their first name – then every one repeated it. We continues until everyone had gone and then began sending the focus to each other by first saying our own name and making the gesture – then making the gesture of someone else and saying their name (they would then repeat their own and say someone else’s). Eventually we were passing the focus simply by making the gestures of people and making eye contact.
This was done to help us learn each other’s names cause as Susan says: once you know someone’s name you can start actually caring about them (this goes right along with her mantra about characters on stage as: since it’s a fucking legal obligation to name a child you should damn well name characters created in scenes too).

We then quickly jumped in to a warm-up I have played once before called Caligula. It’s basically a giant game of twister without the polka dotted mat and spinner. Everyone gets in a circle (or cluster) and touches some part of their body to the people next to them. Next everyone take a big step forward and begins moving slowly about while constantly retaining physical contact in someway with the rest of the group. The entire time as we were squirming about Susan kept reminding us to follow our bodies – go where they needed to go and to not try and to not aim for somewhere safe, somewhere easy.

Afterwards we took a brief break to catch some air (up till this point for some reason the AC wasn’t really working in the theater, so we were all covered in sweat – thank god it quickly got fixed) while Susan laid some of her improv philosophy on us:
Scenes are all about the people you meat in them (the characters) and the Harold or whatever form/show thing you’re doing are just little worlds where they live.
There are basically two types of scenes out there: Little slice of life scenes - this is a typical day in the life of the Johnson family type shit. And shit hits the fan scenes – this is the day where something unexpected/weird/whatever happens in the lives of the Johnson family.
The first three seconds of any scene is your promise to the audience of how you’ll be/act the rest of the scene.
You’re body is the only thing you own in a scene – everything else comes out through discovery.

This last bit of wisdom sent us into the next exercise. She had all of us hop up on stage and begin walking around normally. She then asked us to begin leading or focusing on specific parts of our body as we walked. For example: Leading with our arm, chest, forehead, hips. Telling us we were all hand models and to really focus on our hands – focusing on our eyes – first keeping them wide, as wide as we could – then squinting. Etc, etc. As we walked about each time focusing on something different she asked us to think about how it made us feel and to say hello to each other as we made eye contact – every time the hellos came out very differently. The exercise is a perfect quick door to creating new characters – just changing one little thing about your physicality can instantly give you a character and change the way you feel and act.
Susan next had two thirds of the class sit down – and got out 6 chairs for the rest of the class to walk around. As they walked (normally again) she asked the rest of us, and herself, what part of their body they were leading with/focusing on naturally.
After we had picked them out she asked everyone on stage to change it – focus on a different par as they walked and then after they had something – to sit down in the chairs (and to keep that thing, and the way it made them feel in mind). What followed next was basically a big group character interview (hot seat – for you theater people). She told everyone that they all new each other somehow and to be inspired from how they were just walking and be someone other than themselves. She then had all of the characters on stage introduce themselves and began interviewing them as to how they knew each other and for specifics about their lives. It was very interesting to see how quickly everyone found a relatively rich character and managed to interact with each other as they were questioned. Of course there was slight hiccup early on – as the third person in the first group, when Susan asked him to introduce himself, paused looked around for a minute and then asked if he was just supposed to make something up or what (though after the exercise was explained one more time – it all moved along beautifully).

After the whole class had a chance to be up in the exercise it really hammered the idea home that physicality an lead to a very rich character if you let it – it also set us up for her next comment: that people want to connect with each other (especially on stage). Very quickly on stage in this – even beside the caveat that we all knew each other – character found special relationships with each other. One person made themselves my sister and that I hated her, in the group scene even with our knowing each other as a group was being stuck at an airport together – people found all kinds of little games to play or connections to make with each other.

We then got our next piece of advice: be a doer on stage – once you’re on stage do something, anything – just make a damn choice and do something.
From this we quickly went into a series of big group scenes with half the class on stage. Once the group got up there they were given a location and asked to immediately start doing something – no dialog at first (she was going to interview us again – about the scene) just start interacting in the space.
The first took place in an emergency room and we quickly found out – with Susan again interviewing them – that there were only two doctors, the family of a guy who got his dick stuck in a chair, a man who answered the phone the docs, and a mortician cause the situation was grim.
The next scene took place at a firehouse – which we quickly discovered had no captain (he was away on vacation) and was part of an experimental urban out reach program that had criminals and drug addicts doing community service as firemen and was about to fail their monthly inspection.

We ended the class with these bits of advice:
On stage try it on, be a crazy drug addicted whore – psycho killer – whatever (take risks, don’t play it safe, lose your filter/censor). Off stage if you do it, get therapy.
Improv (and comedy in a lot of ways) goes against human nature. It’s Human to try and figure out how to do something before attempting it – with improv the moment you step on stage you just have to do something and then figure it all out.
If you aren’t having fun on stage – you’re the asshole.
And of course: “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”