Annoyance Level Two – Week Four

It has been right around three weeks since I last improvised (The theaters up here take a break for the holidays … and I went back to my home town to appease the family – so I didn’t even have the option of jams…sigh).

But classes are back – and it is very welcome. Rich realizing that we all had some extra cobwebs to shake off after the break – started us off with an extra long warm-up session this class. Just a lot of open two person scenes to get us back in the groove.

After a number of these (though I could’ve used even more honestly) he had us circle up in the middle of the room. IN a bid to get us back into the groove of finding characters quickly and organically (and get our energy up some more I’m sure) he had us start working some character transformations.
One person would hop in the middle of the circle. They would then begin by making a random sound and motion that were encouraged to be disparate form each other (no easy way outs in this exercise). The rest of the circle would then repeat this sound and motion – over and over along with the person in the center, until….buhm..buhm…baaaaah – the player in the center locked eyes with someone in the circle who then switches spots – ending up in the middle. At this point everyone else fades off repeating the sound and motion leaving just the new middleman doing it. Slowly then the new person in the middle has to organically find a character from the repetitive sound and motion they were given – transforming it. After they get a clear character (physicality and voice) and saw a few words – they get to start a new sound and motion and the process repeats.

Once everyone had a turn we went ahead and took a quick break. Afterwards Rich had us circle up again – telling us that we were going to be doing the exact same exercise – with a twist…..buhm…buhm….baaaaaaah --- after we found a character he was going to have the class conduct a intense character interview. Sadly not everyone got a chance to participate in this round as the interviews ran long and we ran out of time.

All in all a nice low-pressure class to get us all back into the groove of things after the break.