iO Level Three – Week Two

So Wednesday night was our first class with our regular teacher for level 3: the kick ass Bill Arnett.

From the first few minutes of class I could already tell this was going to go a million times better than least session. I have to say so far I have been very fortunate with all my teachers up here in Chicago as it seems each is either more or just as inspiring than the last.

We started off class with a quick name game in order to kind of get people’s names down (and let Bill get them down). Next Bill had us play 6Things ____ Would Say: a warm up where everyone stands in a circle and one person turns to the player on their right and gives them a profession – that player must then (as quickly as possible) say six things that someone in that profession would say (and preferably only someone in that profession would say) – Bill’s one caveat for this was to encourage us to be as blunt and even obvious as possible. For example if some one gives you Mechanic, say “Yeah, I’m a Mechanic I can fix your breaks.” Or don’t just say “I hate my job” say “I hate being a mechanic” Don’t be afraid to be that blunt and up front about it.

Next Bill had us all sit down and asked for a small group of us to hop up on stage. We formed two lines and Bill explained we would be doing short scenes. In these scenes a player from line A would step out and initiate the scene – and the player form line B would hop out and repeat that initiation back throwing their own Point of View on to it and a short scene would commence. So for example:

Player A: “I want to get a divorce Tom.”
Player B: “Oh, you want to get a divorce do you? well It’ll be a cold day in hell before I agree to that Sheryl.”

After everyone had a chance to participate in a couple of these – Bill had us move on to doing some simple two person scenes (in which we could continue using this method of initiating if we wanted to) where at some point during the scene each character was to give a brief monologue (to the other player, not to the audience). This was building off the Six Things exercise as Bill suggested we keep that in mind if we got stuck at any point: what are 6 things this person would talk about.

The class then ended with is dividing into two groups and running two quick montages with the freedom to try on anything we’d worked on so far in class.

Bill left us with these ideas:
Be Brave in your words – you don’t have to explain everything, but don’t be afraid to explain.
If you ever Don’t know what to do in a scene, say what you’re feeling, state exactly what’s going on in the scene, or state how your scene partner is behaving.
Don’t be afraid to state the Obvious
Be confident in your offers and scene work
Specificity is key – add details whenever you can
Tell stories, have a past
Comedy comes from the context
Your job is NEVER your character