Annoyance Level Three - Week Two

So after a week hiatus from class due to Susan being out of town for personal reasons - class has started up again.

I have to say, especially after my last class over at iO - this particular class was very much needed (even though something surprising happened to me in this one too).
Susan is huge on getting people to say fuck it and just do what they need to do to "get off" in a scene. The idea that if you are in the moment and having fun sticking to your shit no one is worrying if you are a shitty improviser (least of all yourself) is a great one.

The first exercise we did was the one where I was surprised in. Three people get up on stage in chairs. The players on either end are both given topics to talk about - their goal is to simply gain , and keep, the attention of the person in the middle by asking them questions about their topic. Sounds easy right? Well the key is both people on the end are trying to do this at the exact same time - and there are basically no rules as to how they gain/keep the attention of the person in the middle (invading people's personal space is encouraged).

The first time I went up I ended up being monkey in the middle. Both players did a pretty good job of of keeping my attention divided between them (one with very specifc personal questions and the other with such exclamations as: "If you don't look at me I'm going to punch you in the face). For me at least being in the middle was a fairly easy time - even though by the end I was having trouble keeping up my responses to match theirs - it was still fun.

The next time I was up, I was on the outside. I completely dropped the ball on this one. Which even Susan said was surprising for me. My topic was Mexican food and I started off strong but then as the cacophony rose I lost a lot of momentum. Part of the reason (a very small part) was I first started speaking in Spanish only to quickly realize I do not have enough mastery of the language to keep that going, but I think the bulk of the problem arose from the fact that I've been conditioned to be more of a facilitator in scenes: my polite improviser reared it's head and I started waiting for pauses to interject.
I've been in a rather large number of total clusterfuck situations on stage before and from my experience in dealing with those is to default to hang back and wait. I still hold on to my shit, but I move into improv robot mode - I analyze as much of the cacophony as I can and wait for a lull to interject something that will hopefully connect things and move the cluster fuck along.

After this we moved into an incredibly simple exercise - yet one of my favorites so far: "that reminds me..."
Basically three players hop up on stage and are given a simple location and appropriate activity (ie folding laundry in a laundry mat, cleaning the garage, etc). The three players then have light conversation while performing their task until eventually one person gets inspired to relate a TRUE story from their life - and starts it off with "That reminds me...".
After they tell their story (or at some point near the end) another player, inspired by what they've been hearing - tells their own true story ... again with "That reminds me..." - this goes so each individual gets to tell two stories - each inspired from the story they hear just before.