After the typical warm-ups and a few open scenes to shake the cobwebs off - Bill told us we were going to roll some dice and jump right into working a little with third beats.
He got a third of the class up and basically let us know we were going to be doing a spineless Harold: a Harold sans the groups games in the middle.
The format would be as follows:
- An opening of three distinct monologues inspired from a suggestion
- Three distinct scene inspired by those monologues
- A second beat scene for each of the initial scenes
- A third round of scenes inspired by both the initial scene and it's second beat
One of the things we wanted to focus on was making the third and final scenes for each sequence be a scene that was inspired by both of the preceding scenes - instead of merely another second beat of the first scene (also that the first scenes weren't linearly inspired by the monologues: monologue A relates just to scene A, Monologue B to scene B, etc).
The biggest key in making sure that the third scenes were not just alternate second beats of the first scene was two fold: First be willing to drop your ideas of second beats for a scene after a second beat happens, Second look at the type of inspiration the second beat took (was it very literal/narrative or very tangential - if literal/narrative the third scene should probably take a fairly literal/narrative based inspiration from the first two scenes - if tangential it should probably be a tangential inspiration).
After everyone in the class got to be in one of these Bill changed it up a little bit. This time around he got four of us up and told us we would perform one initial scene and then two second beats and two third beats. The catch is - the order would go: Initial scene, Second Beat A, Third Beat A, Second Beat B, Third Beat B.
Obviously we were to take two very different inspirations for each of the second beats.
From this class we took these ideas:
Narrative & Plot are a trap in improv
In a Harold if the Second beat was tangential, perhaps the third should be as well (Likewise if the second beat was narrative based, then maybe the third should be too)
The Third beat should be inspired by both the first and second scene
Be affected by each other and really react to what your scene partner says & does
As characters you can be at odds, as actors you must always be together
You can always hold on to your characters - but you have to be willing to throw out your premises
Play the Distraction (put a spot light on the peculiar behavior or "mistake" and run with it)
No comments:
Post a Comment