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“That’s right. I’m a one-legged seagull, all fucked up! All because of PLASTIC!!”

October sees the Würzburg Improfestival, this year its eleventh and my second. It was a chance to study with wonderful international teachers – Patti Stiles and Matthieu Loos, in my case – reunite with a core of my Improv Olympic cohort and enjoy playing together again, and to socialise with the wonderful, diverse body of attendees, including old friends from last year and others not seen since Canada in 2010. Oh! The shows! From wonderfully dishevelled cabaret-style chat to long-form reinventions, together with time-honoured formats…I enjoyed it a lot. (I also got myself back into the lighting booth for a few of them, which was tremendous fun.) If nothing else, consider this me urging you to go next year.

I caught a Micestro show during my stay, which was a great example of the form at its best: bitty in parts, sluggish early on, but building in confidence and playfulness to a glorious end; a great arc to the evening. The wonderful Filipe Ortiz came out top, with a solo prison break scene that will forever stick in my memory, but another scene moves me to write. Christian Capozzoli of NYC’s 4track, was called up along with Jim Libby, a top-rate improviser I’ve seen before in Wurzburg and at the London impro festival, and I was looking forward to seeing in action here. But in the scene that followed, Jim didn’t get to say a thing. Really, didn’t get to do a thing. Christian steamrollered the scene. And it was brilliant.

Let me unpack. The scene was a police interrogation, and Christian was the cop. He began talking, a tough mouthy new york plainclothes, establishing a situation that was pretty close to the bone – Jim was under suspicion of murdering children in a theme restaurant  ball pond. You could kind of feel in the room this sense of ‘we’re going there?’, but Christian stuck with it, and kept talking rat-a-tat at Jim, and… it started to become apparent that this OTT cop was enough for a scene, and Christian knew it and was feeling happy and good about it being that, and that he saw that Jim was being overwhelmed but in a fun way. And that he realised that he could give his partner a ride on the crazy train.

Then it just kicked off. All the emotional tonal switches in the scene that prevent it being monotone? Christian was good cop and bad cop moment to moment, beseeching then outraged. All the content he generated got fed back into the next round, feeding himself constantly in a stream of consciousness that stopped making sense and became cut-up poetry in interrogation format. Plastic drinking cups led to the murderous plastic of the ball pond, and on to beach creatures maimed by 6-pack connectors, to later him delivering his righteous smackdown in the voice (and flapping, ridiculous gait) of the one-legged seagull.

And as this went on, what was Jim doing? Corpsing like crazy. Every muscle of his body was convulsing as Christian brought the ridulousness up notch after notch, rabid and careening in his face. It looked like torture: pure, blissed-out torture.

If you can delight your partner more by breaking every rule, do that. Jim had a great, active show, but I’m sure he had the best time in that scene where he didn’t have to do a thing.

Links:

Würzburg Improfestival

My teachers there, Patti Stiles and Matthieu Loos

Filipe Ortiz and La Gata impro

Christian Capozzoli 

Jim Libby and the English Lovers

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Back from Germany

Some delayed reports from my trip to Germany at the end of October follow. The visit was partly for leisure but also to return to some sources of inspiration and connection in the improv world.

Yesterday [and a month] I co-facilitated a lovely little impro playshop with Julia Pöhlmann in her home town. It was a little off the cuff and with a modest group size – just two wonderful students! – but it was great to work with beginners again after a while working with performers as coach or peer-practitioner.

While it evolves at each encounter, my teaching framework is becoming more and more solid. It’s really just an expression of what I reckon as the fundamentals of the art. It helps me make sense of why games are useful, and why some exercises seem in themselves sufficient to elicit good scenes, whereas others feel more like laser-focused techniques that attend to one thing well, but aren’t enough to equip a beginner to play through a scene.

It was also my first time teaching out of English! Well, i mostly spoke English but the scenes and some of the warmups were in German. It really kept me aware and conscious of how the scene felt, and i was happy that my sidecoaching appeared to fit what the scene genuinely needed. Julia did a great job translating my ideas and providing her own, ran great sessions and kept the temperature of the session really well.

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I take my cue from technology historian George Dyson, who argues that, from the perspective of the real world, the digital universe is accelerating rapidly but, from the view of the digital universe, the biological world is slllllooooowwwwwiiing doooowwwwn. Since we humans are amphibians and live in both universes, we are being torn by acceleration on one side and deceleration on the other. That sounds rough, but it’s actually pretty exciting.

Stewart Brand, interviewed by Kevin Kelly.

Quote entirely lifted from Matt Jones’ amazing blog Magical Nihilism

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sinful characters [g+ backpost]

Hi gaming peeps

(I’ve just added back a bunch of people into my gaming circle – if you aren’t into that, please let me know.)

I’m toying around with a little technique to develop interesting characters that I’d love to get feedback on. I haven’t formally tested it yet, though it grew out of things I do semi-consciously on occasion. Also, I’m particularly interested in this as a stage technique for improvisation shows, and it may feel less useful/needed in some rpg contexts. But I reckon it may be relevant for any on-the-fly character generation.

This is intended to mitigate 1-D characters by dipping into charged and easily accessible human qualities, or as these are typically termed, sins.

The seven sins – wrath, pride, gluttony, lust, greed, envy and sloth – are fairly accessible in Western J-C culture. So what happens when we mindfully use them as a palette to paint our characters in, together with a set of guidelines for the kinds of results you are likely to get? I think fun happens! Here are the guidelines:

1. Different combinations encourage different roles

You want someone who performs a social role in the story/situation, but with a bit of definition:

A flawed paragon is markedly prone to a single sin

Examples: the priest who is pious but lazy, the artist who is selfless but obsessed with the greatness of their sacrifices.

You want someone who is pretty horrible – a real heel – but want to accent their self-indulgence with some iron discipline

A disciplined badass has several sins but is totally immune to one or more.

Examples: the greedy, wrathful priest who can never be tempted by sex, the artist harping on and undermining the success of others, too lazy to achieve it on his own merit, but cannot be bought off by any amount of coin.

You want someone who is colourful, you kind of hate them but just when you make your mind up you love them again.

A big-hearted scoundrel has several sins but also exhibits the polar opposite of one sin, to the extent that it kind of redeems them.

Examples: the lustful, lazy priest who desires the best for others at the end of the day, the artist perpetually drunk, full of pride, and wallops anyone who doesn’t appreciate expressionism, but is respectful, diligent, even courteous to the opposite sex.

(This is my favourite and the reason I started making this stuff explicit, after reading John Berger on Rembrandt: ‘no saint’, indeed)

2. Different specific sins have a different emphasis on plot vs immediacy

Firstly let’s unpack the sins a bit more. To my mind,

 –   Wrath can include irritation at small things, and great roaring enjoyable anger cf Mark Rylance in Jerusalem, a bellowing Falstaff.

 –   Pride can involve suffering when other people see the world other than how you do – eg how Roger Ebert probably feels about McG’s success.

 –   Gluttony includes boozing, drugs, all vices of consumption.

 –   Lust isn’t merely desiring sex but any example of objectification of other people.

 –   Greed involves any material advancement, including ambition/getting status. The ‘lawyer sin’, reptilian, whereas pride is more peacock, where you really believe it and can easily be wounded.

 –   Envy includes any wishing-ill on others, general grumpiness and zero-sum attitudes towards life (those immigrants get all the social housing!)

 –   Sloth encompasses laziness, unhelpfulness, and demandingness to others (clean my teeth for me!) – a classic nasty Master sin, for those familiar with the Keith Johnstone improv set-up.

So what’s this about emphasis?

The first two are energetic and egoistic. They make the character grow out and show themselves, their sensitivities and buttons to push.

The next two involve approach and physicality. They make characters approach immediate components of the world and grab things (or people) within reach.

The next two are more tactical and scheming. They might involve grabbing things within reach but can be a little more abstract, and execution is often a bit more considered. Think Iago.

To my mind, the first two are great, and the third can be tricky, risking putting players in their heads for the ‘right’ way to get their goals. Compare with Be Angry Now/Get My Mack On.

What about Sloth? To me, it’s a bit of a wild-card. On a stage, played well, inactivity can heighten immediacy and perversely, make stuff happen. This is trivially true if the character has a high status – the king that requires the retinue to carry him to his horse, or delegates all the important decisions to his page – but also for ordinarily low-status roles: the stable-girl who never carries out the orders of the (highly-strung) head of household. No surprise, really, who can care less is status, after all…

But! I think this may play very differently at a game table, where an inactive character can be genuinely forgotten about.

3. How it works

For me, the notion is simply to walk on stage, find reasons to exhibit a sin or two, and then elaborate on these in the context of your role in the story (find a reversal to show your scoundrel’s heart, for instance).

That’s it as it stands. I’d love to hear your thoughts, both from a tabletop and Larp perspective.

Nov 2012

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Play With Intent – tools for open play

I’m super excited that Emily Care Boss  and Matthijs Holter have released their roleplay framework, Play With Intent, as an open document. It’s a customisable methodology that helps us make up a story as we go along. It can be used in a way similar to ‘tabletop’ play – sitting around a table and describing events – but encompasses acting out events live, using mime objects and environments, cinematic techniques (‘cut to…’) and so on. For improvisers it will feel familiar in some ways to what we normally do, but it can go to very different places and is forgiving of lack of improvisation training.

I played with it twice at the Solmukohta convention in Finland earlier this year, and it was a blast – particularly the first session, pulling off an involving melodrama between a group of people who hadn’t played before, going to emotional places and forming a truly unexpected but coherent narrative, played live before each other. Much credit must go to the other players, of course, but that was the point where I became satisfied that the framework is much more than a set of training wheels for improvisation.

After playing with it I became fascinated with the customisability, and wrote some notes on  comedic techniques that Emily and Matthijs have built into the framework. Fun! They are mostly taken from improvisation and clown training, and simplified as much as we were able. But comedy is only a small part of what we’re capable of, so have a look, and be ambitious with your imagination.

Play With Intent is freely available here.

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Play With Intent – tools for open play

I’m super excited that Emily Care Boss  and Matthijs Holter have released their roleplay framework, Play With Intent, as an open document. It’s a customisable methodology that helps us make up a story as we go along. It can be used in a way similar to ‘tabletop’ play – sitting around a table and describing events – but encompasses acting out events live, using mime objects and environments, cinematic techniques (‘cut to…’) and so on. For improvisers it will feel familiar in some ways to what we normally do, but it can go to very different places and is forgiving of lack of improvisation training.

I played with it twice at the Solmukohta convention in Finland earlier this year, and it was a blast – particularly the first session, pulling off an involving melodrama between a group of people who hadn’t played before, going to emotional places and forming a truly unexpected but coherent narrative, played live before each other. Much credit must go to the other players, of course, but that was the point where I became satisfied that the framework is much more than a set of training wheels for improvisation.

After playing with it I became fascinated with the customisability, and wrote some notes on  comedic techniques that Emily and Matthijs have built into the framework. Fun! They are mostly taken from improvisation and clown training, and simplified as much as we were able. But comedy is only a small part of what we’re capable of, so have a look, and be ambitious with your imagination.

Play With Intent is freely available here.

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Art, play and prayer are the only human activities that are totally meaningless and completely meaningful.

Ken Feitt, clown and fool.
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A carnosexual beginning

This has been a fun few weeks of improv: I’ve reunited with cherished teams, hosted a lovely-spirited improv jam, and performed a couple of times. The highlight for me, for sure, was being a part of something new. 

Carnosexual are a new longform troupe who met last Sunday, played a killer show two hours later, and are now officially a thing. I’m in a coaching role, so get to put my evolving improv eye to work enabling the group to get more play out of their time together. It’s a great thing I’m proud to do. The only downside is that these guys are having so much fun I’m sometimes sorry to be on the sidelines!

We’ve started a conversation about the things we each want to experiment with and explore through the group, which will become clearer over the coming weeks. One thing I already cherish is a diversity of background and areas of notable strength – some are more natural game players, others find the relationship meat more quickly – together with a willingness to try out and honour what each other brings to the stage.

I’m keeping my eye out for shows for the group for the rest of the year, especially as one of our players, Brandon, has a limited stay in the UK before returning to the US. If you are interested in hosting a longform group who play at a leisurely pace, dig into relational connections and mine comedic game, get in touch.

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Julia und Alex

Last week I got a chance to try something I’d been hungry to do since Chicago. Only, you know that thing where you get a taste, but end up only wanting even more? Yeah…

I met Julia Poehlmann a year ago at the Wurzburg Impro festival, and spent an intensive week this spring playing mask impro with her in Denmark, but Chicago was a chance to really get to know each other and see how we played. And I love how she plays. We promised each other that on our return we’d explore doing some close-up, slow, impro together, ‘Alex und Julia’.

Last week Julia visited London and we got to do exactly that. The forum was the Hoopla-run Crash Pad experimental impro platform, a lovely night boasting short sets by a variety of groups. As a bonus, we had another Chicagoan with us, Brandon Rafalson, visiting over from the US. The three of us weaved a piece beginning with a large location painted from nothing; in this case it turned out to be the headquarters for a contraption manufacturer. From there we simply saw scenes of the people connected with that building. 

We hadn’t played together for a couple of months, and hadn’t played the format at all together. But I could tell that we all trusted each other and were willing to give each other time. As an example, I opened the second scene slowly, examining documents and muttering to myself. Twenty seconds in, I realised that the others were happy to give me the stage to myself, extending my object work and segueing into a character monologue. Such a generous thing to offer a performer! And so trusting that I would be happy to be out there and could handle that.

Brandon’s affable, confused security guard was so winning and the gentle comedic core of the piece. Julia’s wistful teenager was honest and moved the audience. We stumbled onto an ending. All in 15 minutes!

I have plans to play more with Brandon that I’ll write about soon. As for Alex und Julia, it’s next outing will take place in Tubingen, Germany at the end of the month. I’m still excited. 

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Here, again, we see that the crowd-funding model is uncannily like the conventional music biz methods – only more so. It’s not the record company insisting that the band do more of the stuff that the kids liked last time. It’s the kids themselves. Bands have historically dug their heels in and resisted the demands of their labels (band vs. label conflicts are one of the endlessly repeating motifs of rock history). But how many bands would be bloody-minded enough to have that sort of fight with loyal fans who’ve just given them cash?

Michael Johnson on Chris TT’s post at http://louderthanwar.com/the-case-crowd-funding-platforms/