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Reasons to come to Cellblock!

Cellblock! is an improvised extravaganza taking place this weekend.

It runs 26 hours from 7pm today (8th October) to 9pm tomorrow, within 2 hour slots (runs about 100-110 mins of the slot). One slot is £5, an unlimited pass is £12

So here’s why to come:


1. If you’re a busy person who normally “can’t get to shows”, this won’t apply here; you can fit it in around pretty much anything. Come at 11am tomorrow, or after a long lunch at three. Or heck, roll in at 5am after clubbing – I know some people are planning on it! Each slot starts with a bit of a recap so you can slide in to the action.
 
2.  If you haven’t seen impro before, this is a great chance to get your feet wet. Quite aside from the convenience (1.), there’s such a rich and varied cast, containing people from all kinds of groups, from Music Box to The Inflatables.

3. And this will be no ordinary impro show. So if you have seen a bit of impro before, you’d no doubt be intrigued by the idea of a hard-core cast playing characters across the entire span of the show, in an event that’s all about story, story, story. The time-honoured “mime prop box” will be augmented by genuine costumery, and the patter of the players offset by a house band. So: bigger, louder, longer.

4. And weirder. You’ve got to wonder what happens when people enter a make-believe world and remain in it unsleeping for more than a day. We wonder too! Word has it, some filters drop away and things become very interesting.

5. If you’re of the appetite, this could be a pretty unique audience experience. Because unlimited passes retail at just £12, you can dip in and out across the run – Saturday night, a Sunday matinee and back for the grand finale – or go for the ultimate, and suck up six, ten, or even 26 hours worth. (At last year’s Bristol improvathon I could only make it for the end, but managed the last eight hours, and the immersive qualities of living through that much non-stop story was pretty amazing. Like a boxed set binge if it were weaved before your eyes!)

I’m limbering up for an amazing performance experience, but it would be remiss of me not to share it with you. So why not come along for a show – or the whole thing?

Tickets are here or on the door.

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In a Donald Duck story, Scrooge McDuck fires his old butler, and asks Gyro Gearloose to build him a new, Robotic Butler instead, believing it would be more reliable, as well as less expensive. Gyro initially delivers, but Scrooge keeps making demands for expanded features, demanding that the robot — like his old butler — be able to talk, and provide insightful commentary on day-to-day matters. Gyro is stumped, but the problem gets solved when he runs across the old, laid-off butler, who wants nothing more than to get his job back. Final solution: Gyro disguises the butler as a new robot, and the “rental and service fee” for the robot is just about the same as the butler’s old salary… the butler gets his job back, and Scrooge thinks he has an infallible robot.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnroboticReveal
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The initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.

Vladimir Nabokov in his afterword to the book. NB This article has not been identified.
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Surrealism is threatening, however, and it is interesting to note that when the Marxes moved to MGM, who were after bigger audiences and more accessible comedy, Harpo’s “magic powers” were scaled back. So while in Horse Feathers (Paramount, 1932), he accedes to the request to “cut the cards” by producing an axe from a hidden pocket and severing the pack in two, by the time of A Night At The Opera (MGM, 1935), although he still uses an axe to slice a salami, now it is lying handily on a barrel instead of being secreted mysteriously about his person.

Tom Salinsky on his blog.
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Mrs. Nacca always said that an unwritten thought is an incomplete thought. I add that an unpublished text is an incomplete text. When I have an idea, the only way I can be finished with it is to put it in front of its audience. I never worry whether they’ll be interested – that’s up to them. I answer to the idea, not to its audience.

Vincent Baker, on his blog, anyway.
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Improv for Designers workshop – few places still available

On Friday I’m co-hosting a workshop for designers that will introduce the core concepts of improvisation. There are still a few places left – details below. RSVP to reserve your place: emily@mindfulmaps.com

Improv for Designers
An enjoyable 3 hour workshop to introduce designers to improvisation. Hosted by improvisers Jude Claybourne and Alex Fradera. 

In this fully interactive session you will get a taste of how improvisation can help designers to:

– Free up creativity- Experiment with physical movement to move through ideas- Learn how to change state when feeling blocked
– Get out of your own head and in touch with the unconscious and spontaneous
– Embrace risks
– Fail with grace and delight
– Get it out rather than get it right! 
– Be braver in delivering ideas you’re inspired by instead of/as well as ideas to please the client- Present with more confidence 

You will leave the workshop with: 
– An improv toolkit of exercises and ideas to take away and apply to your own practice
– A big smile on your face
– New friends

Details
Date: June 10th 2011
Time: 1-4pm
Venue: Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green, London E2 6HG 
Cost: £10 £6 (in cash on the day please)

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Football, I am told, is like marriage: you have to cleve only to one team, forsaking all others. You have to pretend that Bristol Rovers are always and in all respects better than Bristol City. In extreme cases, you might be expected to try to physically maim City fans.

I don’t think that poems and songs and books are like that. I think that you make a contract to believe in a particular story-world while the singer is creating it, but that you are fully empowered to put it away an inhabit a different world when the next singer, or the next song, begins. I believe in Steve Knightley’s angry, radicalized England while I’m in it; but I also believe in Martin Carthy’s gentle old England and Bellowhead’s radical subversion of it. In the right mood, I can lustily join in with both Land of Hope and Glory and Imagine. I find Mr Chris Wood’s Come Down Jehovah deeply moving, although I don’t agree with it (or at least, I don’t think it means what he thinks it means).

But “agreeing” with a song seems like a category mistake, like trying to determine if the jelly in the trifle logically entails the choclate sprinklies.

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2011/05/appendix.html
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A roundup of thoughts on “Shop Class as Soulcraft”

I had intended to talk about Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft ‘in the run-up to the new year". Well, it took a little longer than that to tussle with it! I’m really happy that I did. Here’s a potted summary of the ground covered. Note that as the posts progress, I talk more about improvisation, if that’s what’s floating your boat.

Impressions
Lessons for agency and endeavour
The third lesson – awareness
Stoves and giggling freaks – an aside on Catch-22
Creativity at work
Design space is creativity space
Be creative, just be present

I’d love to hear thoughts on any of these posts in comments below.

I’m conscious that some of you were already kind enough to engage with my thinking in comments on previous posts. I tried to address your insights by roling them into later posts, but I’m sure some threads were left dangling; please raise any that you think were neglected.