I’m running Improv as a part of NTW TEAM every Tuesday, and have been attending a different Improvisation course in Bristol run by the lovely Tristan Hancock to brush up.

Friday 16^th November – Week 6

So, a bit of a gap in the blogging as we had a weeks break from Improv at the beginning of November, and I had an incredibly busy week after that. But to quickly recap the fifth session we basically spent some more time playing with status, and Tristan set us some homework for the next session. We had to observe our own status in everyday life and try ‘wall hugging’ where you walk near a wall and play high status to the people you meet, so that they move out of your way. Which sounds a bit random, but when you actually do it, and start maintaining eye-contact with people, and making yourself taller, filling your own space, it is amazing the effect it can have on other people, and on yourself. I realised that I spend so much of my time darting out of other people’s way (and thus playing low status) as it is the nice and charming thing to do. So I found it quite rewarding to maintain my line of movement, and take myself as being more “important” than others in the street, if only partly in play and for a brief moment.

Back to the week in hand. Tristan began by focusing on positivity, and giving that energy to everything we do, and also recapped the basics. Then we stood in a circle and played word association, where you have to associate with the word the person before says. As with the last time we played this, it is all about being open, allowing yourself to be inspired by the word, and not trying to be original or creative or sometimes boring. After playing this for a while, we proceeded to use a movement with each of the words said, but, like the words, the movements could be anything, and they didn’t have to be spectacular, we just had to free ourselves and do the first movement that cam to our heads. Then we played word dissociation – where the word you say can’t connect with the previous one. People can tend to start pre-planning the word their going to say, but this usually backfires at some point, but dissociation can be equally as satisfying when you open yourself up to all the possible words you can use.

Once we were nicely warmed up, we played ‘What comes next’ in pairs, where one person is in charge of the story, and the other simply has to play with them and ask ‘What come next?’ where appropriate. We mainly played variations on this for the rest of the session, and it was actually incredibly useful just to focus on storytelling, and even in the session itself there was an increase in skill and confidence.

So, after playing in pairs we gathered on stage, and one person volunteered to play the actor (Sarah), half of us gave suggestions, and the other half voiced their opinion as the audience. It was as this point where the idea of doing Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Something, of not trying to be clever and of being positive really came together I think. The premise we started with was that Sarah was having the best breakfast ever. Starting with something so positive and yet simple was beautiful, we were all totally engaged as Sarah cut her croissant, buttered it, took a bite, and drank some tea. Next we decided she would open the curtains, put some music on and have a little dance, because the morning was just that good. Again wonderful to watch. Then someone suggested she smoke a spliff, which was a wonderful suggestion, as it suited the mood, was connected to her good morning, and also to her very tasty breakfast, and gave the story somewhere to go. Then we were asked to find the ‘something’ of the story. Now, from absolutely nowhere, we had lots of lovely possibilities: she gets the munchies and finished everything on the table, or gets the munchies and has no food in her house, or starts tidying her breakfast up and becomes increasingly OCD and paranoid, or this is her last breakfast before she must go to her court trial for drug dealing, which she knows she is likely to end up in prison for. All obvious and connected possibilities from a few simple activities.

After this we played word at a time in pairs, creating a story together, which worked well from having one person in charge of the story, to the story being outside anybody’s control. It was a little difficult at first, but we soon had people creating wonderful stories from the simplest of beginnings, and went from playing in the room in pairs, to watching people and seeing what works and what doesn’t. And that was the entire session – lots of stories and lots of learning.

            Fun fun fun. 

Charlie.