Inside the Master Class + Bonus!

Still been doing a ton of improv! I just started level 1 at IO West this week. I've been playing at the jams with The Improv Trick and classes will resume tomorrow. I will be returning to Monkey Butler classes after I'm done with level 1 of IO since they're on the same nights. Seeing even more shows than last year, since I can get into the IO main stage for free now.

More about that later, of course. Here are some clips!

Maybe this will only be funny if you've ever been in an improv class. Here's all of Matt Besser's Inside The Master Class!









***

Thematically speaking:

From Life's Too Short: Liam Neeson wants to do improv.


Michael Scott does improv

My life in "Yes, And"

When I was newly resuming my studies in improvisation I spent a lot of time at the library printing out as much as I could find on the subject. Originally I intended to post a lot of those links here as well as a video clip or two for my fellow students. Before that I'm going to do a little navel-gazing.

It had been easily fifteen years since I performed comedy improvisation on stage. Nearly twenty years had passed since I floundered in my occasional performances with the Santa Barabara ComedySportz team. Let's be honest, I wasn't a great performer or team player in those early years.

I wasn't really sure what to expect on my return. In many ways things had changed, but who knew what would be the same?

I had dabbled with going out to the local improv houses in town through the years. I'd taken in shows at The Groundlings, Acme Comedy, IO and UCB. It was funny stuff, but it certainly had a different feel to the stuff with which I was most familiar. I hadn't really played or seen any long form improvisation in my early years. Harolds were something I heard mentioned in a sort of "have you heard of..." hush. All of the improvisation I learned at ComedySportz were short form games, improvisations that rarely lasted longer than five minutes at a time. Meanwhile, folks had been developing and building on the stuff that I didn't even know about when I was first performing. Yeah, it's nice to have a mountain to climb.

Even if I'm ambivalent about my own early performances and teamwork, I have to admit that improvisation became a very important part of my life. The "yes, and" impulse for as many years as it took me to learn and understand it formed a pretty strong portion of my worldview. The skill of listening took me even longer... is still taking my work. I could go on longer, but I really want to post some of those links.

***

The Skinny on LA's Impov Training Scene, by David Valdez. This is an article on Brains of Minerva, a cool site for actors in the Los Angeles scene.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at how much I found on Wikipedia. The links I found there at the time aren't visible now, but here's one of them:
The Living Playbook, edited by Randy Dixon. This is a catalog, up-to-date through 2001 in this version of various improv games and forms.

My earliest readings in improvisation were the books of Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin. I've written about Johnstone in previous posts,

Here's a video of Viola Spolin, circa 1987:


From my own experience with ComedySportz, I'd suggest that there isn't really competition in so-called "competitive improv." It's really more of a hook to sell a show to an audience.

One troupe that rose to prominence over the last decade or so is the Upright Citizen's Brigade. This is from their televised Bravo performance that I only caught because I had my DVR programmed to look for Tina Fey.



I'm really glad that this was on YouTube, since I lost the show recording that I made years ago. I've also got the ASSSCAT dvd, which appears to be a show shot directly for DVD at the UCB Los Angeles stage. I really dig it.

And lastly, since I wanted my Monkey Butler friends to see the game Five Things played, here's this:


I really dig the annotations. This game is slightly different than the version I played, but the skills are still the same. This seems like a pretty decent representation of the muscles I was hoping to get students to flex last week.

And again, Monkey Butler. Loving the classes I take each week. It's good to have a place to work out.

edited to add:

BONUS!



I love Tina Fey.

What I've been up to lately.

I am loving yoga and improvisation classes. I'm also playing plenty of board games.

I'm taking improv classes through Monkey Butler, which offer many free classes throughout the week all over Southern California and in some other places too. I'm currently in the level one class in Sherman Oaks. I'd take classes closer to home if they didn't conflict with the LindyGroove Technique Class. I'm also backing up this with the I.O. West Improv Jam, hosted by my buddy Nando Velasquez. The Improv Jam is an opportunity for students to play with IO team performers. They're currently reconsidering their schedule, but at the moment the Jam is scheduled for every Wednesday at 11:30pm.

I'm learning a ton there and really putting in the work that I was never able to do in college. I feel like I'm hitting a lot of breakthroughs, so I'm pretty happy with my progress.

I'm taking yoga at Mission Street Yoga in South Pasadena. At the moment I can only afford the $5 lunchtime yoga classes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There's a donation class tomorrow afternoon that I'm planning to take and there are FREE classes every Monday through the end of the month at 10:45am. I'm planning to hit those for the next couple of weeks.

Also hitting breakthroughs here too. I may even soon be more comfortable with going upside down. Don't know why that's so huge, but even being close to it is a lot for me. I'm also returning to a point at which I no longer need the belt to reach my toes in a sitting stretch. It's especially wonderful to be in a place where breathing is so praised. One day I was experimenting with Crow position, a position with which I've never been comfortable and the instructor (without my realization) had pointed me out to the class as having a fully engaged breath. I didn't in fact know that she was speaking to anyone but me until I heard the applause of the rest of the class. It took me by surprise because I take my breathing for granted. That should be the case after having done it for so long.

I'm playing board games a lot. I just picked up Vasco Da Gama and I'm really looking forward to getting it on the table. We've been playing a lot of Power Grid: Factory Manager lately and mostly I'm just going with the flow and being a decent host.

Zoom Schwartz Perfigliano!

I've started taking an improv class offered by Monkey Butler. I've been toying with the idea of getting back into improvisation, but have found the rates to be prohibitive. The Monkey Butler classes are free, and generally everyone seems to be very welcoming and open. It's been really great to find a place that gets me back to work. I have missed performing for quite a while and am really enjoying the process of rediscovery!

More later. I'm just taking lots of notes and doing my best to improve.