There's a moment you know...

An entire Broadway production of Spring Awakening is on YouTube! It's clearly a bootleg, but really worth watching. I'll add that if there's a touring production nearby, you should go out of your easy to buy tickets and watch it live. In the meantime, set aside 2 hours to watch one of the best shows of the decade!

Blackwater Rafting!!!

This is a video of Jill Bernard doing a solo improv musical. The show is called Drum Machine. Holy Mackerel!

Digging in!prov

There's a ton of improv stuff available on ye inter-tubes lately. I faintly remember the days when Harold was only a hushed rumor and you had to fly somewhere to watch one. Nowadays improvisers can watch them on YouTube with little to no effort. Them kids these days...

Here's some stuff I've been finding on the interwebs lately:

Some Things I Learned as Artistic Director of the UCB Theatre, by Anthony King

Here are two clips from Whose Line is it Anyway, featuring Robin Williams!




TEDtalks: Charles Limb - Your Brain on Improv


Next, the basics of Improvisation in one short and easy to digest package!


Lastly, a letter from the late and great Phil Hartman to aspiring comedian Mike Scott
Letters of Note

A variety of scenes for study!

A question we could start with is "what makes good scenes?"

Here are some classic openings:

Star Wars


Jaws


Swordfish
Actually, this video only contains the opening speech. You can watch the longer video here: http://youtu.be/wmtSLpNriTM

What is it about these scenes that make them so memorable?

When Harry Met Sally


Young Frankenstein


Swingers

edited to add:

Homework from week 3



Carol Burnett - Sorry, part 1 and 2


Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen

Here's a link to The State.

Evening Primrose

Back in the days before YouTube, I went to the Museum of Television and Radio (now the Paley Center) and watched this whole thing. As a giant musical theater nerd, it was cool to see this long lost footage. I guess it's on DVD now. I'd like to pick up a copy.

Time to start saving!

I'm planning to hit Europe next year. Here are some things I'd like to do over the course of two-ish weeks.


Here's a short list of places I'd like to check out in Europe:
Belgian Comic Strip Center - What can I say? I'm a big fan of Belgian cartooning. You might be familiar with Tintin or the Smurfs. There's just a certain quality of line that I've always appreciated. Heck, in researching this entry I found this amazing little tour: Brussels Comic Strip Walk.



Moi, j'm'en fous je triche - I want to play board games in French. They play a lot of the same games that I know, only they play in the language of love.

By the way, the pic above is from a filler game I've been enjoying recently. Travel Blog by Vlaada Chvatil is a ton of fun.

I want to take yoga classes and dance the lindy hop too, maybe catch some improv shows if they exist, all the stuff that I love doing at home, but more expensive and foreign. I'd like to eat cheese, yogurt and lots of fruit. Perhaps take in a game of petanque if I can find anyone to play.

Ooh, here's an idea: let's visit spooky places. Anyone got any ideas?

A bit on Viewpoints

I took a workshop with Eric Hunnicutt during the Los Angeles Improv Festival a week ago and really enjoyed it. He taught a shotgun class about Viewpoints which really seemed to mesh with the things that I understood about movement.

What's the essence of this Viewpoints thing? From my two-hour exposure, I'd say it's a technique for teaching students different ways of describing, seeing and interacting with the world around them, broken down into chunks like "Space," "Shape" and "Time."

This technique seems like the kind of thing I could learn to apply in my dance classes. It's a really cool set of techniques that I'd like to learn more about.

Also posted on: The LindyGroove Technique Blog