More ideas that have helped renew my thinking… thank you, Chicago:

3. Gender Issues: I’m sure there will eventually be a longer post about this… but gender representation in certain groups is terribly important. In the first group (the more novice of the three) there was one female out of eight improvisers. She got a LOT of play time, as it seemed that these novice improvisers were not as comfortable portraying a female on stage… it was easier to just grab the actual female in the troupe. Luckily, she got lots of good character time, and was not pigeonholed into the traditional improvised female roles that beginning troupes often fall into: the whore, the mother, the bimbo girlfriend, the bitchy wife. Maybe this issue gets less important as the experience level of the group as a whole goes up, but it made me glad that my relatively inexperienced group back home has about a 50-50 mix of guys and gals.

The second group was two women, and they had no problems at all playing whatever character sprang to mind. I haven’t seen many two-person female groups, but I was a little surprised to see just how many male characters they portrayed. Maybe I shouldn’t be… A quote from Clay Morgan’s review of my Improv Thunderdome performance: “John played more women on stage than were in the audience that night.” I guess it happens a lot, eh?

The third group played the same character the entire time, and those characters appeared to be, for the most part, pretty close to themselves. The issue of gender never even entered my head. I guess the illusion was complete.

4. Emotional connections are still the way to go: I’m sure I harp on this all the time, so I’ll make this short, with no pointed examples, but I think what separated the two groups I enjoyed from the one I didn’t was that the characters in the last two groups were actually vested in one another, and that made me care more as an audience member.

5. Really cool shows don’t need to take the suggestion literally: Something I occasionally drift away from. What should happen? You get the suggestion “skunk,” and you do scenes based on images and themes that the suggestion brings to mind. “But John, that’s harder than just going out on stage and petting a skunk!” Not necessarily, my whiny friend.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of room for skunk petting, and scenes about completely wiping out an opponent, or seeing the skunk family at home, but what about taking that suggestion out to a wider place? What is the skunk’s role in the animal kingdom, and how can that transfer to a human character? What would a character be like that walked into a scene as if he had just smelled a skunk? Maybe my character has a gray streak in her hair. Maybe my character will be a great lover, like Pepe le Peu. From the audience, these characters and scenes will probably look like they have nothing to do with the suggestion… and that’s OK. The point of the suggestion is not to give the audience a literal reinterpretation. The point is to start the creative flow of the artist.

Again, if you just get the suggestion, and immediately are starting a scene, you go with whatever comes to mind… but if you’re  on the sidelines and have half a brain free while you’re listening, why not try something more esoteric?

Yes… there’s still more to come… stay tuned.