Tuesday, May 27, 2008 by John Robison.

Some people don’t like ‘em, but I think warmups are an important improv tool for several reasons:

1. Leave the Past Behind

When you’re just getting into your rehearsal or show,  everyone is coming from vastly different days that may have been filled with winning glamorous prizes, an argument with a loved one, a traffic ticket, or a really good sandwich at lunch. A little warming up before you begin helps everyone to forget (or at least postpone the remembering of) their day. Everyone can start on a relatively clean sheet of paper.

2. Burn out the Bad

Many times, even though you’re working from a place free of outside stresses, you may not yet be in “the improv zone.” With warmups, you can burn out those first few scenes that aren’t quite up to your own good performance standards. Personally, my first scene of the night is never my very best one. I think this is true of most people. Why not get that first scene out of the way early, when there’s no audience watching?

3. Get the Cells in Motion

While I’m on stage, I move in many varied ways like I never do during the rest of the day. On stage, there’s a lot more crawling, rolling on the ground, crouching, squatting, faux humping, walking funny, wild arm undulations, and head bobbing.  A good physical warmup gets the dust burned off your muscles, and you’re ready to do some moving around. Nobody likes an entire evening of talking heads, after all.

It also gets your energy flowing. I’m a lot more apt to do an energy-filled character if my cells are buzzing with some good, warm movement energy. This is also good for your audience - energetic characters are usually harder to do, and therefore more rare. We owe our audience those kinds of characters once in awhile, and a physical warmup can help bring those characters out.

4. Forge the Group

In most groups I know, the warmup is the only activity in which each and every person in the group is up and actively participating at the same time. Most games don’t use everyone, so everyone playing at once really helps build your sense of group, and helps further develop group mind. At Roving Imp, every rehearsal starts with circle warmups, where we can all look into each others’ eyes, do our exercises, catch up on each others’ lives, and get focused on what we’re about to do together.

Whether you realize it or not, warmups are accomplishing all these extremely important tasks. I think that unless you’re the Chosen One of Improv*, and you’re performing with more than one or two other close friends that you’ve been with for at least five consistent years, you need a warmup. Otherwise, you may as well flush the first half hour of your rehearsal down the toilet, and while you’re in there, just hope that your group will manage to cohesively gel without getting some up-front face time.

*If you are the Chosen One, I would like for you to come perform with me.

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Thursday, May 22, 2008 by John Robison.

A program note: earlier in the week I had a long, glorious posting that outlined the history of how the Roving Imp came to be, in more specifics. After awhile I thought, “This is getting pretty long - I’d better save.” I hit the save button, which caused my program to go haywire, and the entire thing has now moved on to the electronic oblivion. As of this moment, I am still too heartbroken to re-create the entire thing. It’ll come later. Damn my longwindedness.

Every so often, it’s important to take a break to charge your batteries. For the past few weeks I’ve been feeling that my improv was not my best. I haven’t been too happy with my character choices, relationship developing, or hosting ability. I’ve had really great characters and scenes, of course (my child Nazi during this month’s IA First Friday springs to mind), but it’s felt like these stellar scenes have been the exception lately.

So, I took a look at my schedule, and noticed quickly that I have been spending so much time on stage lately that my creativity cultures haven’t had time to grow. I kept scraping out the bottom, occasionally finding a good gem, but at some point you’ve got to stop and just let the universe work its good, relaxing, magic. This is a good time for it. The Roving Imp traditionally takes off Memorial Day weekend (the one other time it’s come around in our history), and we have our regular Thursday rehearsal off as well. Looking at this week, I have exactly one improv-related obligation in a six-day period. Wow. Already, after just a day and a half, I feel strangely relaxed. There’s been no show planning, no extra marketing push, no juggling schedules. I love doing this stuff, but it’s a surprising relief to not have to do them.

The only improv event of the week is my regular improv class on Saturday, which strangely has not been affected by my personal doldrums. My teaching and coaching abilities seem to be unaffected by my creative void. So I have no worries for my students - in fact, this Saturday’s class on “Creating the Second Beat” is easily my favorite to date.

I don’t classify this as burnout… I am still in love with the art of improvisation, but rather have seem to hit the bottom of the on-stage biorhythm. I can’t wait to get my mojo back… and I think this weekend might just be the way to do it. No shows or rehearsals, and just one class.

Oh yeah… no more blogging, either.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008 by John Robison.

Though I’ve been doing improvisation for a long time, I’ve read very little on the subject. It’s been one of those “learn by doing” things, and has worked really well. One of my goals lately has been to actually read more. Here are my thoughts on the first in a series of books I plan to read: “Improvise. Scene from the inside out,” by Mick Napier.

I’m happy to say that this easy-to-read and understand book has changed my thinking a little bit. Even in the first few chapters, which I largely found to be a little too basic for my taste, I found a couple nuggets that have already affected the way I approach my teaching. The most important change for me, is that I’m no longer emphasizing “Improv Rules” as part of the first class. I think the traditional improv “rules” are still important… Say yes to your partner and yourself… instead of questioning, add information… etc. However, Napier asserts that thinking about these rules just results in more thinking… and less living in the scene. Most people have a tough time getting out of their head… so I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to start off people’s improv careers by giving them a list of rules to keep in their heads.

This is not to say that I’m going to let students get away with complete denial, question-asking, stagnant-prov. As we do scenes, if they completely flop, I’ll say something like, “Did you feel like you were having trouble easily finding something to talk about?” When they agree, I’ll say, “Here’s why…” and then tell them that scenes in general go better when you accept what your scene partner says, etc.

Really, this is how things should go. After all, everything that happens on stage is genius, and everything that happens in a scene is correct… so it’s really odd that we’d immediately follow up that statement with a list of rules, even if it’s only three. I’ve been heading this direction for awhile. I’ve started telling classes that what we’ll be learning is how to help ensure improv scenes will be successful more of the time. Does denial ruin scenes? Absolutely. Can real comedy happen from it. Absolutely. So… no more rules for me.

My other favorite parts of the book were at the end - the advanced improvisation section reminded me of quite a few exercises and ways of thinking that had become ingrained within me… and being reminded of the building blocks of your improv is really a great call home. All the time, I find myself either matching energies with the other person on stage or doing the complete opposite. Napier cites this as a technique in the book… and it’s good to be reminded that “Oh yeah… that’s why I do that.”

The other greatest section was the advice and guidelines for improvisers section. Every improviser needs to read this section… particularly the section entitled “The Perfect Actor.” Some of my favorite pieces of advice for the actor:

Make strong choices - do something on stage, and own it.

Shut the fuck up - in rehearsals and notes, just listen.

Show up and be on time.

Try anything.

Don’t interrupt anyone at any time. If you do, apologize.

Jump on stage with enthusiasm.

Sit near others.

Also, as a kind of weird, nearly tacked-on chapter, Napier compares improvisation to thermodynamics. As an old-school nerd from way back, this was really interesting to me. I talk all the time about the “energy” from the audience, because it’s real. I’ve always assumed it was the flip side of my Gemini personality… the side that believes in intangible mystic energy, flowing from person to person. It was really nice to see this kind of audience energy explained in a more scientific way. So many times I’ve been on stage and commented that “I’m not getting any energy back from this room.”

If I may paraphrase and extrapolate, energy goes everywhere, and some rooms cause more wasted energy to occur than others. Perhaps the lights aren’t right for the room, or the air conditioning or heating is adding or sapping the wrong kind of energy. You can even derail your own energy train by unexpectedly changing characters onstage, second guessing, or being afraid. Then again, maybe the room feels good if the audience is responding well, adding energy with clapping and laughing.

At the end, there’s a great chapter with some good exercises to do alone at home. I’ve done lots of these before, and found them helpful.

All in all, this is a really solid book on improv. I think it would be most helpful for those that are interested in the art, but are not yet on a team, or are just starting out. For people with more experience, it’s still a pretty good read, especially toward the end.

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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 by John Robison.

The newest show at the Roving Imp is coming up this weekend, and I’m getting really excited. This show has been a long time coming… since very early in the life of the Imp, we’ve had the “Game Show,” which presents various game shows live on stage. These Game Shows are really fun, and are a really neat idea. However, they don’t draw well. Audiences have not been good for the Game Shows, no matter which one has been presented. And with the amount of work that goes into each one, preparing questions, learning rules, getting prizes, and getting a basic stage look for the show… well, they’re not working out. I’ve not given up on them completely, but I’m no longer planning on doing them on a regular basis. They’ll pop up again from time to time if I need to fill a hole in the schedule, but (sigh) for now, I consider this format to be one that is not yet ready to be accepted.

I’m a huge game fan, though. I grew up watching game shows, and still am a daily watcher of Jeopardy! I have a collection of 130 board games that has taken over an entire wall of my house. This may be where my love of playing improv games originally came from.

Several months ago, when I realized that the Game Show was not going to work out, I started looking for a way to combine improv with a game show… but after a few attempts, I couldn’t quite bring myself to tamper with what were, in effect, my childhood friends. Board games, however, I’d been tampering with for years. Many times the rules that come with these games are overly complex, incomplete, or just plain stupid. I’ve been altering board game rules for as long as I can remember.

Trivial Pursuit has long been one of my favorites. As a child, I used to play it with my grandma. When she died, I received her Trivial Pursuit game, and still have it as one of my treasured possessions. People tell me I’m wickedly good at it… and I do win more often than not, but I really just enjoy playing. Winning isn’t the ultimate goal… which to me, is why a game is fun. It’s the journey, not the destination.

A couple months ago, I tried out a preliminary version of the Trivial Pursuit Game Show on stage. It drew just as many people as Game Shows usually did, which is probably a good thing, as it wasn’t fully cooked yet. It was fun, but not fun enough. It was time to really crank things up.

I thought I’d try a more “Bassprov” type Trivial Pursuit - two or three people sitting around playing the game, talking about some of the topics raised by the answers to the questions. This idea came to me while playing a game of TP with my sister Julie. I took it to the stage, and James Nelson and Magie Hogan of the Imps helped me workshop it. After that first session, it was still clear to me that this format was still not going to be the final form.

James and Magie returned to help me work on it again, and this time, I was more prepared. We keep the questions, and get rid of the game board. Standing on opposite sides of the stage, the two players (or teams) fire questions at one another, and anytime someone gets a question wrong, an improvised scene happens, with the actual answer used as the suggestion. This time, things clicked.

After working on it a little more, we arrived at a multi-round system. Round One will be quickfire scenes. Round Two will be longer scenes, and will make up the bulk of the show. Round Three will use a longer form we use at RI and Rounds Four and Five will be a short form game or two. In effect, we’re blending games with a bunch of different types of improv, all under the umbrella of a competition.

This is without a doubt the most fun form I’ve had the opportunity to help create. I can’t wait to get it in front of an audience this weekend. James is returning to christen the form, and based on the rehearsals so far, he has absolutely no chance of winning the trivia portion. However, he will really be a force when it comes to the improv, which is, of course, the most important thing.

Now, I’m just hoping that Trivial Prov-suit will entice an audience better than its ancestor, the Game Show.

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Thursday, May 1, 2008 by John Robison.

Warning: Rant ahead.

I have a good friend who has recently posted a blog saying some very nice things about me and my theater. I’m very appreciative for that, as I’ve worked very hard to try to make my theater a safe, fun place for performers of all ilk.

However, he’s dead wrong about one thing, and he’s not the first one to make that wrong statement: It’s not close enough.

Is Bonner Springs centrally located to Kansas City? Of course not. If you live in Kansas City, MO, or any other location in Missouri, other theaters are going to be closer to where you live. That’s fine. If this is you, feel free to skip past the next couple paragraphs.

If you live in Kansas, I’m betting the Roving Imp is closer than you think it is. Let’s take a hypothetical location near where you might live… say 75th and Metcalf- a nice part of northern Johnson County. From this location, according to Yahoo Maps, here’s how long it takes to get to the three main locations for improv comedy in town:

To Comedy City: 14 minutes

To W. Coffee House: 16 minutes

To Roving Imp: 20 minutes

Some improvisers I know live in Olathe. For them, it takes nearly the same amount of time to get to each location - there’s a two-minute spread amongst travel times. If you live anywhere else in Johnson County, the chances are that the Roving Imp is going to be just as close - if not closer - than the KCMo improv theaters.

OK, so for the person at 75th and Metcalf, the Kansas City theaters are four to six minutes closer than the Bonner Springs one. I really love Indian food… if there were two Indian restaurants, and the really good one was six minutes farther away, I would never ever be seen at the one that was closer to me. I would never recommend the closer one to my friends. When I took people out to lunch, it would be there.

Welcome back, Missouri folks. So, a little theater in Bonner Springs is farther away for you than those downtown locations. The question then is “What is important to you?” Is proximity the most important thing? If so, then you’ll do what you’ve always done - find free places to rehearse and/or perform, taking your audiences along with you, sharing space with others, finding that your space is no longer available, dealing with shows being canceled, paying rent, etc. That works fine - as evidenced by the many success stories in KC improv.

But, if proximity is really that important, then you truly don’t mind eating at that crappy Indian restaurant, and you are perfectly happy going home with whatever girl or guy that happened to be sitting next to you at the club.

Is quality the most important thing? Then ask anyone that’s been there… the Roving Imp is the place for your troupe to perform - alone, or jointly with other teams. It’s the place for you to join a new improvisation team. It’s the place for you to take a class. It’s the place for you to attend Improv Fight Club. It’s the place to establish a brand new audience - a largely untapped audience that’s just waiting for your talent and energy. It’s the place to bring the audience you’ve already got… or are you worried that your audience doesn’t like you that much? Even when I lived in North Kansas City, I’d regularly go to Lawrence to eat at the India Palace, quite simply because it’s my very favorite place. When I met my wife, she lived in Independence, and I lived in Bonner Springs. Some things are worth passing by those inferior, yet closer, things. I have people come once or twice a week from as far away as Liberty, the stadium area, and Lawrence, because they know the value.

But when it comes to improv theaters, it seems that there’s a bit of a mental block. If there are two improv theaters in town, and the owner of one “is a jerk,” but the owner of the other one welcomes all performers gladly, without even charging rent, it seems like a really easy problem.

It’s a great idea to have a great theater with great management somewhere in the middle. I would love it. I think there’s plenty of talent and audience to support it.

But I’m telling you right now, there will be things you don’t like about it. There are already tons of places to perform right now in town, and every single one of them has a drawback. Maybe the owner won’t let outside groups in. Maybe it’s a little farther away than you like. Maybe it’s in the basement of a noisy bar. Maybe you get charged $150 for the three or four hours you’re there. Why do we think that a new space would be different? There will be drawbacks with any new space as well… we just don’t know what they are yet.

Also, it doesn’t yet exist. There aren’t many folks around here that could tell you exactly how tough it is to get an improv theater opened and running, even semi-successfully. In the meantime, let’s get that cool, fun, open theater really hopping every weekend. (For the record, we’re really hopping about every other weekend right now.) Bring your shows. Bring your new ideas. Bring your tired, your poor, improv yearning to be free. The Israelites had to wander 40 years in the desert to reach the Promised Land. Your improv promised land is only half an hour away, even to those of you over in Missouri.

And once we’re rockin’ every weekend, having to turn people away, I will open that new, centrally located venue myself, with the same performer-friendly values. Who’s in?

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