ClassIdeasOverview

Bob's Improv Class:

Overview and Motivation

I'm tired of being clubbed over the head by Johnstone dogma, specifically the dogma that doesn't work for me. An example: objective. I don't dispute the usefulness of objective or its importance, but try as I might I can't reliably pull an objective out of my ass in the split-second I walk on stage. I've been trying for years and I have totally failed at it and I'm really damned tired of directors and instructors parroting unhelpful Johnstone dogma at me. Telling me to fly doesn't make me aerodynamic, it just frustrates me. 1

In the belief that different teaching styles and perspectives may help illuminate truths now obscured in darkness and show new paths to old destinations, I've got this crazy idea I should try to teach some classes.

There are many things our troupe does badly, and our current vague instruction isn't fixing it. Examples: local environment, space work, genres and period work, physicality, speed. More specific instruction could at least give us a 'beachhead' into these fields, so that the most common cases work better and so that we as improvisors have somewhere to work from. Example: Handguns are incredibly easy to mime effectively if one understands their operation and kinetics. Rather than telling people to improve on generic space work and mime 2, I want to focus on some simple and common environments, objects, and activities, stuff that shows up often in our scenework.

Similarly, I've watched the beautiful and talented Lauren Zinn pull off some amazing gaffes (Example #1: David Lampe remarking on the foreign car with the driver's seat on the English/Australian/Japanese side; Example #2: Mike D'Alonzo and Shannon !McCormick trying to rectify Arthurian characters with Charlemagne; Example #3: Mike D'Alonzo trying to play British spies in the Reconstruction South.) Not to pick on Lauren; I've personally screwed up playing 'bucolic' and I can't pronounce French to save my life. Few of us are history, film, literature, or religion majors and it would be a godsend if we could trust that our fellow players to know when (say) Edison lived, what Lovecraftian horror reads like, know which Christian sects have ministers, deacons and priests, what a bris is, and know when steam power, Studebakers, and direct-dial rotary telephones became ubiquitous and then faded into obsolescence. 3

If we work on this, we'll get good at setting up platform. Then, we can focus less on platform and more on important, difficult stuff like objective, relationship, change/tilt, and conflict/resolution. It also means that if we beat this stuff to death in class, we'll attempt newer, less beaten-to-death stuff onstage. At worst, it means we develop platform faster and better and play tepid scenes in rich, consistent environments (vs. playing tepid scenes in vague environs...)

This means that, even if these classes accomplish nothing else, we'll still fix some of our basic problems as improvisors and, by extension, the basic problems with our commercial shows. So I'm not pursuing individual development, The Craft, Truth, and Beauty. Tough crap. I'm doing what's reasonably achievable now and paving the way to further enlightenment. Later. Besides, there's no harm in helping the troupe perform $8-value-shows vs our current $6-value-shows. 4

Footnotes

1 Peter's take on Johnstonian instruction and its limitations can be found on his page On the Teaching of Improv.

2 See the "Notes on Mime" section of Peter's location practice page.

3 For more information, see Peter's improv styles cheat sheets.

4 For which, of course, we charge $10. See Peter's complaints in "What's Wrong with the Hideout".