Level C

As many of my regular readers know I’ve been taking Improv classes each week for the past six months, and recently started level C which is the mid point in the workshop series as it goes up to level E.  Once you progress past level E you have to audition to get into the conservatory program, which is another full years worth of study.  

Over the ensuing months I’ve been asked by lots of people, not just Zach and Sami why I’m taking Improv. Initially the kids were more than a little concerned as they both thought that I was going to quit my day job and become a comedian, nothing could be further from the truth, actually I'm taking Improv for fun!  As an aside, they are thoroughly embarrassed that their friends might find out that I’m taking Improv.  Who knew that there’d be such a “stigma” attached to me doing Improv within my own household, never the less I’m soldiering on! J

Level C has presented a number of big challenges since the class began about four weeks ago.  Interestingly we’ve been focusing on a couple of key things in class this session that to be honest I’ve been struggling with.  This level focuses on building characters, traits and using emotions within scenes to demonstrate range.

The first major conundrum for me was trying to figure out how to portray “status”, either high or low status within a role. Do you know how hard it is to make yourself “low” status while being the boss in a traditionally hierarchical scene? To be honest this still has me vexed. 

Improv goes a little like this, Lisa our instructor says “I need two people on stage” as she reviews her notes stage left.  Generally this is greeted with silence and no movement from anyone in the group, mostly because we don’t want to seem too keen or hog the limelight, lets face it no one likes a showboat. 

Refining those Improv skills...

Anyway, inevitably a couple of people quickly head to the stage.  And with a few cursory questions lays out the foundations of a rudimentary scene, sometimes with as little as “where are they?” followed by “go”.   As they play out the imaginary scene onstage both in actions and words, its important that the participants quickly build the who, what, where to frame out the story as they go - the faster the better.

The next big challenge since this session started is that we have to begin to develop characters that we can re-use week over week, all the while developing a depth of range within the character, both in the narrative (who they are and their life story) but also expand the range of emotions that accompany the character from week to week. 

We started with a simple exercise of taking on the characteristics of an animal at a cocktail party such as a lion, swan, raccoon, cat, puppy, etc…  We had to mingle as if we were at a party but using our interpretation of that animal and how they would talk, move and act.  This was a fun and liberating exercise in that you could be as outrageous as you wanted and really could ham it up using accents, postures and movement to accentuate your character.  Over the course of the night we continued focusing in on these characters culminating in a panel discussion with each of the participants taking on their new persona during an interview.

I transformed into Miranda the 40’s something yoga teacher with two young children (Apple and Lotus) who “swanned around” and spoke with an outrageous English accent, pirouetting about and finishing every sentence with a long drawn out  “darling…”   Who knew it would be so much fun!

This past week we continued exploring various characters with the most fun being incorporated into the “wedding” scene. It started with two people on stage, with the group collectively choosing whom each person was and their special skill or talent for the first two people, after that the two onstage players chose the character traits for who was next in line.  

The scene flowed from there, creating the characters as the act unfolded, after a few minutes of dialogue a third person was introduced by the two onstage who would then join them onstage “in character”, shortly thereafter the first person would find an excuse to exit stage left thus the two characters onstage continuing the scene.  I laughed till my stomach hurt, as we were encouraged to take the character to new places and broaden it as much as possible. 

My classmate in front of me in line was identified as a rather “debonair, handsome Doctor and Rhodes scholar…  I could see him getting his character ready, but they added a twist right at the end before he came onstage “its such a shame that he has no legs.”  Bugger foiled again!   Change gears and get out there…

As luck would have it I was given the most enviable role of all as a 1970’s pimp who also had a snow mobile fetish…  Now, clearly I can play the 70’s pimp with my fedora and feather (make believe of course), and the strut I had to come up with on the spot, strangely I pulled it off…perhaps a little too convincingly if you know what I mean. J  Then without being too overbearing in the scene (yes, my Achilles heal) I had to tie my deep love of snowmobiles into the conversation all the while pretending I was at a wedding.   Can you say make your brain hurt!   We all had such a great time with this one.

In addition, to graduate from this level we all have to take a musical workshop and also perform onstage in front of a live audience.   Stop laughing so hard!   Yes, for those that know me it's rather obvious that I can’t carry a tune to save myself, not to mention I’m completely tone deaf.   Yikes!   That's coming up in a week or so...perhaps I'll be "sick" that night...

Surprisingly performing in front of a live audience doesn’t bother me a bit - hhhmmm, isn’t that strange?  J