Geoffiam will be leading this week’s jam. After a little warm up we’ll be using some of the exercises from the recent Zenprov workshop to portray truthful emotions.
Then we’ll move onto exploring how we incorporate three or more people into a scene. Here’s a little information about that in advance:
Extract from “Improvise” by Mick Napier- page 58 & 59 – reproduced without permission!!! A small extract is a fair exchange for some publicity for the book, so buy the book from Amazon dammit! http://tinyurl.com/bo3fuah
A scene with three people is its own animal. It requires a bit of finesse and timing that a two—person scene doesn’t. The biggest reason people screw up a three—person scene is that they think “different’ when they could have thought “same.” Here’s what l mean:
The lights come up and you discover there are suddenly three people on stage. Lets say the scene goes like this:
IMPROVISER A: lts such a beautiful Sunday!
IMPROVISER B: I’ve got the picnic basket ready!
IMPROVISER C: (says nothing)
IMPROVISER A: I‘m glad the kids are with Grandma.
IMPROVISER B: l’ve got tuna, lemonade, and apple pie!
IMPROVISER C: (says nothing, continues to wonder about his
function in the scene.)
IMPROVISER A: lets go have a picnic!
IMPROVISER C: Wait, I don’t think we should go right now, Im
not feeling well.
This is a fairly typical beginning of a three—person scene. Two people get on track with something. The third person just stands there silently trying to figure out what to do, while the other two continue. Aware that if his silence persists, it soon won’t seem right to speak at all, lmproviser C blurts out something adverse to or different from what lmprovisers A and B have initiated. This is what I mean by thinking different. It’s very tempting for the third person to take a contrary point of view. He may do so because he thinks he needs to create conflict and subconsciously believes that being different will give him power in
the scene. Go with the flow, especially in a group scene. You don’t have time to work around a lot of tangential points of view. This advice also holds true for a scene that starts out with two negative but similar points of view:
IMPROVISER A: I hate the way that dress looks on her.
TMPROVISER B: Yeah, I hope she didn’t get gypped at the
Salvation Army
IMPROVISER C: I kinda like it.
Another example of a disrupted initiation. lmproviser C would have gained a lot more ground with:
IMPROVISER C: Picture perfect white trash.
Go with. The audience is trying to cipher out what the scene is about. They like seeing “Those people talk about the way that persons dressed.” Simple. Thats what the scene is about. It’s as likely, though, that in a three—person scene the first two initiators won’t even share a common point of view among themselves at the top of the scene:
IMPROVISER A: This coffee is delicious.
IMPROVISER B: Really? I think it tastes terrible.
Now what is the third improviser to do? I say take one of the existing positions. In the banal scene above, declare that your coffee is either delicious or terrible, thereby joining an existing point of view………………..
Buy the book from Amazon dammit! http://tinyurl.com/bo3fuah
