This week we’re going to spend some time looking after ourselves. Often we worry so much about supporting our partner on stage that we forget to take some time to enjoy ourselves and have our own deal. This workshop will give you the chance to make some more “selfish” choices on stage whilst also allowing you to see that they’re also good for your scene partner too!
Lots of these exercises I have stolen directly from the workshop I took with Katy Schutte last weekend so naming dropping Katy is 100% important!
BIG NOTE: we’re at Broadway Cinema throughout May & June!
This week’s drop-in: Embracing the Silly
Brought to you by Guy.
In life, as well as in improv, its all too easy to take ourselves too seriously; I know I do. This drop-in is about learning how stop taking ourselves so seriously, embracing the silly, and having fun. It’s a lot easier to be spontaneous when we are less self-conscious. Expect defiantly daft warm up games, exercises that stretch your studied self-consciousness to breaking point and scenes that empower you to step outside yourself.
Broadway Cinema | 14-18 Broad St | Nottingham | NG1 3AL (we’re downstairs, but don’t worry, someone will be lurking in the foyer to collect folks) 7.30pm | £5 / £3 concessions
BIG NOTE: we’re at Broadway Cinema throughout May & June!
This week’s drop-in: Short, Medium, Long
Brought to you by Emily.
This workshop is all about scenes, scenes, scenes. We’ll be mixing it up by doing scenes that are super short, kinda normal length, and then a bit longer than we normally do! Your only limit will be the clock.
Broadway Cinema | 14-18 Broad St | Nottingham | NG1 3AL (we’re downstairs, but don’t worry, someone will be lurking in the foyer to collect folks) 7.30pm | £5 / £3 concessions
(longer explanation: we’ve had the opportunity to do workshops with the great Mike McShane, which have now sold out. Sorry!) If you do need some improv action on Thursday, get yourself down to the Canalhouse for Pint of Science’s Creative Reactions closingnight, featuring The Vox Pops: We’ll be back next week (30th May) with more immense funs. In the meantime…
BIG NOTE: we’re at Broadway Cinema throughout May & June!
This week’s drop-in: Standing, Sitting, Silliness
Brought to you by Lee.
It’s time to break the rules! This week Lee will be (metaphorically) putting red noses on your faces and constraints on your behaviour. Expect to say less, and do more! We will use some clown philosophy, a game of standing-sitting-leaning, and a dose of mischief to explore the rules of the worlds we create. We’ll investigate how we follow, play with and break the rules to engage and involve the audience.
Broadway Cinema | 14-18 Broad St | Nottingham | NG1 3AL (we’re downstairs, but don’t worry, someone will be lurking in the foyer to collect folks) 7.30pm | £5 / £3 concessions
A great actor can play anyone in any situation, but you don’t often see people lining up around the block to see the most critically adored actors. You usually see people lining up to see the stars with genuine charisma like Al Pacino, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, George Clooney, Will Smith and Paris Hilton, who in every role are themselves and don’t often play different people, eg Al Pacino as the cop, Al Pacino as the lawyer. George Clooney as the suave father figure, Dwayne Johnson as the All-Star American Football player / Hero A / Hero B / Hero / C etc, Paris Hilton as the wise ol’ Librarian. They play themselves and people fall in love with the character of them. That’s what makes them a star.
This week you will be draw a certain character or characteristic from Elliott’s bag of characters, which you will use your charismatic improvisational skills to play throughout a series of 2-4 person open scenes. Don’t worry about trying to be Harrison Ford – it’s always you as Harrison Ford! Use yourself as inspiration for how you would play that character. Pay attention, because at the end of the drop-in we’ll sit down to guess who played what and those who successfully guess correctly will go in the hat at the end to win an amazing prize!
Due to the ongoing work at the Malt Cross, we aren’t able to get to our normal room this week so it’s high time we had another social! After the last time was so much fun we are going to go back to the Cornerhouse mini golf course. Afterwards we will head to a nearby pub for drinks/food/etc. We will meet at the Cornerhouse at 7.30pm, and head down to the golf at 7.45pm. Games usually take a bit less than an hour so we will have lots of time to chat afterwards as well. Looking forward to seeing you all there. For next week’s drop-in we’ll be back up at The Castle pub. We have to quote from their website, because it is amuse:
Perfect for budding explorers and adventurers of all ages, The Lost City houses two separate 18 hole indoor adventure golf courses – The Sacred Skull Pass and The Temple Trail! Experience the challenge of playing amid a thunder and lightning storm on our “carpeted” greens, risking our venomous snake and alligator, talking idols and crumbling walls. Both courses have been designed to be wheelchair user friendly so all adventurers can play! Plus, if you can keep a steady nerve to the end and satisfy our Sacred Skull or Temple God – much Inca Gold will come your way…
So yeah – that’s Thursday! Do note that golfing will cost £8 per head.
Thursday 25 April 2019 | 7.30pm | Price £8.00 full £6.00 senior/student £5.00 disabled for le golf sportif The Lost City Adventure Golf(basically the cellar) The Cornerhouse | Burton St | Nottingham | NG1 4DB
HEADS UP! We are not at Malt Cross for the next few weeks as they’ve got a hideous flooding problem to resolve! Instead, we’re upstairs at The Castle pub this week. Plus there is no drop-in next week (25 April) – we’ll be sorting out some social fun instead.
This week’s drop-in: Contrasting Views
Brought to you by Nick.
Contrast is a lovely thing that we randomly apply to our photos on Instagram, but in improv it can be even more satisfying. Presenting differences of opinion and direction in scenes provides pleasing textural contrast in a show, sometimes in wildly different characters, pace of scene or location. Sometimes seeing the consequences of activity in the previous scene, or the people who are affected by what’s happened deepen and emphasise what has come before. This week we’re going to play some short form games which have contrast baked right into them, and look at how we can intentionally provide counterpoints and contrast in more free-flowing scenes.
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” ― John Steinbeck
“Alas, poor Yorick…” sure, that’s more of a soliloquy, but you get the idea. We use monologues in improv as the inspiration for different kinds of improv show, from the very brief personal glimpses at the beginning of the Smash Night Social Club, to the longer and richer monologues that begin an Armando (as seen in The Vox Pops at Nonsuch Theatre on Sat 20 April…) They’re fascinating and often personal things, monologues, and there are as many ways to use them as there are to deliver them. This week we’ll be exploring the content of a good monologue, and how to extract fun and interesting scene ideas out of them. Expect: monologues, group scenes, non-threatening personal revelations, funny stories and related hijinks.
7.30 – 9.30pm | £5 / 3 concessions The Malt Cross (downstairs in the workshop) | 16 St James’s St | Nottingham | NG1 6FG
