Chaos Attraction

Improv 301, Week 5: Arresting A Bear

2016-04-15, 12:35 p.m.

Previous week here. This week we went into environment.

* Have a clear pitch in your mind
* Think about it in 2 word pitches
* Best characters to play this idea
* Endow other person to play the role you want here
* Where of the scene
* Use environment--which is the entire stage and whatever fits on it
* Use a cut to if you want to go elsewhere
* We don't use 90% of the stage here
* Environment helps you find hits on the pattern
* Come into the room, see it, start to manipulate/touch the room
* Explore as much as possible
* Whatever you do should help with the next hit
* Give an example hit of how you want things to work
* Be specific with patterns at the start.
* Avoid asking questions at the start--they will give you things you don't want. (Referring to the vegan McDonald's worker scene below--it was going a little weird because the second guy in the scene didn't know where she was going with this and was giving her answers that didn't work with what she wanted to do.)
* Going pop culture means that some people won't know the joke
* Don't stand in line for group scenes
* Commit to space objects.

Games played:
Herd of Squirrels (people imitate animals in a herd), at one point someone called out "celebrity chefs."
Touch To Talk (literally--you're in a room and have to touch something in it before you can say a line)
I'm Standing In The Middle Of (everyone is in the same area and they name things put into them.

Then we did a half Harold--monologues, first and second beats and one group scene for the rest of the night.

Monologue A: something about the sound of silence (wasn't really sure where that was going, about not being allowed to use headphones)
Monologue B: girl had to swim in a gross pool while playing water polo and everyone's eyes were irritated and she was getting yelled at for missing shots and she retorted back, "I'm sorry I got pussy-itis! ....I didn't play in the next game."
Monologue C: playing out silly death scenes in the pool and getting a random leg cramp during that.
Scene A: A LARPing quest, which went biblical.
Scene B: A guy who doesn't know the name for his medical aliments and does things like calling a headache a head sting. "Let's cut on dick pain." On the second round he did an analogous scene about not being able to hear people properly while on the battlefield.
Scene C: Vegan McDonald's employee bitches out customers. On the second round she was a strip club employee refusing to do anything.
Group scene: splashing in the water. "Hey, let's pretend to kill Sammy when she jumps in the water! Don't take it personally!"

Monologue A: driving around in Humboldt.
Monologue B: Sasquatch museums.
Monologue C: (me) Duck rape! Yup, I just can't stop talking about duck rape.
Scene A: A boring guy who on a date recites all these facts about Sacramento in the first scene, recites facts about his Jetta in the second.
Scene B: 2 Bigfoots go to the Farmer's Market in Arcata and everyone likes them. In the second scene, they have an antique shop.
Scene C: (me) Cops in nature busting animals for crimes. I had to arrest a bear, and my supervisor instructed me to shoot all the bees. I was all, "don't I have to fill out an incident report every time I shoot someone?" Yes, for each bee. In the second half, she wants me to shoot a bunch of birds and I mentioned the incident report again, and she mentions sasquatches in an antique shop. I'm all, can't we bust those two, and she's all, "how do you know there's two?" At which point I gave an amusingly long look to the audience...and then a sasquatch came out to give me some drugs and a bust went on. I loved it, even though Brian was all "no rape monologues" and "don't go around merging on second beat scenes or calling people out."
Group scene: mallard gang goes after a lone white duck showing off in the vicinity.

Monologue A: A fellow walked up and saw "a gentleman receiving fellatio from a lady." For whatever reason he felt compelled to give the lady (who couldn't see him, though the guy could) a ah, heads-up that they were spotted, so he breaks out an Aussie accent and says, "Good on ya, mate!" I loved this.
Monologue B: Extrovert girl dates introvert guy, he starts telling her she's being a "puppy" when she's bugging him to go out. So she's learned to let him watch "Tyson Degrassi videos" or whatever. This set off the Neil DeGrasse Tyson nerdery AND the Degrassi nerdery (in Brian).
Monologue C: falling out of the boat on a rafting trip.
Scene A: Girls being described as animals, a.k.a. "dating website for worst human beings." The guys feel skeezy but go with it. "I'm gonna go with that koala over there, I like the way she's hanging."
Scene B: Let's spice things up in bed by listening to a CD of Crocodile Dundee quotes! You don't like that? I've got some Stallone quotes. Finally he gets somewhere with a CD of Louis Armstrong...just talking about going to the store and buying a banana. In round two, he pulls out a dude in the closet ("This is Bill." "I was in the closet") for an impromptu jam session/possible threesome. "Just as long as you keep banging me, man." Brian gave the initiator crap for not doing so well on round 2. I attempted to defend the choice and he was all, "I love you, great support of your teammate, but you're both wrong."
Scene C: Some kind of driving tour, I never quite got what was going on with this because I think they were going for something scary....but one girl in class was on call for work and her phone went off in an amusingly ominous manner at just the right moment.
Group scene: UPS coworkers gave each other lame nicknames based on their jobs.

For whatever reason, some folks were screwing up and starting a group scene when we hadn't finished the third round of first scenes yet. Brian said everyone gets lost doing Harold sometimes, it's up to the group as to how to handle it. Sometimes they will be out of order. Just keep going.

Random funny quotes from the night that don't really have context:
"Pirate succumbs to irony" --from the "standing in the middle of" game where we turned an underwater scene into a pirate ship.
"Shagging wagon" --same game, someone describing a bachelor pad motor home
"Pick an action and then an animal!" followed by, "God, you worry me." --really wasn't any context for this being shouted out of nowhere.

So my night involved arresting a bear, doing a drug deal with a Sasquatch, and being in a duck gang :)

At Jam that night, I was in a scene involving a Roadkill Cafe that ran on a truck. Mostly I was going to eat the Mystery Surprise. That was okay, but I did enjoy the scene someone else did where the guy was going on about how he was the biggest badass in the neighborhood, but then he skips into the saloon and orders a Shirley Temple. Later, they have a "who's the swizzlest" competition by doing double dutch.


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