Chaos Attraction

Improv 301 3.0 Week 3: Taking A Shit On Stage

2016-07-28, 2:36 p.m.

Previous week here. Administrative note: I'm trying to get all these entries up months late and frankly, I don't remember all the details from the sketchy notes, so I'm probably leaving most of this in here without uh, any explanation.

Notes:
He has no idea how he came up with ideas all the time during the 2 man Harold he did recently. Ideas came from invocation opening (already discussed here.)
From last night’s Harold: Pick low hanging fruit, something that needs to be seen. For example, someone made a one off comment about a “stripper factory” and that turned into a great group scene.
He is a UCB kid. “This is what I want to do.” Game = pattern. Absorb full pattern in group scene. How we play game. Listen to entire pattern. Don’t leave out pieces.
Why stripper factory? Funny. Already have connotations. (when someone wants to go to a strip club, Brian suggests “or we could go to Scandia.”) Primes imagination.
Tropes. Look for 2 words stuck together that make you go hah. That you can communicate to scene partner.

Group scenes:
Little or no justification

5 things game

Someone does a monologue and you write down a 2 word pitch
What came to mind: gorillas, incubus, bands, album played repeatedly for six months, divorce, emotions in your face, frog, ribbit
“frogs in your face”
3 things that could happen in your pitch.
Obnoxious frogs won’t shut up, in your face, stalker frogs in the middle of the night
This is fun
“circles are fucking horrible. Lines are not great.”
“playing sexy dog” at Harold-better be doing it
Don’t be the asshole, everyone is trying to help.
“I’m sorry I fucked you. Not literally.”
Everyone should have each other’s backs

Monologues and then a group scene

Monologue about being halfassed with unloading Lego boxes. Led to group scene about halfassed driving. I mentioned my recently burned out headlight. Come up with idea so clear strangers could figure it out.
Monologue about thinking you could sell unfrozen otter pops
Gatorade pools, other Gatorade products, “we could put Gatorade in the Gatorade.”
Pitch meeting group scenes suck
Tried to redo it with an ice cream man, a creepy one.

Monologue about celebrity fuck list turned into a scene with a sorority serial killer chat turns into murder. Did not like this or get it.
“I’m just looking for you guys to commit to fun stuff.”

Dog story. Dog had infected cut ears. “AS she got bigger, the poop got bigger.” And she destroyed stuff. Dogs fucking stuff up.

Peeing in the opposite gender bathroom
Ridiculous protests

Broke phone
Cell phone dares got forced to…
“Don’t be afraid to take a shit on stage.” UGH I HAD TO DO THIS. Yes, during a scene about crazy cell phone dares, someone made a comment about my having to shit out a cell phone and thanks to the discussion about peeing on the dog a few weeks ago, I knew I’d have to actually goddamned do it. Not my finest moment, but at least I didn’t get razzed for NOT doing it. Oy. I am also glad that was in a class and nobody else saw it.

Furniture broke on stage during play
Under 30 dollar circus
“Please, no applause.”

Group scenes are the most significant part of this class, good group scene will change the tide of a show that isn’t going so well. Resets everything.


At Improv Jam, I played a kid who dies in Oregon Trail.

We also had a very odd moment because one fellow started doing the Key and Peele “A-aron” teacher skit pretty much verbatim, and then later he played a former cop now working at Chipotle who tasered people, and I was thinking, haven’t I seen this before? After that scene he was all, “We won Cage Match tonight and now I’m brain dead.” Well, perhaps, but I can definitely say that got brought up in class the next week.

I also heard one of the world’s best stories after Jam. There is one girl here who has SPECTACULARLY CRAZY dating stories, and I actually got to kind of see one. She came in saying she’d been on a bad date and called another improviser to come rescue her. I gather she’d actually brought said date over here earlier at some point and he’d met the improviser. And the improviser...basically came in and propositioned a threesome. So after that ended, they came back here and were telling the story outside...AND THEN SHE REALIZED THE DUDE WAS SITTING IN HIS CAR RIGHT OUTSIDE WITH THE WINDOW OPEN, PRESUMABLY HEARING ALL OF THIS.

I seriously never saw anything like this happen outside of a movie in my LIFE. Wowza.


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