Chaos Attraction

Improv 301 2.0 Week 1: Your Homework Is To Get A Tattoo

2016-05-12, 11:30 p.m.

So....I have been debating whether or not to just keep taking Improv 301 (or some other class lower down) over and over again for more practice. I've heard that other people who got on teams have done this, and well...it's not like I have anything else to do and god knows I can use the practice. So even before my graduation from the last 301 class, here I am starting it all over again. Which seems a little nutty in practice, but...whatever, I need more Harold practice and this is the class that does that as opposed to the free practices.

I'm not really sure how to recount these class entries given that I've done this before...but the teacher did say he's revamping the curriculum, so....?

General notes:
* Time dash, heighten a bit in 2nd beat, start at about a level 3, shorter. "When in doubt, dash it out"—just pick a time and see if you want to add. Like chapters in a book.
* Analogous—“this is where s--- gets weird, you guys.” Same or same ish pattern, new hits and justification. Think another book in same genre, different super hero movies."

List of bad habits people do:
* Machine gun pattern hits without justification or exploring
* Don’t be a no person as the grounded
* Don’t argue and never make hits
* Too many walk ons
* Only walk on to clarify or make a hit
* Talking heads—need to do things in present. Cut to tomorrow!
* Not listening
* Boring initiations like “I’m so glad you’re here!”
* Identify the symptom, you can identify the problem. Start out as a character. Firm up information instead of being vague.
* Wwpw- pattern and why go together.
* “Because is a powerful word in improv”
* Noel—what you do when you’re nervous. What am I missing here?

The rest of the night was partial Harold practicing. And hoooooo boy, did I ever suck, along with everyone else. Because after the three monologues, literally nobody had any ideas out of the six of us. Everybody just stood there stupid.

For the record, the monologues were:

Monologue A: dead cat photo (I really don't remember the details of this, I have down "dead cat photo." Someone showed a dead cat photo to someone?)
Monologue B: some girl named "Melissa" was handing out what happened to be this dude's number at bars, so he's been texting the guys back as "Melissa." Then he found out that one of the guys he was texting was the friend he was at dinner with.
Monologue C: one guy got mistaken for being Justin Bieber's new girlfriend on Twitter, to the point where they asked him for verification.

For the record, Brian was getting on us a bit for scenes involving texting--or in my case, mentioning gross things with animals--in the last class, so I at least was reluctant to do anything involving those subjects. Plus I hate Twitter so ain't no way I'm doing that. But apparently nobody else could think of anything at all either. Clearly I need help.

We then proceeded to do some very painful scenes involving a CSI guy acting like a teenager, doing paintings of people like they're dead, and...apparently the scene I was in was about self-promotion and I did not get that at all. Did not pick it up, did not figure out where he was going with that, did not figure out anything to do besides stand there and smile while a dude went on...which is too much like real life for me, thanks.

Anyway, sucked worse that night than a few weeks ago! Whee! But better to have that go on in class than during the performance, at least.

The other four people's:

Monologue a: this woman's mouth was stuck shut from chocolate when she had to answer phones
Monologue b: first aid kid is empty when someone injures themselves

Scenes were:
(a) Ice cream truck selling melted ice cream, at no discount!
(b) Overly prepared mom at grocery store

Those were better, at least.

Brian's note at the end of the night was this: “Your homework is to get a tattoo that says say it and then play it.” It makes me wish I had some henna around before next Thursday, but these days I don't feel like paying that kind of money to buy henna just to do one tat on myself. It'd be funny if I showed up with that though...on the other hand, I'd probably get crap for it at work, so never mind.

At Jam that night, I did a monologue about my fear of Disneyland as a kid, and was in a scene where there was a family of five kids and the dad kept giving them nearly dead pets (bunny, dog) for Christmas. He kept complaining that he should have stopped at 2 or 3 kids and another chick and I kept giggling about his "first mistake." He said he was going to get out another gift and I yelled out, "Is it going to be a dead cat?" Well, now you ruined everything!

So at least THAT one was better.


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