This is an account of the final week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, and week 5.

There was no specific theme for the final session. We played a series of games drawing on the skills developed in previous weeks and getting general feedback from the teacher.

As usual we warmed up with Zip, Zap, Zop and Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. I’ve grown to love these games. I’m definitely going to continue using these games to warm up at future improv events. We even added a couple of extra rules to Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. Here’s the final set of rules:

Everyone stands in a circle. On your turn you must point at another person in the circle and shout one of the following things.

• Zoom – The game must start with a Zoom. Directed to anyone in the circle and the turn passes to that person. You can’t have two Zooms in a row.
• Schwartz - Directed to anyone in the circle, but the turn passes back to the previous person.
• Pofigliano -  Directed to the person directly on the left or right and passes them the turn.
• Murph - Everyone shouts “ahh!”, the turn remains with the person.
• Twisler - Directed to the person directly on the left or right, but the turn passes to the person on the other side.
• Bork - like Pofigliano, but skip one person.
• Twisle bork – like Twisler, but skip one person.

When somebody messes up everyone group hugs and shouts “Awooga!”

I think this game originated as a drinking game. And like any good drinking game it is designed to make people fail quickly and often. I love this game as it really develops an acceptance of failure as something funny and entertaining.

Forward, Reverse

There’s a nice video example of this game in this post.

The key to this game was to be very physical. Large gestures and pantomiming look very funny when repeated again and again; they also provide visual milestones to the performers helping them recall the sequence of events.

Fresh choice

This game helps develop presence (i.e. a feeling of being in the moment). It is impossible to over think the scene and plan out future events, as you are constantly being told to take the scene in new and surprising directions.

Freeze tag

This was a challenging game that required a lot of creative thinking. One of the rules of this game is “no dancing and no fighting” as you can move into these activities from almost any position.

Count down

In this game we were asked to play out a scene that took ninty seconds. We then had to replay the scene in fourty-five seconds, twenty two seconds and finally in eleven seconds. This game really helped you identify the key moments in a scene and get used to advancing the story quickly.

Object punchlines

In this game we were given random objects like a broom and a straw hat, and told to deliver a punchline involving that item. The punchline would re-purpose the object as something else like pretending a broom was a snooker queue. I found this one of the most difficult exercises!

So that’s the end of the six week level 1 course at the National Comedy Theatre in San Diego. They offer two more levels, and I’m very pleased that most of the class will be carrying on to the level two class starting in a couple of weeks.

This is an account of the fifth week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4.

We spent the first few minutes warming up with Zip, Zap, Zop and Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. We’re seriously awesome at this game now! We were introduced to a new warm up game called The Frog Game. This is an evil game! It’s one of the easiest set of rules, but requires a lot of concentration and the pressure to say the right thing really builds as the game progresses. Everyone stands in a circle and take turns to say the next statement in a sequence before passing the turn on to the person on their left. The sequence goes: One frog.. two eyes.. four legs.. kerplunk.. in the water. Two frogs.. four eyes.. eight legs.. kerplunk.. kerplunk.. in the water.. etc. See the pattern? Notice the second “kerplunk” for the second frog? Easy right? Just you try it!

The rest of this class focused on creating characters. During the class we got to play a lot of different characters and learn techniques for creating them out of thin air.

Hitchhiker
For the first game we set up a “car” (four chairs) on stage and put four passengers inside. They were told to play neutral characters. Another person was told to embody a strong character and to hitch a lift from the passengers. One passenger got out, the hitchhiker got in and then the scene continued with everyone taking on the characteristics of the hitchhiker. The game continued like this introducing loads more hitchers with strong characters. This was a fun game. The hitchers chose some interesting characters, and we got experience identifying character traits and attempting to embody them ourselves. We also got to interact with each other. I noticed that when four people are playing the same character the traits tend to get exaggerated as everyone introduces new ideas.

Good advice, bad advice, the worst advice
Three people make up a panel that will answer audience questions. They each make a strong character choice (e.g. maniacal billionaire, spiritual yoga instructor, anything really..). They are allocated the task of delivering good advice (genuinely so from that character’s perspective),  or bad advice, or the worst advice (taken to the comic extreme).

Identity Crisis
Three people play a scene, each making a strong character choice. Periodically the director shouts “switch” and the improvise switch positions and carry on the scene playing one of the other characters.

Drawing Inspiration from objects
It can be difficult to think of an original character. A tactic to overcome this could be to look around for physical objects in the room and ask yourself the question “if this object was a person, what kind of person would they be?”. And then use those attributes as a basis for your character.

We tried this out with a few objects. We decided a microphone might be overly loud and want to be the centre of attention. We thought a stuffed toy might be friendly and cuddly.

People really seemed to embrace the challenges of this class. The characters that were created led to some really funny scenes. Only one more week to go

This is an account of the forth week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1, week 2 and week 3.

We did our usual warm up. The class is getting really good at playing Zip, Zap, Zop and Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. We’re a lot faster and getting a lot further before making a mistake.

Red ball
Another group warm up game. The groups stands in a circle. One person mimes throwing a ball to another person. As they throw it they say “(name of person), Red ball”, the receiver mimes catching the ball and says “Red ball thank you” before passing it on to another person. Once we get the hang of this multiple balls are introduced until the game descends into chaos.

Scenes
We played some basic scenes in pairs. The first person began with an action/mime based off an audience suggestion. The second person came on stage and a short two to five line scene ensued. The teacher gave us some tips for a good scene, I can’t remember them all, but I think they included the following:

• Don’t ask questions
• Say yes
• Add something

Playing scenes is really fun, both to watch and perform. Personally I found the best scenes were the ones that put an emphasis on developing the story and relationships. A few of the members were trying to through in one liners. They got laughs, but I felt they came at the expense of the scene.

Dirty hand randy
Six players stood in a line while the teacher kneeled in front randomly pointing at people. When we were pointed at we had to say something related to an audience suggestion (superhero, American presidents, super heroes, …). Hesitation, or repetition or an off topic response led to elimination.

Switching emotions
Four players are each assigned an emotion sourced from audience suggestions. A mix of positive and negative is best. A scene is played. When a character enters the scene all players in the scene have to inhabit that emotion and play it as strong as possible.

Another week, another fun selection of games and an introduction to more free-form improv with scenes. Looking forward to next week

This is an account of the third week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1 and week 2.

We began our third lesson with Zip, Zap, Zop, and quickly moved onto Zoom, Schwarts, Pofigliano. We added the rules: “Murph” everyone responds with “ahh”; and “Twisler” which is similar to pofigliano but directed to the person directly behind you. It was a fun game. Our teacher was mischeviously pointing and poking the wrong person during on his schwartzes and twislers.

Next we played a round of What are you doing?. This was palyed as an elimination game with two competing teams of three. The activities had to relate to a suggestion from the audience. Generally we started off with something easy like basing the round around a film or a sport. Then we moved on to letters using sequences of up to three letters.

Then learned how to talk gibberish. We went around the circle, each person translating a line of English into gibberish, then providing a new English line for the next person to translate. After this we paired off and told each other a true story from our life, periodically the teacher would shout “Gibberish” or “English” and we would have to switch. It was impressive how much we could understand in gibberish mode through tone, expression and gestures.

Next we were introduced to pantomiming. We all found a space and closed our eyes. The teacher told us to visualise ourselves standing in-front of a fridge. We were told to move a fridge magnet around, hold the handle, open the fridge, take out food and eat it. The exercise twas designed to show us the complexity of interacting with objects: there’s thickness, resistance, movement, temperature, smell. All these things should be considered and mimed.

Next we played a game that combined gibberish and mime. An player was sent out of earshot and another player was given a location, a profession and a weapon for a murder. He then had to mime these three things to the first person using only gibberish and pantomime.

The key to this game is that the improvisers must interact. The guesser cannot just stand static. They have to get involved.

We played a variation of this game where the information had to be passed on through multiple people, often times resulting in mistakes.

This was a fascinating game. There was a lot of subtlety to it. It was interesting to see how people contributed to avoidable mistakes. One pair mistook playing tennis for sword fighting. This was due to:

1. The miming of tennis being too unconvincing. The player jumped straight into enacting a fast rally with grunting. She could have interacted more with the racket and the ball: perhaps bouncing the ball, performing an overhead serve and running up to the net to return it. Perhaps she could have called out the score in gibberish, perhaps she could have interacted with the umpire.

2. Not confirming the guess is correct before moving on. As soon as the person doing the guessing guessed sword fighting he IMMEDIATELY mimed killing the person with a sword, which ended the game. A more experienced player might have acted out sword fighting a bit first, perhaps embellishing it so that the first person can confirm they have guessed correctly. If the second person had convincingly mimed fencing or Zorro-like sword fighting then the fest person could easily have set them straight and mimed tennis more convincingly.

In one of my rounds I had to guess “Psychic”.My partner was acting out looking into a crystal ball. I thought he was miming a potters wheel so I mimed that to him. Interestingly this got the biggest laugh of my section. Goes to show that it’s important for the guesser to really get involved even if they’re a bit lost. And it’s even funnier when you’re getting it wrong.

The teacher kept telling us to speak more gibberish to each other. Many of the games were almost completely silent and could be made easier by adding gibberish as the tone/emotion/etc. will be conveyed.

Great stuff. Can’t wait for next week.

This is an account of the second week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1.

Another great improv class. I’m really impressed with the teacher’s ability to generate a fun positive atmosphere.

As last week, we started the class with Zip Zap Zop.

We followed up with a similar game called Zoom, Schwartz, profigliano. In a circle the first person points at someone else and shouts “zoom”, now it’s that person’s turn. Two Zooms in a row is not allowed. Instead they can shout “Profigliano” or “Schwartz”. “Profigliano” can only be directed to one of the people next to you. “Schwartz” sends the turn back to the previous person. The point of the game is to communicate properly, pay attention and learn to tolerate inevitable failure.

As last week we played another round of What are you doing?. I think people were a little bit more unstifled this week which made for more entertaining watching.

The rest of the session consisted of the the following games:

Three headed expert. Three people stand in a line, shoulder to shoulder. They speak as one person, each contributing a word at a time. When the “three headed expert” has finished speaking all three people bow simultaneously. The game is structured so that the “expert” introduces themselves, then a moderator gets a question from the audience and poses it to the expert. The moderator may simplify the question so that it can be answered more easily.
During this game there is a temptation to create sentances that run on far too long, perhaps exacibated by certain heads being afraid to end the sentance and just saying “and..”. Furthermore there is a temptation to try and be funny by saying a word that is out of the ordinary, but this only serves to make the sentance difficult for the subsiquent heads to continue.

Word at a time story. We all sat in a circle. A title for the story was decided and we told the story by contributing a word at a time around the circle.

Sentence at a time story. As before, but with an entire sentance. I found this to be a very interesting exercise. We produced a complex story. The teacher commented on the importance of reincorporating things that had been said before to help them make sense. He also commented on how some ideas had been blocked or delt with too quickly.
Personally I was interested in how the story had it’s own momentum, and when someone borke the momentum by moving the story on far too fast, it was extremely jarring.

Story teller die. Multiple people stand in a line and try to improvise a story. One person begins with the focus and the director changes the focus frequently, often mid sentence. If anyone hesitates or makes a mistake they are disqualified. This is a classic game that I’ve always found incredibly boring to watch and unenjoyable to play. I think the only way to make this game fun is if you make sure that everyone is disqualified VERY quickly. People should be willing to disqualify themselves for small things. Unfortunately the temptation is to stay in and try to tell the story. But the story is not the entertaining part of this game. The entertaining part is watching people fail.

Roll on week three.

Improv comedy involves one or more people making things up as they go along. A typical improv show might accept a suggestion from the audience (perhaps a location or a career) and immediately act out a sketch based on that suggestion.

Although improvisors are making things up as they go along they are also employing techniques that add structure, and depth to the scene which prevent it from descending into chaos.

To get good at improv you need to  learn and practice these techniques. You also need to develop a mindset that allows you to be spontaneous and playful on stage.

There are many different styles and categories of improv comedy. Short form improv are games where multiple people act/play while conforming to the rules of a game. This style of improv has been made famous by the show Whose line is it anyway? and more recently Drew Cary’s improv-a-ganza. They play games involving improvised scenes, one liners, improvised songs. Here’s an example of the game “Forward, reverse”

(Youtube link)

Long form improv is more free form and less rule based. Improvisers are free to create stories and characters out of nothing. The following video is an example of a Harold, a structure for a long improvised show. It’s long, but why not watch the first few minutes?

(Youtube link)

Lots of faces you recognise right? Turns out many of famous comic actors got their start doing improv comedy including Tina Fey and Bill Murray.

On Saturday morning I attended the first session of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego.

I should point out here that improv comedy is different to stand up comedy. People often get them confused. Stand up is usually pre-written and involves a single person being funny into a microphone. Improv comedy is a group of people acting/playing on stage, and everything is completely made up on the spot. Improv comedy was made popular a few years ago by the show Whose Line is it Anyway?

I started doing improv back in London and I was instantly hooked. Improv develops skills that are transferable to other performance mediums, including public speaking. For that reason I have decided to keep a diary of what we covered in this beginners course.

When the class began we were asked to stand in a circle and introduce ourselves one-by-one. But rather than just give our name we were told to make up a little rhyme about our name to help everyone remember it. Mine was “I’m Andy, and when I’m on the beach I’m sandy”. The class shortened it to “Sandy Andy”. This was an incredibly effective way to remember everyone’s names, I was able to recall almost all the rhymes during the class. My favourite rhymes were: Jon’s got it going on, Frying pan Leann, Joe’s wife thinks he’s slow.

The rest of the class involved playing improv games. The teacher was fantastic. Enthusiastic, encouraging, gave excellent feedback, and really kept the momentum going.

We played the following games:

Zip, Zap, Zop. We stood in a circle. One person would start by pointing at someone and shouting “zip. That person would point at someone and shout “zap”. This sequence would carry on until someone, inevitably, made a mistake. He encouraged us to celebrate failure by doing a group hug and saying “Awooga”. I felt that this game really helped people stop worrying about looking foolish on stage, and prepare them to do more interesting things.

What are you doing? Two people on stage. One asks the other “What are you doing?” The person says something (possibly with constraints like beginning with a certain letter or relating to a film) and the other person has to begin acting it out. He claimed that sound effects were important here.

Yes And. A game for two people: an interviewer and interviewee. The interviewer begins with “So I understand you’re an expert on <<audience suggestion>>“, followed by a back and forth where every statment must begin with “yes, and…”.

185. Several people stand in a line and take turns to step forward and tell a joke. The joke must have the format “185 <<audience suggestion>> walk into a bar. The barman says ‘We don’t serve your kind around here’ and the <<suggestion>> says <<pun>>. I found this the most challenging exercise.

It was a great first class, I’m really looking forward to the next one.

The above was my entry into the Phoenix Speakers Humorous speech contest 2011. I won at the club level, I didn’t place at Area level. Congratulations to Laura McCracken who won and went on to represent our Area at the Division B contest.

As with any speech at Toastmasters it was a big learning experience. I was pleased with the new things I tried, like leaning on an audience member (thanks Tom). However I would like to lower the intensity of the delivery and appear more loose on stage.

I would encourage everyone to try competitive public speaking. It takes nerves to a new level and reveals blind spots in your writing and delivery. The opportunity to perform a speech more than once and incorporate feedback was eye opening and gave me an appreciation for feedback that is specific and applicable rather than vague and subjective.

Last summer I went to the Edinburgh Fringe, a world renowned comedy festival. I watched the semi finals of So you think you’re funny, a high profile competition where fledgling stand up comedians were performing their best seven minutes. Some of the comedians were fantastic, some not so great.  I was struck that many of the comedians were doing very basic things wrong. I noted the most obvious things down and realised that the list is very applicable to stand up generally or any humorous speech.

1. Be politically correct. I was surprised by the number of jokes at the expense of: ethnic minorities, fat people, gay people, disabled people, ugly people, etc. More then half of the competitors picked on at least one these groups making them appear vicious and ignorant. You’re better than that. Distinguish yourself from the other competitors by choosing original subjects or by picking on yourself.

2. The opening is important. The first three sentences should be punchlines. You need to get people laughing straight away. Some of the contestants took far too long to say anything funny and began to lose the audience. You need steady laughs from the beginning. Save the long set ups for later.

3. Pause for laughter. I was amazed at how the comics would start their next joke while the audience was still laughing.  If you do this the audience has to stop laughing so they don’t miss anything! You will give the appearance of reciting a pre-rehearsed monologue rather than reacting to the audience, and you will prevent the laughter gradually building.

It’s better to pause too long as it will give you the appearance of confidence. If you have trouble with pausing then write the word “pause” into your script, or start a new line whenever a pause is merited.

4. Hide your nerves. A lot of the other contestants looked incredibly nervous. If you take steps to hide your nerves you will look better than them. If you know you’re going to shake then leave the mic in the stand and don’t use props (holding a piece of paper at arms length really exacerbates shakiness). Smile. Take your time to acknowledge the host at the beginning and end with a handshake and a smile.

5. Enunciate your punchlines. Speak clearly, especially on the punch. One comedian’s punchline was lost because he slurred his punchline. We weren’t sure if he said “bank director” or “fence erector”.

If your punchline includes difficult to pronounce words, or words with plosives (T, P, B, or D sounds) that may get distorted when spoken into a microphone, then consider swapping out the word.

6. Acknowledging things in the room. This will make you sound more natural and in the moment.

Have a standard funny line for common things that might happen: a glass falling over, a loud noise outside, a mic malfunction, someone walking in late, etc. For example “I’m being heckled by [a glass, a chair, whatever made a noise]”, or “I’m making everything go wrong on purpose so the judges see my vulnerable side”

From the moment you arrive at the venue keep an eye out for things you can mention: the room becoming uncomfortably hot, weird decorations or posters. (At the SYTYF competition there was  an enormous backdrop advertising The Sims – the best comedians acknowledged it).

7. Act out dialogue. When you change characters change the position you’re facing, and change the tone slightly. Consider altering the intensity and facial expression. It makes dialogue more interesting.

8. If you have a joke with several taglines and the punchline falls flat, don’t say the taglines. Just move on. The joke didn’t work. Trying to squeeze a laugh out of it will be excruciating for the audience.

9. Be wary of time. There will probably be a lot more laughter than you anticipated in a large room, so if you’re used to practicing in front of the mirror or at a badly attended open mic then you might go over time. You don’t want to be disqualified because the audience laughed too much! Have a section you can cut, about thirty seconds to a minute long.

10. Don’t do fake audience interaction. Only ask questions to the audience if you’re ready to deal with an unpredictable response. If you force it in, it will look forced in. At the SYTYF competition an act asked an audience member what they did, she embarrassedly responded “I’m one of the judges”. The emcee asked one of the audience members to do something and they flat out refused. You can’t rely on the audience to give you the answer you want.

(Watch this 7:40 video on vimeo)

On Monday I completed the first project from the Storytelling manual (from the Toastmasters Advanced Communication series). The objective was to tell a folktale. I found this to be an interesting and challenging project.

The most difficult part was choosing a story. There are a lot of folktales out there. Wikipedia has a huge list. I read a lot of stories trying to find something that I liked.

I chose The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson. I love the morality in this story that comes through the hidden agendas of the characters. The vain Emperor. The sycophantic falseness of courtiers and subjects. And the tailors who turn out to be con artists. The only character who is genuine is the little boy.

I had an excellent evaluation with three main recommendations:

Tight body language
I keep getting this recommendation. I look tense on stage. My gestures constricted and my shoulders are hunched. I loosen up towards the end of the speech. For future speeches I need to push myself to use more expansive gestures early on.

Vocal Variety
My evaluator pointed out that I had a lot of opportunity to use voices to enhance the dialogue. Most of the voices sounded the same. I could have experimented with accents and pitch.

Use of the Stage
I stayed in the centre of the stage for the hole speech. There was oportunity to break up parts of the speech by moving to different parts of the stage. For future speeches I should probably include stage directions in the script.