11/09/18 Improvisation

Today we continued with improvisation work, for each exercise we had a new partner.

For the first exercise we had an improvised conversation where the first word of each sentence began with the next letter of the alphabet. For example:

A: “Are you serious?!”

B: “But I thought this is what you wanted!”

I really enjoyed this exercise because the conversation can become really obscure and fun to improvise around. Most of the time the conversation ends in a completely different place than it started meaning you can get very creative with this exercise. It also reminded of my time at the National Youth Theatre as we also did this there.

We did another alphabet exercise where the first word of your sentence had to begin with the last letter of the final word of your partner’s sentence. This exercise was a lot harder than the last as you have to really concentrate to what your partner is saying otherwise the scene becomes very disjointed. However, if you find someone you bounce well off this exercise is really fun. For example:

A: "Look! Up there in the sky! Is that a spaceship?"

B: "Pretty sure that's just a pigeon."

The last exercise we did was the most difficult. For the last exercise we had to have a conversation but only allowed one word responses. For example:

A: “Snake!”

B: “Where?”

A: “There!”

B: “Run!”

I found this really difficult because it’s almost impossible to get the scene off its feet properly since you can only use one word responses.

After playing around with these exercises with different partners we sat and formed an audience. Two random members of the class got up and were given one of the exercises. Taylor and I received the second exercise. Our scene worked well because we bounced off each other and went with obscure ideas our partner threw at us. We started off lost in a forest which turned out to be Jurassic Park. The class enjoyed our performance which was a rewarding end to an enjoyable day.