What to say and what to do? What you already know.

Hey Joyful followers,

Today was the sixth edition of The Joyful Saturdays. The theme of the day was:"How to keep being physical while we talk (by talking I mean improvising with words) and what is the outcome?"

Just for a reminder, we want to be physical because it triggers a different way to improvise. We don't improvise our ideas in our brain, we move our body and these movements trigger our imagination, and that's the kind of improvisation we are looking for.

The challenge is once we start to talk, our body becomes a burden. We just pretend to use it but we don't. The movements we do don't inspire us, and we block our bodies from responding physically to what we are talking about.

Let's take this generic scene I've seen often:

Improviser A gets involved in an argument with improviser B. Then, Improviser A announces that they are going to do something: "I swear that I'm going to throw the TV through the window!". But, Before Improviser A do what they say they would do, Improviser B prevents improviser A from doing the thing.

Why the primitive response of Improviser B is to stop improviser A from doing the thing? Because Improviser A is about to move the story forward and to bring improviser B with them. How? By moving their body and miming the action of throwing the TV.

Back to The Joyful Saturdays' sixth edition, minute 16.

The instruction was: Take a shape, take a rhythm and then take a vocal rhythm.

What do I mean by "take a vocal rhythm"? I mean shaping your voice and making a sound. Whatever you want, as long as you let the voice coming out. (It's also in Clown Secret, by Ira Seidenstein).

I ask to do it 3 times to get familiar with the instruction. Then I ask to do it again, but this time, you shape your voice and you say something, a word or a sentence. You make a voice, you choose how fast you talk, the ton, the language, whatever! And you do it 3 times, again to be familiar with it.

Now, what was your favorite one? These are the answers they told me:

• Tiramisuuuuu!
• Salut les p'tits lous!
• STOP WATCHING ME!
• Wait!
• Give it to me.

I'm glad because when they shared with the group their favorite line, they don't just say the line, they go back to their shape. They showed the premium package: Shape/Rhythm/Voice/Line.

5 lines, 5 characters. I ask them to take 1 minute and think about everything they already know about their character.

With this one shape, this one rhythm, and this one line, what do you already know about the character that you haven't said yet?

I ask them to deliver a 2 minute monologue, based on everything they found out so far. Guess what? They had a lot to say. Without thinking about what should they do next, they were focused on sharing with the audience what they already knew about their character, and also try to keep being physically.

The main worry of improvisers is to not know what to do next. If it's your worry too, then ask yourself... What do you already know? Then say it with you mouth, do it with your body, and don't let improviser B stopping you.

Cheers,

Pauline

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