Rehearsal #1: Getting to know you

We had our first rehearsal for Un-Scripted Un-Scripted last night. The exact punctuation of the title is still up in the air, so until it gets set, I’ll refer to it that way. I like the title. It reminds me of “pizza pizza” from the old Little Caesars ads, or the Circus Circus casino.

It’s a short form show, which we as a company haven’t done in over a year and I personally haven’t done in almost 2 years. I’m really looking forward to stretching those muscles again, especially with the cast Dave’s assembled. Unfortunately it looks like Derek might not be able to do the show after all, but even without him I think it’s a strong group.

Last night we worked mostly on basic exercises, word-at-a-time stories, I am a tree and genre freeze tag. Then we moved on to playing some moving bodies. That game really does show you all the different physical things you could be doing in any scene if you weren’t so focused on the words.

Many improvisors don’t realize this, but most games where developed to help build skills for regular scene work, but they were so enjoyable in their own right, they became used in performance. Moving bodies lets one person focus entirely on talking and another focus entirely on movement. The result is very eye opening for both. One thing we noticed, for instance, was the scenes had more head petting than we’ve ever seen in a regular scene, but there’s no reason not to do that in regular scenes.

Then we moved on to 4-way dubbing, which builds your listening skills as well as teaches you to have reactions to things. Since you can’t speak for yourself, you have to react and hope the person doing your voice gets it. Or, you have to react to justify what they just had you say.

Rehearsal #2 is tonight. I think we had a solid beginning.