Sticks Author: Jesse

Remembering the Game, the Relationships, and the Relationships between the Games and Relationships.

As we have grown and learned in this medium we have spent time focusing on finding “games”. Games are the little funnies that crop up during improv that we try to heighten and expand on. They can be as simple as a little slip in dialogue, or as complex as a running gag that gets called back throughout the show. Some of us love games. Appropriately, some of us get chided for overusing games. Some would argue that our games are a good part of what makes us funny, but they can be the cause for us running amuck.

Relationships, on the other hand, are our differentiator. We have all known each other for a long time. There is trust and honest caring between the group. When I look in someone’s eyes and let them know they have a boogie hanging out, they, and the audience have to know it’s a statement based in honest compassion. When they do, it’s deeper than a low brow joke. While lots of groups build relationships, I think we are exceptional in this area. Whenever we lose our way, I find our solution is often in remembering to slow down and let the relationship simmer. Humor is often fermented in surprise. When we let an audience really know some characters, and perhaps even start to care about them, the twists we throw in are what generates surprise and laughter.

No one in the group should be surprised I was disappointed with our last show. More clearly, I was disappointed in myself. I found myself far too often an observer. I felt we lost our way during the show, and I sat paralyzed watching instead of actively contributing to try and improve things. This weekend, my mind has been filled with all the great things I should have tried. They all seem to center around a simple truth that hasn’t occurred to me before. There is, and should be, a balance between games and relationships.

I’ve always compartmentalized them before, considering them separate items that require balance, but not considering how they feed one another. Games add depth. Improv is a short art form, and we don’t necessarily have the time we need to add the depth to characters to make relationships real. Games are an avenue for not only “the funny” but for depth. Games give us a chance to explore and add to characters without them even necessarily even being present. Characters, in turn, are the manure pile for our garden of games. They have faults, quirks, and interesting habits. All things that we can explore with time dashing, parallel scenes, and straight up pimp outs. The richer our relationships, the more fodder for games.

This may seem like just the ramblings of a Monday morning, but they are actually a call to action for all my fellow Sticks. We need to remember when we are on stage to build the relationships. Take it slow and find them in your hearts. Always strive to make them real. The closer to reality a character is, the more the audience can identify with them, and the more surprise we generate when their world changes. Supporting characters need to help the characters build. We need to use our opportunities to come on and make the main characters richer. We need to push each other to add nuance to our characters. Pimp them in unimaginable ways and look for the games that make the main characters twitch just a little. Above all remembering that while big can be good, small is often best.

Sticks Author: Chris B

With a scripted show, you never really know what may happen – an actor may forget her line or pages of lines (My Fair Lady, 1993), the power may go out and leave you acting into a black abyss (Into the Woods, 2005), or the flat you worked so hard to paint to look like a real house – fail – will fall over and almost take off your left foot (Two By Two, 1992).  But these things truly are oddities when it comes to scripted theater.  Sure there is always the occasional dropped line, a flubbed part of a song, or a missed entrance or cue; so terribly minor.  On a whole, in my 25+ years (really?!) of performing on stage most of the shows go just as we’ve rehearsed them.  This may be why I am now so drawn to the art of improv.  You really don’t know what you will say, what you will do, and whether you’ll be good or not.  It’s like the Actor’s Nightmare, but it’s a joke that you and the audience are in on together.

Ok, I admit it; I love having an audience.  Something happens when the lights dim, you hear the murmur of the crowd (well – small group of people you know won’t be too harsh when you suck) start to die down, and the waiting begins.  The anticipation of the unknown.  In that moment, just before the improv show starts, not a single person in the building is sure how the show will go or what the show will even be about.  You are all in this together.  Your job as the improv performer is to be quick, witty, big, bold, funny even.  The audience’s job is simple – laugh.  I feed on that laughter.  I don’t quite know why, but I feel myself become a different person.  I’m far more focused than I am in rehearsal; time seems to tick slowly by, and I notice things that I don’t think I would notice without an audience there.  I can’t really explain how this works or why.

Part of me feels a little bad – like I’ve been letting my fellow Sticks members down during our rehearsals.  I can remember rehearsals when I struggled to get my butt off the chair and contribute, unless that contribution was pouring more wine into my glass.  In front of an audience, I could hardly stay in my seat.  I’m starting to think that this may be one of my fatal flaws.  When I think no one is looking, or it doesn’t matter so much, I get lazy.  I’ve been acutely aware of this ever since our performance last week.  I do this same thing in many aspects of my life.  As soon as the spotlight is on, I grab the controls and act like I’ve been flying the ship the whole time when actually I’ve been on cruise control  gliding through life happily unaware of my lazy bliss.

Improv is no time to be lazy.  Because you have to completely trust your fellow troupe members, you have to believe that what they give you in rehearsal they will give you in performance.  I am not doing that right now.  I will though.  I’ll pretend there’s an audience, set up a video camera and threaten to put it all on YouTube, open the window shades – put speakers outside and let our neighbors watch and listen (kinky!), or drag a homeless man off the street to come watch and judge me.   Or, maybe I don’t need a gimmick.  Maybe I just need to bring it, all the time, because that’s what my friends and family deserve.  Consider it brought – now, time to get my butt out of this computer chair and pour myself another glass of Malbec.

Sticks Author: Steve

I really recommend that when you are 12 or so you start hanging around with smart, funny, talented stagey types.  It’s about the best thing you can do if in the future you want to try and learn the Harold.  It’s what I did.

We did our first public Harolds last Friday in front of a warm, engaging and appreciative audience.  The Sticks, my closest and most important friends for 30 years, were truly amazing.  We’ve been rehearsing since September 8, 2010 and I suppose that’s a long time .  But consider that up until about August 2010 only one of us (Chris M) even knew what the hell a Harold was.  Personally, I never even knew a person named Harold because I wasn’t alive in 1910.  My only exposure to things heraldric came via dungeons and dragons (heraldry) and Hark The Herald Angels Sing.

So.  A rewarding trip with these Sticks that began as a discussion with Chris M and I on the rooftop bar of The Elbow Room in West Hartford and continued with frantic research, book reading, video watching (while on vacation with many of the soon-to-be Sticks in Cape Cod) and finally, outrageously, audaciously with the first Sticks rehearsal at Chris M and Jen’s house.

We barely understood what beats were, but we knew how to improv.  We studied and worked and disagreed and then, then!  Then the bastard Sticks staged an intervention against me.  Me!  An intervention to wrestle me into submission about performing publicly.  An intervention against my pickiness.  Assholes.  Lovely, lovely, correct assholes.

Up until now we’ve performed in various Sticks living rooms across the great town of East Hampton.  And all of these Sticks long, long ago surpassed my improv abilities.  With the structure of the Harold down, and with our decision to include mini monologues instead of group games between beats, we’ve been flying.  The best part is – I get to watch them.

Last night, other people got to watch them and it wasn’t in a living room. It was in the upstairs of our little town museum.  That’s practically Radio City Music Hall or The Apollo or some other famous theater like the main stage of the Gold Club.

Since most in the audience were unfamiliar with improv (let alone the Harold), we spent a minute explaining the form.  We then warmed up with a bit of shortform.  After that, we got the first audience suggestion.  Horse.

Chris B. performed a nuanced monologue dealing with his first experiences with horses and we had plenty to work with.  From there, things went really, honestly, perfectly.  Bad driving, horse chicanery, QVC horse-themed restraint devices – all tied neatly together in the third beat thanks to great listening and trust in one another.  The tie ins were especially helped by Chris B, Jen and Jim.  The three of them thinking together is what made it happen.

The audience seemed to like it, but I was tempted at that point to end.  We had planned on doing two, but I was afraid that the audience wouldn’t be interested in watching a second one.  I was wrong.

After a quick break for BYOB imbibing, we settled in again.  The suggestion was “love” and I did the monologue touching on what love means to me and how it can compel even the youngest of us to break down barriers to be together.  Again, everything went extremely well from there.

We’ve all performed in various things for most of our lives and we are very familiar with the feeling you get, how you draw on the audience and how you feel grateful for them.  It was different this time because we were unsure if the form would resonate or if we would pull it off.  Would they know what was happening?  Would they get edits, dashes, beats?  Could they follow people as characters, multiple characters across different scenes?

Would we be funny?

This was a special audience and they seemed to love it.

There are a few things that I’ll take away from the night.  First, we’ll be doing it again and more regularly.  We are beyond ready.  Second, my friends The Sticks are the best bunch of people you could know.  Third, the funny stuff happens when we connect details from the monologue, our relationships, and through listening.  Fourth, quick edits, time dashes etc. are funny.

Most importanly, I will take away that this is freaking fun as hell.

I am grateful to all of The Sticks for doing this and I am very appreciative of the audience who came to see us.