Sticks Author: Steve
We took our opening word suggestions for rehearsal tonight from twitter. The fine folks of Sea Tea Improv (@seateaimprov) gave us “dastardly” and @topherpolack gave us “luxurious”. Not enough video power or filming to show the full Harolds, but they were funny. Trust me. How are you going to prove me wrong anyway?
But, here is Marilyn with the “dastardly” monologue at rehearsal.
Posted by sjones71 on June 23, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/harold-monologue-dastardly/
Sticks Author: Steve
We don’t need an excuse to remove the child seats from our minivans, load up with beer, cheese and smoked meat products, lock our children up with babysitters and hit the road. We don’t need an excuse for that. We’re adults and if we want to pack into the minivan and head to New Haven, we can do that damnit. We can.
Eight Sticks in Chris M and Jen’s minivan. A jumpseat added (a cooler) for comfort of the eighth. And off we went.
From where we all live in Connecticut (East Hampton) it’s about 45 minutes into the Elm city. Since our lives mostly revolve (lovingly, joyously) around our small children, we don’t actually get out much. So when Kendra noted that the Second City touring company was playing the Long Wharf, we jumped! And by jumped I mean that we loaded up a minivan with beer and pepperoni. Beep beep! Squeal of tires. Dust cloud. Good luck to you babysitters! We’re outta here.
A quick ride, some cheese cutting in the car (you heard me), some monologues for the fun of it and we arrived.
Listen, it’s our personal brand as an improviser troupe that we are family types. Piling in and out of the minivan obviously fits this brand and you may think I’m making it up. But I’m not. It was honestly the best and most fun way for us to get there. Right out of the suburbs and into…
Long Wharf. A fun little theater in New Haven stuck between salami shops and Ikea. The whole thing actually looks like where they would stage a mildly-urban superhero fight. Quick Batman! Down by the loading docks and dumpsters! There’s a group of criminals trying to get into a theater to steal pearl necklaces right off the rack (!) of entitled theater goers!
I could probably write a lot of detail about the Second City show, but others have done that before me. Many, many times in the 50 year history of the group. But I will say that I can’t remember laughing in such a full-guffawish way in a long time. More than two hours of high-quality entertainment.
We don’t do sketch comedy in The Sticks, but I bet we will at some point. Many of the scenes were revelations, finely crafted, perfectly paced. For us, the value (beyond laughing a lot) was in being able to see how those sketches started. You could see their origins as improv scenes and that was enlightening.
A talented group these Second City folks! We’ll do it again and I’m sure we may go this time in a station wagon. With wood paneling.
Sticks Pic: Chris B, Jen, Rachel, Marilyn at Long Wharf.
Posted by sjones71 on June 17, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/second-city-touring-company-in-new-haven/
Sticks Author: Steve
When I was a small child, my Nana would tell me stories. These were mostly stories she had heard during her days as a gypsy – haunting, vaguely European tales with harsh lessons involving witches, children, Baba Yaga and other wise crones with swollen, arthritic joints and plastic rain hats. She would sit in a shadowy corner, knit with needles made from the bones of large birds of prey, and I would settle deeply into my Super Friends wolf skin duvet while servants tended the embers of a smoky fire. She would start.
“This one,” she would always cackle. ”This one is for you and for all the scamps like you. For all you pilferers of window sill pies, you stealers of paw paws, you trespassers of corn fields…”
My wizened, whiskered Nana, like most gypsies, liked copper pots, wooden beads, Woodstock and allegory. Her tales always had a lesson and it was usually this one:
You think you know what you are talking about, but you don’t know what you are talking about and we’re all getting really sick of you and your know-it-all bullshit and we want to challenge you, you dicky little bastard and aren’t there like a million ways to do The Harold anyway and let’s do that now. God!
Admittedly, I don’t actually have a gypsy Nana. And admittedlier, nobody thinks I’m dicky. Right?
Right?
This is the normal way groups learn to do stuff together – with different approaches and opinions.
Have I mentioned that we’re trying to teach ourselves this thing called The Harold? Yes? Well, it’s true. We are all friends and have grown up together, married one another, and performed with each other for years, years, years. We spend time together. We vacation together. We drink together. We share clothes. We love each other. Learning to do this improv thing was a choice we all made together after Chris M suggested it. He’s our leader, has the most experience and I’m the guy who thinks he knows the rules to put in place because I read Truth In Comedy. Twice!
We are doing really well. Really well. Our first rehearsal for The Harold was in September 2010. We can do Harolds now. Real Harolds. And now it’s time to push on some of the rules that have been put in place to try and get better. The whole group is feeling it and driving it now.
Our first change? Group games. We can do them, but it’s just one of those things that I think seasoned improv people understand when they are watching it. But I’ve been to a few Harolds now with noobies and they don’t understand what the hell is going on with that. So… we’re pulling an idea from Truth In Comedy and going with mini monologues instead. We prefer opening with a monologist and it’s a group strength. Last week we went with an opening monologist and then 2 or 3 mini monologues in place of the group game.
Worked great. We’ll stick with it for now.
So what next? This group now knows what they’re doing and they want to try and do things now in different ways. Do we need so many rules around who the main characters are and how many times that actor can be a main character across the beats? Do we need to stick draconianly to “he/she who initiates becomes a main character”? Should we always try and move blazingly fast? All rules I introduced to (theoretically) ensure clarity, but do we need them any longer?
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” my Nana would say. ”But let the group decide Mr. Smartypants or Baba Yaga will eat you.”
Posted by sjones71 on June 13, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/how-to-own-your-own-harold-group-mind/
Sticks author: Steve
I’m in LA where my pasty, puffy skin is burning. It’s like our hot denizen of outer space has something against the English and is making an example of me. Whatever sun! You may be big and important to photosynthesis, but you can’t deter me from gazing up in wonder at smog!
Also, and this is impotent. I am trying to write this on an iPad so there may be a few damn you autocorrect moments. Forgive me! I’m nude at this.
I am out here on very exciting business that I can’t talk about, but rest assured that it has nothing at all to do with me being a US Navy Seal. It’s more in the genre of jobs that people like me do. So if the Navy Seals are in the genre of Tom Clancy books, I am the equivalent of Judy Blume and not the sexy stuff like Are You There God It’s Me Margaret.
Speaking of sexy children’s books, The IO West theater is here with me in LA! It’s in a place called Hollywood that comes up every now and then in America. I was able to see a Harold each from The Cartel and Local 132.
I went with a group of advertising-type friends. It is the second time I have dragged a few of them to a Harold. Enjoyable fun the first time and this time for them. It’s funny the pressure I feel for it to be funny for them. I feel like it’s a very specific interest of mine and the beauty of improv may be something that not everybody digs. Especially a Harold!
But both groups had it all under control. They were sharp and clear and very funny. I found the group games to be particularly smart for both teams.
And the speed! Holy crap. Maybe 15 minutes each. Scenes were crazy fast. To me, as we have been discovering in our rehearsals, speed helps. I might have wanted some of the scenes to breathe a bit more, but the pace was very close to right for an audience.
One note on the opening. We tend to use a monologue. It’s a strength of our group across the board and I am more convinced than ever that it is the right way to go. Both of these teams used more of the living room, group discussion opening and while it worked for me, the folks I was with didn’t know what the deal was. They couldn’t follow it and then had trouble seeing the connections drawn from it into the beats.
Onward! I’d go to IO West or Chicago or East again.
Posted by sjones71 on May 11, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/io-west-harolds-fast-fast-super-fast/
Sticks Author: Marilyn
In my dreams I’m the queen of funny.
No really, last night – seemingly all night – I had dreams about how funny I was. In one, The Sticks were at a comedy club which was hosting a forum on improvisation. I was so inspirational, Jess and I did the ol’ dine-and-dash because, really, they owed me for all the funny.
In the culminating dream of the night, I actually went to a doctor to see if he could determine why I was so much more funny than everyone else. I asked if he could x-ray my arm to see if, perhaps, my funny bone was longer that most people’s. He said he could, but he wondered what I was hoping to get out of the appointment, what was my ultimate goal. “I’m looking for ways to be funnier, I guess,” I said. “I’d like to find ways to increase my funniness. Maybe there are certain foods I should eat?”
“Bananas are funny,” he replied.
I woke up chuckling.
So when I say I can be funny in my sleep, I mean it.
Posted by sjones71 on May 1, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/fda-nutritional-guidelines-for-funny/
Sticks Author: Steve
There’s no failure in improv.
Right?
Right?
Come on guys! So I made a pretty large structural error in our Harold rehearsal. All for one and one for all!
Who’s with me?
Hello?
Back when we were fledgling Harold rehearsers (1 month ago) we got slapped around a bit. And last night was another rough one. At one point, I thought we were in 2C, but it was 2B’s turn. Then, when I went on to 2C, I tried to do the group a “favor” by nudging things along into a logical third beat collision. Too early! Too early. It confused everybody as it seemed I was deciding to skip right into the third beat. There was other general sloppiness. Our pacing wasn’t as good as the last time. Kendra didn’t bring Cinnamon rolls.
But! BUT! This group is resilient, flexible (Jim can bend in half on the vertical axis), and funny. There were some really great scenes, some excellent time dashes and some wonderful demonstrations of group mind.
Sitting there last night, deconstructing and analyzing what went wrong (my absolute favorite thing to do… seriously) I realized how much I love this group. We’ve been friends since junior high in many cases and have seen graduations, weddings, children, jobs, adoptions, houses, vacations, successes, failures, boobies (!), low hangers, bad hair (my Richard Marx mullet), good hair, chest hair, facial hair, Hair (let the sunshine in), movies, books, new friends, old friends, best friends, Friends, medical emergencies, medical necessities, medical marijuana (not really), good times, bad times, the Durham Fair, live dogs, dead dogs, dog bites, Spelling Bees, bee stings, Sting, comedy, tragedy (my Richard Marx mullet), Richard Marx, Billy Joe confused with Billy Joel, tears, laughter, hugs, kisses, boobies (again!), smoked meat products, weight loss, weight gain (I’m big boned), rogaine, Novocain, Chicken Stemperata, Thai food, promotions, demotions, emotions, Animotion, objects in motion that tend to not stay in motion, motion pictures, moving pictures (today’s Tom Sawyer), sprained ankles, broken hearts, soaring hearts, kites, bikes, trikes, transvestites, shots, pots, cots, lots, and Sasquatch.
I love them all and would rather learn with them than anybody else.
I mean, I wouldn’t take a bullet for them because that would hurt. But I would give a very, very accurate description of the shooter so that the police sketch artist could get the investigation started on the right foot.
Posted by sjones71 on April 26, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/theres-no-failure-in-improv/
Sticks Author: Steve
Has there been floundering? Maybe. Has Steve been a little harsh and overanalytical? Perhaps. Why am I using the annoying rhetorical question thing? Because I am not a good writer.
The truth. That’s right! Now comes the truth. Everything that I have written or said before was a lie. Or was it?
The truth is that we’ve done incredibly well learning the Harold. To go from a basic understanding of the structure to where we are now is pretty nutso. Chris M and I started talking about trying this in August. He made it happen by September. Since then, we’ve done hundreds of scenes together and reviewed, rewound and rebuked ourselves. We’ve laughed, chortled and snickered. We’ve eaten. We’ve drinkened.
And dang! We’ve gotten better. Structural issues are rare. Scenes are stronger. Flow is better.
This Sunday we had a breakthrough. A really-seriously-yowza-we’ve-done-it 3 hours. There are a few reasons why:
We also had an audience member! My wife. And she thought we were funny and that most things made sense. This is very important for us as we anticipate performing in front of people who are not familiar with the structure of a Harold.
There is still concern in the group (Allison is right!) about abandoning what we’ve worked hard on so far. We do not want to move so quickly that there are no characters built, that there isn’t a sense of the relationship and that things don’t breathe a bit. Since we were moving quickly, we actually got through two full Harolds and the second was far stronger than the first. We believe that by continuing to focus on strong (but fast) scenes, we will truly find the formula.
We are almost ready.
Posted by sjones71 on April 12, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/effective-harold-work-catching-our-stride/
Sticks Author: Steve
I think it was Franklin Roosevelt who said “The best way to learn stuff is to get it taught to you or by buying a book about it or by watching a DVD. You could also consider watching other people do the thing that you want to learn. If you want. You know, if you have time for that kind of thing and like to watch people doing things. Sicko.”
He was a good Prime Minister of England, no question about it. And he could turn a phrase and end it in a judgement of your morals just like that. A lickety-split judger was ol’ Prime Minister Roosevelt. Well you know what your highness? Maybe I do like watching other people do things and maybe it is a good way to learn everything from juggling to loving. Get off your high horse Mr. Rough Rider!
By now, all of our regular readers (which is us, we’re insular AND provincial… take that Prince Roosevelt) know our story.
So, we aren’t in a position to take regular classes even though we’re only a couple of hours outside of NY/Boston. We rehearse now only once per week and we are self directed (i.e. we drink a lot at rehearsal).
Teaching ourselves has been fun, audacious and sometimes bodacious. There are resources for learning improv, but we are often struck at the opportunity that some of the larger improv theaters are missing. I’d shell out many of my corporate job dollars to buy better instructional books (perhaps I expect too much, but Truth In Comedy just isn’t that well constructed) and instructional DVDs. Heck, we just want to see clean, solid video examples of full Harolds. Tough to find even on the internet and the internet has lots of things in it.
We need to get out and see more improv.
Last night, every member of The Sticks (except Thom who was being a Father for goodness sake) got out to see the 2-year anniversary show of Sea Tea Improv. Improv circles I think are tight and we’ve been learning about Sea Tea via Twitter, Facebook and other cool webbish devices for a while. They seem like good people and we like good people more than we like bad people except when we want somebody to do something bad to/for us.
Not only was it a fun night out for The Sticks (plus my wife went too!) with adult drinks adult food adult conversation and adult bookstores, but it was a treat to watch an improv group perform. We learned a lot. It was a short form show, but we love short form. There is plenty to be applied to the shorter bits of our longer form Harolds. The truth is, we’re not really having a hard time any longer with the structure of The Harold – but we have plenty of room to get better at many of the things that are on display in short form.
The game structure is something that we need to apply to our intermezzo (yes I speak Italian… please form an orderly line ladies) group games. Sea Tea is particularly skilled it seems at listening to one another – again something that any improv group needs. There was a calm cleverness to the delivery that was right on also. You never saw somebody making a joke just to make a joke. Things were true to their characters and relationships. We laughed a lot which is good since it was a comedy show. One of us cried, but it was because we almost didn’t have enough seats. That one of us was me because I had planned the little field trip. Okay? Are you happy now making me admit that I cried?
So, yes! Mr. Roosevelt. You were right about the going-and-seeing-things-to-learn-about-them theory. Good for you! But let’s face it. You were way off on a bunch of other things. Still, we’ll keep following your advice. It’s time for us to see more improv whenever and wherever we can.
Posted by sjones71 on April 4, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/get-out-and-watch-improv/
Sticks Author: Chris M
WHY?
On my long drive back into real life this morning, I was thinking about last night’s rehearsal. All the usual post mortem stuff, “ We did well with beats one and two, struggled with three, but our warm up focusing on group games paid off.” I then started thinking about this rather amorphous and bizarre project as a whole, and I was immediately struck by the commitment of our team. Every Sticks member is overcommitted. We are teachers, bankers, corporate leaders, gardeners, theater directors, cooks, students, and Moms and Dads with 11 kids amongst us. Yet each week, despite the flu, leaky roofs, collapsed lungs, sick kids, business trips, and law school exams we still pull together enough of our team each week to have really great rehearsals.
Why?
We moved rehearsals to Sunday night for the next few months, and as expected it created conflicts and difficulties for all. Team members had to miss more rehearsal because of the switch. I was worried that the project might not survive the rescheduling. But the actors just keep on showing up ready to work.
Why?
Could be the laughter. We laugh a lot in rehearsal. Could be the food and drink. We eat and drink well at rehearsal. (Cinnamon buns. Wine. Health food.) Could be the friendships. We’ve all grown closer during this unusual project.
But at the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, I think it’s improv that keeps the Sticks vibrant and growing despite all the real world road blocks. Everyone gets off the wall, everyone is fully engaged in trying to understand what is working, and what is not working. A couple of months ago, most of us didn’t know long form from long johns. And yet last night the whole cast was engaged in a spirited discussion around why 1A was so much easier to heighten than 1B. I think we are all a bit surprised by our passion. Everyone desperately wants to get better at the craft. And we are, slowly, beat by beat.
Nah, on second thought it’s probably the cinnamon buns….
See you next week.
Posted by sjones71 on March 28, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/we-rehearse-for-the-cinnamon-buns/
Sticks Author: Steve
Rehearsal! And that means cherry pie from Kendra. And cinnamon buns from Kendra. And scones from Alison. Christ! All I can tell you is that if you don’t get that at your rehearsal, you need to get a Kendra and an Alison.
You can’t have ours. Find your own.
The group was itching to get back to The Harold. We made progress on creating more solid scenes and characters and felt that we’d carry it over into a good ol’ rompy Harold.
And The Harold said “Take THAT! And that. And THAT! Respect me bitches!”
And bitches we were made. Sticks no more…. bitches of the Harold.
Stuff was still funny. (These people are funny… I’m telling you.. every last one of them.) But the scenes were sprawling, sailing, time dashing away from clarity. We had characters, but we failed to anchor the scenes as we edited in and out. People playing main characters also got brought in to be different characters. By the end, had we been the audience, we would not have known what happened or what really held the whole thing together.
Focus for next time will be to keep the characters very firmly established and to not dash too far away from them in each beat.
Successes however! Rachel monologized despite her insistence that she has no stories. Bah! Let’s just say she’s lived a little bit. She’s got stories. Off of a suggestion of “beach” she took us on vacations, adventures across swamps, into the lives of Candy, Nina, and Deena, into a sprawling beach house of splendor and a humble cabin. We had polygamists, bouncers, Madonna and… and …. XANADU!
Also, two of our stronger group games.
In any event, onward! We’re at the point where we can be pretty darn hard on ourselves as we try and get better. Everybody has thick skin.
Except me. I’m a fragile flower with delicate petals made of insecurity and pollen made of doubt and a flaccid stamen and a.. stem .. made from infinitely extended metaphors.
Of Montreal, Gronlandic Edit. Physics makes us all its bitches.
Posted by sjones71 on February 3, 2011
http://thesticksimprov.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/the-harold-makes-us-all-its-bitches/
