Conspirator Hayley Tantau runs a blog over at TheTheatricalJournalist.com where she has been posting some great content about her continuing adventures with improv. With her permission, we'll be republishing some of her best posts in their entirety. Today's post: Not Sure If: Improv Notes or Life Advice (part 2)
This new edition of ‘Not Sure If: Improv Notes or Life Advice’ is brought to you by the help of Heal Yourself, Skeletor - a meme featuring He-Man’s Skeletor and positive life affirmations. Since I found it, it has become my favourite thing as it combines humour with annoying-yet-true life affirmations. Also, I can relate every single image and quote to improvisation. Also-also, I really just wanted an excuse to use this meme.
Life affirmation: “My mind is open to new ideas”
Improv: Before you step into training or a performance, or even before you take improv classes, you need to open your mind and prepare it for the forthcoming possibilities of which you can’t control. Planning out an entire scene in your head is toxic! If you initiate a scene idea, you need to know that you’re not solely responsible for how the scene is going to go, nor are you entitled to own the scene. It’s a collaborative process.
Conspirator Hayley Tantau runs a blog over at TheTheatricalJournalist.com where she has been posting some great content about her continuing adventures with improv. With her permission, we'll be republishing some of her best posts in their entirety. Today's post: Not Sure If: Improv Notes or Life Advice (part 1)
Performing with my current improv team, Foggy Windows
“When an improviser lets go and trusts his or her fellow performers, it’s a wonderful, liberating experience that stems from group support,”
- Charna Halpern, Del Close, Kim Johnson in Truth In Comedy
The most important thing I have ever learnt about improvising (thus far) is also the most simple: listen and react.
“Well, DUH” – said a chorus of people who still say ‘duh’/are aware that listening and reacting is straight-up common sense and human instinct. To listen to something and then react like a human being is what being a functioning member of society is all about.
Alas, to an up-and-coming improviser this lesson takes a while to show itself. I remember the exact moment I learnt this lesson, it wasn’t on stage and it wasn’t in class…
It was before my last show with my first Harold team, The Reluctant Sergeants (who were indeed as reluctant as our name suggested). Before these shows I would get nervous three hours beforehand (this seems absurd to me now, but hey, that’s personal growth for ya!), sometimes I’d even wake up nervous on show-day. My anxiety came from a place of “what if my brain stops working on stage?” “what if I can’t pump out witty one-liners?” and “what if no one laughs at me?” – none of which are really relevant to good scenework.
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