This week was full of whimsical storytelling, improvised fights and a full day improv kinda weekend.
Starting with our Whimsical Wednesday
Wed, 1st July.
July started off on the lovely note of sharing personal stories, and watching them evolve as others retold them from their perspective. It's exciting to observe how folks perceive stories, and which parts stand out to them as important details. A story of motorcycling through the desert could be about spunk and courage for one, or about the perils of solo travelling to another. We also concocted shared memories in pairs, one sentence and detail at a time. "Remember that time we saw a Rhino at the zoo?" Finally, we closed on the story of the rat massacre outside the window. Truly bloody!
Next we had our regular The Silliest Show Tonight
Fri, 3rd July.
The Silliest Show this night took a turn for the competitive with us fielding the first Improv Cage Match! Two teams took on each other in a battle of wits and genders (we took a page out of school classroom politics with Boys versus Girls). We saw the Boys bring some strong emotional game, while the Girls spooked the audience with a bone-chilling, scary story told in the dark - the acapella surround sound made it truly immersive! Team Boys might have managed a narrow victory, but the war is far from over...
Last up we had a big day with Graduation Show, Make Friends with Stage and PPT ROULETTE
Sun, 5th July
Truly a marathon day: 4 sessions one after the other!
We started the day at 9AM with rehearsals for the Graduation Show of our Improv 101 cohort. We often get asked, "If improv shows are made up on the spot, what for and why are you rehearsing?"
The simple answer to this is that we're merely putting in our reps to be more spontaneous, connect deeper with our co-improvisers, and learn to think about and play some of the games we run, more smoothly. Overcoming panic on stage takes work.
At 12PM, we launched into the aforementioned Graduation Show with our favourite game of Baba Sehgal (treat every word as an acronym and expand upon it). We travelled to space, gave an elegant hippo's hippocampus to a crow (LOL!), and met a Pickleball expert who also cooked with pickles. We keep these graduation shows open only to friends & family of the graduating cast, to make sure the audience is generous and supportive for the brave folks who are getting on stage for the first time; they kept the energy up, and the suggestions flowing. Good stuff all round!
At 3PM - Our latest addition to the stable of jams we run has been Make Friends With the Stage, and it has quickly become one of our most popular offerings. We've been sold out for every edition so far!
My stand out memories from today's session have to be the stories about Robin Hood, Dobin Wood, and White Rose; and the one about the Union of the Devil Tales in the forest. This is what happens when adults tap into the storytelling child that lies deep inside of them - we explore characters, lands, and ideas that are hard to fathom otherwise. I mean, where else would you find a retributive fox whose tail fur had been used to make paintbrushes, if not in an improv workshop?
Finally (phew!), we close out the day with PowerPoint Roulette, a show where the improvisers present out of slides they've never seen before, on topics they get on the spot. It's a classic format, great way to bring a sense of seriousness to our stagework... hahaha! Yeah, right! We try, though. We had some fun presentations today; a Life Coach Seminar, a Luxury Real Estate Pitch, and a Supervillain Annual General Meeting. Told you, serious stuff.
Jokes aside, we open up a couple of slots for brave audience members to give this a shot, too, and they outshone all of us. We found a new Mayor of Bangalore (they run for elections in 2049, so keep an eye out for them), and we got a private tour of the Visvesvaraya Technology Museum by its veteran curator Mr. Ramesh Gowda (I feel obliged to say that these were made up characters, and bore no resemblance to real life people). We closed out the evening with a History Lecture by a pair of ancient spirits; a well-travelled French-Nigerian-Jamaican sprite, and a Rosogolla-loving Bengali ghost, who had been around for 30,000 years.
Check in with us next week, we promise giggles, good stories, and generous attention.