Last night there was an 'improv' presentation in SAWCHU. February nights are cold, so usually I don't venture out, but last night I braved the silly odds in order to attend the show.
I believe that no theatre performance is either black or white. Most are, mostly, grey - some good ones are a higher key grey, that's all. It is exceptional that a play performance is 100% white or Black - there is always an odd positive in an overall flop just as there is some shortcoming to an overall brilliant play. I think that it is the nature of the craft that makes it so.
Regarding 'improv' ( I have attended a workshop or two and have tried working with a group in the past) I have reservations. Except for the element of surprise that a fellow actors constantly throw at you, there is not much that I can say I like about improv. Things 'work' or they don't. The idea is to work without a charter or a script. What comes out is not always jazzy, why, most often there is conflict and a arrhythmic fall out in intensity.
Last night they presented 'sketches', and I thought that mostly they worked. Yet in what 'mostly' worked there was a real-life- one-up-manship from a couple of actors, and it showed.
Since it was improv where anything is possible, I called the actor on his cell phone which he was seen using even while on stage! Unfortunately, I heard the voice telling me that the number I had dialed was busy. The actor must have got that miscall, because he called me this morning and I asked him whether there was any belligerence from the other aggressive actor on stage. He said that he did not feel anything of the sort. Being an actor myself, I clearly felt an angry energy from the other actor, but this actor, my friend, was oblivious of it. Perhaps it was because he was performing. While performing your adrenaline level is high and the impact of the unexpected can be tackled more easily. Sometimes you do not feel anything.
However, what I observed was that an improv actor needs to be present in mind and body. This may sound like stating the obvious, but I shall elaborate on what I mean by that.
In all versions of theatre -the regular theatre and improv or any other kind of theatre - it goes without saying that the actor HAS TO BE alert. That is a given. But what I mean to emphasize is this: In a play with a proper script and scenes the actor has to remember for the character he is playing. There is a slight poise there, a gap, as it were, between the character and the actor. What the actor must be alert to remember is whatever has been rehearsed and blocked. There is quite some freedom to improvise there but a broad border is drawn within which to create. In improve, the character and the actor are the same so the character's personality is not separate from that of the actor. Besides, there is no way of saying that the actor you are working with has 'registered' fully who you are or whether you have properly understood who your partner 'imagines' he is. So an actor has to constantly try to establish 'relationships' on spot. Till this is done, there is pressure and tension. The actor has to make sure that his technique is concealed from the audience, otherwise the performance may be as boring as playing poker with open
cards.
Then another actor may decide to join in. What he has picked up from what the two actors already in the scene is another unknown element. When the third actor joins, it is quite possible that he may completely upset what the two actors have already built.
There were younger people in the performance last night and they were good.
Some theme based 'sketches' worked but they lacked the purity of improv, I thought.
All in all, just as I said, some things worked and others did not. Whatever worked did so because of chance and what did not, also did not work because of chance. So much is left to chance in this format of theatre that I wonder what the difference is between the much popular theatre games and theatre proper. The overall effect is trivial and therefore momentary. " But that's the whole point", the improvisation freaks would say. I don't agree, and that's where we differ.
I believe that no theatre performance is either black or white. Most are, mostly, grey - some good ones are a higher key grey, that's all. It is exceptional that a play performance is 100% white or Black - there is always an odd positive in an overall flop just as there is some shortcoming to an overall brilliant play. I think that it is the nature of the craft that makes it so.
Regarding 'improv' ( I have attended a workshop or two and have tried working with a group in the past) I have reservations. Except for the element of surprise that a fellow actors constantly throw at you, there is not much that I can say I like about improv. Things 'work' or they don't. The idea is to work without a charter or a script. What comes out is not always jazzy, why, most often there is conflict and a arrhythmic fall out in intensity.
Last night they presented 'sketches', and I thought that mostly they worked. Yet in what 'mostly' worked there was a real-life- one-up-manship from a couple of actors, and it showed.
Since it was improv where anything is possible, I called the actor on his cell phone which he was seen using even while on stage! Unfortunately, I heard the voice telling me that the number I had dialed was busy. The actor must have got that miscall, because he called me this morning and I asked him whether there was any belligerence from the other aggressive actor on stage. He said that he did not feel anything of the sort. Being an actor myself, I clearly felt an angry energy from the other actor, but this actor, my friend, was oblivious of it. Perhaps it was because he was performing. While performing your adrenaline level is high and the impact of the unexpected can be tackled more easily. Sometimes you do not feel anything.
However, what I observed was that an improv actor needs to be present in mind and body. This may sound like stating the obvious, but I shall elaborate on what I mean by that.
In all versions of theatre -the regular theatre and improv or any other kind of theatre - it goes without saying that the actor HAS TO BE alert. That is a given. But what I mean to emphasize is this: In a play with a proper script and scenes the actor has to remember for the character he is playing. There is a slight poise there, a gap, as it were, between the character and the actor. What the actor must be alert to remember is whatever has been rehearsed and blocked. There is quite some freedom to improvise there but a broad border is drawn within which to create. In improve, the character and the actor are the same so the character's personality is not separate from that of the actor. Besides, there is no way of saying that the actor you are working with has 'registered' fully who you are or whether you have properly understood who your partner 'imagines' he is. So an actor has to constantly try to establish 'relationships' on spot. Till this is done, there is pressure and tension. The actor has to make sure that his technique is concealed from the audience, otherwise the performance may be as boring as playing poker with open
cards.
Then another actor may decide to join in. What he has picked up from what the two actors already in the scene is another unknown element. When the third actor joins, it is quite possible that he may completely upset what the two actors have already built.
There were younger people in the performance last night and they were good.
Some theme based 'sketches' worked but they lacked the purity of improv, I thought.
All in all, just as I said, some things worked and others did not. Whatever worked did so because of chance and what did not, also did not work because of chance. So much is left to chance in this format of theatre that I wonder what the difference is between the much popular theatre games and theatre proper. The overall effect is trivial and therefore momentary. " But that's the whole point", the improvisation freaks would say. I don't agree, and that's where we differ.
