Santa Barbara Improv Workshop

Once again, Bill Arnett at iO Chicago wrote up a great post about scene work. This time he discusses the problem with being coy about an object or situation in a scene. We’ve all seen the problem where some object in a scene is described in indirect terms: how amazing or disturbing it is, how [...]

The Santa Barbara Improv website is back up and running. We are now officially hosted at www.sbimprov.com, so be sure that your links are addressed correctly. I still have the members.cox site, but it should be directing you to the new home page.
Just a quick note to warn folks that I’m going to be making [...]

If you are having problems getting to our front webpage (http://www.sbimprov.com), I am working on correcting that. For now, this blog is hosted at another location, so it shouldn’t suffer while the main page is being corrected.
Sorry about the inconvenience!

Dyna Moe at Nobody’s Sweetheart is putting together an Improv Infographic that explains a Harold. Roughly in the form of a flow chart, all the phases (beats) are illustrated along with an indication of the flow, timing, and points of focus. It’s a pretty fun graphic although she hasn’t finished it, yet. It’s possible that [...]

This post doesn’t directly address improv performance, improv in Santa Barbara, nor improv techniques. This is more along the lines of my post on Soviet Era humor. I see these as examples of how humor is a common component of the human condition, no matter how horrific or oppressed that condition may be. This post [...]

David Razowky has a great little article discussing what to do when a scene has spun out of control. To summarize:

Make sure each line of dialog starts with “You …”, keeping the focus on each other
Be honest when confused or lost
Tell your partner how you feel about them
Slow the scene down – allow silences and [...]

Okay, generally I focus on Improv as performance, typically comedy improv.
However, this just caught my fancy, and I felt like it needed to be shared. It involves an additional (or more correctly, an occasional) pastime of mine.
The public announcement is so well written, I’m going to be lifting direct quotes from the webpage:
The Fallen Fruit [...]

Hmm, another interesting exercise from Bill Arnett at I.O. I really like the way he deconstructs improv and gets to nice little nuggets of improv insight.
In his short article, he talks about the tendency to overly focus on coming up with a funny line, rather than staying true to the character we are creating. The [...]

Okay, how the heck did I miss this?!?
Apparently, at ComicCon, the folks at the Jim Henson Company put on a performance called Jim Henson’s Puppet Improv. Here’s a clip from the show. After the introduction, they do a translation improv game. The sound isn’t great, but you get the idea. I was astounded at their [...]

This is a goofy story with an improv twist. Apparently, a discarded prop from a Second City improv show was mistaken for a bomb in Chicago.