I spent Sunday with seven other people in an improv class
with Matt Smith.
Improv was the part of my first acting class I liked the
least. I knew it was necessary if we
were going to turn Mr. Stick-Up-The-Ass into Mr. Mellow Quick-Wits. But I didn’t like it.
But this class was much fun as Jesse, the director of my
play, had promised. And at the end of
the day I felt the stick, if not fully extracted, had at least been loosened a
little. Let me share one of the
activities we did.
Call it Arms. You stand
in front of your group with your hands clasped behind your back. Your partner stands behind you and sticks his
arm through yours, so at a glance it looks like his arms are yours.
Ready? Someone throws
out a topic. For me it was bees. So you start riffing on your topic. But you have to build on whatever gesture the
arms are making. Normally you speak a
thought and reinforce your thought with your gestures. Now the gesture leads, and you have to follow
with a line of thinking.
So the arms made an expansive open-handed gesture—I described
the search over hill and dale for colorful flowers. A finger pointed—the bees zero in on a
target. The hands go into my pockets
(slightly risky gesture)—hey, we weren’t really that interested in bees anyway.
One thing to keep in mind: the gesturer has to hold a
gesture long enough for the speaker to work out something to do with it.
This stuff can be fun.
You just have to find the right people to do it with. Do people still play parlor games, the way they
did fifty, sixty years ago? Some of my
friends would get a kick out of these improv games. Others might say, “Roger, I can see those
acting classes you’re taking must get kinda weird.”
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