Tagged "Kevin Mullaney"

// Mullaney’s Performance Class #2//

As part of my Summer comedy geek out, I was lucky enough to get a spot in Kevin Mullaney’s Performance workshop. It’s a special 8 week class and 4 weeks of performance in which Mullaney hones 14 improvisers into polished performers. So far the class has been great and the best (and unique) part of this class is Mullaney’s thorough notes after each session. These have been super helpful and I hope you can glean some insights from it for own improv as well. Now go out and improvise!

More great work yesterday! I think we started out a little rusty at the beginning, but really hit a stride midway through the class. I’m seeing a lot of good stuff, but most importantly I see everyone working hard to process the notes and focus on the task at hand. That’s all I can ask from you. If you do that, you will get better.

The One Thing:

Two fun characters are better than one.

What We Did:

First we did a couple of warmups to work on character. Weirdo is a way to dive into a physical approach to character without thinking about it too much. It’s a great to stretch our boundaries so that we can make stronger choices when it comes to doing scenes. Next we did a point of view exercise where we took on points of view that are not our own. This can be a great source of characters for improvisations. We can enter a scene with a strong point of view that is not our own, or we can give ourselves a strong point of view in a scene already in progress.

Next we did another round of Character Wheels. We tried on characters with a strong point of view and tried to carry that point of view through numerous scenes.

Remember that if you are initiating a new scene with a character, you are there to set the table and to provoke the character. They get to decide how they are going to react to the provocation. Don’t decide it for them.
Also, remember to put the character on the roller coaster rather than put them in a scene talking about roller coasters.
Remember, it’s not just about taking these characters to the most obvious places that conflict with their point of view. Don’t be afraid to take them to places where you have no idea how they might react.
If you are the character with the unique point of view, remember you don’t have to filter every last line through your point of view, but when figure out how your character connects to the situation, go for it!

The rest of the class we did La Ronde, a different structure which has a similar challenge. We still want to take fun characters to inappropriate places, but there is the added challenge of bringing your own fun character along for the ride too. Ideally we want to see scenes where two fun characters are dealing with each other. That way we have two ways to build off of this scene, not just one.

Lastly, we had a couple of situations where people made initiations that were a bit too vague. You don’t have to lay out everything in the first line, but you do want to give enough to your scene partner so that they get the gist of what is going on. “Wanna go faster?” and “What did you bring me?” are both ok, but we want first lines that give a bit more so that our scene partner feels confident to respond.

Homework:

Think of a theme for one our shows. I’d like each of the four shows to be special events. We want people to feel like they have missed something special by not being there. This won’t affect our “improv form” or the content of the actual improvisations, instead think more about the trimmings of the show. Is there going to be music? Is there going to be something special happening before, in between and after the two teams? Can we decorate the space? Should we all wear hats? Should the two teams have a theme defining them (Pirates vs Ninjas)? What would be the subtitle of this show?

I want you to think about this and write down a simple pitch for your idea. We will pitch them all in a meeting after class next week and come up with some kind of voting to decide which ones we are going to use (at least for the first couple of weeks).

Thanks,

Kevin

// Mullaney’s Performance Class #1//

Great job yesterday!

I thought it might be a good idea to send you some post-class notes. I’m not sure I’ll do this each week, but I wanted to do it this week, in part because we were missing two people and I want them to be up to speed for next week.

The one thing:

Take fun characters to inappropriate places!

What we did:

We started with a couple of warmups and then moved right into improvising scenes. I had each half of the class get up and do a series of 2-3 person scenes with a few instructions:

These scenes should be two person scenes, but if three people come out, that’s ok.
There are no walkons or addons of any kind (for now).
When the scene is edited, we should assume that it’s a brand new scene, with brand new characters.

After each montage, I asked the group to think through the scenes and look for characters who were specific in their behavior or point of view. One thing we want to do is find characters that we would like to bring back in different situations and ones that we would immediately recognize if we saw them again.

Next we did character wheels. A character wheel is a series of scenes that begins with one person doing a monolog in character. Then we do a series of scenes with that character in different situations.

The person playing the character should try to bring a consistent point of view or behavior to the scenes.
The rest of the group should focus on taking the character to interesting places and situations that you would not expect that character to be in.
Do not talk about the content of previous scenes. Every scene is new.
Know that we can take these characters anywhere, to any situation we can think of, and we don’t need to explain or justify how they got there. A character can be a high school student in one scene, an army doctor in the next and a famous painter in the next, as long as the character has a fairly consistent point of view or behavior.
If you are playing the character in odd situations, remember that you are meant to be there. If you are faced with a situation that would make your character uncomfortable or unhappy, still do that activity and let yourself be unhappy and uncomfortable.

I feel like we had a lot of success with this exercise. There were a lot of fun characters and people caught on quick to the idea. It’s so much more fun to surprise ourselves when it comes to taking characters to new places, then it is to take them to the places that we expect.

Lastly, we went back to the original montages and added the following wrinkle:

These scenes should be two person scenes, but if three people come out, that’s ok.
There are no walkons or addons of any kind (for now).
When the scene is edited, we should assume that it’s a brand new scene, with brand new characters.
Instead of editing the whole scene, you may tag in to the scene and take one of the characters to a new situation, like in a character wheel.

We did alright with this, but not surprisingly it was not quite as successful as the previous character wheels. That’s to be expected and is ok, two steps forward and one back. We learned that we want to use these tag ins sparingly. If we do it for every scene, a predictable rhythm sets in and it’s not as fun. Save these tag ins for times when the character is so fun that we just have to do more with them.

If you get a chance to, take a class with Mullaney. He’s based in Chicago but he’s also at festivals, especially the Del Close Marathon. http://mullaney.tumblr.com/