Full Monty Harold

After a mildly sporadic November, The Sticks were back at it last night.

Since the fun began, most of our time has been spent hitting the first two beats over and over.  We’ve done our best to adhere to some simple rules:

1. Listen to the monologist.  We choose to begin our Harolds with a standard suggestion that one of us then monologizes for about 5 minutes.  We believe in being truthful in our monologues and that by being personal, we will create outrageous specificity and a diverse playground from which to draw inspiration for our characters and scenes.  Early on, we all were realizing that it was hard to truly listen to the monologue – it was hard to keep pieces of it in our minds to draw on for later scenes.
2. Initiate clearly.  Shrouding the idea of your scene in mystery only creates an uncomfortable audience.  Set the scenes and characters quickly and without ambiguity.  And… do this without wholly dictating where we are and what we are doing.
3. Move the scenes forward and back in time within the boundaries of each section.  Characters from 1A should not bleed into 1B.  Nor should 1A and 1B creep into 1C.  However, within 1A we are enjoying time dashing each construct.
4. Group games are harder than they should be.  We are getting better and bolder!  One rule that we are adhering to for now (and for the most part) is that characters from 1A, B, C etc. should not appear together in the group game.  We believe it will confuse the audience if we have set boundaries up between a,b, and c only to have characters appear willy nilly together in some group explosion.  Character crossover and intersection is for the third beat in our set of rules.

We’ve done endless first and second beats.  Our scene work is getting better.  Sticks member Jen made a nice discovery last night – initiate with a character and relationships rather than just a situation.  It freed her up nicely and was a great lesson for the rest of us.

So, endless first and second beats.  Time dashers, time prancers, time vixens aplently… all the way up to the precipice of the third beat… the teasing, quivering third beat!  Grab it!  Go! Go!

And grab it we did last night.  The first complete Harold for The Sticks.  And you know what?

We kicked ass!

Steve was the monologist and the suggestion was summer camp.  His tale took us to drama camp (nerd!), ghost stories about a camp outcast named “queerbait” who became a killer, recollections of trying to outprank a camp counselor who was a magician and escape artist that ended with the counselor climbing to naked freedom.

1A brought the tale of the man hiring a food-obsessed hit man to kill his wife.  1B brought the tale of an old woman being sent to summer camps instead of nursing homes.  1C, the story of queerbait and those who loved him, shunned him, died from him.

Rich territory in all of them and some of the best scene and character work we’ve yet done.  Heightening in the second beat was easy and the groups came crashing together in a satisfying third beat that saw marriages, murders, and mayhem.

After finishing our first Harold – just about 45 minutes long – we toasted, critiqued a bit and went on to do another first beat.

In this other first beat, Allison was the monologist and it was her first time.  The suggestion was Christmas and she took us on a very personal journey into her world of Christmas.  A divorced household.  An incredible strip mall Santa that turned out to actually be a woman.  Gifts, stashed in prescription bottles, from a father who may be lost in despair.  A girl, growing up, wistful on Christmas morning, wistful then on New Years, crying over the year that has passed, feeling the pressure of the year ahead.

But seriously, it was funny too.

So!  An important night for The Sticks.  What’s next?

Whatever you do, don’t push this button!

Have We Beaten The First Beat?

Sticks member Jesse, eager to get to monologizing.  Suggestion from the rest of The Sticks… Nightmares.  Go.

A journey from childhood, dark nights, unable to scream.  Parents in the next room, but he can’t alert them to his fears.  A fearful adolescence, teen years, high school, even college where he practiced bad pickup lines with his frat brothers.  Still, the nightmares are constant.. and only amateur immersion therapy brings relief.  Hours and hours of horror films.  One after another and he is cured.  Or is he?

And we’re off.  1A is Chris M unable to speak, the product of a rowdy night.  How will he do his job as a radio DJ?  What will his wife think?  Job is lost, wife is gone.  1B, first seven minutes in heaven, both kids scared to do much, but the boy has some horrible pickup lines that she laughingly shares with her friends later.  1C, a famous horror movie director who has a terrible secret.. he is afraid of things like… the cold.

Group game.

Group game… ummmm….

Come on!  Group game time!

Ah! Yes.. the interview.  Talk show host with horror movie fans.

And here we sit, struggling a bit with group games.  Probably the thing that we should be better at given our experience with short form, but it’s definitely been the hardest part.  We are working quite well on our scenes, edits, heightenings.  Character work and relationships are getting better.  It’s just the darn group games!

With some poking, some posting on the improv resource center forums, some asking of another Connecticut improv group Sea Tea Improv (good advice from their twitter… 1) Everyone participates 2) One unique, rest peas-in-a-pod 3) Keep it short 4) Do something physical #quickgroupgamestips) and I think that we are going to do better.  We’ve been overthinking.

From the Improv Resource Center, an earlier forum discussion on group gamesand a wiki .  Here’s what I’m thinking after reading all of that information from so many helpful people:

1. You pull the idea of the group game from the suggestion and probably shouldn’t pull it from one of the scenes.
2. Involve everybody.
3. Use a template like The Interview, or The Advertising Game.
4. One person leads, the rest join in and find patterns.

Next rehearsal, we move beyond the first beat.  We’re going to kill with a great group game and move on to the second beat.

Bonus material.  Also from the Improv Resource Center forum.  A really funny video of a group game. What could be better than gardening?