The Ginger Mumbly

Just a few notes on my Improv class - it was taken by an American lady - Sue Walden.  Tellingly, I could point you at that URL because I've stuck the 'Yes And' badge that she gave me onto my overcoat. It was a departure from the normal sessions that we have at the Spontaneity Shop and I think there was a bit of impatience after we'd spent large of chunks of last week's session taking about improv in a kind of group therapy session. The thought occurred to men and some of the others that we'd rather just be doing scene after scene. We can talk up a storm in the rest of our lives, what we want to do for the three hours of improv is scene after scene after scene. And after this class, I had the same kind of hunger, yes,it's always good to revisit the basics (especially if you hardly ever pay attention) but what I really want to do right now is scenes. Scenes and scenes until I'm sick of them.

So my heart sunk a little when Sue said she needed a flip chart and pen and paper. But the exercises we did were compelling. I particularly liked one where we improvised all the different ways that we could possibly get from one point to another across the stage, having been told there were only a small number of fixed rules. Then we went back and added in all the rules that we'd imagined. Yup. That was interesting.

Just as good - although, I think I have done it before was a game which is either called "Dumb Ideas" or "That's a great idea!" Where you sit around in a circle and exclaim how great any dumb idea is and explain why.  My favourite, from someone who I think didn't quite understand the aim of the game was "Lets have beer that has alcohol in it and tastes of beer."

And I liked the communal drawing at the end, and I dunno, to my mind the 'thing' that three of us did with differently-coloured pens looked more crazy and in some sense more attractive than the animals that the pairs came up with. I dunno, maybe that's threesome parental pride. And the sense of relief was immense when we realised that we could make the extra head into a baby.

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