Improv Game

by payalcshah

Unfortunately I couldn’t find the time to test out my improv activity until this Friday at the end of dead week. But I did do it! And I learned a lot. 

First of all, leading an improv game that invovles scenework with novice improvers is really difficult! So my emotion/mood label improv activity, models after very typical improv games like the “dinner party” game that we had in class. The thing about novice improvers, you run into a lot of roadblocks. Being Stanford though, I feel like the “embarressing” factor of improv doesn’t really exist.  No one really cares that much if they make a fool out of themselves. More so, the roadblock is allowing your mind to be free of inhibition. It’s definitely a problem that I have too in class.  I almost always break character just to allow myself to think about what I should say.  It’s not even to consider my options of what I could say and reply with the “wittiest” one to be considered funny and respected by the room, but it’s honestly just having something, anything to say in response.  

Novice improvers feel the same way, but 10 times more because they’ve not played the little games that build the skill to be able to do it better in scenework.  

Anyways back to my game in particular.  So my main goal with the game was to make improvers me more socially conious of moods and personalities when they interact with people. Because in fact, in the everyday world, people come from social contexts.  Whether they’re jittery about a party they’re planning, or depressed over a recent family death, people are in a state of mind in every interaction they have with people. 

The game was definitely difficult for the novice improv goup that I did it with. Initially, I thought a two-person scene would be simpler than a three-person scene for the improvers.  I still think that judgement was a good one! But the first problem I ran into was when both players wrote an emotion/mood down, one person misjudged the game. The whole scene consisted of him portraying the emotion he wrote down rather than giving the other character hints to how they were feeling.

I thought giving the characters the chance to write down a mood made it easier for them.  Clearly, if it’s a mood they wrote down, it’s an emotion/mood they’ve experienced or can resonate with.  That connection makes it a lot easier to communicate it to your partner.  However, I think the way I led the game in class in which I just handed the players an emotion/mood worked a lot better, and left out opportunity for confusion. 

In class, I allowed the audience to pick a setting.  The same thing was done when I hosted the activity for the second activity, but as I led the activity, I made sure to tell the characters to pay attention to setting.  I’m sure they paid attention to me saying that, but I also think that because the scenes only consisted of two people, setting also become more important.  When there’s three people on stage, each player thinks about what mood he/she is experience individually, but also how to help their two partners figure out what they’re feeling, and on top of that pay attention to setting. It honestly gets to be a lot to think about.  Having two people on stage simplifies things a lot.  Now each player is only thinking about one other player, and suddenly setting became a lot more integral to the scenes. Being in the audience the whole time, I realized I could really see the scene playing out in real life a lot more when it clearly was defined by a sense of place. I enjoyed it more!  

After we did 4 runs of the activity with two people in each scene, I asked the people what they thought about the activity. They all seemed to share a sense of difficulty of balance during the scene.  Either the players were primarily focusing on communicating to the other player what they were feeling (mainly this one) without any regard to what clues they were recieving to uncover their own emotion, or vice versa.  

In real life, this is the case. Given a social interaction between two people, each person individually has his/her own mood occupying his/her mind. However, after speaking with my novice group of improvers, I realized I would make a change.  

For those that are interested in leading my game to a group of novice improvers, I would start with a simpler version of my game.  The simpler version would entail one-way traffic, before they dive into two.  To clarify, only one character of the two in the scene is given the emotion.  So each character now has a separate role, but they both must pay attention to setting.  One character’s main role is the give clues to the other character to what emotion they’re feeling, and other other’s is to slowly figure out what they’re feeling and really inhabit that emotion.  

Once the players master this game, then the two-way traffic game (in which each player performs both roles) can be followed!

But overall, everyone really liked my game and there was lot of positive energy.  

As the creator of the game itself, I’m just really impressed by how easy it is to entertain a room of people with nothing but each other.  Most of the “adult” board games like catch phrase, taboo, hilarium, etc are improv games! What people don’t realize is that these games are very easy to self-lead. Having created an impov game definitely has inspired some low key but fun party-activities to do with my friends in the future!  

Originality and Music

by payalcshah

This reading this week definitely startled the way I thought about creativity. LIke I had told Saif when he posed the question to our class, when I think of creativity and originality, I think new.  Some of the most powerful text of the chapter was towards the end in which association of new and originality is completely discounted. 

It doesn’t necessarily have to complete newness that is produced by you, but rather a truth that originates from your being. It can be inspired and even use the ideas of others, but as long as some aspect of it can be traced back to you.  To relate the quality of the piece produced by the piece back to other areas of the reading, maybe the quality (that attests to the thought given to the originated work) can be evaluated by how different ways the piece can be seen. 

In the arena of music, I’m very quick to judge pop music. Often when I hear songs like, “The Show Goes On” that have sampled the songs of the past, I immediately made a judgement like, that’s so unoriginal. However, the music industry is transforming today just as it did every other year of the past. Sampling music is just another original way of incorporating old art into new musical compositions.  In the 80s, it was video and dance that were other altering the music industry.  Many musical artists not only had to think about the songs that they produce, but also how it fuses with video media and how it moves with dance. 

And very recently, sampling, mash-ups, remixing etc have become the new media layer of the music industry.  In the end, The Show Goes on is a very different song than Float On by Modest Mouse. Although, both are high energy, and upbeat, The Show Goes On is resonates more of a “dive into life and experience everything” feeling for me.  On the other hand, Float On ultimately keeps me resolute yet calm. These songs can evokes so many different emotions and memories for people, and even though the one incorporates a strong layer of the other, the two are definitely unique pieces of creativity. 

 

super scene: on stage and off stage improv

by payalcshah

What was most interesting to me about Friday’s adventure with the BATS theater was seeing an off stage element of improv.  I know Saif often directs us from off stage to give us useful ways of leading to better comedy for our on stage productions, but I always thought those were just teaching tidbits. In the end we are all taking an improv class to learn more about improv, and Saif knows the most about the art of improvisation.  As a result, I often see his off stage help as just aid to understand humor or stage control better.  What I never realized was that the offstage element isn’t necessarily just direction for aid to make something go better or inject humor, but it’s also just another element of improv to a scene.  

The way I saw the composer too when we were doing Alexandra’s game is very similar. I thought the composer had a great role because he/she had the power to latch onto a broader perspective and make sure all the parts are operating together to produce something that sounds better then what the individuals can achieve on their own.  It’s just nice to have that person with that role to just aid us on stage.  Even though, I saw this role as a power role, I never saw it as improv itself.  It was just occupied by teacher to me so in my mind the role was occupied by someone who was able to direct a stage of students into better learning.  

Friday’s performance however, completely opened up that role. I do realize, of course, we were watching a group of professionals. In that sense, these people have enough expertise to be able to occupy this role and offer real direction to the scene.  However, the people that occupy to role of director or lightsman, or musician of stage are all improving everything as well. Coming to understand all these layers of improv that’s involved in scene production makes the whole become more impressive. 

I’d be interested in seeing how our scenes develop in our classroom if the role of director is handed out to other students…hmm. 

Back to friday night though, I also thought the dance between director and actors was quite elegant in it’s own way to watch.  Sometimes the director would just step back and let the characters go because they were doing such a good job on their own at entertaining the audience, but then sometimes the would step so much into the scene that they would tell the actors exactly what to say, but never how to say it.  It was interesting that even when it came to the director telling the actors what to say and where to say it, the task of “how” to say something was always left up to actor, unless I’m mistaken.  

Thinking about it now though, I think novice improvers can often devolve scene work into just a back-and-forth conversation that either a) isn’t that funny or b) is just insulting banter back and forth.  A director’s role for novice improvers is more of teaching role because it allows for progress of the story line rather than a still into meaningless conversation. 

I don’t know maybe I’ll ask more about the directors role to Lindsey, Saif and Marrily!

Feeling the Control

by payalcshah

When we really sit down and think, it is our social interactions that define us.  It’s our social interactions that is the source of our motivations and our drive and it’s our social interactions that take up the largest bank of thought in terms of our psychology.  Social interaction is one of the most human processes that can be compared and observed across cultures and environments.  We all talk to people, and we all work together in some capacity.  Goffman points to this fundamental aspect of our lives and tries to flesh it out a little bit.

Seventeen again would define the categories of our nature as being fake and real. But really it’s not that simple. Just because you’re aware of the impression you’re giving off in a certain “performance” doesn’t mean that you’re being “fake” and manipulative in the negative stigma that it has. Because, if that was so, we’re all guilty of being fake all the time.  We all control ourselves to be more studious and scholarly in a classroom environment, confident and classy at a mixer, and calm and collected in a waiting room.  We want our teachers to know we’re smart, we want the girls to slightly want to be us and the guys to like us, and in a waiting room, we just don’t want to be the “weird” one that deters from the norm.  We aren’t being manipulative, we’re just tweaking our natures by circumstance. And we know what aspects of our personality may appear to be part of our subconscious, and we’ll still control them.  Maybe if we’re on a date, we’ll answer the phone form our parents more politely than usual. It’s not necessarily us being fake.  It’s more just us attempting to be successful within a social context.  Let’s face it. We just like being in control of our day-to-day lives. And as a said before, social interactions is central to our day-to-day lives.

I’m definitely more aware of my own tendencies throughout the series of performances that make up my life.  Maybe my next blog post will be things I notice about my own self-controls!

Jazz: The art of improvisation

by payalcshah

“Jazz music objectifies America. It’s an art form that can give us a painless way of understanding ourselves. The real power of Jazz and the innovation of Jazz, is that a group of people can come together and create art, improvised art, and can negotiate their agendas with each other. And that negotiation is the art. Bach improvised all the time, and he did improvise, but he never looked at the second viola and said ‘Let’s play the Ein Feste Burg.’ They were not gonna do that. Whereas in Jazz, I could get together, I could go to Milwaukee tomorrow, and there’d be three musicians in a bar at two thirty in the morning. And I’ll say, ‘What you want to play, man? Let’s play some blues.’ Well, all four of us are going to start playing. Everyone will start copping and playing and listening. You never know what they’re gonna do. So, that’s our art. And the four of us can now have a dialogue. We can have a conversation. We can speak to each other in the language of music.” — Wynton Marsalis, First Interview of Episode 1

http://movies.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70202576&trkid=3342671&t=Ken+Burns%3A+Jazz

After the improv game we played last week that related improvisation to music, I remembered seeing the documentary Jazz, by Ken Burns in high school. Wynton Marsalis is heard over and over as Burns attempts to unfold the story of Jazz to his audience. This line here opens the documentary and I thought it was extremely relevant to what we’re talking about. When you have a group of authentic jazz players together, they enter a dialogue of improvisation together. They listen to each other and try to complement the rhythm that they all individually add to the conversation. You can’t help but be inspired about jazz and music in general when listening to Marsalis talk.  

Relating improv back to my own life, I saw improv used in the dance world this past weekend. I performed in a national competition for bollywood dance and this same kind of “art of improvisation” that wynton talks about actually happened but through dance. The day before the competition, all the teams were invited to a formal mixer to get to know the other teams. At some point during the mixer there was an organized dance off! The dance was always one school against another, like UCLA against UCDavis or Stanford vs Cal. Sometimes the dance offs involved the entire team that coagulated in to a mosh pit in the center of the room just going at it with dance. However, these were never quite fun to watch. Each member within a team was doing their own dance to the music that was playing, and each team was doing their own thing as well. In other words, there was no dialogue or conversations being told when this mosh pit happened. Rather, the most enjoyable dance offs were the ones that involved a handful or maybe just one person per team that watched their rival(s) dance and responded through dance. These were by far the most enjoyable to watch, and the most memorable!

The gems of the female mind.

by payalcshah

It’s interesting how any reading about love and relationships, whether a report from a psychology professor at Stanford or a colorful page in TeenVogue, is always an intriguing read. People are fascinated about the interactions among men and women or just between people in general.  Forming strong bonds with other people, romantically or friendly, is what unifies us all into a well of human experience. 

I’m sure all of us found this week’s read interesting. I found it particularly interesting because I’m in my first relationship right now.  Dave and I have been together for a handful of months now and many of the conversations Gottman opens up to us, are conversations I’ve had with Dave!  We’ve talked about how I probably have “stronger” friendships with my girlfriends than he has with his guyfriends because of just the nature of our interactions.  When I meet up with an old friend, I want a long lunch date, or coffee date, where we just talk for hours. I want to know and experience everything important in their lives that I missed out on.  Dave on the other hand, would rather spend time with his old friends they way he always used to.  It could be playing FIFA on xbox over soda and pizza, or getting out on the field on a hot day and playing soccer.  

Even though Gottman admits that men play their own roles in strengthening a relationship  as women play their part in diminishing that bond, the article undeniably prefers and looks to a female’s approach to a relationship as the better one.  He highlights the gems of female mind and our approach and our reasoning several times, which I definitely can appreciate.  

However, there’s something to say about a man’s approach as well.  That coffee date can be as uncomfortable as it is meant for the “strengthening” purpose.  It can expose how much you’ve missed out on and how disconnected you really are with that friend’s life, when all you really want is for it to be how it used to be, for it to feel how it used to.  And a man’s approach, even if he misses out on the big emotional weights ensures a good time during a reunion, with all the same emotions from the past.  

I can’t help but want that too.  

it’s educated out of you…

by payalcshah

watch this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

I found the reading this week extremely in sync with what Ken Robinson often speaks about.  Ken Robinson’s TED talks and expertise resides in changing paradigms of education as a system.  He just wants to completely redesign what our preconceived notions are about the purpose of it and they way things are taught and implement new ways of learning and mainly just change the system.  Robinson’s inspiring speeches were one of the first reasons I ever got into education.  I too see tremendous flaws in just the American system of education, which is considered internationally as one of the best servers of learning.  My work with the Bing Nursery Center at Stanford definitely evidenced some of Robinson’s insights.  Preschoolers have fresh eyes that discover and are continuously stifled and amazed about the world that we live in.  Adults do not nearly stop enough to allow the world to dazzle us and confuse us as it should. We’d probably learn a lot more about it, if we did.  Also, these kids are also insanely more creative than adults.  Instead of battling this creativity with reality, we need to guide it into use.

Robinson obviously agrees with Johnstone at some level. The two men agree that the current education system can be a destructive process, hence the “school kills creativity” take home point.  The fact is that “one solution” is often consistently driven across disciplines as the only approach.  Even in the humanities, where it is known to embrace multiple perspectives and interpretations, high schools often push on the most popular or traditional  interpretations of classic texts.  Because a students ability to digest a text independent of how critics have defined it, there has become an over-reliance on resources like Sparknotes, and other shorthanded study guides.  The end result: students are reading, students are thinking, and students aren’t crafting original productions.

I personally see education purposed around skills. Every person that walks out of high school let’s say should have a more refined ability to problem-solve, read, write, interpret, create, ideate, think, communicate, present, as well as other soft skills.  Then they use college to apply this skills across challenging disciplines to amass a larger “knowledge base.” However, again this knowledge tank that builds class by class, book by book is grounded in each individual mind, guided by individual life experiences and talent, making original intra- and interdisciplinary. connections. But then again, this is just my idea. There are many solutions out there to mold a better education system.

Along the lines of me taking my own initiative to craft my own mind (the way Johnstone continued to do throughout his own lifetime), I’m taking improv so I can further develop basic skills like communicating with confidence, allowing my mind to create without hesitation, which is naturally linked to creativity, and other skills as well. Yayy improv!

the energy of improv

by payalcshah

One thing that struck me almost immediately about our dynamic as a class was how comfortable we were with each other.  Some of us were either new to the art of improvisation, some merely wanting to gain confidence in spontaneity, others-the occasional improv performer and weekend champ, while others were just committed spectators of the sport wanting to delve deeper.  Whatever level we all seemed to be at, within just a handful of minutes, we all seemed to be on the same wavelength (as Alanis Morissette would put it). It was unexpected. And yet the palpable energy of the room kept the game of improv ablaze. Although aided and abetted by chocolate pretzels, the energy swirled and swelled because of the team. And by the team, I mean, us.

We went from a dozen slightly–or very–uncomfortable individuals to an interdependent team so fast!  And from the ability of ours as a group to lend ourselves 100% to the moment by moment living of improvisation, I knew this was going to be a great quarter of learning.  If all of our heads were in the game day 1, we are definitely going to accomplish something at the end of week 10 to put it simply. As Saif said, we all need to be there for each other to lock into our eye contact when we need, to dive and hacky sack the ball back in action with just an ankle, to offer three solutions to dear friends’ eccentric queries.  And we definitely did so! It’s like we all took the step into the freezing pool of discomfort, but because we all fell in together, dunking our heads completely and whatnot…it didn’t feel so cold anymore. We surprisingly got past 40 on the first day of the ball game, and were just all so committed. I think we’re off to a great start, and I can’t wait for a good quarter of improv!