What if you were asked to tell your life story within 1 minute to a partner you met for the first time? How would you make a choice about what to tell, how to tell? Or rather, you can’t really think too much because here you must go on the stage and tell the story. You just choose and grab the first thing coming to your mind. When you hear the retelling of your story from your partner, you are amazed at what their improvised choices reveal details that you yourself have even overlooked… And when it is your turn - all you do is to actively listen and then so quickly perform a story…
The same object becomes all sorts of different things in different scenarios with the imagination and performances of group members. A pen is a heavy labour tool of an engineer but a ballet Barr on the side of a dancer. An Object Challenge sets off our improvisation and one’s improvisation inspires another.
Diving in and doing the exercises allowed the participants to experience and grasp the tips and theories Samara mentioned earlier in the workshop. Whether that’s Character Walks in opposite scenarios or Object Challenge, Samara’s timely instruction tailored to individual participant’s performance or concise summary and reminder to the group effectively made the group learn with ease and fun.
Group improvised scenes were definitely a highlight of the workshop and, bringing the most fun and charm of improvisation. The first person walks into the scene and starts to do something, a second person walks in to conduct the scene together, then a third person comes… you are pushed to be confident to receive whatever is happening, ‘no negotiation’, let everything affect you and be creative with choices and instincts. You are challenged to be working with fellow actors to make this scene work while performing your character you choose to go for.
Things can go wrong… you might have decided to conduct the plot in a certain way only to find out the next second another actor is pulling it to a conflicting direction…But you co-create stories, laugh and experience excitement exactly in being creative and letting the drama unfold.
In receiving and giving within the scene with you partners, and playing your characters, you also add more and more details to this wonderful scene where interesting things happen – a traveller is seeking a book of local legends in a Scandinavian bookstore, while the shop assistant also has to deal with another customer’s babysitting crisis…
Before you even know it, within an improvisation group we have performed and created a scene together. In fun practice we have explored rules and techniques in improvisation while strengthening our acting.