All The Improv In Half The Time, or Rigel's Studio Is Cooler

I had a full day, yesterday. (Like, when do I NOT?)

Covered a shift, mailed child support (I have a 14 yr old daughter that lives in Ohio), started another round of Improv classes with Tom Chalmers at NYS3. Then went straight to Lab Ratz practice. (Another improv troupe I'm in). One thing that resonated in class was, "Want It, Want It, Let It Go.". Which is a pretty good formula, I think. Like, "conflict, conflict, resolution". One of Kevin McDonald's sayings was "surprise and satisfy". I think these two go together and cover a lot. Like, you want to create interesting scenes to watch. Conflict is necessary for that. Agreement within a scene is important. But, without conflict, agreement gets boring. So, hopefully the two main characters of a scene should have conflicting desires. And those conflicts should escalate, and then resolve. A scene of escalation with no resolution can be entertaining. But, resolution often provides the "satisfaction" element of "surprise and satisfy".

Want It, Want It, Let It Go

&

Surprise And Satisfy

In Lab Ratz, we did some fun things. I can't remember the name of the game, but the one where one person leaves the room, and it is decided what "item" they are about to "try to return". They come back in, and try to return an item they don't know what is. The other people in the scene give clues, and the returner has to figure it out. The item I tried to return, was "Saturn's Rings". I had a blast guessing. I feel like I did well, turning each guess into a decent joke. Another thing we did, after playing an ABC game, (when every line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet), is we tried to do the scene backwards. Really good memory building practice. 

After Lab Ratz, I finally made it back to The Comedy Freakshow at The Odditorium. I haven't been back since I got back from Chicago. I feel like my set went well. The Odd crowd is generally much

smarter/more on top of it, than the crowd at The Southern. I was gonna do a thing where I did a hand stand, and do as much of my set upside down as possible. But, when my time got cut from five minutes to four minutes, to conclude the show early to let a karaoke thing start, I cut that from my plan, as I thought setting up the mic upside down would eat up too much of my time. I recommend checking out these two weekly open mics, if you have any interest in stand up comedy.

Finally,.. I just got a studio in The Phil Mechanic Building. I plan on filming comedy videos, an the daily. So, hit me up, and let's make some funny!

I'd go into more details about everything. But, I gotta hustle my way over to Salsa's. I'm managing, today, so come on by and let me entertain you.