This is an account of the fifth week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4.
We spent the first few minutes warming up with Zip, Zap, Zop and Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. We’re seriously awesome at this game now! We were introduced to a new warm up game called The Frog Game. This is an evil game! It’s one of the easiest set of rules, but requires a lot of concentration and the pressure to say the right thing really builds as the game progresses. Everyone stands in a circle and take turns to say the next statement in a sequence before passing the turn on to the person on their left. The sequence goes: One frog.. two eyes.. four legs.. kerplunk.. in the water. Two frogs.. four eyes.. eight legs.. kerplunk.. kerplunk.. in the water.. etc. See the pattern? Notice the second “kerplunk” for the second frog? Easy right? Just you try it!
The rest of this class focused on creating characters. During the class we got to play a lot of different characters and learn techniques for creating them out of thin air.
Hitchhiker
For the first game we set up a “car” (four chairs) on stage and put four passengers inside. They were told to play neutral characters. Another person was told to embody a strong character and to hitch a lift from the passengers. One passenger got out, the hitchhiker got in and then the scene continued with everyone taking on the characteristics of the hitchhiker. The game continued like this introducing loads more hitchers with strong characters. This was a fun game. The hitchers chose some interesting characters, and we got experience identifying character traits and attempting to embody them ourselves. We also got to interact with each other. I noticed that when four people are playing the same character the traits tend to get exaggerated as everyone introduces new ideas.
Good advice, bad advice, the worst advice
Three people make up a panel that will answer audience questions. They each make a strong character choice (e.g. maniacal billionaire, spiritual yoga instructor, anything really..). They are allocated the task of delivering good advice (genuinely so from that character’s perspective), or bad advice, or the worst advice (taken to the comic extreme).
Identity Crisis
Three people play a scene, each making a strong character choice. Periodically the director shouts “switch” and the improvise switch positions and carry on the scene playing one of the other characters.
Drawing Inspiration from objects
It can be difficult to think of an original character. A tactic to overcome this could be to look around for physical objects in the room and ask yourself the question “if this object was a person, what kind of person would they be?”. And then use those attributes as a basis for your character.
We tried this out with a few objects. We decided a microphone might be overly loud and want to be the centre of attention. We thought a stuffed toy might be friendly and cuddly.
People really seemed to embrace the challenges of this class. The characters that were created led to some really funny scenes. Only one more week to go 
Improv comedy course journal: week 6
This is an account of the final week of a six week improv comedy course run by The National Comedy Theater in San Diego. Read about week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, and week 5.
There was no specific theme for the final session. We played a series of games drawing on the skills developed in previous weeks and getting general feedback from the teacher.
As usual we warmed up with Zip, Zap, Zop and Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. I’ve grown to love these games. I’m definitely going to continue using these games to warm up at future improv events. We even added a couple of extra rules to Zoom, Schwartz, Pofigliano. Here’s the final set of rules:
Everyone stands in a circle. On your turn you must point at another person in the circle and shout one of the following things.
When somebody messes up everyone group hugs and shouts “Awooga!”
I think this game originated as a drinking game. And like any good drinking game it is designed to make people fail quickly and often. I love this game as it really develops an acceptance of failure as something funny and entertaining.
Forward, Reverse
There’s a nice video example of this game in this post.
The key to this game was to be very physical. Large gestures and pantomiming look very funny when repeated again and again; they also provide visual milestones to the performers helping them recall the sequence of events.
Fresh choice
This game helps develop presence (i.e. a feeling of being in the moment). It is impossible to over think the scene and plan out future events, as you are constantly being told to take the scene in new and surprising directions.
Freeze tag
This was a challenging game that required a lot of creative thinking. One of the rules of this game is “no dancing and no fighting” as you can move into these activities from almost any position.
Count down
In this game we were asked to play out a scene that took ninty seconds. We then had to replay the scene in fourty-five seconds, twenty two seconds and finally in eleven seconds. This game really helped you identify the key moments in a scene and get used to advancing the story quickly.
Object punchlines
In this game we were given random objects like a broom and a straw hat, and told to deliver a punchline involving that item. The punchline would re-purpose the object as something else like pretending a broom was a snooker queue. I found this one of the most difficult exercises!
So that’s the end of the six week level 1 course at the National Comedy Theatre in San Diego. They offer two more levels, and I’m very pleased that most of the class will be carrying on to the level two class starting in a couple of weeks.