Un-Scripted Blogs

Many of my blog posts return to the idea of saying yes, finding ways to say yes, and seeking "yes" experiences.

It is a core principle of improvisation...as improv guru Keith Johnstone says (and I paraphrase here): "Saying 'no' keeps you safe, saying 'yes' leads to adventure." Another way of putting it is that "no" keeps us in the realm of the familiar and prevents (or at least attempts to prevent) change, while "yes" invites change into the picture.

There are lots of valid reasons for big people to say no. There are safety reasons, ethical reasons, and personal value reasons. There are emotional reasons...and a subset of those is the all important group of saving one's own sanity reasons.

And there are lots of little people reasons to say "no." Because they are tired or hungry or frustrated or desiring to do it themselves or wanting to express something that is too big for the words they know....or because they are 2 or 3 (or older!) and learning the power and control of "no" it is part of that stage of development.

So as much as our little folk need to learn to use "no," we can also make sure to give them opportunities to say "yes" -- even when they are firmly grounded in the practice of "no."

Some foundations for "yes" success include...

• saying "yes" (literally). I try to remember to actually say "yes" and not always just nod or do something without acknowledging the "yes."
  

• saying "yes" with actions. When LP invites me for the 8th time to come play tinkertoys and I agree, I try to get into the game and really play...even if it is only for 5 minutes.
  

• making sure physical needs (food, water, potty, diaper change, etc) are taken care of (really hard to say "yes" when you are physically uncomfortable)

• using all the observations you have about what makes your little person (or people) tick. I realized that LP is quite willing to eat veggies while I'm chopping them and cooking and not as willing when they show up on her plate. So by I give her lots of opportunities for her to say "yes" to my desire for her to eat vegetables by saying "yes" to the eating moment that works for her.

• clear requests....while it doesn't always work, sometimes just letting LP know what I need in a straightforward way leads to a "yes."

• AND multiple opportunities. I know LP sometimes says "no" to something she really wants. I give her a little space and make the offer again. And sometimes again after that.
  

As you might imagine...a post like this can only be written in the midst of a lot of "no, no, no."


This post is part of the Moms' 30 minute blog challenge over at SteadyMom.

We had our last rehearsal for the show last night, and we made it count.

Lyn returned after two weeks in China, so we spent the beginning of rehearsal going over what we’d learned and worked on over the last couple weeks. Then we moved on to playing games.

In the shows we’ve gotten into something of a rut of playing the same handful games all the time (and even playing them at same points in the show). Our homework was to come in ready to introduce a game within the style of the show that we hadn’t really done yet. I set up the “audience word song” game by pretending to be Clive Anderson hosting a show like Who’s Line Is It Anyway. (I called it What’s My Line Anyway.) That’s an idea I had a few weeks ago, to try and set up a scene as a scene from a different improv show. Let’s see if I can do it in a show.

(Mandy said I did a good Clive Anderson impersonation. I also got good feedback on my George Lucas impersonation in the show last week. Who knew I could do impressions of arcane celebrities?)

After a heated debate on whether or not the game Oxygen Deprivation (a.k.a. Head in a Bucket) could be performed without a set up, we moved on. (Personally, while it could be done without a setup and the audience would catch on, I think it would be stronger with one. An example for the no-setup faction was Spit-Take which we play sans intro. My feeling is that spitting water at a shocking statement is something that could exist in reality. But putting your head in a bucket of water on the side of the stage doesn’t exist in any reality outside of an improv show, unless one is given to it. Another example given was Bell Games that are played without setups. I actually don’t like those either. I think they break from the reality we’re creating and are stronger when set up somehow.)

I took notes a couple times last weekend, once while I was also lighting. I noticed, perhaps only because as the lighting improvisor I was particularly focused on the scene’s endings, that scenes tended to fall into three categories: Sketch or Short-Form Scenes, Slice of a Long-Form Scenes, and Self-Contained “Middle” Scenes. I also noticed that we didn’t know how to end the latter of those. I could see the improvisors getting deep into a “Middle” scene, realize it needed to end, and then search for a Sketch ending, which wouldn’t end the scene.

We spent some time working on these and quantified some of the differences. A Sketch Scene riffs on an idea and ends when it peaks. It doesn’t really matter if the character change or not. They probably don’t. We don’t often know because the scenes are very surfacey.

A Slice of a Long-Form Scene has a lot of backstory. A lot has happened before this moment and a lot will happen after. It’s a tiny piece of a large arc, and as a result the scene’s arc itself is rather flat. The character’s probably don’t change unless this slice happens to be the change moment.

A Self-Contained “Middle” Scene has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a complete arc within itself. One character might go on that arc or all of them, but for the scene to end the arc needs to arc. For that to happen, a character generally needs to change.

That can be the key to saving a scene that’s not going anywhere. Simply allow your character to arc, build emotion and the release it, and that becomes what the scene is about.

Here is the play schedule for Un-Scripted: unscripted! Note the all-man show on March 4 and the all-woman show on March 11.

Full Cast:
Alan Goy
Merrill Gruver
Melissa Holman
Mandy Khoshnevisan
David Madison
Clay Robeson
Lyn Travis
Christian Utzman

Thursday, February 18: Alan, Christian, Melissa, and Lyn
Friday, February 19: Alan, Dave, Mandy, and Merrill
Saturday, February 20: Christian, Dave, Lyn, and Melissa

Thursday, February 25: Christian, Clay, Melissa, and Merril
Friday, February 26: Alan, Dave, Mandy, and Merrill
Saturday, February 27: Alan, Clay, Dave, and Merrill

Thursday, March 4: Alan, Christian, Clay, and Dave
Friday, March 5: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa
Saturday, March 6: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa

Thursday, March 11: Lyn, Mandy, Melissa, and Merrill
Friday, March 12: Alan, Dave, Lyn, and MelissaMerrill*
Saturday, March 13: Alan, Christian, Clay and Mandy

*Transcription error in the original list

There are many different ways to incorporate the sense of touch into storytelling and story-acting.

I focused on touch as a starting point when I was working with seniors with dementia. I always had a bag of scarves to serve as props and often brought in other objects (often natural objects that were out of reach for folks living in a facility like seashells or pine cones). Of course all of these objects activate other senses too, but it was important to me to have things they could touch as well as see.

One moment will always stand out to me. A woman that enjoyed our talk sessions but really was not into our acting sessions got swept up into a group-created story about three sisters getting ready to go to a dance. When she agreed to be one of the sisters, I asked her "what color dress will you wear?" She replied, "Blue" and her eyes lit up with delight when I pulled a light blue scarf from my bag . "Yes, that's the color!" she said. She and I draped it over her and throughout the rest of the session, I saw her stroke the scarf while she participated with gusto. I believe it was that moment where her senses got united with her imagination that freed her to enjoy stepping into the group's story.

So here are a few ideas to get started:

1) Choose an object (or objects) to bring into playing with your little person and see how it evolves into a story. With a seashell, you can talk about its colors and textures, listen for the ocean and tell/act a story of the shell' s journey in the ocean. Or imagine what it is like to live inside a shell and act that out.

2) Choose a tactile way to expand a written story that your little person enjoys. An example is having a set of keys to use while reading "Goodnight Gorilla." Scarves or playsilks are always wonderful to become the sea or the sky or other elements of a story.

3) Start with the tactile experience of the here and now. If you and your little person are barefoot in the grass, explore that feeling and let it grow into whatever comes next...maybe being a piece of grass growing. Or telling a story about the toes in the grass that met an ant. Or the toes in the grass that met other toes and took them to meet the brick path by the grass.

That's just the beginning....what ideas do you use with your little ones?

Here and now, I am on a plateau. Somehow so many areas of my life (including finding "a ha!" moments and ideas to blog about) feel stalled right now. My ability to initiate, to create, to make things happen...that ability seems to be set on low (or off). I feel less competent in almost every arena of life. Ugh.

I am not patient with being on a plateau. I am not gracious about being on a plateau. I have all kinds of "good" self-talk about how being on a plateau is also part of learning and growing. It can be a place of integration or a place of regeneration. I am trying, trying, trying to see it as an opportunity to regenerate, to restore energy to heart and mind and spirit.

I attempt to reflect on other plateau times and I know these things to be true. That the plateau is part of learning. I am seeking ways to breathe deeply and take in the view because I know that when things get moving again, that big things may happen.

Improv frames my perspective in this as in many things. I remember after about 2 years of improvising (and I mean IMPROVISING...once I caught the improv bug, that's what I did 4 or 5 nights a week...classes, shows, impromptu get togethers, etc), I just stopped improving. I wasn't able to translate my knowledge of characters and story into action in scenes and games. I floundered. I despaired. It went on for a looooonnnnng time. Friends became performers and excelled. I remained in classes and regressed. And got upset and sad and didn't think it would ever change.

And it did. Slowly without realizing it, it changed. All that head knowledge turned into active knowledge. And I was invited to perform. And teach. And so many doors opened up that I am ever grateful for not giving up. I didn't know what life would look like off the plateau, just that I wanted off the plateau.

Many years later, my perspective is a bit different. I would like to get off the plateau but my hope is I can use this time to prepare for the unknown ahead. I want to feel ready to start saying YES to ideas and opportunities (without obsessing about where are those ideas and opportunities???).


This post is part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

There was a Little Person who had a cardboard box.

Her mama had a yearning to make something from this box. The box moved around their home for many weeks, sometimes being played with and sometimes just being a box.

Then there was a day full of rain and colds in the head. Little Person and her mama were looking for things to do.

So they made a little house:

The little house had a little door and windows all around. Little Person put a layer of lovies in and had her mama put her in through the roof. Then requested story after story read to her through the window.

A few days later the sun came out...so Little Person and her mama (mostly her mama who really likes that kind of thing) painted the little house:


This post is part of se7en's Fabulous Friday Fun!

We started off last night’s rehearsal by working on dancing. We end up singing a fair amount in this show and anytime there’s singing, there’s likely to be backup dancing. So we worked on movement and basic dance vocabulary a little. Then we took turns leading steps with a couple followers and finally had someone fake sing a lead vocal while three people danced behind them. The point was to be aware of stage picture and style matching so that the dancers all look like they belong from the same show.

One of the cast members of this show, Dave, is a social dancing instructor. He ran us through a quick 15-minute lesson in partner dancing, and I learned so much in that short period of time! About how to lead. About how to follow (in improv you never know when your character might be a woman). It was amazing!

Then Christian wanted to work on letting one scene inform the next, not necessarily overtly, but through taking some element of the first scene and using it in a different way in the second. Then we added on top of that the desire to perform more theatrical and play-like scenes. That’s accomplished by not looking at each other so much (improvisors are trained to make eye-contact a lot which is necessary for beginners but isn’t necessary in plays), speaking obliquely (characters in plays frequently don’t directly answer questions or they carry on separate conversations concurrently; the key for doing this in improv is to not let the offers drop even though you’re not immediately responding to them), allowing for small parts (you might be onstage the entire scene but only have one line), and only saying as little or as much as the playwright wrote (meaning, some lines can be incomplete thoughts and some lines can be monologues).

After we did that for a while, we added yet another layer: we played arms, moving bodies, audience lines, he said/she said, scene in reverse, etc. The point here was to not let the game’s hoop derail the scene. Instead use the hoop to inform the scene. You’re still doing a committed scene from a play, it just happens to be the forward/reverse version.

This weekend’s shows should be a lot of fun and feature some unique casts. Friday and Saturday’s casts are identical: Christian, Clay, Mandy, and Melissa. Ever wondered if it’s really improvised? Come see the same cast perform two nights in a row and find out!

Thursday’s show features an all-male cast: Alan, Christian, Clay, and Dave. Next Thursday’s show features an all-female cast: Lyn, Mandy, Melissa, Merrill. Come to this week’s show and you can get in to next week’s for just $10!

This Thursday's show has an all male cast: Alan, Christian, Clay, and Dave.

Next Thursday's show has an all female cast: Lyn, Mandy, Melissa, and Merrill.

Come to this week's show and you can come to next week's for just $10!

LP has always been a focused individual. And she has always had plans...I think it a main drive in her early mastery of words was "get these big people in on what the plan is."

And turning 3 has turned up the passion for her plans. She wakes up in the morning with ideas for the moment and the day and goes to sleep at night talking about her next plans with her loveys.

She often bursts from her room after "quiet time" (in quotes because it is rarely quiet) with a list of what comes next. This morning she arrived by our bed with an armful of pandas who NEEDED a walk and then to be wrapped in a blanket while LP ate yogurt with frozen raspberries.

ImprovDad and I are both pretty delighted by her plans. We want to raise a strong girl who can articulate and follow her passions.


Of course, true to her stage of development, interruptions in her plan are met with protest. So I'm attempting to be creative so I still say "yes!" to the plan and her enthusiasm and also can 1) disengage myself when I need a break or have something else I'm doing or 2) there's something else I need her to do (like submit to a diaper change or get her shoes on).

Today as I was trying to wrangle these thoughts into a post, I had the "a-ha!" that some of my delight in LP's plans come from the commitment that she brings to them...it is full commitment of body and spirit.

One of the principles of improv is just that -- COMMITMENT. When we're creating, it is so easy to get scared or unsure or even just plain confused (I've had that moment on stage plenty of times..what just happened?). Commitment is the answer. I've experienced it and witnessed it so many times with improvisors on and offstage. When we commit and really commit with our whole body and spirit, our confidence grows and we start to delight again in the act of creation and the experiences we're having. An example I use in teaching is often in rhyming games which is "a word rhymes with itself -- cat rhymes with cat perfectly. A word rhymes with a similar sounding real word -- cat rhymes with bat and also with a made up word -- cat rhymes with giblat. AND cat rhymes with dog if you say it with enough commitment."

In reflecting on this, I see that I've been in a low-commitment zone. My mind feels a bit fuzzy and I have a slew of unfinished business. None of those projects has hit the crisis mode...and all seem to be in meandering mode. Even my novel is sputtering.

I think I need to see if I can approach even one of these lingering projects with some of LP's energy. If I were to write my novel the way LP tells a story...well, that's an interesting idea... I imagine that I'd be enjoy

Whoa, what happened? Suddenly it's Friday and I haven't blogged about Tuesday's rehearsal. (Well, our new dog is what happened.) The further away I get from rehearsal, the harder it always is to write about.

We do continue to rehearse throughout the run of the show. That allows us to spot issues during performance and then work on them in rehearsal. I don't know if the production team spotted any specific issues we needed to work on, but we did sit around and talk about our experiences in the shows.

The main thing I remember about rehearsal, aside from having yummy yummy key lime pie for Clay's birthday, was a new game we stumbled into called "Tenor Switch". It started out as a playwrights exercise. We took two similar playwrights with opposite tenors and played Genre Switch with them. We did Tennessee Williams & Beth Henley and Eugene O'Neil & Neil Simon. It was soooo much fun. We soon learned that it didn't really matter if you started with playwrights, what mattered was switching tenors from light to dark when the bell rang. I hope we break it out in the shows this weekend.

We have a couple of last minute discount offers for this weekend. You can still take advantage of them:
- Use the coupon code "CRAZY" when buying tickets online through our website and get 65% off! This offer is only good for this weekend's shows.
- Say "Wish Clay a 'Happy Birthday' for me" at the door and get tix for just $8! This weekend only.

Tonight during dinner, I mentioned how I thought our potatoes probably wouldn't come up. The day after LP and I planted them, we had a week of torrential rain which just seems like too much water. I also fessed up that I don't really know what the growing potatoes would look like and thought I might "weed" them by accident.

LP had a plan (she almost always has a plan these days). She wanted to go out to the garden with a candle and sing to the plants.

A little dialogue brought ImprovDad and I up to speed...and we made the connection to the Frog & Toad story where Toad is worried that he scared his seeds by yelling at them to grow so he plays violin to them and reads them stories.

It would've been easy to talk about it, to story it and to maybe even play act it. LP was suggesting it but not strongly, not insisting on it. AND it was such a perfect moment to surprise LP (and ourselves) by saying "yes!" The dinner clean up could wait, so could the bath. So could every other distraction of the moment.

So after dinner, out out to the back yard we went. I held a candle and LP rode on ImprovDad's shoulders. We stood in front of our wee potato patch and made up a song "Grow potatoes, grow." There was a half moon shining through a partly cloudy sky and a few stars peeking through.

And best of all was the smile on LP's face.

This post is part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom. Go on, click over and check out all the links.

LP's 3rd birthday was yesterday, so the end of our week last week was all about preparing to celebrate.


The main craft activity was making party favors. A few weeks ago, LP and I had hunted through Goodwill for a wool sweater to felt (my first try). So I had the shrunken, felted sweater which I cut and sewed into mini-bags. (These two a few takes to get them the right size to hold the favors and have decent proportions for being held by small hands.) Then I made a version of Rainbow Mama's little people. I've made a few different iterations of these as gifts...I thought making mini-ones was going to go faster but actually small ones took longer. (So glad I was only making 6!)

Then I added dinosaurs because LP loves those dinosaurs.

LP enjoyed playing with scraps, requesting that I cut her some "pie" or "cherries" or "noodles" and had her usual good time with thread.

She also spent an incredibly long time sorting out branches from a bush that she collected.


It was fascinating to me to listen to her talk as she played and I sewed...sometimes she gave each branch a name, sometimes she gave each one (what sounded like) a title of a book and sometimes she used made-up words. As always I am learning that I never know what will spark her imagination and it was fortunate for me that we each ended up able to work on our "projects" side by side.

I linked this post to se7en's Fabulous Friday Fun!

We did another run-through last night, this time with the cast of Friday night’s show: Dave, Mandy, Merrill, and myself.

We were not in the theater itself, but the one across the hall. As always, tonight will be a storm of chaos before the show trying to get everything ready, but I’m trying not to think about that.

Let’s see if I can pull some takeaways from last night out of my sleep deprived mind:
- We mixed a few longer, slower-paced, scenes into the evening last night that felt like they came straight out of a play. The takeaway was that these scenes can exist side-by-side with shorter fast-paced “sketch-like” scenes, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them or their length. (And lighting improvisors should light them as if they’re from a long-form, not from a short-form show.)
- Commit, something, and something else. I can’t remember. Christian had some three word, three point note. It was brilliant.

Special side-note for Merrill who’s not reading this anyway: Don’t worry so much about getting things “right”. The point-of-view song didn’t falter until you started doubting yourself and worrying about doing it correctly.

Highlights:
- Living at Wonderland
- “Gladiolas” on the porch
- Who’s Afraid of Noel Coward
- Selling your script and getting laid
- Interviewing the great actress
- Everyone needs a secretary

Tonight we have an actual show. My voice seems to be holding out ok, but I’m exhausted. Tonight should be fun! Tomorrow should be even more fun, as long as I can stay awake through it.

We did a run-through last night at rehearsal with the cast of Thursday night’s show: Christian, Melissa, Lyn, and myself. I’m glad I got to play with Melissa, because I’m only in the 1 show with her (see the play schedule here).

We were in the actual theater where we’re doing the show, although we didn’t quite have the stage set up how it will be. We still need to put up the doors and wings on the sides of the stage. I’m not sure when that’s happening.

It’s an interesting space to perform in. The stage is larger than we’re used to and it’s raised, which also makes the ceiling shorter than we’re used to. The lights come at you pretty much from eye level, which is always fun.

The run itself went well. The takeaways were:

- Be wary of getting stuck in a “tone rut”.
- Work to vary the number and combination of performers in scenes. It’s easy to get stuck in “2 on / 2 off – 2 on / 2 off” and end up only doing scenes with one person all night (as evidence by the multitude of Christian/Alan scenes).
- Passenger more / fill out background characters.

Some of the highlights of the “show” included:
- “That’s how we did it in Wisconsin!” A Midwestern couple goes swinger speed dating with some cheese.
- Benjamin Franklin, Franz Ferdinand, and Francisco Franco teach children the word “fecundate”.
- Superhero House. The new reality show featuring a very drunk Batman arguing about kitchen cleanliness with Superman.
- “It’s a Meal” and “It’s a Mule”.
- Frankenmime
- Lesbian love in Shakespearean Iowa.
- Room-mate love and existentialist foreign films.

As usual, my “highlights” are probably skewed to scenes I was in, because those are the ones I remember the best. I’m sure other people did brilliant stuff I’m missing. Of course with such a small cast, there weren’t many scenes I wasn’t in.

Tonight we have another run through with Friday night’s cast, which also includes me. I’ll effectively be doing 4 shows this week. Which is great, as long as my voice holds out. Come see me Friday night. My brain should be good and fried by then.

Sometimes I get stuck in my own story.

We all do. Probably more often than is comfortable to admit. I find that I've become closed to alternative ways of seeing or understanding. There are many paradigms out there to understand this process....and all of them (in my mind) boil down to this...there is more to the story.

"More" can be a different perspective. "More" can be details that have gone unnoticed. "More" can be allowing new feelings to color and tint OR letting old feelings stop coloring experience. "More" can mean so many things.

One of the glorious things about improv stories is that they are of the moment. The more experienced an improv storyteller becomes, the more at ease one becomes with exploring new paths, letting go of assumptions and experiencing new story realities...essentially ready to watch the clouds of the story change. Was that a rabbit in the sky....or a mushroom growing near a top hat? Or was it a rabbit disappearing into a discarded magician's hat?

Last week, in the midst of a bunch of rainy days, we had a burst of blue sky. After a lunch picnic, LP and I lay on a blanket and watched the clouds move in the sky. And as I watched those clouds change, I thought about how much LP is changing every day. I tried to soften my gaze on her and see the things that I don't usually see. It is easy to focus on the parts of LP that delight me and the things that are challenging. So easy to focus on the first image, on my first ideas and assumptions about what it means that she loves to make bouquets out of any material she can find in nature. Or what it means that she prefers the color red. Or loves dinosaurs.

And focusing on those details can leave so much out of the story of who she is today...and tomorrow. Noticing the details is wonderful. So is noticing when the details are limiting my ability to really see her in any given moment.

It is a challenge to give up our solid sense of story, of this is how you are and who you are. Yet when we can do this, when we can see each other as changing beings, we can not only better support growth but enjoy all the potentials you can see.

I hope that I can remember to watch LP with that soft, cloud-watching vision sometimes and to also help her build her ability to see the world in alternative ways.


This post is part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.

That's right, improv fans! The FIRST SHOW of our eighth season opens this week!

Un-Scripted: unscripted -- an improvised improv show.

This is a shortform show that we've done before, and we've had a great time -- and so have audiences. Basically, the goal is to challenge, surprise, and delight ourselves, each other, and the audience -- from the time the show starts, the improv doesn't stop. (Well, except for intermission, silly.) We don't even pause to talk to the audience or the other improvisors, unless it's in character! (Gone are those boring introductions and explanations.) And we don't always let our fellow improvisors in on what's going on . . . watch as we all figure out together how the show will unfold! Maybe scenes will come back; maybe they won't. Maybe someone in a scene is playing one game, and someone else is playing a completely different one, and they both have no idea. Maybe a scene will last 10 minutes -- or 10 seconds. And you never know, we might start to sing.

We're having a great time rehearsing for it; you can read more about those rehearsals on Alan's blog, "Something Like a Chicken Sandwich".

The show opens on February 18, and runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm until March 13. We're in a new location for this run, the Off-Market Theater in downtown San Francisco. Check out un-scripted.com for all the show details.

We have some really fun new castmembers that we've never worked with before, in addition to familiar faces. You can read the cast bios on our web page!

And, for those of you who are our beloved Un-Scripted supporters, have we got a deal for you! Subscriptions to our Eighth Season are on sale now -- AND, if you subscribe before March 1, you get an awesome bonus. Subscriptions purchased before March 1 will include two EXTRA tickets. That's six tickets for the price of three! Follow the link now to become a subscriber and new best friend!

And what's coming up later this season, you ask? Why, two brand-new longform shows!

In July and August, it's (working-title) What If? a show that takes place in a slightly altered reality from our own. As director Dave Dyson says, "it's a world where just one thing is different." The style could be like Harry Potter, Like Water For Chocolate, Mad Max, The Martian Chronicles, or . . . anything else! You let us know what you're dreaming of, and we make it real.

In November and December, it's (working-title) A Tale of Two Genres -- an improvised musical in the style of Charles Dickens PLUS another genre supplied by you. It'll be as if Dickens and his time-travelling collaborator, whoever that might be, wrote a musical together. We had so much fun at this summer's Temporary Improv Festival when we mixed Dickens and John Hughes (plus tragedy and horror), that we figure everything goes better with Dickens. Just in time for the holidays, come join the fun!

This was really my improv craft project (i.e. just leaping in without much of a plan and figuring it out along the way) but LP was along for the multi-day ride of making it happen.

I've wanted to add texture and color to LP's room for quite awhile. Since we rent, there are some limitations to what I can do to the walls, etc. After much contemplation, I finally felt inspired to make a felt tree to cover up the closet door. I bought some brown and green felt, pulled out the sewing box and went to it.

While I worked on this (over 5 days), LP supervised, played with the fabric scraps quite a bit, arranged pins in the pin cushion and (my favorite) made "costumes" by wrapping herself in thread. Yellow thread was her duck costume, green thread was her frog costume and red thread was her London bus costume. It brought back many sweet memories of playing with my mom's sewing box (which is mine now) when I was a kiddo.

Here's the closet before crafting:




And here's the progression of a the tree "growing"...I measured the height of the closet and cut the trunk shape freehand and taped it with my trusty painters tape.


Once it was up, I cut down the center (because the closet folds out) and started sewing it through the slats. This took a loooooooonnnnnnnng time. Cool unforseen effect is that the thread loops make the felt look more like bark.


Next up, I cut leaves out of the green felt using my pinking shears and arranged them on the tree branches. These leaves also were sewed on through the slats of the door.


Lastly, I used leaves to make the rest of the crown of the tree on the door frame. These leaves are hot glued together in bunches and then tacked up with green tacks.


I hope LP enjoys it...I had a good time making it!


AND this post is linked up to Se7en's Fabulous Friday Fun

Two more rehearsals, two more to go. After rehearsals Tuesday, I had the strange realization that normally at the point in the process (with 3 rehearsals left at that time) we’d have more than 3 weeks until opening night. Instead, we had a little more than 1.

Tuesday we sang. We had a new musician we’d never worked with come in to play so we could get to know each other. Like a first date at a coffee shop that couples argue about later as to whether or not it counted as a date. I suspect you’ll see him play some shows for this run. His name was Jacob.

What did we sing? Well, we warmed up a lot with scales and a Dona Nobis Pacem. We did some simple Chorus/Verse songs and Verse/Chorus songs in a semi-circle. We did the Un-Scripted Theater Company version of a point-of-view song in groups. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Three people start a scene, then they each take turns singing a verse about their inner thoughts on the topic at hand, then they all sing at once. When they sing together they’re singing “chorii”, or rather each is singing a simple chorus to the song they sung without trying to unify the choruses or really be heard. When three people sing their own thing all at once:

A. The audience can’t really follow content.
B. It sounds really powerful.

Then generally everyone gets another solo verse and you end on another round of chorii. Ideally the person with the most to say will sing the last solo verse.



Typically in short-form improv shows, a point-of-view song goes like this: One person starts and sings “I love cheese”. The next person, forced to take a different point of view sings “I hate cheese”. The third person also forced to choose a different point of view and feeling pressured by the rule of “Comedy Comes in Threes” to be funny, sings “I am cheese.” We try to avoid this way of playing the game because it’s a lazy shortcut.

Then we did three scenes with songs as if they were snippets from a full-length musical, with an eye towards making out musical scenes more nuanced. The tendency in short-form is to cram an entire story of plot into one 4-minute scene. We’d rather the scene feel like a slice out of a larger work.

We performed one series of these in the time period of “Viking”, which I had never seen before. I wish we’d get that as a suggestion more.

We finished with the “Audience Word Song” Game, wherein you get a list of words from the audience while the singer is out of the room, they start a song and are then shown the words one at a time having to work them into their song as immediately as possible. This does not require singing a brilliant song. The game is impossible. The audience knows it, and roots for you the whole time. As long as the song isn’t a non-sequitorial mess, the audience loves it.



Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. We did more of what we did the Wednesday before, running every cast member through 6 scenes focused on playing with them. We did not finish everyone, but moved on after a while to an exercise in style matching. One person would leave the room. The other three would decide on a genre/playwright/time period/film director to do the scene in. Then the one who doesn’t know just has to follow along and style match as best they can.

The distinction I think, with this exercise, is that it is not a guessing game. You’re not trying to get the other person to guess the genre right. If you know the genre, it’s not your exercise. You just play it as committed as you can and give the other person something to match. That’s their exercise: matching and letting go the need to get it right.

We performed one of these in the genre of “Bronte”, which I’ve also never really seen before. I wish we’d get that one more too.

Once upon a time, our hero was in an Improv show. In this show, a call went forth from the audience for "Molière" as a style for a scene. Not knowing Molière from a hole in the ground, our hero was want to not participate directly in the scene, but as no one else dove onto stage in the blackness, he did what any brave Improviser would do and said "Tell me something about Molière." The sentence he got in reply was "Rhyming couplets." So, armed with this knowledge, he dove onto stage and proceeded to do a scene (into which someone else eventually entered) that made the audience laugh even though it was more Seussian than Molière.

The problem occurs post show, when the audience was departing the theater and thanking the cast, and being thanked by the cast. Our hero's post show glow was shattered by someone saying quite bluntly that the "Molière scene" was totally wrong. Completely, totally wrong. The inadvertent tongue lashing made our hero feel pretty dumb... and while he's by no means a rocket scientist (gave that up for performing), he's not dumb. But feeling that way is a sure fire way to get him to clam up and get super-duper pissy.

Since then, however, whenever specific genres or authors are dictated for a scene, the ghost of "Completely, totally wrong" comes back and causes a total brain lockup. The cerebral cortex filter kicks into afterburner overdrive and completely shuts down all communication to the cerebellum, rendering our hero about as Improv savvy as over-buttered toast. Which is why, at tonight's rehearsal, what started out as a swimmingly fun night quickly came to a screeching over-buttered toast halt. Our hero felt dumb, and once that happens, it's all down hill.

me
L'Imposteur

While many of our co-created stories occur during quiet times when the goal is settling down and peacefulness, there are also so many opportunities to use story to get into action. I'm trying to get more in touch with these active story opportunities...especially as the on-going cold rain has me feeling like curling up under a blanket and have someone tell me a story (and oh, yes, how I look forward to the day when LP does).

I'm experimenting with using story-acting as a transition when LP is coming to the end of an activity (or if I need her to come to the end of an activity). For example, if she has been building happily with the Legos but seems to be getting restless with it and hasn't self-initiated something else, I might join her with the Legos and make a few offers to see if we can transform the moment. (She has so many opportunities throughout the day to self-initiate, I like to see if at least once a day I can pay close enough attention to be a part of it, just for varieties sake...and it does also work if the "transition" LP has arrived at is whining.)

Currently her Lego creations are either parfaits or trampolines or parfait trampolines (sticky but sweet landings on that one)...so I might start a story about a trampoline who liked to make people go up and down and flip around. I'd repeat a key phrase like "up and down and flip around" and then stand up and do some action of "up and down and flip around" myself and then invite her to join me and do it together.

As we're going "up and down and flip around," I'd pay attention to LP's body and words to figure out where to go next. The story-moment can be brief and just the transition (as our action moves us to the big bed for some tumbling time) or can be an entry to a shared imaginative experience as we find out what happens when the trampoline flipped LP so high up into the sky that she landed on a cloud or perhaps she would become a pancake being flipped.


This post is part of the Moms' 30 Minute Blog Challenge over at SteadyMom.