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I’m driving up to Philly tonight for two shows at the Philly Improv Festival with Safeword and Mister Licorice. Wish I could stay the whole weekend because there’s a lot of greatness going on, but I have to come back for the BIG shows this Saturday.

Join us for an improv doubleheader this Saturday at 7:30 and 9:30 at the Strand Theater (1823 N. Charles St.)! Tickets here and here.

We did mantra scenes last night in my intermediate class and the effect was profound. People who have never studied acting looked like they’d been doing it for years. The actors look incredibly real and that captivates the audience. There’s something about authenticity that sucks people into your world.

I have them repeat “I love you” or “I hate you” over and over again inside their minds to practice. Then we do a short scripted scene between a husband and wife with a rocky relationship. After they get the lines down, they do the scene while repeating the mantras in their head.

Using “I hate you” creates intense scenes, filled with tension. Having them switch to “I love you” creates lighter scenes, but the acting is still very good.. it just takes on a much lighter tone.

There was one moment where one of my students forget the last line. We were all waiting for her to say it and the tension in the theater was so think you could feel it choking you. It was like the audience was being sucked onto the stage..pulled forward by a powerful magnetic field. Realizing that she had forgot the line, I stopped the scene and the tension rushed out of the room like a balloon.

I’m going to use mantras in my shows this weekend in Philly and Baltimore with Safeword. We do a slower style of improv that benefits from the added tension and presence of mantras.

I went to the theater yesterday in Baltimore to see a play I had high hopes for. About 15 minutes into the 1st act I was not having a good time and my mind started wandering and I could hardly pay attention to anything the actors were saying. I’ve never seen the play before so I don’t have a benchmark but I think that they were playing the statuses all wrong.

Anyway, at intermission I asked if they gave refunds and the woman told me “no, it’s like when you go to a movie…” and I guess she meant that you pay up front and hope that you have a good time, and if you don’t then you’re not getting your time or your money back. I wasn’t mad and I thanked her and left without watching the 2nd half.

I’ve never had anyone ask me for a refund at a BIG show but if they did I would give it to them on the spot. I would ask them why they had a bad experience and even apologize if the show was bad. But even if the show was great, I would give them the refund and probably some free tickets to another show. Because it’s an opportunity to give someone a good customer experience and have them mention your name in a positive light.

And if the show wasn’t good, then you shouldn’t be taking people’s money anyway.

Tonight is Halloween, my favorite night of the year. Something about wearing costumes brings out the playful side of people. Everyone is naturally friendly, outgoing, and fun. Costumes provide natural ice breakers and role playing is rampant. The ‘high’ feeling of going out on Halloween was something I experienced only rarely before I started learning about improv, and it’s a feeling I get regularly when I go out after shows. I’ve been practicing with some success to recreate this feeling on a regular basis.

I’m guessing that this playful social state is natural in some societies, but definitely not in the west. I believe that it is the highest form of social interaction, if such a thing can be measured. When the costumes go on, the fear of judgement is stripped away, maybe because everyone knows it’s not really ‘you’ that’s acting silly or crazy. When you remove the fear from good-natured people, great things happen.

At my class on Tuesday, we played a game whose name escapes me. The gist is that you have two people in a scene and three bouncers behind them. When either of the players decides that they’re not having fun in the scene, they snap their fingers and the bouncers drag the other player off the stage while he happily screams “but I’m a good improviser!”

There was some resistance to the snapping. People are polite and don’t want to offend their scene partner by having them dragged off, but I think it’s a good learning experience as long as everyone is good-natured about it (and sometimes the snapper is the one who blocked the action and caused the momentum to hit a wall). After they’ve been dragged off to the wing, you can talk about why the scene stopped being fun for the person who snapped.

Some teachers will leave you on stage for five minutes while you try to ‘claw your way out’ of a bad scene. I don’t think that’s fun for anyone although I’m sure the teachers who do this have their reasons. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really unbearable scene turn into a really spectacular scene (or even a good scene).

Sometimes when I’m sitting in an audience and the show isn’t going so well, I wish to myself that the performers were playing this game. I think that audiences would love it. Some day when I own my own theater, I’ll install buttons on the chairs for the audience members. If enough people get bored and press their buttons then they’ll be dragged off by the comedy police or a trap door will open and they’ll fall into a pool of water or they’ll have to fight for their lives like improv gladiators.

I compiled this list to give out to my intermediate improv class. I call them ‘ways to have more fun’ because I think the idea of ‘rules’ in improv is a destructive one. This is not a manifesto and it’s not very original; most of the ideas I took from Mike Subelsky, Mark Sutton, Keith Johnstone, or assorted people on YesAnd.com.

• Absolutely accept all offers by other improvisers; these are tremendous gifts that you should always accept with genuine, strong responses. Say yes and accept the reality given to you. The only ‘rule’ in improv is that you should never deny the reality that you’ve created. People who say ‘yes’ go on adventures. People who say ‘no’ stay safe (and boring!).
• Absolutely commit to the decisions you make and the characters you create ; never give up on yourself.
• Don’t think, just act. Artists don’t make decisions, they know what to do. Your instincts will become better over time but only if you learn to rely on them. If you don’t know what to say, just start a sentence and let your brain catch up. Or start an action. Or say something in gibberish. You’ll be amazed when you blindly announce “I have a plan…” and all of a sudden you find your brain has supplied the plan for you.
• Make positive choices. Sex, proctology, shit, drugs, etc. These things are never as funny as you think they’ll be. Instead, why not have a nice revenge scene or discover that your wife has been bitten by a vampire?
• Take risks. If you’re not failing, then you’re not taking enough risks. Once you ‘know how to improvise,’ you’re not improvising anymore.
• Fail Happily. The audience wants to see you screw up. So when you screw up, don’t ruin it for them by sulking or looking upset. Smile and laugh at yourself or sacrifice yourself to the improv Gods, but don’t get upset.
• Give up control, bitch. Let go of the need to plan or to control the future. It won’t work and you’ll screw up your scenes.
• Get excited about being on stage. Improv is fun and we should be happy and excited to be up on stage! If you’re not having fun, then it’s my fault and you should tell me so I can fix it.
• You have permission to suck. You can only be as good an improviser as you already are. So stop trying to ‘be better’ or ‘have a good scene.’ The ‘harder’ you try, the more you will screw up your work. Trust that you will get better as you go along; if you don’t, it’s my fault.
• Have fun. I feel bad for giving you this long list. It’s a lot to think about and thinking is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed or lost, just remember that there’s only one thing that really matters—having fun! Write it on your wrist if it helps you remember or say it as a mantra over and over: “I am fun, I am fun, I am fun…”

I saw The Terrordactyls tonight at the Charm City Art Space. I think I was the only person that wasn’t in one of the bands in the lineup. I’ve done improv shows like this, where nobody shows up except for a handful of other improvisers.

It’s hard to do shows this way and I think it’s because the crowd feeds your energy back to you, which creates a positive feedback loop. I also think it’s easier to go into a trance when you have the bright white lights and a packed house, which makes sense intuitively, but I can’t really explain why it would work that way. What is it about the crowd frenzy that take people out of their heads?

Anyway.. the show was good. And who else is using kazoos these days?

I was at the Evergreen Cafe today and a little girl named Abby came by and offered to draw my portrait. I think it’s quite good:

I was impressed with her entrepreneurial spirt and fearlessness in the face of rejection, although she was doing pretty well for a 9 year old–she had a wad of cash in her pocket.

The Royal Farms on Key Highway is selling gas for only $2.49, down from over $4.00 over the summer.

I can only come to the conclusion that those greedy oil companies have learned the error of their ways (no doubt scolded by the collective liberal conscience of their detractors). Or perhaps we’re seeing those nasty speculators change their tune. They must’ve grown bored of heartlessly driving up oil prices for sport and profit.

One of the most powerful techniques I’ve learned in improv is repeating a mantra over and over again in my head during a scene. I learned this from Keith Johnstone and he recommends starting with “I love you” or “I hate you.” It doesn’t really matter, as long as you repeat some words over and over (it could be a nursery rhyme or a single nonsense word).

I love you tends to produce warm, positive scenes and I hate you tends to produce intense, passionate scenes (although not necessarily hateful).

We tried mantra scenes at Safeword rehearsal tonight with delightful results. On the surface, the scenes seem to be uninteresting (a man asking his friend to be his best man in his wedding or an army recruiter trying to recruit her nephew) but below the surface, the results are intense. The actors are strikingly present and interesting to watch.

Mantras are especially good for breakup scenes because you often have to ’squeeze’ the dialog out between the mantra in your head. It gets easier with practice, but the sometimes labored speech is very similar to what you would see if you could watch two real people trying to express themselves while breaking up with each other.

Concentrating on the mantra makes you forget about the crowd and doesn’t give you any space to fall into thought. Since most fear on stage for an improviser comes from a fear of the audience or anxiety about what to say next, mantras are very easy and powerful ways to diminish fear and produce realistic acting.

There is something magnetic about someone who is ‘in the moment’.. I would call this quality authenticity. We are drawn to people who are authentic.