2 posts tagged “improv”

So, after 5 weeks of putting it off, I have written a fairly straightforward note to myself so that, when I wake up in the morning, I'll stop putting it off:

"Go swimming/ You stupid fucker."

I wonder if my morning-self will cower with fear at the unbridled wrath of my evening-self and race out the door in haste to do his (my?) bidding. Probably not. But I hope to actually get that done.

Other things.

First off: my third improv performance will be on Friday and Saturday. This is the single longest thing I've done since I started attending university - nothing else has lasted quite this long. The level of enthusiasm I have for it also outdoes anything else by quite a long way as well, too. It makes me happy, though recently I have begun feeling rather dissatisfied with my performances - flatter than I'm capable of, less spontaneous and inspired than they have been.

We're also beginning to look ahead to the next year in the hope of keeping the group going in the next academic year. While we're losing at least 3-4 members (out of about 10-11), most of the core group - including one of the two experienced improvisers in the group - will be sticking around in Oxford. Which is good. We're already thinking about recruitment and getting a regular time-slot, possibly at one of the smaller theatres in the city, or possibly a watering hole with a small stage area for performances.

It's great fun. Pity Singapore has no improvisation theatre to speak of - and at the moment I'm far too inexperienced to run it myself. Maybe after another year. I like this stuff enough that I'm half-tempted to live in Chicago for a while if only to go for some Second City sessions. Crazy talk? Maybe! Maybe. Maybe not.

There's an "ImprovEverywhere-inspired" group in Singapore at the moment, but it's not quite what I'm looking for - I'm thinking theatre-based, not flash-mobesque type improv. Part of it is simply because I really like to, once a week, just not be myself for a while.

We'll see. Summer should be interesting. Or it might not be. I'll have something to do, at least...

Elsewhere - my libido is oddly low. Perhaps I'm moving on from the hypercharged state of the adolescent male to the more even keel of the older man... about time, really. Or am I deluding myself? Bleargh, stoopid hooman. Anyway the idea of being hopelessly obsessed with a single person is both repulsive and highly inconvenient. Better a detached, mild interest than an exhausting, all-consuming, ever-present obsession, I say.

Take G., for example. One of the more liberal Christians I've spoken to (for some indiscernible reason, a LOT of the Singaporean Christians in Oxford tend towards the Crazy Evangelist type), she's interested in politics and such, is articulate, and - get this - hates the idea of marriage. Like, omg where have you been. Sort of. I don't know, I don't feel particularly obsessed with her, which is a refreshing change from previous experiences... we'll see. At the moment, I have that show to stress out over, heh. Not to mention a truckload of frickin' essays. Which are in themselves actually quite fun to do, if I don't leave them to the last minute.

One joke got quite a laugh from the team. We were playing "It Just Gets Worse", where four players take turns to tell the story of a disaster which has befallen a small town, each taking on a different persona.

The disaster was, "The post van has broken down". The story got to the point where an angry naked man who wanted his Super Duper Food Processor was chasing a titanium-legged feral boy through a forest with a phlegmatic postman hot on his heels...

"If you're a naked man running through a forest, and only a postman can see you - do you make a sound?"

It's one of those "You Had To Be There" things. But it was hugely satisfying.