Snow!! Snow!! Everywhere! In my ears and in my hair! In my shoe it feels like goo. Snow! Whaddya know.
I got an image in my head last night as I was struggling to sleep. Inspired by leftover turkey soup. I was picturing boiling myself so I could easily slip the meat off of my bones. Which sounds pretty gross. But I paralleled it to taking warm bath to temporarily soothe the horrible aching in my body. But if I could somehow squirm myself off of my spine for some relief...like turkey escaping from it's carcass in a happy day after thanksgiving broth. Mmmmm.
I saw an Armando show last night at IO. And as much as I don't like to publicly pick on people, I am happy to admit that the show last night was horrible. Well, not happy for the people in the show. It must have been frustrating. But from my perspective it is sooo good to see even the best and most experienced performers have their failures. It makes their successes seem easier to achieve. It's the whole, they are human too, dealio. And what put me in even better spirits about the show(which I have to admit, even though this was the worst I have seen them do since I moved here, it was still highly entertaining. That's one thing that is still hard to grasp how they do that. And I know saying failure or horrible are pretty strong word choices. I use them for lack of a larger vocabulary.) Oh yes. What got me even more excited was I saw how they could remedy different holes they were digging for themselves. Eh, I hate mentioning specifics, but for some reason my brain wants me to today. So I can look back and remember. The opening source scene was a transaction scene. Which is rough, because that is where inspiration for the rest of the show comes from, and if there is no information to pull...well.....it was a struggle. But I kept thinking in the first few lines of the scene that all would be well if they named each other. "Sir, would you like to buy ___insert anything here____" And I wanted to whisper into their ears "name each other!" hehehe Steve, or dad, or Henrietta. Anything that showed they had a familiarity with each other so they could transform the scene into being about their relationship instead of about the transaction. Or robots? But I know there are times when it is impossible to make the strong choice because your brain doesn't hear the whispers. Like it bugs me when a coach/director would say "if you had only made this choice, the scene would have worked better. You should have chosen to go in this direction rather than the one you chose." And the thing is...well if my brain had devised that option, I would have chosen that one. Especially being aware that is the stronger option. So how can you call it a mistake if it is not a choice your brain constructed? Sometimes, yes, my brain will move so fast I just grab at something and there was probably a better option somewhere in the jumble of thoughts. But sometimes, the stronger choice just isn't there. And you just have to pray that your scene partner notices what your brain doesn't and steers you to the "happy place" where play becomes easy again. I LOVE it when my teammates say something like, "you seem upset about __blank__ but that isn't what this is really about, is it?" It's like code for saying find the emotional connection with the other character instead of with whatever fluff you were focusing on before. How do people affect me, not just my frustration over chopping vegetables. I guess the MOST important thing I have learned in improv, is when in doubt, go to the relationship between the characters. No matter how far along a scene is or how much a struggle it is or how weird it has gotten with invention, exploring the relationship can only make it better.
