Improvisation....some tricks of the trade

The next encounter in our series of seminars will delve into the world of improvisation. That involves imagination, logic and a spirit of adventure. What do you think these men are arguning about?

In real life perhaps we feel improvisation is a nasty activity. In theatre it is investigation, discovery, dressing characters and situations in order to gather information that will help us in acting out the scene or the play. There are actions. What are the character's motivations? What do I want to achieve? How can I go about it?

There is a dialectical relationship among the improvisers. The action actually started before the improvisation and will develop and seek a definition, a resolution. In the process an enormous number of possibilities appear.

Sometimes the improvisers arrive at a dead end street. In that case one of them has to make a proposal: die, laugh, leave the scene. That brings up the idea of adaptation. Improvisers must always be alert and able to adapt to new circumstances.

What should never happen is for the improvisers to give up. They must continue no matter what. It is that push that allows them to find creative responses.

Likewise, it is important for improvisers to use not only their voices but their whole bodies. Each character moves in a particular way and reacts to others on the basis of who he or she is.

If you improvise on the basis of a known character, it is important to read the lines to discover the mood or the feeling of the character, his motivations, what he or she seeks. And material--pictures, movies, sculptures, essays, etc--provide a wealth of information.

But the improvisers must also take into consideration his or her potential spectators: what he or she does is for them!

Improvisation is an essential and necessarily previous tool to the staging of the play. It gives the director vital information on how to organize movements and characterizations. It also gives vital information to the actor, allowing him or her to "get into the skin" of the characters. It also give incredible sociological and psychological data concerning the lives of the characters represented in the improvisation.

There's always a story waiting to be told. Maybe it happened on this mysterious trail. A love affair? A murder? Some strange people who live here completely outside civilization? Guerrilla warfare during the 1970's or the struggle for independence...

Images are great starters. But likewise bits of conversation you might have heard on the bus, on the train, an article you read in the newspaper, a dream, perhaps just a play on words that triggers an engaging tale.

This Friday our Creative Writing Seminar will meet at 7pm to share experiences about stories participants have written. Then, even more exciting, each writer will tell his own story! There we will explore the techniques of story telling.

P.S. The stories must be written in English and they will be told in English! If you want to join us, let us know at hopalfred@gmail.com

We will give you more details and the exact address.

Hope to see you there!

Summer Storytelling, Writing and Acting Seminars

     

  Summer. Vacations. Plans for the New Year? What if we think of life as a never ending story? Every day a new tale appears. Problems to solve. Characters to deal with. Conversations with our neighbors, our loved one(s), the grocier, a discussion we have at the bank. Attitudes we assume when we wake up in the morning, which then take an about turn in the afternoon. Then at the end of the day we sit down with our dearest friend, sip a glass of rose wine and talk about the day's adventures. We narrate our own stories!

          We have organized a series of seminars for the hot sweaty months, aimed at having fun learning how to write about our experiences, how to tell stories and how to use impovisation technique to go through that magical transformation between the "me, myself and I" and the other character, the king, the businessman, the thief, the assassin. It's great fun and a unforgettable learning experience. 

                What? You don't trust your writing ability in English? No better way to improve it than to practice it with a U.S. born English teacher, writer and actor. We are not interested in grammar books. The beauty of the seminar is that it awakens the creativity of the participants!

              We meet Wednesdays at 7pm. For more details and the address write hopalfred@gmail.com