DAY 13 - EXTENDED PLAY AT THE PLAYGROUND

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SHOW TONIGHT?

GRIFF: Ryan Nallen played with us tonight. He is a very positive high energy guy and that feels great to be around. James is positive and I’m usually high energy, but holt shit this kid blows us both out of the water. If anything I feel like I was lagging behind. The overall show, though it had some great moments was low energy. Which is weird considering everything I just said. My initiation was super vague and mundane, I feel responsible for sucking some energy out.  

DUGAN: It was great to have Ryan play with us. Not only is he the pioneer of the 31 Days of Improv, but that guy is an information machine. Griff and I have noticed we leave a lot of empty pauses in our shows. Ryan is great at filling the pauses with gifts and information to further the scene. This kept our show going, and gave us so much to discover and play with. There was some fun gameplay, and nice relationships, however, there was a lot of talking over each other and dropped ideas, something that is so common in teams that don't play together all the time.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT GRIFF/JAMES?

GRIFF: It is really bizarre watching James become more aware of himself onstage. I think lately he has had trouble finding a strong character (based on his comments after the shows). It's weird because at the Bughouse the other night he shot out of the gate with some of the strongest stuff I’ve seen in awhile. He immediately had a game and an emotion perspective. I don’t know if he is aware that he’s able to do that as well as he did.

DUGAN: I've mentioned this before, but Griffin is at his best when he is committing hard to his bits. In this show he started with playing pool, and he never dropped that. At one point (I’m not sure which one of us was responsible for this) we said that he has a habit of organizing youth football games, but making himself the quarterback. This left him a nice little well to come back to throughout the show, and believe me, he did not let that one go.

HOW DO YOU FEEL/ WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT IMPROV?

GRIFF: Improv is a two steps forward one step back affair. Also you have off nights. I do this thing where, when I don't know what to do and I'm nervous, I overcompensate by doing and saying boring prosaic shit. I know I do this. I’m aware of it when I do it and know that I shouldn’t do it. The frustrating thing is not being able to always turn that into a positive “I should do X” instead. I’m at a weird point. I have seen a great deal of shows and have talked with and learned about improv from some of the greatest living performers. But, my empirical understanding of the craft lags greatly behind my theoretical understanding of it. This month is slowing helping and it is showing me how true the “gotta do dem reps, yo” mantra actually is.

DUGAN: (Disclaimer: This is a long one. I had a very revelatory show) If I don’t make a decision at the top of the show, it takes me a while to find something to play with. It’s a bad habit that I’ve really begun to notice this month. If I don’t come out the gate with an emotion, point of view, or character, then I’m sunk. It happened to me tonight. Both Ryan and Griff  started the show by interacting with different things in the room, and I started by sitting down and watching them. Huge mistake on my part. I got stuck in what a wise man (Mr. Eric Hunicutt) called “Feed-back”. Eric used to say that there’s two modes you can be in during an improv show: Feed-back, and Feed-forward. When you’re in Feed-back, you’re listening to what your scene partner is saying, and processing it. Then you switch into Feed-forward, when you respond and further the scene with your reaction. In Feed-forward, you’re offering information, details, and emotion that help your teammates. Tonight, Ryan and Griffin were doing almost all the Feed-forwarding.

Something very strange happened tonight also. We got to watch ourselves. By that, I mean one of the teams got up there and there were two guys that played off each other the same way that Griff and I do. This one guy made all the same moves I would, and had all the same habits. It was absolutely fascinating to watch. I got to see how my own bits landed, when they worked and when they didn’t. When I talked with Griffin after the show he said that he noticed the exact same thing. In closing, go find people that perform like you do, because it will blow your mind.  

IF YOU COULD MURDER ANY HEAD OF STATE AND GET AWAY WITH IT, WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

GRIFF: That ought to drive up our site visits. Currently listening: McFearless by the Kings of Leon.

DUGAN: I usually don’t let Griffin come up with the closing questions. I’m letting this one go because the government is shut down, and I’m sure the NSA isn’t monitoring us anymore.