Instructor: Blaine Swen
Date Taken: August 2010
For DCM 2010, Blaine Swen (founder / performer of Improv Shakespeare and 1-man musical improv show Bash!) offered a 3-hour workshop that focused on 1-person musical improv scenes.
Here are the notes from the workshop.
Class Notes
- 3 important points of improv: pov, dialog and emotional dialog
- come out and find a point of concentration. that point will affect you emotionally which create your pov and then drive your dialog.
- have to rely on the truth that improv is magic.
- trust that if you react to the moment, moment to moment, and the map (plot) will happen
- when i dont know what to say in a scene, i think of what my pov is and then say “i feel …â€
- you also have to relax and play
- the only way you fail in this is if you give into your anxiety to the audience
- practice patience not panic
- theres a fine line between pov and projection (dont project on to someone else what they have to be). you give yourself a great gift just by telling your partner how you feel
- songs should explore your pov and emotion, not the plot of the scene.
- pov can be expressed through object work and expression
- improv audiences do a lot of the work for you. they connect the dots for you. you can relieve yourself of the burden of the work
- singing about your feelings is so much easier than trying to sing a song about story or plot.
- for songs, boil down your pov into a thesis statement and thats the title and focus of your song
- emotional reaction is a huge gift to your scene partner.
