Instructor: Louis Kornfeld
Date Taken: November 2009
After going through the curriculum at UCB, my biggest weakness as an improviser was reacting emotionally. : After great experiences with: Shoot from the Hip: (full of Magnet people) and the: Dynamic Duos: class, I decided to go through the Magnet program with an emphasis on improving as an emotional player.
I was able to skip Level 1 and started with Level 2. : Here are the notes.
To find out more about the Magnet training program, go: here.
Class Notes
- Start your scene by reacting to something that has already happened
- Don’t present your idea, embody or be the idea
- Take a suggestion and think about the emotions it inspires
- Deal with your own honesty on stage
- Your scene partner on stage can be your “suggestion”—take what you notice about each other and personalize it
- Theres enormous value into trusting your instincts and reactions to what your scene partner is giving
- Make an offer and then pay attention to their reaction, that’s your new suggestion
- “How well am I performing” is one of the most worthless questions in improv. : If you are asking that, you aren’t paying attention
- Scenes shouldn’t be hard. they should have energy, not effort
- Law of adjacency – given one very specific detail, there is a another specific detail that is related to it. : Improv is communicating those adjancecies
- You can “sell” anything to the audience if you commit
- The one thing we don’t want to be on stage is neutral. don’t be the “too cool for school” attitude
- Take full ownership of what you do on stage
- Specific thoughts lead to specific action. if you make a decision in your mind as to what’s going on, it will inform your decisions
- Big truths are made up of a bunch of tiny truths
- Positive emotion is not a weak one
- Don’t forget the different shades of an emotion. be specific—gloom is different than depression
- An emotional reaction gives you another thing to explore. explore how you feel about what’s happening on stage
- Strong reactions beget strong reactions. when you don’t have them it forces you to have to think instead of reacting
- Dirty little secret of improv: it doesn’t really matter what your reaction is so long as its committed
- Heightening = magnifying the behavior
- Theres a lot more power in exploring what you’ve already created instead of just creating new ideas
- Improv is not just about making shit up, its about using what you have
