Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

In improv class this week at ComedySportz , our instructor, Dave, told us that we could invite a guest, because he wants us to get used to performing in front of an audience. So I asked The Gryphon to come in.

We ran into problems finding a parking space, which made us a little late. I used to park in a garage on 18th and Market Street, but then they put in an automated system, and the last time I parked there, the pedestrian door wouldn't open. The only way I got in was that someone with a monthly pass came up and swiped it.

The following week I parked across from Rittenhouse Square on Walnut, but that cost me $20, even more than the other garage.

I knew there was a lot on Sansom Street that cost $6, because my classmates had mentioned it. We set out early but ran into a lot of traffic on the way there. When we finally found the lot, they only took exact change, which we didn't have. So we stopped at a Wawa to get some change.

Of course, on our way back Sansom Street, we got stuck behind a cab driver who was not only letting out an elderly patron with a walker but then helped her over the mounds of snow to the opposite side of the street.

With all that, we were about five minutes late. I told The Gryphon to wait in the lobby while I ran upstairs to use the bathroom, and when I exited I saw Dave in the room across the hall. They had moved up there for the day, so I went down to the lobby and grabbed The Gryphon.

This week we worked a lot on games, some of which we might do in our open performance at the end of our session.

First, we started out with some warmups like Zip, Zap, Zop. Even this The Gryphon found entertaining: I heard him laughing along with us as we messed up and then succeeded with new challenges.

Apologies in advance for getting things out of order or missing things, because we ran through a lot of different things.

I believe the first game was Dr. Doublespeak. This involved two people and an interviewer. The interviewer would ask them questions, and they were supposed to answer in unison, by looking at each other as they talked. This was a lot harder than you might think; the challenge is to agree on words and create them together, not to just have one person leading the other.

When I went up, I teamed up with Geoff. We were experts in marine biology and answered a lot of questions about whales. My favorite answer was when we said we got interested in whale watching when a whale came up to us and spoke Yiddish!

Jennifer and Colleen teamed up as a butcher with a very unusual way of making their cuts: they threw the meat down on a slab and hit it with something hard. Carol and Tim were experts in photography and waxed episodic on the beauty of light.

Next we moved on to a game that involved more people. I forget what it was called, Changeover or 1, 2, 3, 4 or something like that. The game starts with one person doing something based on a suggestion. Then, Dave freezes them and a second person goes in. They start a new scene that has nothing to do with the first. They're frozen, and a third person comes on, starting a third scene. They're frozen, and a fourth person starts a fourth scene.

Then, in the order they arrived, each player finds a reason to leave the stage. As they do, it returns to the previous scene until you're back to one person on stage.

The first brave soul to get up was Colleen, who was shoveling snow, muttering about how heavy it was. Dave froze her, and Tim entered, changing the scene to looking for buried treasure. Just as they found a buried piece of gold, I walked in and snatched the item from their hand, thanking them for finding my family heirloom. As a reward, I made them my maid and my butler. While Colleen stood there looking shocked, Tim eagerly went to work as my butler, because I sold him on the benefits package. Since Tim and I were kind of standing close to each other and Colleen across the stage looking angry, Jennifer came in and said, "Dearly beloved, we are here to celebrate the marriage of this couple." Immediately, Tim and I took each other's hands and looked at each other adoringly. Colleen spoke up and said, "I object. He's mine!" I called her the "B" word and then clasped my hand over my mouth, certain I'd violated the brown bag rule. Dave told us to keep going.

Jennifer acted uncomfortable with the new situation, as Colleen and I were arguing, and she said, "Wait a minute. I have to go check something," and took off. We were back to the maid and butler scene. Colleen complained there was nothing for her to clean, so I suggested that she dirty something and then changed my mind: "I'll go dirty something for you," and left the stage. Back to the treasure hunters. Tim was raving about how this piece of gold would solve all their financial problems, so Colleen hit him over the head with the shovel, and he was effectively out of the scene. Back to snow shoveling, and Colleen heaved a big sign and turned back the other direction, shoveling heavy snow.

The second time, I went on a little earlier. There were only 7 people, so someone had to go twice. Dave suggested starting with something physical, because it could help get into the scene. J.T. started by washing dishes. I came on shaking my hand, complaining about some green, gooey stuff on there. I was starting to wash my hands in the sink and then decided to wipe it on him instead. He reacted as if it was burning him, and pulled off his sweatshirt, which then started to burn a hole through the floor.

Carol came on and demanded to know who I was. "She's my sister, Sylvie," J.T. said.

"Yes, I'm his sister, Sophie. I mean, Sylvie." Carol wasn't buying it, and when she acted angry, I handed her a bowl of popcorn, which she threw in my face, making me cry. I had my hands down, and Geoff came on and helped me lift a heavy television, which we all loaded onto a truck. Apparently, we were stealing furniture from Carol.

The police came, so Geoff took off. Then, back to the lover's triangle, Carol got her comeuppance when J.T. informed her that it was over between them, and stomped off in a huff. Back to the green goop scene. We discovered the substance was eating through everything it touched, and I ran off to get medical assistance, leaving J.T., back to the dishwashing scene, lying on the floor, holding his hand and complaining about having broken a dish.

Another game involved offstage coaching from Dave. The idea was that you'd establish a scene and then he'd yell different things for you to work in, such as emotions or a film style.

Geoff and Tim started with the suggestion of mountain. They were stranded on a mountain so decided to set up camp. Tim bragged of his Boy Scout skills but was unable to start a fire. Dave called out paranoia, which made Tim worry that Geoff was holding out on him. Turned out he was right: Geoff snuck a Snickers bar and called down the mountain with a walkie-talkie while Tim wasn't looking. Then they moved to sadness, and Tim was crying about how they were both going to die. It turned out that they were brothers and had always competed for their parents' love.

Next, Dave called out "Chick flick", and they started chatting like teenage girls about cute boys. Geoff said he wished the cutest sherpa would come rescue them, and Colleen took that as her cue to bound on-stage and announce she was the "cutest sherpa" there to rescue them.

For the next round, J.T. and Jennifer started on-stage with the suggestion "employee-boss". J.T. berated her for coming in late, and Jennifer was very mousy and meek. He threatened to fire her and then put her to work.

My initial instinct was to come in as an even worse employee, but I gave conflicting signals by walking on scratching my head in a somewhat ape-like manner. "Am I late?" I asked, fully aware that they'd just had a huge argument about how late Jennifer was. J.T. was frustrated and told me to "Get in the cage and get to work." So then I became sort of a monkey girl.

I was in a cage, jumping around and throwing bananas while J.T. harped about how our work was so bad that we'd missed a delivery. Dave called out mystery thriller, and I started complaining that there was something wrong with the bananas. Just then, Carol drove on with a fruit delivery, and J.T. asked her if she'd brought the poison bananas.

Next thing I knew, he was force feeding bananas to me and Jennifer that may or may not have been poison. My first response as the monkey girl was to spit it out and stare at him. Jennifer did the same thing, and we sort of stared each other down until Dave called out "joyful." J.T. cheered and I exclaimed, "I love weird day at work!" It was the only way I could think of to put a button on such a strange scene.

Afterwards, Dave gave us some comments, including the suggestion that it's important to have a good idea of who you are when you go on-stage, rather than expecting others to help define it. If I'd really committed to being a bad employee, I could have made that clearer going in, and not devolved into monkey business. Or I could have come in as his supervisor and demanded that some task get finished right away. That could have gotten things moving. Or maybe someone delivering news of a work-related crisis.

Then we did an old favorite, Dr. Know-It-All. Four people answer questions as one person, one word at a time until they form a sentence. The first time I was up, I was on the far end away from the interviewer, and I found I often just ended up adding conjunctions, because the first three people came up with a strong subject-verb pairing. We were an expert in arachnophobia, and advised dealing with it by looking through special scientific spectacles. Our advice for dealing with a room full of spiders was to take your leg and bash through the wall. If you didn't have an artificial leg, use your own. Failing that, open your eyes and be not afraid.

The second time, we were an expert in Ferris Wheels. We came up with an extreme Ferris Wheel that went really fast and had gorillas and orangutans wrestling on it. Our favorite restaurant was at Coney Island because it was green and yellow and purple. The main difference between riding a Ferris Wheel at night was that it was dark.

That game is always fun, I must admit.

We played another old favorite, Blind Line. This is where the actors leave the room while the audience generates lines of dialogue. They're scattered on-stage, and periodically throughout the scene, the players pick up the lines and say them. Dave cautioned us not to pick up more than two each.

I was on with Jennifer and Geoff. The suggestion was scuba diving. Jennifer and I were stretching and getting ready for the day. We were scuba diving instructors, waiting for our first student. Geoff came on, ready and raring to go. We told him to put his tank on. He said he didn't need one, but we made him turn around and get strapped up. Jennifer put weights on his legs. I picked up a line that said, "Welcome to the Rock." Jennifer stepped in and explained that in this scuba diving school, people trained by swimming out to a large rock where they could see the wonderful marine life.

Just as we were getting ready to get started, he picked up a line that said, "I bet you that mouth got you that nose."

I took umbrage and pushed him into the water. "It was a shark, thank you! I know the prosthetic isn't great, but they're working on it!"

Meanwhile, he starts to drown. Jennifer takes my side and calls out to him, "Well, you shouldn't have insulted her. She's the one with rescue skills."

"Yes, you should have thought of that before you insulted me."

Jennifer relented, though, and I agreed to rescue him, for insurance purposes. I picked up one final line: "I'm not your broom."

It went well, although Dave cautioned us about talking over each other. It's hard when you get excited.

In another scene, Tim and Colleen were on-stage and the suggestion was airport. They were a couple going on their honeymoon, and Carol was an airport employee calling out the planes were loading. Tim picked up a line and announced he was going to walk the dog, so he got the dog out of its cage and started walking it around. Carol stepped in and put a stop to that. Colleen picked up a line and announced "I am the walrus," hoping that would get them on the plane sooner. It didn't. Apparently, Carol's airline gave no preference to walruses.

Another time, the suggestion was tea party. J.T. was an elderly rich man with a long-time servant, Carol, serving him tea. She'd been with him for 50 or 60 years. He picked up a line, then, "What's your damage?" She rattled off a litany of physical complaints. He said that he would be not long for this world and had a big announcement.

Just then, Colleen bounded in as his granddaughter and nearly frightened him to death. Carol picked up a line that said, "I hate this!" and started crying and left the room for a crying jag.

J.T. said he had something to ask Colleen, and she said she wouldn't get rid of the maid, that she was like a second grandmother to her. J.T. complained that she was always whining. Just then, Carol came in, still sniffling, and announced that she had to tell Colleen the truth, announcing that her mother was still alive in North Africa.

Our last game was, I think, called Shopkeeper or something. The shopkeeper gets sent out of the room and three people get suggestions from the audience for things they need to get from the store. You start with an ordinary item, like candlestick, but then it has to be unusual so that it's harder to guess. So maybe it's a candlestick that dances.

First up as shopkeeper was J.T. Tim was looking for a bowling ball that predicted the future and Colleen for a phone that only spoke French. Carol was looking for a sweater that made breakfast. J.T. actually got the first two but not the third, because he never managed to guess sweater. It reminded me of the first time I played this with the beginning class, and I couldn't come up with glue stick no matter how hard the person tried to get me to guess it!

Next round, Jennifer was the shopkeeper. I was looking for a towel that flew. Geoff was looking for a gold-plated plunger, and J.T. was looking for a singing toaster. Dave suggested that we use what we were looking for as part of our character, which was a great suggestion. J.T. sang everything to the shopkeeper, so that while it took a little while to get to toaster, she got "singing toaster" right away.

I went in next, shivering and brushing extra water off my hair and clothes. "It's really raining out there!" I exclaimed. Jennifer offered me an umbrella. "Maybe five minutes ago that would have helped. Do you have something back there to dry myself?" She gave me a towel. Dave said to keep going, since I had some time left. I took the towel, and after drying my hair, threw it up in the air and watched it fall. Then I grabbed the towel, took a flying leap with it underneath me and collapsed on the stage.

"Do you need a flying towel?" Jennifer asked.

"Yes!"

Geoff got her to guess plunger right away by saying he was a plumber there to unclog a toilet and was missing a vital tool. After a couple tries at the gold-plated bit, he came up with a brilliant idea: telling her that he wanted to give the plunger to his wife for their tenth anniversary.

"You want a gold plunger?" she asked. Exactly.

At the end of the class, we did some cool down exercises and Dave asked The Gryphon if he'd enjoyed himself. He said he did. My classmates joked that he had to say that to earn brownie points with me. But I could tell by the way he laughed throughout that he truly had a great time. It was a nice reminder that the audience is with you, and they want to laugh. It doesn't really take that much, so it's important to relax and not try too hard to be funny.

More Musings from improv class:

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Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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