Another opening, another show...

I've done what I always fear I'll do: not keep up with something that I set out to. I've not updated at all regarding the journey of The Miser: Improvised. There were a couple of extenuating circumstances that occurred outside of the rehearsal process that became time consumers. I worked for the Furman chem department for 2 weeks which was nice as it's always good to actually have monetary income. I also managed to contract mononucleosis which was not nice as I felt at one point that I'd never be well again (& that was 4 days before the show opened. Boy... do I have great timing...) Even though I gave poor Murdock a director's nightmare, I managed to fight off mono with lots of sleep, off-brand Extra-strength Tylenol, and season 4 of The Wire all without missing a rehearsal (though I was admittedly a bit worthless during parts of a couple). With all of that aside, I hope I can catch everyone up to speed a bit on the course of the show.

Murdock did actually "cast" the show with each character in the show only being played by one person (with a couple of minor exceptions that happen because it's improv and we can do that kind of thing). Most members of the company are playing 1 or 2 characters. Because of the distribution of supporting characters throughout the show, I've been saddled with playing 3. Most of us are also playing bumbling servants with names we spontaneously made up (mine is Gobi and for some reason most of the rest of the cast really likes Gobi). The closest thing I can think of to compare the servant characters to is Pokemon because the only speech they use is their own names.

The bulk rehearsal process was a lot like that of a typical play. We put a lot of focus on developing the characters we were playing, but we also had to work each scene enough times to ensure that we were hitting all of the necessary plot points with the right pacing and rough blocking. The plot thing is a bit easier to manage in a scripted play, but with all of the dialog being improvised the scenes had to be tailored to include important information to the course of the show without letting the scenes drag on too long. With the exception of a few early additions, we incorporated most of the improvisational elements that include audience suggestions in the last week of rehearsal. The most prevalent elements are blind lines (random lines of dialog written on slips of paper by audience members before that show starts) and hesitations (by snapping his or her fingers any character can get a word from the audience to work into a line of dialog), but there are also impromptu songs, genres, stimuli and responses, accidents, and miming thrown in.

Last night was opening night. I was really excited to see how everything would come together. The suggestions were pretty solid across the board despite a little bit of hesitation in volunteering them, and a lot of new things happened. I felt good about a lot of what I did as my most significant character, Frosine. Laura-Ann was especially hysterical as her schizophrenic Master Jacques character. We played to a small but receptive house, and everyone I talked to seemed to really enjoy it. The people who'd seen plenty of Improv!able Cause short-form shows before really appreciated this new way of seeing a production with some old familiar ways of getting suggestions and such. While there are some very silly aspects of the show, I think most of the best comedy comes from the earnest characters that have been developed. I'd really like to see more people at performances for the rest of the run, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing, all cool

So the summer has finally brought me something creative to work on. For the past 4 days I’ve been rehearsing in Greenville with a company that has been dubbed by its director, Murdock, The Molière Improv Project. That makes us sound really awesome… and with good reason. The company is comprised of past and present members of Improv!able Cause that span from the class of 2006 (Jeb) to the class of 2013 (Caroline). All of us signed on to this project without knowing exactly what to expect aside from the fact that we’re reworking Molière’s The Miser and that we’d be working with some great improvers (some of whom have improved together before and some of whom didn’t officially meet until the first day of rehearsal). The official title of the show is The Miser: Improvised. Word.

Thus far the rehearsals have been fairly focused on character development. Through a character circle exercise, we’ve taken 4 Miser characters from brainstormed traits to physical neutral stance to default gestures indicating things like surprise, love, and the formulation of an idea. One funny occurrence presented itself after we had created the character Harpagon. The members of the company were in a line standing in Harpagon’s neutral stance and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with each member saying a few words at a time to get used to how he would speak. When we tried to think of something else we all knew to recite that wasn’t super repetitive (i.e. Row, Row, Row Your Boat or Mary Had a Little Lamb) or religious (i.e. The Lord’s Prayer or The Apostle’s Creed), we were pretty stumped. That is, until someone suggested the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Belair. Sure enough, we all knew the words. However, it was pretty difficult to be a 60+-year-old man with a hunched back, gnarled hands, and slightly bowed legs while saying the phrase “shooting some b-ball.” I just thought it was an interesting comment on our personalities and society that the only things we could come up with that we all knew were nursery rhymes, prayers, and Fresh Prince.

Last night we put the first scene on its feet. The idea is that we know the outline of what occurs in the established scene and the traits of the characters in it, but the dialog is fairly improvised. We started with one pair of performers, Caroline and Jacob, playing the young lovers Valère and Élise. They first did the scene in gibberish then replayed the scene with improvised lines. The result was very funny. There were some rough patches and things that didn’t get covered that will need to for the sake of the plot, but overall that first scene was very solid. It was very reassuring to see the idea for the project actually take shape and work well. Following the first pair, two other pairs did the same exercise, first Laura-Ann and I then Bryson and Brian. Every time the scene was played, new things were discovered, old bits were reworked, and everyone got big laughs from the rest of the company. After rehearsal, Murdock mentioned to Jacob and I that he was very impressed at everyone’s abilities to play each character especially regardless of gender and may keep each character interchangeable with some way of knowing who is playing which character at any given time.

At any rate, this new and different way of combining performing a play and improvising is beginning to take definite shape. I’m excited to see where it goes from here.