Second City’s Level A improv class, week two, proves worth every penny

January 18, 2009 by vongsundara · 2 Comments 

I’m only two weeks into my improv class at Second City, and already I’ve gotten my money’s worth. Sunday night improv is starting to become a big highlight of my week.

This week, we focused on specific techniques to help flesh out an improv scene. The biggest challenge was about identifying the what, where and who of the scene. For instance, the first person up establishes what the activity is. The second person establishes where the scene takes place, and the third person establishes the relationship between the three people.

We were also given some great tips on what not to do in improv. One of the big no-no’s is entering a scene with a question.

It was funny, though, that no matter how many times I was told, it was a habit I could not shake. Whenever I came into a scene, I’d ask the person who started the scene a question instead of making a statement. I suppose it’s just human tendency.

I absolutely love how improv is pushing me in new directions creatively. It’s given me lots of ideas for my stand-up, which is why I joined the class in the first place. Unexpectedly, though, it’s also given me a love and appreciation of improv that kind of makes me want to push forward and learn more and more. I haven’t felt this excited since I first discovered stand-up.

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Transfer of knowledge can take longer than expected in comedy

December 27, 2008 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

I’m learning to work in smaller chunks lately. I have a huge project right now in that I’m attempting to write a one-hour-long one-man show. The first step in doing this is to organize all of my notes, all 45 pages worth.

My writing style is to doodle down little notes whenever I feel inspired and then come back and collect those thoughts and flesh them out later. I think this method works in that I’m never having to sit down and try to come up with jokes from scratch. The unfortunate part is that I hae a huge backlog of material to go back and flesh out (or maybe that’s a good thing).

To write my one-hour show, I have to reorganize the material into different sections such as Work Life, Family Life, Gay Life and so on. This helps me write stories for each of the different parts of my life. The unfortunate part is that the job of transferring my random notes into an organized book has taken me almost half a year.

The task of organizing 45 pages of notes was so daunting that I spent much of that time procrastinating. Now, if I can’t even transfer notes, how am I supposed to actually write one hour’s worth of material? It finally came to me today: I have to write in smaller chunks.

Instead of looking at the full hour, I’ve got to write little five-minute chunks that can be later spliced together. I’ll have to then build some narrative structure in later. This will be somewhat difficult as it is reverse to how I normally write. I generally have a narrative skeleton that I then add the meat to as I go along.

I hope this works. I’m really excited today, though, because I am on page 35 of 45. I really, really hope I can finally get this huge monkey off my back so I can move forward with my writing.

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