The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

May 3, 2009 by vongsundara · Leave a Comment 

I’m currently taking Level B improv classes at The Second City Toronto Training Centre with instructor Cary West. I’ll be blogging about my experiences below. This post will be updated after each class (as opposed to me writing a new post each class), so bookmark this page if you want to follow along with my experiences.

DAY SIX – Sunday, May 3, 2009: The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

My last day at Level B intensive was a great culmination of everything we learned so far. I skipped out on Saturday’s class due to a personal engagement, but I’m happy I made it back for the finale. Our final day was a lot more relaxed and more a review than anything else. We were able to play some games that I saw at Wheel of Improv, so now I hope to be more comfortable when playing along on Mondays.

In all, I’m super happy that I took the Level B intensive and am now caught up with my Level A class so that I can take Level C with them starting next week. The intensive format is definitely different from the weekly class format, and I think that I enjoy both forms.

As for Level B itself, I feel a lot more comfortable with environment, though it’s still not my strong suit. I’ll have to work at it some more for sure in the later levels, but I’m looking forward to it.

DAY FOUR – Friday, May 1, 2009: The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

Today’s class was all about environment. I was really tired and a bit beat down from the week, so I had to really pull from all my energy banks to be able to tackle some of our exercises. I still have a long way to go as far as environment, but at least now I know what exercises I can do on my own to improve.

My favourite exercise involved performing the same action in four, eight and 20 steps. I was given the action of getting ready in the morning. Performing this action in four steps was funny and showed how disconnected we can be as performers when we don’t add in the little touches. Expanding to eight steps felt a bit better and is probably closer to where I’m at right now as a performer. Trying to add up to 20 steps was really difficult for me, as I ran out of things to do. Now, getting ready for the morning in real life obviously takes a lot more than 20 steps, so I’ve just got to concentrate more on the little details.

The ultimate goal is to be able to perform any action in 50 steps. I’m a ways away from doing this, but now I know how to move forward. I will definitely practice on my own.

DAY THREE – Sunday, April 26, 2009: The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

I had yet another great day at my Second City improv class. I’m really starting to feel more comfortable working with environment, which has been my biggest weakness by far.

Today’s class was really well structured. We worked on several smaller exercises leading up to a final exercise that used the skills we learned throughout the day. This is the first time I’ve felt this type of progression in an improv class. The fact that we got to use everything we had learned gave me a great sense of accomplish when we were done.

We started out with free association, kind of similar to when stand-up comedians perform stream of consciousness. I had a great time with this exercise, as I do with most thinking and talking exercises. We built on the free association by introducing an environment. Once we were in our environment, we had to continue talking about an unrelated topic while still continuing our activity. I found this incredibly difficult to do, but I’m sure it will get easier with time. My thoughts were much more muted, and I had difficulty remembering what I was saying.

The new techniques we learned for environment were really helpful. Cary West showed us how to sustain an activity that isn’t overly repetitive. After learning this technique, I was able to try using them during our final exercise. Putting free association, environment and adding an extra improvisor, the final exercise really stretched our improv skills. I was given the environment of a clothing store and had to carry out a conversation while shopping. I think I botched the conversation since I was thinking we were still doing free association and thus spoke way too much.

At the end of the day, though, I felt the most comfortable I’ve ever been while doing environment work. Our instructor Cary is really great with giving us helpful tips and suggestions.

DAY TWO – Saturday, April 25, 2009: The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

Today I felt a lot more comfortable than yesterday. A lot of the rust came off, and I was definitely more in the moment.

I was really excited because today we worked a lot on environment, which is my weakest skill for sure tied with character (which will be covered more in Level C). We had an exercise where we had to establish an environment, and the audience had to figure out where we were. I decided to establish a wrestling ring. The good part is that I conveyed the environment well enough that the audience guessed correctly. The bad part is that I have a long way to go as far as committing to a scene.

Now, I fully understand that I have skills that need to be worked on, but I shouldn’t have to work on committing, as that’s something I can do right now whether I have the other skills or not. That’s my takeaway from this week is to always commit fully as much as I can. Cary had some great recommendations after the scene about how I can improve by being more in the moment and adding all the extra little details.

The second part of today concentrated on free association and being generous with our fellow performers. Now this is the part of improv where I feel I shine through much more. Any exercises where it’s about using words and nothing more are where I feel at home. I definitely know I can develop more in this area too, but it’s nice to come back to something I’m good at after spending hours working on my weaknesses. It’s a nice confidence builder for sure.

DAY ONE – Friday, April 24, 2009: The Improvisation Program, Level B with instructor Cary West at Second City Training Centre, Toronto, Improv Class

Ooh, today was definitely a little bit rough. Improv is like a skill that you need to keep sharp, and I definitely was not sharp today as it’s been about three months since my Level A class. This isn’t to say that the class didn’t go well; in fact, it was fantastic and I had a lot of fun.

My instructor for this level is Cary West, an experienced improvisor and actor. Well, instead of describing him, I’ll just paste his bio from the Second City website:

“Cary West has been teaching improvisation since 1996 including the Second City Education Department starting in 2001. A long-time graduate of the Second City Conservatory Program, he has also been involved with the Bad Dog Theatre and the Toronto Film College instructing comedy performance and writing. In 2000, Cary was nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award for Best New Sketch Troupe with the Closet Primadonnas and has appeared in numerous award winning short films.”

What’s interesting about Cary is that he started out in stand-up comedy for a year, which of course intrigues me since stand-up comedy is my first love as far as performing goes. Cary is very different from my last instructor, Natasha Boomer, though they both are incredible improvisors in their own right. Cary loves telling stories, which I love because it gives insight into the improv world outisde of just learning how to perform.

My new classmates are really cool too. It was a little strange, though, because 80 per cent of the class knew each other from Level A, and I was one of only two people who was new to their group. I wasn’t phased for too long, though, because the group was very welcoming.

The biggest thing I noticed in my first class back was that I was holding back way too much. I tend to be a little too caught up in my thoughts when performing instead of projecting outward. Hopefully I can start to learn a bit more and get better as the course goes on.

Second City Toronto Training Centre Available Improv Courses

http://secondcity.com/?id=training-education/training/toronto/course_descriptions

The Second City

The Second City Toronto Training Centre

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My first new stand-up comedy routine in six months almost ready

February 5, 2009 by vongsundara · 7 Comments 

Today I was able to overcome my short writer’s block from yesterday to put together a really solid stand-up comedy set that I’m really excited to debut. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to write about my sister, as I feel the best and most balanced comedy version of me to present on stage is the one that is brought out when I hang out with my sister Anne.

Yesterday I tried my best to write but ended up with nothing more than half-page of unusable nonsense. I suppose I should have expected it after not writing for half a year. It took me until about four hours into my writing process today that it finally all clicked.

You see, I have a unique way of writing which doesn’t really follow the usual rules of comedy writing: set-up, punchline, tag, tag, tag. My style doesn’t completely follow classical literary narrative structure either, though I do try to work that in. When I first started writing comedy a couple of years back, I was able to develop a unique style that worked for the way that I think, which tends to be a little differently. Yesterday I completely forgot what the style was.

I started out by trying to speak the words and form my routine off of that. When that failed miserably, I tried more traditional free-form writing. I don’t know why it finally clicked later on, but boy am I happy that it did. I won’t go into detail over how I write (sorry, I have to keep some things secret still).

After getting together a rough draft composed of about ten short lines of text, I then tried sounding out the routine to my roommate and improvised a lot of it. Now I have to go back and write down some of the new ideas that came during the spoken improvisation.

I’ve submitted for time at a bunch of the open mics in town, so hopefully you’ll be seeing this new routine very shortly.

Filed under: Living, Performing
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