The Process Link to heading

“The most important idea is simply focusing out and avoiding conscious choices while improvising.”

“After all was said and done, the process we developed boils down to three major points. The first is to explore and heighten a point of concentration (POC). A POC gives us action instead of just activities. We learn to focus out, make discoveries, and react to those discoveries. The second is to explore and heighten a point of view (POV). A POV gives us a method of creating dialogue, which moves the play forward, avoids dialogue traps, and heightens our knowledge of the character. The third is to explore and heighten scenic focus, which helps us to focus the play one action at a time and allows the actor to live in the moment. The improvised play builds moment to moment like a snowball rolling down a hill. Most of the techniques boil down to focusing out, making discoveries, and having an emotional and physical reaction to those discoveries”

“Follow the follower. Stay in the moment. Focus on your partner and react. Make discoveries.”

“Writers call this a block, and it is measured in distance from your deadline. Improvisers call it being up in your head, and it is measured in those lethal seconds that feel like hours before the stage manager puts you out of your misery and kills the lights. As any good improviser will tell you, you can save yourself from this slow, painful death by getting your focus off of yourself.”

“Follow the follower. Stay in the moment. Focus on your partner and react. Make discoveries. The big mistake everyone makes in Freeze Tag is to stand on the back line and try to think up clever gimmicks, then jump in and impose them on the scene regardless of what’s actually going on.”

“I was relieved to see that most of the people in the other group were not very good. They walked through the objects they created, and you could barely tell what the objects they held in their hands were.”

“…you don’t sit there thinking up gimmicks, you just show up and let the ideas come to you.”

“I got that feeling of panic again, and I knew from experience that the best way to handle that feeling is to just start doing something.”

“…we were arguing too much in the scene, which isn’t a good idea when you’re improvising.”

“The pulse stops when someone ab- sorbs the pulse, or the energy of the scene. It doesn’t really get lost — it gets absorbed by one of the actors”

“Be more aware of your partners than you are of yourself”

“Stay in the moment. Don’t try to think up clever bits. Don’t feel responsible for creating the final product.”

“The point wasn’t to show my objects to the audience; it was to concentrate well enough that I could imagine and interact with the object.”

“Much of what you do is determined by what is not said. In fact, most of what you communicate in life and onstage is determined by your behavior, not by what you say. A grunt can communicate much more than a poetic speech. A shrug can be more meaningful than a witty one-liner.”

“Your job is to help your partner maintain eye contact with you. It’s about supporting your partner.”

“I was reminded that the reason you avoid questions is because asking questions places a heavy burden of responsibility onto your scene partner. When you start a scene asking, “What are you doing?” or “Why are you acting like that?” or even “Where is the iguana cage?” you’re more or less demanding that your partner figure out the scene for you. It’s not only a selfish thing to do to your partner, it’s a terrible thing to do yourself. Instead of revealing your character to your partner and to your audience, you turn yourself into an interrogator. And that’s no fun for anyone.”

“…as soon as you start asking a bunch of questions or start talking about the past, the scene comes to a screeching halt.”

“…a new rule or guideline for our dialogue: don’t dictate the action. Or perhaps in simpler terms: don’t boss each other around.”

“…what you do in normal life is not theater. Theater is compressed time and space, artificial dialogue, and heightened situations. It is our job as good actors to help the audience believe it’s real and natural. And I think it helps if we believe in the given circumstances ourselves. The more we commit to the character and the play, improvised or scripted, the better we are able to get to that place of the believable.”