Aidan Feldman "That's a weird combination."

How do you arrive?

When I walk into an improv jam, it always takes me a good 5-10 minutes to get in the state of mind where I can focus.  I usually start moving around slowly on my own, in a combination of stretching and mental relaxation.

I’ve heard debates in the past about how to approach improvisation cognitively.  Something we talk about in my Physical Theater class is that a clown has no past, and has no anticipation of the future: they exist completely and helplessly in the moment.  Should the mover shut out any thoughts that are not immediately relevant to the task at hand, i.e. what assignments are due tomorrow, when will they eat dinner, etc.?  On the other hand, if that is what is immediately important to the mover, shouldn’t they leverage that material?  Isn’t that the point?

A Widening Field

A widening field by Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay: Chapter 1

My favorite passage was the following factoid: “When the Crow Indians felt stuck in some habit they do everything in reverse – ride their horses backwards, eat breakfast at suppertime.”

Body Blows

This is a response to reading out of the coursepack for DANCE 572 - Performance Improvisation, journal entry #1.

Body Blows by Tim Miller: Foreword by Tony Kushner and Introduction

I was lucky to have participated in the workshop with Tim Miller when he came to town, and went to see his performance 1001 Beds at the Aut Bar.  I don’t know of many performers that make a career doing solo performance, and this was among the most engaging shows of any kind that I have ever seen.  I admire how exposing his performances are (in all senses).  I never felt that he was putting on a persona or twisting the truth in any way, which is so easy to hide behind as a performer.  That is something I have been learning in Malcolm Tulip’s Physical Theater class: it is much easier to go onstage and pretend to be someone else with fake problems, rather than being yourself.  On top of that, being isolated as a soloist takes another huge batch of courage.  As Tony Kushner put it in the Foreword, Tim Miller is “democratically, expansively self-celebrating.”