I went to see the Armando at iO tonight (the Armando is a long form format, one of the players performs monologues based on the suggestion and the scenes are inspired by the monologues). The Armando at iO is basically the All-Star game. Players from Second City mainstage, from different iO teams and teachers without troupes, perform. These guys are very experienced have been there done that and bought the t-shirt. Now they only get together once week and the line-up of players changes each week, so its not like they have the luxury of building a group mind.
I have seen the show 3 times since I have been in Chicago. Tonight's show had a really tight first half where people were bouncing off each other's ideas brilliantly. Scenes were allowed to develop further then I have seen before and short gag driven scenes were chucked in to vary the pace. The second half started in much the same fashion, however, a few scenes started to go array. This is not unusual in an improv show. What was surprising was that they then started coming out saying "You read your lines wrong lets do that again". Thereby breaking the illusion of the 4th wall, and saying to the audience "ouu this is going badly lets see if we can cover it up". For me this is one of the worst things you can do as an improviser. If a scene is going badly then either edit it off or come in and heighten it. It got to the stage where you could tell that they were willing the lights to go down as they got stuck in treacle towards the end.
The point of this blog is not to rinse the players but as a demonstration to aspiring improvisers that it is ok to cock up, it happens to the best.
I have seen the show 3 times since I have been in Chicago. Tonight's show had a really tight first half where people were bouncing off each other's ideas brilliantly. Scenes were allowed to develop further then I have seen before and short gag driven scenes were chucked in to vary the pace. The second half started in much the same fashion, however, a few scenes started to go array. This is not unusual in an improv show. What was surprising was that they then started coming out saying "You read your lines wrong lets do that again". Thereby breaking the illusion of the 4th wall, and saying to the audience "ouu this is going badly lets see if we can cover it up". For me this is one of the worst things you can do as an improviser. If a scene is going badly then either edit it off or come in and heighten it. It got to the stage where you could tell that they were willing the lights to go down as they got stuck in treacle towards the end.
The point of this blog is not to rinse the players but as a demonstration to aspiring improvisers that it is ok to cock up, it happens to the best.
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