Improv Comedy in 3 Easy Sentences

I would love to be able to shower you with a healthy dose of improv-y wisdom today, but the truth is, I'm not wise. At all.

What I've learned about improv comedy can fit into about three sentences. (Okay, 3 basic sentences with a couple of extra sentences for justification. What? I've told you before, I'm the Queen of Justification.)

1. Be honest. The truth is not only stranger than fiction, it's way the hell funnier, too. Just play the reality of the made-up situation you're given, and the funny will happen.
2. Don't tell jokes. For the love of unicorns, people, one-liners do not belong in improv. If you simply can't help yourself, do stand-up. That's what one-liners and jokey punchlines are designed for. Every time you go for the joke, you stop the momentum of the scene and pull the audience out of the action.
3. Choose to lose. There's just something inherently funny about a loser who accepts the loser label and runs with it. Not only that, but an on-going battle/argument/contest of any kind is b-o-r-i-n-g, and to end it someone has to lose. In real life, the loser is the loser. In improv, the loser is the BIG winner. Being labeled any kind of loser is the best gift you can get. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth by denying it and insisting you aren't, in fact, a loser.

I was thinking about writing a book about improv, but now I realize it would be a short book. Three sentences, and you're an improv expert.

By Sonnjea Blackwell

Don't Bring Your Shrink On Your Dates

There is a time and a place for analysis and, as it turns out, the time and place for analysis is NOT the same as the time and place for the thing being analyzed.

No, wait. It's not that heady, I promise. Lisa hates it when I get too heady.

Let's just say you are having difficulty in a relationship. Let's also suppose you have a therapist because it is, after all, 2011. Now, the appropriate time and place for analyzing your relationship issues would be when you visit your shrink at your regular appointment. You wouldn't bring your therapist along with you on your date to analyze your situation as it unfolded.

That might seem like common sense, but it isn't as obvious with certain other activities. And it is actually good advice for those of you who tend to analyze your improv while you are doing it.

The fact that you are analyzing the thing you are doing automatically alters the thing you are doing. So you can't be fully engaged in your scene if you are busy critiquing the scene as it happens.

If you are like me and love the intricacies and technical brilliance of good improv, it's hard to stop analyzing and just do it. At our show the other night, I got all wound up in the mistakes that were happening in scenes (mine and others') and the more analytical I got, the worse my own scenes became. Of course, by then it was too late to do anything about it because I was caught in the vicious circle of judgement.

So the moral of this story is simply: Don't bring your shrink on your date. If you are doing something, listen to Nike and just friggin' do it. There will always be plenty of time after doing it to pick it apart and analyze it from 40 different angles. And if you separate the doing and the analyzing, both of those activities will be far more satisfying.

At least I think so. I wasn't analyzing this blog as I wrote it, so it might be total crap.

By Sonnjea Blackwell

The Real Truth

The problem with having to get up at 4 a.m. on a Monday is that I tend to be a) cranky, b) literal and c) see "a". So I have already deleted two entire posts and am wracking my brain in search of a topic that is worthy of the time you lovely readers invest in reading this blog.

What would you like to read about? Unicorns? Rainbows? Fantasy football? Improv?

I was afraid of that. I'd love to help you out, peeps, but I have nothing to say about fantasy football.

So I suppose I should stick to a topic I know a little something about.

First of all, contrary to what they told you in school, rainbows are not formed when the sun's rays are refracted and reflected by drops of mist or rain. Nor are they formed when god has a message for humankind; that's just silly. Everyone knows god texts.

Rainbows are created when unicorns spin lovely ribbons of various colors and then weave them into a magical fabric made of colored ribbon mist, which is pulled up into the atmosphere by the sun's affinity for colored mist. The sun adds its golden energy to the rainbow and then lets it curve back down to earth, where it lands and spontaneously creates a pot of gold. (As everyone knows, gold coins are the physical manifestation of the sun's golden energy).

Leprechauns have peacefully co-existed with unicorns for eons, and they protect the pots of gold from thieving bandits (often referred to as "teenagers"). They also make sure the unicorns have plenty of sparkles and fairy dust for their manes and horns and, in exchange, the unicorns let the leprechauns have some of the gold.

And there you have it, people, everything Sonnjea knows about improv.

You're welcome.

By Sonnjea Blackwell

Last Laugh Saturday in Long Beach

Because I woke up with a kink in my back and can't turn my head, I'm not going to write a long blog post - I'm just going to wish you all a very happy weekend, good football choices and a laugh-out-loud good time at Held2gether presents Last Laugh Saturday tomorrow night. Hopefully I'll be able to move my head by then. Otherwise, I'll be doing a lot of mortician and Frankenstein-type characters. So, pretty much the usual, then.

By Sonnjea Blackwell

Be Better, Not Just Funnier

Do you wanna know what inspires me? Well, I'ma tell you anyway. Because, you know, that's just how I roll, people.

I'm inspired by people who struggle with certain aspects of improv, whatever those may be, and who continually put themselves out there, class after class, and shove the edges of their comfort zone a little bit further each week.

When I was in high school, I was on the swim team. One day at practice, one of the girls on the diving team was learning a complicated new dive with three flips and a twist and a half or some utterly ridiculous thing. She wasn't making it all the way over on the final flip, and she kept splatting into the water like a high-speed belly flop, only right on her face. You could hear the splat all the way across the pool.

Every time, she swam over to the side, pulled herself out of the pool and climbed determinedly up the ladder of the high dive. The coach would holler something encouraging and suggest slight adjustments to her technique. Splat. Again and again and again. She was still at it when our practice ended two hours later.

The next day at school, she had two black eyes from all the face-plants. But she had mastered the dive.

I would argue that improv is much more fun than diving. But it can be that painful (emotionally, if not physically) depending on your reasons for taking it. If your goal is just to get away from the kids for a few hours a week, you won't end up with two black eyes. But if your goal is to overcome something like shyness or to push yourself outside your comfort zone or to get more in touch with your emotions, there will most likely be days where you feel like only a crazy person would subject themselves to this kind of torture. Because it is hard to face your weaknesses and force yourself to overcome them. But it's also incredibly rewarding and life-altering and enlightening. Every time I forget about the deeper aspects of improv and get caught up in the "I need to be funnier" notion, I see a student finally overcome a personal hurdle and I get re-inspired to make myself better, not just funnier.

Obviously, improv is also about being funny and I definitely love the applause. But anyone who is out there working to best some personal demon deserves way more applause than I do for kissing a girl.

(BTW, if you want to see me kiss a girl, your best chance is to come out to Last Laugh Saturday at Hot Java this Saturday night. I'm not making any promises, but I haven't seen Barbi for ages.)

By Sonnjea Blackwell