Improve

We did some improvisation exercises in class which turned out to be even harder that what I expected. It’s easy to say “listen to each other” “accept, accept, accept,” “respond” “build on each other’s ideas” but to do it is a whole different thing. I think the main problem with us is that there’s no trust between us. What I mean is, there’s times in which I do have ideas, I do have something in mind that I can say, but I’m just too nervous to share them with the class, because I don’t know how they’ll respond to that. Also, I’ve noticed it’s way harder to come up with something when it’s you doing the improvisation. For example, when I see other groups improvising, and they get to a point they don’t know what to do, and their group members can’t come up with something, it’s easy for a member from the audience to think of something, but not for the group members, who have to come up with something. This is probably because of the pressure on them because not only are they trying to make it work, but they’re also trying to come up with something new that others have not done, and they’re also trying to come up with something funny to do. A class member said something last time which I think it makes a lot of sense: if you’re trying to make your audience laugh, you’ll bore them, if your intentions are to keep the dialogue going, they’ll crack up. The reason for this is that if you’re trying to make the audience laugh, you take too much time thinking about what to do or what to say, and eventually they get bored, but if you just keep the dialogue going on, eventually it starts being funny because the audience can see the actors successfully building up on each other’s ideas. Still as I said, I can analyze the whole exercise and see what I’m doing wrong, but doing it right is easier said than done.