What we learned from NCCAF 2010

[jmcdonal23]

Wow!

So much to process after an INTENSE 5 days! This festival is really amazing and such a great opportunity to be able to host it at DSI. I hope everyone took the chance to get involved and see shows and take the workshops. It helps us all grow as performers to see the spectrum of styles, experience, energy, etc. These are things we can now take back to our groups/teams and say let's try this or let's stay away from this.

Workshops:
My first workshop was with Corey Brown. We talked about game of the scene. The performers in the class all had some knowledge of game even though they were from both short and longform backgrounds. Corey stated that game was commonly thought about as the first uncommon or out of the ordinary thing that happens in the scene. Corey took it a step further and said it was the first uncommon or out of the ordinary event that the players agreed upon as the game. We played a simple game of Duck, Duck, Goose to start our exercises. The goose is the the first uncommon event and there are certain rules that follow which everyone is in agreement over. Now of course in the scene the rules aren't set yet so when that first glimpse of a game appears, the easiest way to confirm is to repeat the action immediately. This will signal to your scene partner that the rules are now established and the game of the scene can begin! Another takeaway I had from the workshop was to play at the height of your intelligence. Since we are not real doctors, lawyers, or astronauts when we play them, we aren't going to get all the technical stuff right. But instead of joking out or taking the scene to Sillytown, USA we should play the characters as best we can and when the natural mistake happens, embrace it, and let it inspire the funny.

My second workshop was with Jeff Griggs. After somewhat successfully going through the warm-up game "George" we moved to being a good scene partner. Jeff said half of that was being a good listener, and we practiced a "secret" exercise in remembering facts. Jeff also made the comment that the better you know a person in real life, the easier it is to play with them on stage which I feel is very true. Big take away was to focus on the scene on every thing that is said and done so you can play with it to the max. It's too easy to let our minds wonder and possible miss out on major opportunities in a scene or show. We then ran some two person scenes and worked on following the fun.

Shows:
I REALLY enjoyed watching Death by Roo Roo. They played so fearless yet kept each other in check. The BAT was unreal. This is a form you have to check out if you have never. All in all, I hope we can take the energy of the festival into all our work at DSI and just have it EXPLODE!!!

[jakalili]

My first workshop was with Jill Bernard. We played around with distinguishing relationship scenes from game scenes. We also played with how we could take any initiation and turn it into primarily a relationship scene or primarily a game scene. The most successful scenes:

1. Had a strong , clearly defined game(s) and/or a strong, clearly defined relationship.
2. Allowed the game(s) to dance with the relationship – breaking from the game was most successful when the relationship was developed during the break.
3. Heightened one thing, instead of “shopping around” for things to heighten. How far can you go with one idea, without adding new, parallel ideas?
4. Kept the elements that were “shiny”, to the players and to the audience, and allowed other elements to fade out.
5. Didn’t devolve into two players standing still, at a standard distance apart, talking.
6. *Said* no but *did* yes. “No, I could never kill my prize goats, boo hoo; I’m sorry George and Samson and Delilah…” (as player is slitting their throats)

Jill also talked about Voice/Attitude/Posture, and how easy it is to immediately determine a character just by changing one of these elements. I loved her emphasis on honesty and on playing “sweet” relationship scenes that can be extremely funny without being overtly weird or over the top. The weird scenes are great, but it’s also nice to know that you can have truthful funny in addition to over the top funny. She also emphasized specificity: “ I left my red F150 running in the Kroger parking lot” is much better than “I left my car running”. We played around with the game of scene by having two players start a scene with a clear game, then having two new players take over the scene and try to play the same game with side coaching from the original players. This was a marvelous exercise that allowed us to see our choices from the audience’s point of view.

My second session with Greg Tavares was completely different from the one with Jill, at least in terms of approach (my take on this may be colored by my enormous lunch and subsequent late afternoon stupor). He emphasized cooperation between players, which he says begins before the scene even starts, with a successful join. It is best for the person who joins to do so without dialogue (so as not to crush the potential initiation: Oh great, you brought me potatoes! (Damn, those aren’t potatoes, I was holding a baby! But now I’m holding potatoes.)), but anything else that shows support and bolsters the physical/vocal initiation is awesome. We played with this for awhile. We also played with harvesting information from our scene partner. We did a bit of long form at the end, playing with developing a successful second beat. Successful scenes in this session:

1. Had players fully supporting one another, from the join to the end.
2. Had lots of physicality.
3. Had lots of detail, physical and/or verbal.
4. Could have the players ask questions and/or talk about what was happening in the scene IF these things gave gifts to the players and/or heightened the scene.
5. Were about the journey, not about solving the problem.
6. Balanced Point of View with context.

Greg also discussed the relationship between context and cooperation – the less context the players offer, the more cooperation is needed to make the scene engaging to the audience. We also spoke briefly about essence versus circumstance – is the character *essentially* a nervous character, or only when she has a gun to her head? This led to the idea of layering essence with circumstance.

I am so thankful for these workshops, especially since they came right after 201, and after weeks of awesome comedy at DSI.

Oh, and I now have a comedic crush on Paul Thomas. His expressions, economy of movement and words, and timing rock my world. I don't generally "fan" people, but I'm a fan of his.

[Zach]

Awesome.

What else?

[rene]

I learned that I want to come to NC every few months and play.

Seriously, you guys are awesome.

[Zach]

Originally Posted by rene

I learned that I want to come to NC every few months and play.

Seriously, you guys are awesome.

Okay.

[RickSkarbez]

For whatever reason, I've been lazy and not posted this yet. Better late than never, though, I guess.

These two workshops (Will & Alison, and Dave Buckman) covered a lot of similar ground: Have strong emotions (they're the basis for your scene), play real characters, play honest, play true to yourself.

They were both awesome. These people are great.

Workshop 1: Will Luera & Alison Royer

• You can't have a scene without emotion. It (1) informs your initiation, and (2) gives you something to heighten from.
• Slow down - don't be afraid of silence in a scene. Use it to find/heighten your emotional reaction.
• Exercise: Each person picked an emotion (silently). Will then said a thing ("grilled cheese", "the mall", whatever), and each person had to say "I feel X about Y," from the emotion they had previously chosen. A permutation on this was then having to say "I feel X about Y, because Z."
• In a scene, someone can negate all your shit, but they can't negate your emotion. It gives you something to hold onto if your other details get negated (or if there aren't any to begin with).
• Look at a list of emotions (say, Wikipedia's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions) either as part of an exercise or just to get your brain moving before practice a show. All too often we just think of the same 4 or 5 emotions, when there are dozens to choose from. Don't shortchange yourself.
• Exercise: 2 person scene. Each person starts with a physicality and/or physical action, but never address it in the scene. Focus on not looking, just let the action inform the scene. (This was to get a student to get out of always staring down her partner to figure out what was going on. Physicality can inform the scene without necessarily becoming its focus.)
• TRUST. Trust in yourself, and in your partner, that you'll find the scene.
• Exercise: Personal-monologue hotspot
• After doing a personal-monologue hotspot: Why would we we ever need to create something that doesn't exist? There's so much real inspiration in our lives already, don't feel the pressure to make something up and go off to crazytown. Do something real. Stop creating.
• Don't invent, discover.
• Exercise: Physicality-match hotspot
• When all else fails, you can always pull out a gun, fall in love, or confess a secret to raise the stakes.
• Fall in love with the details of your scene.

• You never just go to "a show". Cirque du Soleil, Avatar in IMAX, French new wave, Wagner's ring cycle…all "shows", but gifts that drive very different scenes
• Use the word "again". If your partner killed a hooker, fine, whatever. But if your partner killed a hooker AGAIN, that's a whole different character.

Workshop 2: Dave Buckman

• Bring what's inside of you to the scene
• Exercise: "Feel and reveal". 2 person scene. In between each line of dialogue, Dave would do a slow five-count before the other player was allowed to respond. For those five seconds, silently react and build the emotional response to the previous line.

• This was ostensibly an exercise about finding the emotional response, but I felt that it was a really effective exercise to demonstrate how effective having BIG emotions and expressing them in a BIG, THEATRICAL way could be. Go to the point it feels ridiculous and unnatural, and keep going. The scenes where people didn't go all out were just awful, and the ones where they did were hilarious. Five seconds of silence is a looooooooong time if you don't have a purpose/you're not doing something interesting.
• Exercise: Point-of-view freeze. 2 person scene. After ~ 3 lines of dialogue, Dave would stop the scene, and ask a bunch of questions about your character. "Who are you?", "Who are you related to your partner?", "How does he/she make you feel?", "How would you describe your character in 2-3 words?", "What's your thesis statement?", etc. Really helped to focus attention on the fact that these are real people with motivations and wants and histories and inner lives, and that you always have access to all these details in your scenes.
• Go big. It's not that your character doesn't get along with the other person in the scene, it's that he doesn't get along with ANYONE. Make your characteristics general/universal.
• Pay attention to the specific words you and your partner say. What kind of person would use that word? If you have a slip of the tongue, embrace it: What does it tell you about your character?
• Exercise/Group scene: Every person up on stage at once. Take a position on the stage and a physicality. One at a time, say one line to set up your character. "I can't find the last piece of this jigsaw puzzle," "I'm so sick of Richard telling me what to do," "There's no way this project is going to get done by Friday," etc. Then do a monoscene where all these characters are having a group conversation. Each person has already initiated what they are, so we can all start the scene out on the same page. Be aware of how the character you created fits into the social group with the rest of the team.