Susan Messing - 6/4/07 - Part 2
JF: What do you think the impact The Annoyance has been on the Chicago comedy and theater scene and even broader?
SM: I think it was a real start off point for people to have permission to say whatever you wanted to say on stage, and now everybody does. I think you have to look at the history of it to see ‘Oh, maybe we were the precursors of all that.’ After us, Torso Theater came out and did ‘Campbell Cheerleaders on Crack.’ I could see people mimicking certain styles of shows we were doing. Or creating whole shows through improv, which is what Cardiff Giant ended up doing, but I think that was based off of what they had done with The Annoyance Theater.
JF: They did Urinetown, right?
SM: That’s Greg Codis. He’s out of Cardiff Giant. But when my mom saw Urinetown on Broadway she said ‘It reminded me a lot of an Annoyance show.’ That was her first comment. I didn’t ask her if it reminded her of an Annoyance show. It felt very loose. Part of the joke of the Annoyance was you can’t say you’re the star of our next musical. It really didn’t matter how good you were. It certainly was an attitude as well. We didn’t have auditions. There was this guy Ken Mancy who saw Coed Prison Sluts 72 times. You can imagine he needed a hobby, then the 73rd time he was on stage as the warden. Then we would do holiday shows and Ken would get dressed up. He was like [does a voice] ‘Ken Mancy, already in his forties. He just kind of had a very basic life, and he worked for Buena Vista film.’ A very boring man with a very monotone voice. He reminded me of Larry ‘Bud’ Melman. We’d stick him in a unitard with skulls and cross bones all over it. He’d be ‘Ken, as a skeleton.’ After a while, everything was game. I think we loosened people up. I think people saw us and thought that it was ok to go there. [Mick] is a big fan of lack of censorship. When I play at iO, I’m careful to acknowledge the integrity of the stage, same thing with Second City. I don’t want to alienate the audience or my peer group. By walking in the door, it doesn’t matter what time slot I’m in, I’m protected. I can say whatever I want to say and that’s nice. It’s nice not to have to catch yourself.
JF: Do you think that the training center there is unique? Do you think that the Annoyance has a unique approach to improv?
SM: It totally comes out of Mick, the whole premise of taking care of yourself at the top of the scene, whereas someone like Charna at Improv Olympic says ‘Take care of your partner.’ Mick says ‘Yes, you should take care of your partner, but the best way to take care of your partner is to take care of yourself for the scene.’ So, if your partner looks at you and you’re not panicking, that’s a pleasant place to be. You can’t take care of someone in lieu of yourself, like saying ‘You make me whole.’ You know what I mean? Now, granted, I can’t do it without my friend. I cannot do it without my friend, but the only thing I own in the scene is me. I don’t own your plot. I don’t own anything, but I can always put a person in your plot.
I created the level 2 curriculum at iO. When I teach it at iO, I’m bringing an Annoyance idea with me. It makes a powerful improviser. I don’t think it makes a selfish, bad improviser. I think it makes a solid improviser. Have you read Mick’s book?
JF: Yeah.
SM: I like his book. When you see Annoyance members improvising, I’m not saying it’s always good, but they don’t look scared. They don’t look scared as an improviser, so you disconnect and go ‘Ew. Yuck. I’m scared of them. I’m worried for them.’ That will make you disconnected and not enjoy the joy ride.
JF: What were you doing after Blue Velveeta?
SM: At one point Mitch [Rouse] and Jay [Leggett] sat Tommy Booker and I down and said ‘You can’t do this and The Annoyance. You have to make a choice.’ They didn’t want to go up first, because they were the headliners, the top dog team. They decided that they always had to go up second. It was more important for us to keep this status spot on the roster than for us to all play together. I thought ‘Well, I’m going to go where they don’t make me choose,’ because The Annoyance didn’t care what else I did. So, I left Blue Velveeta for a while, then they wanted to do this ‘Southern Comfort Comedy Team Challenge’ thing that Charna set up with a liquor company, where the winnings would be that we would tour military based with Southern Comfort in hand. You can only imagine how fun that would be. We were so stupid. Charna asked me if I would come back to Blue Velveeta for that, so I did. And we won. And we went to military bases. And I was the only woman. We would ask for a suggestion and the men would say ‘Show me your tits.’ Then we’d all drink Southern Comfort. It was warm and sticky like syrup, and invariably someone would throw up. [laughs]
I left iO for a while, and started doing only Annoyance stuff, then I was doing only Annoyance and wanted to teach for iO. I don’t know why. Oh, I was teaching for Mick. I was teaching a ‘Ladies Class,’ which I fucking hated. I didn’t want to teach ‘ladies.’ I wanted to teach people. I did realize there was a need for it at the time. Women were very victim-y in this work. It was rare that you got the Amy [Poehler]s and the Tina [Fey]s. Women were still blaming men for their misfortune, and I wasn’t. I was just thrilled to play with them. So, Mick had Jodi Lennon and I teach a class together, then I went to Charna and said ‘I want to teach for you.’ She said ‘If you want to teach, you have to coach.’ I’m thinking ‘Miles Stroth started like 6 years after me, and you’re making me coach instead of teach?’ I said fine and went and coached 3 teams for a year and a half, and I coached them fucking hard. Every day I’d go home and make up exercises, high in my tub. Finally, I came to her a year and a half later with a full curriculum. I said ‘You need this and this is why. You have a bunch of people standing around and talking about it and you’re boring me. It’s a character, environment and teamwork class.’ That’s how that started and she’s made a bajillion dollars off me since.
JF: I’ve heard you make up a lot of exercises. Not a lot of coaches do that. Why do you think that is and do you think that’s a shortcoming of theirs?
SM: I don’t know if it’s a shortcoming of theirs. I can’t comment on anywhere I’m not. I think every team is unique and every coach is unique. You have to balance how much of this is teaching and how much of this is getting your team to be a cohesive unit and ready for a show. I’ve always felt creative [with making new exercises], like this is an exercise I’d do, or this hits my gay zone really tight, so let’s cross it. And if they were willing to do it, I was willing to show them. Actually, everybody who has ever committed fully to anything I’ve made them to do has looked great doing it. The worst thing that’s going to happen is maybe somebody laughs at them and we’re doing comedy, fuck you. [laughs] The failure rate is incredibly low in comedy if you pursue it with joy. Even a glorious failure is a huge success, don’t you think?
JF: It’s interesting.
SM: I don’t know. That’s just me. You improvise a lot Josh?
JF: Yeah.
SM: Yeah? You like that shit?
JF: Failing? I’m kind of tentative about making mistakes, or what I feel are mistakes.
SM: Isn’t that interesting? You’re tentative about making mistakes in an imperfect art form where there are no mistakes. Not only that, you’re greatest mistakes will become your greatest joys. I did a show a couple weeks ago with Alex Fendrich and Rachel Mason and I’m like the Yogi Berra of improv. I say bullshit all the time that just vomits out of my mouth, and I immediately of course want to take it back, but you can’t. It’s in nature now. I said ‘Starboooks,’ instead of Starbucks. Alex says ‘Ahhh, yes, Starboooks, almost as good as Starbucks.’ Rachel said ‘Yes, yes, it’s with an umlaut.’ I thought to myself ‘How fucking awesome that Starbucks has a bastard cousin, Starboooks. It’s kind of like the Avis of coffee shops.’ And I’m so fucking gullible I’ll buy into it the more I hear about it. The day that I realize ‘Fuck it. People don’t judge my mistakes unless I telegraph that I’m an idiot.’
I think The Annoyance is great at protecting the freak, that’s what I call it. If I walk around in circles for four hours at iO, I’m retarded or crazy Jenny. If I walk around in circles for four hours at The Annoyance, I’m just Jenny. You know what I’m saying? When I’m playing anywhere except The Annoyance, I’m making sure that I relax what might appear as a stereotype unless somebody joins me in that energy, so we’re protected by style, I relax my crack a little bit, so I can play with someone who’s as grounded as a Dorff or a Peter Gwinn or anybody.
JF: Do you teach differently in different training centers?
SM: Yes, here’s my curriculum at iO: I teach what I created for other teachers to teach what I teach as well. It’s funny to watch them teach Doublemint Twins get fucked up the ass, but they do it so I’m not going to complain. At The Annoyance, the level 3 class usually has a big case of F.I.D.S., which is frustrated improviser disease, which I’m trying to eradicate from the planet, although it can never really be cured only managed. Nice improvisers disease will turn into F.I.D.S. too, that’s the tentative, quiet improviser who holds up the back wall and says ‘Oh, I’m just a support player,’ one of those. I’ll tell you this: you will ultimately get so frustrated not sharing who you are and saying ‘fuck it,’ which is really where Mick comes from, ‘Fuck it. I’m great.’ You will jump through that, because you’ll get too frustrated with it. There is no right or wrong way to express yourself, and those aren’t rules. They’re suggestions that might get you there faster. They might put you in the power ride faster. Even Mick’s book, just suggestions. Everything is just a suggestion. Ultimately, I studied everywhere and became the improviser that I wanted to be. The way that I teach is, this is just my opinion from going in the trenches the other week, I don’t want anybody to go to hell. So, I really come from a very empathetic space.
JF: How do you encourage people to get off the backline? It is just a matter of time sometimes?
SM: Either you are going to have a breaking point or you are finally jump in there and realize that it doesn’t hurt. You come out and you’re proud of yourself afterwards. Followers have to turn into leaders. Leaders have to turn into followers. I was one of those frustrated leaders, one of those ‘Come on you guys,’ then I relaxed my crack and joined in the predominant energy. This is not about me. I’m an integral part of a whole. That also means that an improviser who has nice improvisers disease who says ‘This is nice.’ If we don’t know what it is, it sure as hell isn’t nice. Start getting specific, because I love your brain. There’s only two kind of improvisers I hate, that’s an improviser who telegraphs ‘I suck’ or who telegraphs ‘you suck.’ Everybody is on the exact same level playing field. I don’t believe that your college degrees are what make you intelligent. I believe your life experience pulls you out there. You’re only limited by your lack of imagination and fear of appearing stupid. Now I’m quite sure you have a vivid imagination, which is why you watched the show one day you said ‘I want to do this,’ or ‘I know I can do this one day.’ Well, you were right, so start being right. You understand what I’m saying?
JF: Yeah.
SM: I say to people ‘I can’t push you. I can’t manipulate your spine. The only thing you own in the scene is yourself. So, why don’t you try something on and see what the fuck happens? And if you don’t like it, do it more.’ [laughs] That’s the whole weirdness of improv. It goes against human nature, which is if you don’t like it, you’re prerogative as an adult is you don’t have to do it. I’m an adult. In improv, if you don’t like it, you have to do it more, because it’s your commitment to something that’s going to pull out the comedy, not hanging around saying wacky, clever shit. That’s hard to do. I don’t work that way anymore, because that’s too hard for me to do. I just work uncensored and trust that everything I put out there will be added to the stew, and by the end we have stew. Now it’s our choice whether we want to make stew or broth with water in a pot or a rich, aromatic stew. It’s up to us. We don’t know what the stew is until the scene over. Why are we all giving up on our shit?
I’ll let you know another little secret too. If you ever see me hugging the back wall, definitely I’m feeling insecure that night. I’ll tell you this: the power place on the stage is downstage, because our audience is on our side. You want to feel the fucking love, and you want to recognize that what you’re doing is important, you hang out downstage and you’ll discover that what you’re doing is important to the scene. It’s not just object work, not the coffee-stall-until-the-argument-in-your-apartment-scene anymore. It’s going to be that you’re drinking coffee. Now throw out a reason. ‘I was up with the baby all last night.’ Boom. Or ‘If I don’t I have a migraine.’ Now you have something in your arsenal to work with. Mick always says ‘Do something. Anything.’ One of the things about the UCB, you know how fast they play?
JF: Yeah.
SM: Yeah, because their whole gig is ‘finding the game.’ To them, I think it means the first weird or goofy thing that happens in the scene, but the game in the scene is your creation. It’s anything that you do more than once. If my contact lenses are bugging me at the top of my scene, if I wear them, which I don’t, but let’s say my contact lenses bug me and I’m blinking my eyes within the first three seconds of my scene your audience thinks you’re blinking. Then if your contact lenses stop bugging you and you stop blinking they go ‘Where did blinky go!? Come back!?’ That’s when they get mad. They don’t get mad when you make a choice. They get mad when you drop it. Your first 30 seconds of your scene is your promise to the audience about who you will be. We will discover where you are and what’s up, because scenes definitely aren’t about plot and it’s definitely not about your funny. It’s about people. I don’t care where you play. It’s got to be about people. So, ringing a bell could be a game. It doesn’t have to be wacky, but if I get lost in a scene and dropping it and go on to something that I perceive would be better, i.e. I suck, and recommit to the choice I made at the top of the scene and heighten them I will discover a new plot or at the very least the reason why I was doing this. I share that and something happens. Or somebody else comes up with a reason for it.
SM: I think it was a real start off point for people to have permission to say whatever you wanted to say on stage, and now everybody does. I think you have to look at the history of it to see ‘Oh, maybe we were the precursors of all that.’ After us, Torso Theater came out and did ‘Campbell Cheerleaders on Crack.’ I could see people mimicking certain styles of shows we were doing. Or creating whole shows through improv, which is what Cardiff Giant ended up doing, but I think that was based off of what they had done with The Annoyance Theater.
JF: They did Urinetown, right?
SM: That’s Greg Codis. He’s out of Cardiff Giant. But when my mom saw Urinetown on Broadway she said ‘It reminded me a lot of an Annoyance show.’ That was her first comment. I didn’t ask her if it reminded her of an Annoyance show. It felt very loose. Part of the joke of the Annoyance was you can’t say you’re the star of our next musical. It really didn’t matter how good you were. It certainly was an attitude as well. We didn’t have auditions. There was this guy Ken Mancy who saw Coed Prison Sluts 72 times. You can imagine he needed a hobby, then the 73rd time he was on stage as the warden. Then we would do holiday shows and Ken would get dressed up. He was like [does a voice] ‘Ken Mancy, already in his forties. He just kind of had a very basic life, and he worked for Buena Vista film.’ A very boring man with a very monotone voice. He reminded me of Larry ‘Bud’ Melman. We’d stick him in a unitard with skulls and cross bones all over it. He’d be ‘Ken, as a skeleton.’ After a while, everything was game. I think we loosened people up. I think people saw us and thought that it was ok to go there. [Mick] is a big fan of lack of censorship. When I play at iO, I’m careful to acknowledge the integrity of the stage, same thing with Second City. I don’t want to alienate the audience or my peer group. By walking in the door, it doesn’t matter what time slot I’m in, I’m protected. I can say whatever I want to say and that’s nice. It’s nice not to have to catch yourself.
JF: Do you think that the training center there is unique? Do you think that the Annoyance has a unique approach to improv?
SM: It totally comes out of Mick, the whole premise of taking care of yourself at the top of the scene, whereas someone like Charna at Improv Olympic says ‘Take care of your partner.’ Mick says ‘Yes, you should take care of your partner, but the best way to take care of your partner is to take care of yourself for the scene.’ So, if your partner looks at you and you’re not panicking, that’s a pleasant place to be. You can’t take care of someone in lieu of yourself, like saying ‘You make me whole.’ You know what I mean? Now, granted, I can’t do it without my friend. I cannot do it without my friend, but the only thing I own in the scene is me. I don’t own your plot. I don’t own anything, but I can always put a person in your plot.
I created the level 2 curriculum at iO. When I teach it at iO, I’m bringing an Annoyance idea with me. It makes a powerful improviser. I don’t think it makes a selfish, bad improviser. I think it makes a solid improviser. Have you read Mick’s book?
JF: Yeah.
SM: I like his book. When you see Annoyance members improvising, I’m not saying it’s always good, but they don’t look scared. They don’t look scared as an improviser, so you disconnect and go ‘Ew. Yuck. I’m scared of them. I’m worried for them.’ That will make you disconnected and not enjoy the joy ride.
JF: What were you doing after Blue Velveeta?
SM: At one point Mitch [Rouse] and Jay [Leggett] sat Tommy Booker and I down and said ‘You can’t do this and The Annoyance. You have to make a choice.’ They didn’t want to go up first, because they were the headliners, the top dog team. They decided that they always had to go up second. It was more important for us to keep this status spot on the roster than for us to all play together. I thought ‘Well, I’m going to go where they don’t make me choose,’ because The Annoyance didn’t care what else I did. So, I left Blue Velveeta for a while, then they wanted to do this ‘Southern Comfort Comedy Team Challenge’ thing that Charna set up with a liquor company, where the winnings would be that we would tour military based with Southern Comfort in hand. You can only imagine how fun that would be. We were so stupid. Charna asked me if I would come back to Blue Velveeta for that, so I did. And we won. And we went to military bases. And I was the only woman. We would ask for a suggestion and the men would say ‘Show me your tits.’ Then we’d all drink Southern Comfort. It was warm and sticky like syrup, and invariably someone would throw up. [laughs]
I left iO for a while, and started doing only Annoyance stuff, then I was doing only Annoyance and wanted to teach for iO. I don’t know why. Oh, I was teaching for Mick. I was teaching a ‘Ladies Class,’ which I fucking hated. I didn’t want to teach ‘ladies.’ I wanted to teach people. I did realize there was a need for it at the time. Women were very victim-y in this work. It was rare that you got the Amy [Poehler]s and the Tina [Fey]s. Women were still blaming men for their misfortune, and I wasn’t. I was just thrilled to play with them. So, Mick had Jodi Lennon and I teach a class together, then I went to Charna and said ‘I want to teach for you.’ She said ‘If you want to teach, you have to coach.’ I’m thinking ‘Miles Stroth started like 6 years after me, and you’re making me coach instead of teach?’ I said fine and went and coached 3 teams for a year and a half, and I coached them fucking hard. Every day I’d go home and make up exercises, high in my tub. Finally, I came to her a year and a half later with a full curriculum. I said ‘You need this and this is why. You have a bunch of people standing around and talking about it and you’re boring me. It’s a character, environment and teamwork class.’ That’s how that started and she’s made a bajillion dollars off me since.
JF: I’ve heard you make up a lot of exercises. Not a lot of coaches do that. Why do you think that is and do you think that’s a shortcoming of theirs?
SM: I don’t know if it’s a shortcoming of theirs. I can’t comment on anywhere I’m not. I think every team is unique and every coach is unique. You have to balance how much of this is teaching and how much of this is getting your team to be a cohesive unit and ready for a show. I’ve always felt creative [with making new exercises], like this is an exercise I’d do, or this hits my gay zone really tight, so let’s cross it. And if they were willing to do it, I was willing to show them. Actually, everybody who has ever committed fully to anything I’ve made them to do has looked great doing it. The worst thing that’s going to happen is maybe somebody laughs at them and we’re doing comedy, fuck you. [laughs] The failure rate is incredibly low in comedy if you pursue it with joy. Even a glorious failure is a huge success, don’t you think?
JF: It’s interesting.
SM: I don’t know. That’s just me. You improvise a lot Josh?
JF: Yeah.
SM: Yeah? You like that shit?
JF: Failing? I’m kind of tentative about making mistakes, or what I feel are mistakes.
SM: Isn’t that interesting? You’re tentative about making mistakes in an imperfect art form where there are no mistakes. Not only that, you’re greatest mistakes will become your greatest joys. I did a show a couple weeks ago with Alex Fendrich and Rachel Mason and I’m like the Yogi Berra of improv. I say bullshit all the time that just vomits out of my mouth, and I immediately of course want to take it back, but you can’t. It’s in nature now. I said ‘Starboooks,’ instead of Starbucks. Alex says ‘Ahhh, yes, Starboooks, almost as good as Starbucks.’ Rachel said ‘Yes, yes, it’s with an umlaut.’ I thought to myself ‘How fucking awesome that Starbucks has a bastard cousin, Starboooks. It’s kind of like the Avis of coffee shops.’ And I’m so fucking gullible I’ll buy into it the more I hear about it. The day that I realize ‘Fuck it. People don’t judge my mistakes unless I telegraph that I’m an idiot.’
I think The Annoyance is great at protecting the freak, that’s what I call it. If I walk around in circles for four hours at iO, I’m retarded or crazy Jenny. If I walk around in circles for four hours at The Annoyance, I’m just Jenny. You know what I’m saying? When I’m playing anywhere except The Annoyance, I’m making sure that I relax what might appear as a stereotype unless somebody joins me in that energy, so we’re protected by style, I relax my crack a little bit, so I can play with someone who’s as grounded as a Dorff or a Peter Gwinn or anybody.
JF: Do you teach differently in different training centers?
SM: Yes, here’s my curriculum at iO: I teach what I created for other teachers to teach what I teach as well. It’s funny to watch them teach Doublemint Twins get fucked up the ass, but they do it so I’m not going to complain. At The Annoyance, the level 3 class usually has a big case of F.I.D.S., which is frustrated improviser disease, which I’m trying to eradicate from the planet, although it can never really be cured only managed. Nice improvisers disease will turn into F.I.D.S. too, that’s the tentative, quiet improviser who holds up the back wall and says ‘Oh, I’m just a support player,’ one of those. I’ll tell you this: you will ultimately get so frustrated not sharing who you are and saying ‘fuck it,’ which is really where Mick comes from, ‘Fuck it. I’m great.’ You will jump through that, because you’ll get too frustrated with it. There is no right or wrong way to express yourself, and those aren’t rules. They’re suggestions that might get you there faster. They might put you in the power ride faster. Even Mick’s book, just suggestions. Everything is just a suggestion. Ultimately, I studied everywhere and became the improviser that I wanted to be. The way that I teach is, this is just my opinion from going in the trenches the other week, I don’t want anybody to go to hell. So, I really come from a very empathetic space.
JF: How do you encourage people to get off the backline? It is just a matter of time sometimes?
SM: Either you are going to have a breaking point or you are finally jump in there and realize that it doesn’t hurt. You come out and you’re proud of yourself afterwards. Followers have to turn into leaders. Leaders have to turn into followers. I was one of those frustrated leaders, one of those ‘Come on you guys,’ then I relaxed my crack and joined in the predominant energy. This is not about me. I’m an integral part of a whole. That also means that an improviser who has nice improvisers disease who says ‘This is nice.’ If we don’t know what it is, it sure as hell isn’t nice. Start getting specific, because I love your brain. There’s only two kind of improvisers I hate, that’s an improviser who telegraphs ‘I suck’ or who telegraphs ‘you suck.’ Everybody is on the exact same level playing field. I don’t believe that your college degrees are what make you intelligent. I believe your life experience pulls you out there. You’re only limited by your lack of imagination and fear of appearing stupid. Now I’m quite sure you have a vivid imagination, which is why you watched the show one day you said ‘I want to do this,’ or ‘I know I can do this one day.’ Well, you were right, so start being right. You understand what I’m saying?
JF: Yeah.
SM: I say to people ‘I can’t push you. I can’t manipulate your spine. The only thing you own in the scene is yourself. So, why don’t you try something on and see what the fuck happens? And if you don’t like it, do it more.’ [laughs] That’s the whole weirdness of improv. It goes against human nature, which is if you don’t like it, you’re prerogative as an adult is you don’t have to do it. I’m an adult. In improv, if you don’t like it, you have to do it more, because it’s your commitment to something that’s going to pull out the comedy, not hanging around saying wacky, clever shit. That’s hard to do. I don’t work that way anymore, because that’s too hard for me to do. I just work uncensored and trust that everything I put out there will be added to the stew, and by the end we have stew. Now it’s our choice whether we want to make stew or broth with water in a pot or a rich, aromatic stew. It’s up to us. We don’t know what the stew is until the scene over. Why are we all giving up on our shit?
I’ll let you know another little secret too. If you ever see me hugging the back wall, definitely I’m feeling insecure that night. I’ll tell you this: the power place on the stage is downstage, because our audience is on our side. You want to feel the fucking love, and you want to recognize that what you’re doing is important, you hang out downstage and you’ll discover that what you’re doing is important to the scene. It’s not just object work, not the coffee-stall-until-the-argument-in-your-apartment-scene anymore. It’s going to be that you’re drinking coffee. Now throw out a reason. ‘I was up with the baby all last night.’ Boom. Or ‘If I don’t I have a migraine.’ Now you have something in your arsenal to work with. Mick always says ‘Do something. Anything.’ One of the things about the UCB, you know how fast they play?
JF: Yeah.
SM: Yeah, because their whole gig is ‘finding the game.’ To them, I think it means the first weird or goofy thing that happens in the scene, but the game in the scene is your creation. It’s anything that you do more than once. If my contact lenses are bugging me at the top of my scene, if I wear them, which I don’t, but let’s say my contact lenses bug me and I’m blinking my eyes within the first three seconds of my scene your audience thinks you’re blinking. Then if your contact lenses stop bugging you and you stop blinking they go ‘Where did blinky go!? Come back!?’ That’s when they get mad. They don’t get mad when you make a choice. They get mad when you drop it. Your first 30 seconds of your scene is your promise to the audience about who you will be. We will discover where you are and what’s up, because scenes definitely aren’t about plot and it’s definitely not about your funny. It’s about people. I don’t care where you play. It’s got to be about people. So, ringing a bell could be a game. It doesn’t have to be wacky, but if I get lost in a scene and dropping it and go on to something that I perceive would be better, i.e. I suck, and recommit to the choice I made at the top of the scene and heighten them I will discover a new plot or at the very least the reason why I was doing this. I share that and something happens. Or somebody else comes up with a reason for it.
posted by JoshFult at 11:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home