By WICF Editor Liz McKeon
Happy Thanksgiving, ladies of comedy! Happy Thanksgiving, fans of comedic ladies! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone outside of the U.S. who has to work today (my apologies).
I'd like to direct your attention to a brilliant podcast hosted over at our sponsor ImprovBoston's site, "Fireside Improv." You know the wonderful WICF Contributor Rachel Klein, you love her. Now you can hear Rachel, along with the brilliant David Marino and Andy Short, expound on all the improv geekiness you've been missing in your life.
On the most recent episode, "Gender and Improv," the group tackles the important questions about women's roles in improv and how gender roles play out on and off the stage. Check out "Fireside Improv 9 - Gender and Improv" on the ImprovBoston Radio page.
For some choice quotes to share around the dinner table, my money's on: "I came back to improv as a married woman, mother of two. I noticed the difference that made as to how some men in the improv world would look at me versus an attractive single female counterpart of mine ... less onstage than ... you know how, when a man meets a women — you tell me if this is not true — they think maybe there's a chance I'll sleep with her? The quotient of that goes down with certain attributes." -Rachel Klein
"Is Being married one?" -David Marino
"Being married is one, but, like, ugh, she's had babies. That's a whole scary world. So there's this whole bed-able quotient that reduces [our chances onstage.]"
Or chew on these two bon mots from Rachel:
"Men don't have to be representative of all men when they speak, but women represent all women."
"People are more willing to look at tubby, middle-aged men than at tubby, middle-aged women."
I'd like to make a shout out to Patti Jane McCauley McLoughlin, for the deviled eggs and conversation. Happy holiday!
Showing posts with label Rachel Klein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rachel Klein. Show all posts
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Playing The Relationship
By WICF Contributor Rachel Klein
Reblogged, with permission, from Rachel's blog, "The House That Del Built"
Rachel Klein, in addition to performing at last week's WICF, taught the workshop "Get Real: Playing the Relationship of the Scene with Rachel Klein."
We asked her for her thoughts about the fest, and she was happy to share (and already working on it, in fact)!
The best single note I've ever gotten was given to me by Colleen Murray in her level 2 class at iO. Her note, like all great notes, was personal, insightful, and actionable. Here's what she said (forgive me for paraphrasing, Colleen):
You're a fast thinker, Rachel. And that can be a helpful thing sometimes in life, because you can quickly make connections and respond to people. You're probably one of those people who formulates your response while the other person is talking, and that's fine...in life. But, on stage, you can't know what your scene partner is going to say until he says it. Because even though your characters are supposed to know each other, really, they've never interacted before this scene. So what you need to do is stop and listen and take it in, and then respond. There will be a millisecond of silence, and you're not used to that, so it will feel weird at first, but I promise you that the audience will not notice, and you’ll be able to respond more genuinely to your scene partner.
That note has stuck with me, and it has refined and reinvented itself in my mind as I see larger and larger implications of the paradox this note addresses: that, in a long-form improv scene, the two characters are usually supposed to be people who know each other very well, and yet, in reality, these two characters have just come into existence for the first time on this stage, at this moment. How do you simulate the former while acknowledging the latter?
My guiding principles regarding how to focus on the relationship of the scene are two-fold: listen to your scene partner, and feel the weight of the content of the scene. Listening is based very much on that original note I was given. It sounds simple, but a lot of the time, if we’re really being honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that we’re not really listening in scenes. We’re thinking about the next funny thing we might say. Or we’re caught up on the line before, and so we miss the next one (that’s how a lot of negations happen in scenes—like misnaming people or not realizing your scene partner has said where you are—you miss some vital information while you were thinking about a response to an earlier line).
And if you really listen, you also listen to tone, to pace, to pitch. And all of that data is important in order to come to an appropriate conclusion as to what is going on in this relationship. For example, the statement, “It’s really cold in here,” is just information. But how your scene partner delivers it can tell you who you are, and what your role in the coldness of this place is. Did she say it in an accusatory way? Did she say it lovingly as she nuzzled up against you? Noticing these things is as much a part of listening as hearing the words.
And then there’s the second part: weight—because not every line, or every word in every line, carries the same about of emotional data. And it’s easy to get distracted with information that’s not going to help you get to the bottom of the relationship (this is why coaches will tell improvisers not to do “teaching” scenes—not because, as a rule, you can’t find a relationship there, but because having so much of the dialogue be direct commands and responses to those commands makes it harder to deliver emotionally rich content. Harder—but not impossible. This past Sunday, I taught a workshop at the Women in Comedy Festival that was about finding the relationship. In one exercise, the scene pair had gotten themselves caught in a “teaching” scene: one wanted the other to exercise by lifting and putting down some object (what was the object?—it was unclear). She was barking commands at him: “Yes, this way.” “No, that way.” “Now lift it over your head.” I let it go for a few lines, waiting to see if they’d find their way out of the situation. That’s when the woman giving the orders said something really interesting, although she didn’t recognize it at first. In describing his movements, she said, “You need to change,” and then, when he did move, she followed with, “Now you changed too much.” I thought, “Okay, here we go; now they have something to latch onto.” But they moved past that moment and went back to figuring out how this amorphous object was going to be manipulated in space.
That’s when I stopped them. And I pointed out what they hadn’t noticed, because it’s always easier to see these things from the audience. The command to “change” followed by the contradictory exhortation not to “change too much” had “weight.” And I use this term, because I find it helpful to actually try to imagine holding the scene in your hand and asking yourself, “What’s heaviest here?” What’s so interesting about this example is that, presumably, the guy in the scene was actually lifting a heavy object—but that object wasn’t “heavy” in emotional content. Talking about that object was never going to get these people anywhere. Talking about why the one person was both controlling and contradictory was.
When I told them to continue the scene with this in mind, they fiddled around with the object a bit more, until the guy finally locked in and said, “I don’t like how you try to control me.” Yes. Yes. All day yes. That is what this scene is about. And she tries to control him in loads of other ways, too—not just about lifting indeterminate objects.
You might recognize what I’m describing as similar to the concept of “game” that originated at UCB. And it is. But I prefer to call it the relationship dynamic to help me avoid the pitfall of getting caught up in a repeated pair of actions that’s not actually significant or interesting; keeping my mind on the relationship, for example, will keep me from perseverating on the way my scene partner is lifting the heavy object and get me to think about the pattern of our relationship overall, regarding which this particular set of actions is simply just one manifestation. That perseveration on insignificant details is what I like to call the “I fart/you burp fallacy.” Sure, you can connect those two behaviors all day, and it might very well be funny some of the time, but without an underlying relationship, it’s hard to keep that pair of actions interesting, or funny, for long.
This mistake is similar to when people use the phrase “you always” as a shortcut to establishing relationship. “You always…” “take the last soda”, “make me go on roller coasters”, etc. Saying “you always” can often help clarify the relationship, but sometimes it gets in the way. “You always take the last soda” is an infamous one. Because, really, I don’t know anyone who always takes the last soda. Like, without fail. Taking the last soda (even if we acknowledge that there are people who probably do that a lot—just not “always”) is indicative of a larger “always.” It’s about being inconsiderate, not taking other people’s feelings into account, not respecting the person with whom you live. The roommate who just took the last soda is probably also the roommate who throws parties without checking with you first, or smokes in the apartment when you’re asleep even though he knows the rule is to go on the porch. The “game” is not “you always take sodas/I always complain”, the “game” is probably “you are continually inconsiderate of our shared space/I complain but never build up the nerve to kick you out because I fear conflict.”
If you look for the heavy words/phrases/ideas in the content of the scene, you can be steered toward the deeper sense of the “game,” the relationship dynamic. Because maybe when you called out that roommate who took your last soda, his response was, “Well, I know it’s, like, house rules and everything, but you weren’t here, so I figured, you know...” In that bumbling response, the phrase “you weren’t here” defines the most about the way this guy thinks. Feel the weight of that. This is a guy who will only “behave” if someone’s there to force him to. When you’re not there, he thinks you and your rules don’t matter. He is childish and he is shallow. Call him out while defining your role in this dysfunction: “That’s why I leave notes on my food—because I know you have a tendency to forget about things when I’m not here to remind you.” Oh, I see. You’re a little bit anal and possessive. I mean, that doesn’t give him the right to drink your last soda, but I see how this whole relationship works. The word “tendency” in your line, incidentally, is quite heavy. It’s pretty passive-aggressive. It’s you telling him he’s wrong, but it’s softer than “compulsion” or “you always…”, while at the same time passing judgment on his character overall rather than this one particular instance. And he can respond to that, and you’re off to the races.
A real example from my workshop is this: girl sitting in a chair eating some sort of finger food out of a jar. Friend standing over her watching. Girl eating the food is being methodical, slow, measured. Friend finally breaks the silence, saying casually, “You enjoying your pickle chips?” Girl doesn’t look up, but continues to slowly eat and says, breaking out into a sob, “They’re so goo-hoo-hoo-hood.” I stop the scene and ask the “friend” what’s going on; I ask the audience. We all concur. Girl just broke up with her boyfriend; friend is trying to act cool like it’s no big deal. None of that is in the content of the lines. That’s why listening is more than hearing the words, and feeling the weight isn’t just looking for the explicit “topic” of the scene (which, at this point, is “pickle chips”). These two now know exactly who they are to each other, and how they’re each going to deal with this break-up. Now the scene plays itself.
The best thing about playing the relationship is that it takes all the pressure off of you to be “funny.” You don’t have to think about what line or words will get a laugh. In fact, you won’t even be worried if you don’t get laughs right away in the scene, because you know you’re building comedy capital by establishing clarity in the relationship dynamic that can be exploited as the scene goes on and you heighten the behavior and responses. And, amazingly, you’ll end up producing more satisfying scenes for the audience, too. There’s less miscommunication, there’s more efficiency, and everyone feels more comfortable. Like a show that finds its theme, a scene that finds its relationship “locks in”—it has a sense of control and purpose, and it’s a joy to play.
Forgive yourself if this lock-in doesn’t happen in the first two lines. This isn’t a science. Just stop and listen and look for where the weight is coming from. If you’re present and honest, the scene will find you, and when it does, you’ll know what to do.
Rachel Klein began in comedy in college, performing with The University of Chicago's Off Off Campus. After a five year getting-married/baby-making hiatus, she returned to the stage at the Second City Conservatory and with the Harold team Chopper at the iO theater in Chicago. She joined ImprovBoston when she moved to Boston in 2008, and currently coaches and performs with t he Harold team Maxitor. She was in the cast of the popular ImprovBoston showcase show This Improvised Life, and has directed and performed in several other groups and shows in the Boston area. She also teaches improv at ImprovBoston and Gann Academy, where she teaches English. Rachel blogs about the comedy that is motherhood at accidentalfeminist.com, and her comedy writing has been featured on the popular humor website McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She is the proprietess of the site "The House That Del Built."
Reblogged, with permission, from Rachel's blog, "The House That Del Built"
Rachel Klein, in addition to performing at last week's WICF, taught the workshop "Get Real: Playing the Relationship of the Scene with Rachel Klein."
We asked her for her thoughts about the fest, and she was happy to share (and already working on it, in fact)!
The best single note I've ever gotten was given to me by Colleen Murray in her level 2 class at iO. Her note, like all great notes, was personal, insightful, and actionable. Here's what she said (forgive me for paraphrasing, Colleen):
You're a fast thinker, Rachel. And that can be a helpful thing sometimes in life, because you can quickly make connections and respond to people. You're probably one of those people who formulates your response while the other person is talking, and that's fine...in life. But, on stage, you can't know what your scene partner is going to say until he says it. Because even though your characters are supposed to know each other, really, they've never interacted before this scene. So what you need to do is stop and listen and take it in, and then respond. There will be a millisecond of silence, and you're not used to that, so it will feel weird at first, but I promise you that the audience will not notice, and you’ll be able to respond more genuinely to your scene partner.
That note has stuck with me, and it has refined and reinvented itself in my mind as I see larger and larger implications of the paradox this note addresses: that, in a long-form improv scene, the two characters are usually supposed to be people who know each other very well, and yet, in reality, these two characters have just come into existence for the first time on this stage, at this moment. How do you simulate the former while acknowledging the latter?
In reality, these two characters have just come into existence for the first time on this stage, at this moment.
My guiding principles regarding how to focus on the relationship of the scene are two-fold: listen to your scene partner, and feel the weight of the content of the scene. Listening is based very much on that original note I was given. It sounds simple, but a lot of the time, if we’re really being honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that we’re not really listening in scenes. We’re thinking about the next funny thing we might say. Or we’re caught up on the line before, and so we miss the next one (that’s how a lot of negations happen in scenes—like misnaming people or not realizing your scene partner has said where you are—you miss some vital information while you were thinking about a response to an earlier line).
And if you really listen, you also listen to tone, to pace, to pitch ... Noticing these things is as much a part of listening as hearing the words.
And if you really listen, you also listen to tone, to pace, to pitch. And all of that data is important in order to come to an appropriate conclusion as to what is going on in this relationship. For example, the statement, “It’s really cold in here,” is just information. But how your scene partner delivers it can tell you who you are, and what your role in the coldness of this place is. Did she say it in an accusatory way? Did she say it lovingly as she nuzzled up against you? Noticing these things is as much a part of listening as hearing the words.
And then there’s the second part: weight—because not every line, or every word in every line, carries the same about of emotional data. And it’s easy to get distracted with information that’s not going to help you get to the bottom of the relationship (this is why coaches will tell improvisers not to do “teaching” scenes—not because, as a rule, you can’t find a relationship there, but because having so much of the dialogue be direct commands and responses to those commands makes it harder to deliver emotionally rich content. Harder—but not impossible. This past Sunday, I taught a workshop at the Women in Comedy Festival that was about finding the relationship. In one exercise, the scene pair had gotten themselves caught in a “teaching” scene: one wanted the other to exercise by lifting and putting down some object (what was the object?—it was unclear). She was barking commands at him: “Yes, this way.” “No, that way.” “Now lift it over your head.” I let it go for a few lines, waiting to see if they’d find their way out of the situation. That’s when the woman giving the orders said something really interesting, although she didn’t recognize it at first. In describing his movements, she said, “You need to change,” and then, when he did move, she followed with, “Now you changed too much.” I thought, “Okay, here we go; now they have something to latch onto.” But they moved past that moment and went back to figuring out how this amorphous object was going to be manipulated in space.
That perseveration on insignificant details is what I like to call the “I fart/you burp fallacy.”
That’s when I stopped them. And I pointed out what they hadn’t noticed, because it’s always easier to see these things from the audience. The command to “change” followed by the contradictory exhortation not to “change too much” had “weight.” And I use this term, because I find it helpful to actually try to imagine holding the scene in your hand and asking yourself, “What’s heaviest here?” What’s so interesting about this example is that, presumably, the guy in the scene was actually lifting a heavy object—but that object wasn’t “heavy” in emotional content. Talking about that object was never going to get these people anywhere. Talking about why the one person was both controlling and contradictory was.
When I told them to continue the scene with this in mind, they fiddled around with the object a bit more, until the guy finally locked in and said, “I don’t like how you try to control me.” Yes. Yes. All day yes. That is what this scene is about. And she tries to control him in loads of other ways, too—not just about lifting indeterminate objects.
You might recognize what I’m describing as similar to the concept of “game” that originated at UCB. And it is. But I prefer to call it the relationship dynamic to help me avoid the pitfall of getting caught up in a repeated pair of actions that’s not actually significant or interesting; keeping my mind on the relationship, for example, will keep me from perseverating on the way my scene partner is lifting the heavy object and get me to think about the pattern of our relationship overall, regarding which this particular set of actions is simply just one manifestation. That perseveration on insignificant details is what I like to call the “I fart/you burp fallacy.” Sure, you can connect those two behaviors all day, and it might very well be funny some of the time, but without an underlying relationship, it’s hard to keep that pair of actions interesting, or funny, for long.
This mistake is similar to when people use the phrase “you always” as a shortcut to establishing relationship. “You always…” “take the last soda”, “make me go on roller coasters”, etc. Saying “you always” can often help clarify the relationship, but sometimes it gets in the way. “You always take the last soda” is an infamous one. Because, really, I don’t know anyone who always takes the last soda. Like, without fail. Taking the last soda (even if we acknowledge that there are people who probably do that a lot—just not “always”) is indicative of a larger “always.” It’s about being inconsiderate, not taking other people’s feelings into account, not respecting the person with whom you live. The roommate who just took the last soda is probably also the roommate who throws parties without checking with you first, or smokes in the apartment when you’re asleep even though he knows the rule is to go on the porch. The “game” is not “you always take sodas/I always complain”, the “game” is probably “you are continually inconsiderate of our shared space/I complain but never build up the nerve to kick you out because I fear conflict.”
If you look for the heavy words/phrases/ideas in the content of the scene, you can be steered toward the deeper sense of the “game,” the relationship dynamic. Because maybe when you called out that roommate who took your last soda, his response was, “Well, I know it’s, like, house rules and everything, but you weren’t here, so I figured, you know...” In that bumbling response, the phrase “you weren’t here” defines the most about the way this guy thinks. Feel the weight of that. This is a guy who will only “behave” if someone’s there to force him to. When you’re not there, he thinks you and your rules don’t matter. He is childish and he is shallow. Call him out while defining your role in this dysfunction: “That’s why I leave notes on my food—because I know you have a tendency to forget about things when I’m not here to remind you.” Oh, I see. You’re a little bit anal and possessive. I mean, that doesn’t give him the right to drink your last soda, but I see how this whole relationship works. The word “tendency” in your line, incidentally, is quite heavy. It’s pretty passive-aggressive. It’s you telling him he’s wrong, but it’s softer than “compulsion” or “you always…”, while at the same time passing judgment on his character overall rather than this one particular instance. And he can respond to that, and you’re off to the races.
If you’re present and honest, the scene will find you, and when it does, you’ll know what to do.
A real example from my workshop is this: girl sitting in a chair eating some sort of finger food out of a jar. Friend standing over her watching. Girl eating the food is being methodical, slow, measured. Friend finally breaks the silence, saying casually, “You enjoying your pickle chips?” Girl doesn’t look up, but continues to slowly eat and says, breaking out into a sob, “They’re so goo-hoo-hoo-hood.” I stop the scene and ask the “friend” what’s going on; I ask the audience. We all concur. Girl just broke up with her boyfriend; friend is trying to act cool like it’s no big deal. None of that is in the content of the lines. That’s why listening is more than hearing the words, and feeling the weight isn’t just looking for the explicit “topic” of the scene (which, at this point, is “pickle chips”). These two now know exactly who they are to each other, and how they’re each going to deal with this break-up. Now the scene plays itself.
The best thing about playing the relationship is that it takes all the pressure off of you to be “funny.” You don’t have to think about what line or words will get a laugh. In fact, you won’t even be worried if you don’t get laughs right away in the scene, because you know you’re building comedy capital by establishing clarity in the relationship dynamic that can be exploited as the scene goes on and you heighten the behavior and responses. And, amazingly, you’ll end up producing more satisfying scenes for the audience, too. There’s less miscommunication, there’s more efficiency, and everyone feels more comfortable. Like a show that finds its theme, a scene that finds its relationship “locks in”—it has a sense of control and purpose, and it’s a joy to play.
Forgive yourself if this lock-in doesn’t happen in the first two lines. This isn’t a science. Just stop and listen and look for where the weight is coming from. If you’re present and honest, the scene will find you, and when it does, you’ll know what to do.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Improve Your Improv and Laugh Your A** Off With Rachel Klein
By WICF Editor Liz McKeon
Attention, attention, please. May I have your attention, please?
Ready for this?
WICF contributor Rachel Klein, who wrote last month's brilliant "My Mother, the Comedian: A Life, with Kids, in Comedy," has started putting her awesome comedy instructional ideas down on the World Wide Web, out there for all to see at: "The House That Del Built." Herein you can find all sorts of musings and deconstructions of long form improv; please, soak it all up to your heart's content.
Want Rachel to instruct you IN PERSON? You're in luck, friends, she'll be running the WICF workshop Get Real: Playing the Relationship of the Scene with Rachel Klein this Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 10 a.m. at ImprovBoston. Head to the Workshop section of the WICF main site to sign up!
"Playing the relationship is a way of approaching scenework," Rachel says, "that helps you make informed and powerful choices from the very start of the scene — choices that quickly establish the foundation for authentic and seemingly effortless play. Scenes 'lock in' quicker and play more intuitively. 'Getting real' means getting more out of yourself and your scene partner in every scene."
Still not enough Rachel Klein in your life? well holy moly, have we got just the thing for you! Catch Rachel live, onstage, with the Harold group Maxitor this Saturday at WICF! 10 p.m. at ImprovBoston, head over to the "Maxitor, Boot, and Friends" page to purchase tickets!
Phew. If that's not enough Rachel Klein for you, well, you clearly have very good taste.
Attention, attention, please. May I have your attention, please?
Ready for this?
WICF contributor Rachel Klein, who wrote last month's brilliant "My Mother, the Comedian: A Life, with Kids, in Comedy," has started putting her awesome comedy instructional ideas down on the World Wide Web, out there for all to see at: "The House That Del Built." Herein you can find all sorts of musings and deconstructions of long form improv; please, soak it all up to your heart's content.
Want Rachel to instruct you IN PERSON? You're in luck, friends, she'll be running the WICF workshop Get Real: Playing the Relationship of the Scene with Rachel Klein this Sunday, March 13, 2011 at 10 a.m. at ImprovBoston. Head to the Workshop section of the WICF main site to sign up!"Playing the relationship is a way of approaching scenework," Rachel says, "that helps you make informed and powerful choices from the very start of the scene — choices that quickly establish the foundation for authentic and seemingly effortless play. Scenes 'lock in' quicker and play more intuitively. 'Getting real' means getting more out of yourself and your scene partner in every scene."
Still not enough Rachel Klein in your life? well holy moly, have we got just the thing for you! Catch Rachel live, onstage, with the Harold group Maxitor this Saturday at WICF! 10 p.m. at ImprovBoston, head over to the "Maxitor, Boot, and Friends" page to purchase tickets!
Phew. If that's not enough Rachel Klein for you, well, you clearly have very good taste.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Jaime Sommers Theory of Bionic Improvisers
By WICF Contributor Pam Victor
(Pam will be performing with The Ha-Ha's this Thursday at WICF in "Shrink: Where Freud Meets Funny!)
Scott could be right. Perhaps it is the nourishing, womb-like embraces of all our fellow players. Like a short, big-breasted Jewish bubbe who never sits down to eat the meal she has been up since 3 a.m. to prepare. “No, you eat, bubala. Don’t worry about me. (sigh) I’ll be fine licking up the crumbs you leave behind when you’re done.” But maybe there’s a little more to it than that.
Maybe moms make good improvisers because of special superpowers bestowed upon us. Call it luck. Call it a convergence of biology. Call it karmic reward for dealing with gag-inducing diaper explosions in the middle of a wedding reception that have you eyeing the cleansing rivulets of the champagne fountain with alternative motives. Any way you split the stream, many moms rock the improv stage in a way under-recognized by the dominant class of white boy improvisers (with the noted and appreciated exception of Scott Braidman). Why? May I present to you the Jaime Sommers Theory: Improvising moms are bionic.
First of all, moms bring to the stage their freakish strength. You’ve heard the story of the mom who lifts a bus to get it off her child. Personally, I’ve given up my career to raise my kids. Those twerps are a huge fucking investment, man. Do you seriously think I wouldn’t gladly rip your head from your shoulders like a Fruit Roll-Up from its wrapper if you so much as look sideways at my kid? You better believe moms who improvise bring that same intensity to their scene work. Improvising battling aliens with spaghetti is small potatoes when you possess the superhuman powers to lift an actual 10-ton Mack truck.
In addition, a mom’s senses are refined to a ninja-like sharpness. Once, when I was pregnant, I was driving by a café at 55 mph with all the windows rolled up when I said to my single/no kids friend, “Boy, they are frying up a whole mess of food in that restaurant!”
My friend was like, “What the fuck is wrong with your face? How can you smell that?” I just shrugged. How could she not smell that? Like I said, bionic.
When my son was a baby, I could hear him before he started crying. I could see so well I was friggin’ echo-locating. That’s how finely tuned my senses became. And I still have a superpower ability to send out an Expanding Radar of Potential Dangers within a three-mile radius of my kids. “At 11:47 tomorrow afternoon,” I could tell my kid. “You’ll be walking by a counter that has a very sharp-looking edge. Be careful.”
And everyone knows the strength of a mom’s right arm when the car is coming to a quick stop. That badass human seatbelt swings out to brace the passenger at lightning speed that surely defies the laws of physics. Newton didn’t even attempt to figure that shit out. So it would seem an improvising mom brings to the stage extra-powered senses and strength unbound by natural principles. Surely that skill set adds something distinct to one’s improv tool box, no?
On top of that, most improv comedy moms aren’t exactly shy. When you’ve had three people with pointed instruments staring at your twat, everything seems somehow less risqué. A mom enlivens the stage with that energy: “Bring it on, bitches. There ain’t nothing you can throw at me that is scarier than extruding a human head from my magnolia.”
Finally, as Rachel Klein smartly noted in a previous post on the WICF blog, when a mom comes to improvise, she ain’t there to fool around. At rehearsal and performance, I feel like I’m Tim Robbins bubbling up out of that pipe-full of poop in Shawshank Redemption. I am free! Free, I tell you. So let’s play hard and work harder, ‘cause the warden is hot on my trail.
Sure, moms might be good improvisers because of our selfless care-taking abilities. But maybe it’s also our superpowers too. Fierceness. Strength. Heightened senses. Braveness. Look, little people literally have shit on our party dresses. Everything from there on out is just plain fun.
Pam Victor is the founding member of The Ha-Ha’s (formerly The Ha-Ha Sisterhood). She produces Happier Valley Comedy Shows. Pam writes mostly humorous, mostly true essays and reviews of books, movies and tea on her blog, "My Nephew is a Poodle."
(Pam will be performing with The Ha-Ha's this Thursday at WICF in "Shrink: Where Freud Meets Funny!)
“Maybe it's about how moms are naturally good at giving others the spotlight. The tendency to let their little ones shine and be the best they can be translates really well into improv. The mothers that I've improvised with, for the most part, rarely steal a scene in a selfish way, and are more often than not contributing in major ways to another actor's moment.”
– Scott Braidman, Experienced Improviser and Teacher
Scott could be right. Perhaps it is the nourishing, womb-like embraces of all our fellow players. Like a short, big-breasted Jewish bubbe who never sits down to eat the meal she has been up since 3 a.m. to prepare. “No, you eat, bubala. Don’t worry about me. (sigh) I’ll be fine licking up the crumbs you leave behind when you’re done.” But maybe there’s a little more to it than that.
Maybe moms make good improvisers because of special superpowers bestowed upon us. Call it luck. Call it a convergence of biology. Call it karmic reward for dealing with gag-inducing diaper explosions in the middle of a wedding reception that have you eyeing the cleansing rivulets of the champagne fountain with alternative motives. Any way you split the stream, many moms rock the improv stage in a way under-recognized by the dominant class of white boy improvisers (with the noted and appreciated exception of Scott Braidman). Why? May I present to you the Jaime Sommers Theory: Improvising moms are bionic.
First of all, moms bring to the stage their freakish strength. You’ve heard the story of the mom who lifts a bus to get it off her child. Personally, I’ve given up my career to raise my kids. Those twerps are a huge fucking investment, man. Do you seriously think I wouldn’t gladly rip your head from your shoulders like a Fruit Roll-Up from its wrapper if you so much as look sideways at my kid? You better believe moms who improvise bring that same intensity to their scene work. Improvising battling aliens with spaghetti is small potatoes when you possess the superhuman powers to lift an actual 10-ton Mack truck.
In addition, a mom’s senses are refined to a ninja-like sharpness. Once, when I was pregnant, I was driving by a café at 55 mph with all the windows rolled up when I said to my single/no kids friend, “Boy, they are frying up a whole mess of food in that restaurant!”
My friend was like, “What the fuck is wrong with your face? How can you smell that?” I just shrugged. How could she not smell that? Like I said, bionic.
When my son was a baby, I could hear him before he started crying. I could see so well I was friggin’ echo-locating. That’s how finely tuned my senses became. And I still have a superpower ability to send out an Expanding Radar of Potential Dangers within a three-mile radius of my kids. “At 11:47 tomorrow afternoon,” I could tell my kid. “You’ll be walking by a counter that has a very sharp-looking edge. Be careful.”
And everyone knows the strength of a mom’s right arm when the car is coming to a quick stop. That badass human seatbelt swings out to brace the passenger at lightning speed that surely defies the laws of physics. Newton didn’t even attempt to figure that shit out. So it would seem an improvising mom brings to the stage extra-powered senses and strength unbound by natural principles. Surely that skill set adds something distinct to one’s improv tool box, no?
On top of that, most improv comedy moms aren’t exactly shy. When you’ve had three people with pointed instruments staring at your twat, everything seems somehow less risqué. A mom enlivens the stage with that energy: “Bring it on, bitches. There ain’t nothing you can throw at me that is scarier than extruding a human head from my magnolia.”
Finally, as Rachel Klein smartly noted in a previous post on the WICF blog, when a mom comes to improvise, she ain’t there to fool around. At rehearsal and performance, I feel like I’m Tim Robbins bubbling up out of that pipe-full of poop in Shawshank Redemption. I am free! Free, I tell you. So let’s play hard and work harder, ‘cause the warden is hot on my trail.
 |
| Badass photo of the bionic Pam Victor, credit: Megan Brantley. |
Pam Victor is the founding member of The Ha-Ha’s (formerly The Ha-Ha Sisterhood). She produces Happier Valley Comedy Shows. Pam writes mostly humorous, mostly true essays and reviews of books, movies and tea on her blog, "My Nephew is a Poodle."
Sunday, February 13, 2011
My Mother, the Comedian: A Life, with Kids, in Comedy
By WICF Contributor Rachel Klein
"Confessions of a Juggler," Tina Fey's article on working moms in the entertainment world and the rude questions which are so often posed to them, has touched off a storm of words within the blogosphere. WICF contributor Rachel Klein has her own compelling take on being a mom, being a comedian, and putting together the puzzle pieces of a life onstage. "Confessions of a Juggler," Tina Fey, The New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011, pp. 64-67.
Let’s get this out of the way right from the start: I am done having children. Contrary to what some people who clearly just got out of a time machine from the 1950s ask, I’m not interested in “trying one more time for a boy.” I don’t miss nursing, or changing diapers, or waking up every two hours in the middle of the night to feed a human being the secretions of my own body. When all of my friends are finally sending their kids of to their first days of kindergarten, I’ll be dropping mine off at college, and I can’t freaking wait. I also don’t regret having children when I was twenty-four, or getting married when I was twenty-two. I love my husband. I love my kids. Plus they’re always saying awesome stuff like, “Harry Potter is basically just Luke Skywalker, right?” and “I hope Nicholas Cage’s daughter appreciates what he went through to bring her that bunny!” And there’s something else: I don’t regret the time I took off from comedy, because it was those life experiences that I had in the intervening years that have given me my unique comedic perspective.
It’s a little strange, feeling like the people I perform with every day are very much my peers, and yet so disconnected from one of the most important parts of my life experience. And it goes both ways. When my twenty-something friends ask for dating advice, I tell them the seemingly shocking truth that I literally never dated as an adult, and so, were I to give them advice, I’d probably just try to recall what Rachel did in a “Friends” episode or something. They, for their part, don’t know what it’s like to have to negotiate nights out with your husband, since any night you are gone at rehearsal, or a show, or “team bonding” is a night that you are asking him to stay home with the children—or pay $60 for a babysitter to do it. I once had the members of my improv team in Chicago literally chip in five bucks each so that I would stay another few hours with them at the bar when I complained about how much the babysitter was going to cost. Being a wife and mother in comedy is not really living two different lives; it’s cramming the commitments, relationships, and ambitions of two lives into one life-sausage. And sometimes it’s a tight squeeze.
A few years ago I was coaching a high school improv team. One night we had particularly low numbers at rehearsal, and no one had let me know beforehand they’d be out. I launched into a tirade about how every moment I was choosing to be with them was a moment I was spending away from my children. That I was okay with making that choice if I knew the time would be well spent, but that I wasn’t going to tolerate them just blowing me off because they were watching “Gossip Girl” and couldn’t be bothered to make it out to rehearsal. The next week the student leaders made a reminder notice with a picture of my kids (that they’d found on my blog) and the copy: “What are you doing Wednesday night? Spending it with your children? Ms. Klein isn’t. Feel the guilt.”
Everyone showed up.
But, I will say this: there is something about the crystalline clarity that the life I live provides. Because every choice carries with it such a clear set of options, and because every moment I’m choosing one thing I love I’m actively choosing to spend time away from something else I love. I make my choices wisely. I don’t have time to not love what I’m doing, and whom I’m doing it with.
That’s led me to create a Harold team at ImprovBoston, Maxitor, consisting of like-minded performers with passions and empathies that match their talents. When I choose each week to spend time rehearsing and performing with them, it feels like the right choice. It’s time away from my family, but it’s time that enriches my life, and I bring that feeling back home. One of my favorite questions I get asked by my sleepy kids when I come home from a show is, “Were you funny?” Of course, my other favorite question they ask at those times is, “Why do you smell like pine trees?” (The answers to those questions, of course, are “yes” and “gin”, respectively.)
Of course, the reality is that there are a lot of great opportunities I pass up because they would just push too far into the time I’ve already set aside to be with family. And the opportunities I do take on beyond my regularly-scheduled rehearsals and performances have to be carefully chosen and planned for. When I choose to go to an improv festival, I have to plan for my children to have playdates, for their lessons to be rescheduled, and for all this to happen without my husband feeling overwhelmed by a weekend of single parenting. And my experience at that festival, or show, or rehearsal, is heightened by my understanding of all of the sacrifices and rearrangements and compromises that went into making it possible. Of course, it’s also heightened by the all-night rager involving way too many people crammed into my hotel room until way too early in the morning, drinking PBRs chilled in the bathroom sink — but that’s a different kind of heightening.
Really, though, what I’m talking about is a feeling I think anyone who pursues a life in comedy feels. As my friend and teammate Natalie Baseman recently said to a group of students for whom we performed at a local school when they asked us why we seemed to be having so much fun onstage, “None of us get paid to do what we do, so we have to do it because we love it.” Comedy, like any art form, is a labor of love. Sort of like being a mom.
Rachel Klein began in comedy in college, performing with The University of Chicago's Off Off Campus. After a fi ve year getting-married/baby-making hiatus, she returned to the stage at the Second City Conservatory and with the Harold team Chopper at the iO theater in Chicago. She joined ImprovBoston when she moved to Boston in 2008, and currently coaches and performs with t he Harold team Maxitor. She was in the cast of the popular ImprovBoston showcase show This I mprovised Life, and has directed and performed in several other groups and shows in the Boston area. She also teaches improv at ImprovBoston and Gann Academy, where she teaches English. Rachel blogs about the comedy that is motherhood at accidentalfeminist.com, and her comedy writing has been featured on the popular humor website McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
"Confessions of a Juggler," Tina Fey's article on working moms in the entertainment world and the rude questions which are so often posed to them, has touched off a storm of words within the blogosphere. WICF contributor Rachel Klein has her own compelling take on being a mom, being a comedian, and putting together the puzzle pieces of a life onstage. "Confessions of a Juggler," Tina Fey, The New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011, pp. 64-67.
Let’s get this out of the way right from the start: I am done having children. Contrary to what some people who clearly just got out of a time machine from the 1950s ask, I’m not interested in “trying one more time for a boy.” I don’t miss nursing, or changing diapers, or waking up every two hours in the middle of the night to feed a human being the secretions of my own body. When all of my friends are finally sending their kids of to their first days of kindergarten, I’ll be dropping mine off at college, and I can’t freaking wait. I also don’t regret having children when I was twenty-four, or getting married when I was twenty-two. I love my husband. I love my kids. Plus they’re always saying awesome stuff like, “Harry Potter is basically just Luke Skywalker, right?” and “I hope Nicholas Cage’s daughter appreciates what he went through to bring her that bunny!” And there’s something else: I don’t regret the time I took off from comedy, because it was those life experiences that I had in the intervening years that have given me my unique comedic perspective.
It’s a little strange, feeling like the people I perform with every day are very much my peers, and yet so disconnected from one of the most important parts of my life experience. And it goes both ways. When my twenty-something friends ask for dating advice, I tell them the seemingly shocking truth that I literally never dated as an adult, and so, were I to give them advice, I’d probably just try to recall what Rachel did in a “Friends” episode or something. They, for their part, don’t know what it’s like to have to negotiate nights out with your husband, since any night you are gone at rehearsal, or a show, or “team bonding” is a night that you are asking him to stay home with the children—or pay $60 for a babysitter to do it. I once had the members of my improv team in Chicago literally chip in five bucks each so that I would stay another few hours with them at the bar when I complained about how much the babysitter was going to cost. Being a wife and mother in comedy is not really living two different lives; it’s cramming the commitments, relationships, and ambitions of two lives into one life-sausage. And sometimes it’s a tight squeeze.
 |
| Rachel and her beautiful girls |
Everyone showed up.
But, I will say this: there is something about the crystalline clarity that the life I live provides. Because every choice carries with it such a clear set of options, and because every moment I’m choosing one thing I love I’m actively choosing to spend time away from something else I love. I make my choices wisely. I don’t have time to not love what I’m doing, and whom I’m doing it with.
That’s led me to create a Harold team at ImprovBoston, Maxitor, consisting of like-minded performers with passions and empathies that match their talents. When I choose each week to spend time rehearsing and performing with them, it feels like the right choice. It’s time away from my family, but it’s time that enriches my life, and I bring that feeling back home. One of my favorite questions I get asked by my sleepy kids when I come home from a show is, “Were you funny?” Of course, my other favorite question they ask at those times is, “Why do you smell like pine trees?” (The answers to those questions, of course, are “yes” and “gin”, respectively.)
Of course, the reality is that there are a lot of great opportunities I pass up because they would just push too far into the time I’ve already set aside to be with family. And the opportunities I do take on beyond my regularly-scheduled rehearsals and performances have to be carefully chosen and planned for. When I choose to go to an improv festival, I have to plan for my children to have playdates, for their lessons to be rescheduled, and for all this to happen without my husband feeling overwhelmed by a weekend of single parenting. And my experience at that festival, or show, or rehearsal, is heightened by my understanding of all of the sacrifices and rearrangements and compromises that went into making it possible. Of course, it’s also heightened by the all-night rager involving way too many people crammed into my hotel room until way too early in the morning, drinking PBRs chilled in the bathroom sink — but that’s a different kind of heightening.
Really, though, what I’m talking about is a feeling I think anyone who pursues a life in comedy feels. As my friend and teammate Natalie Baseman recently said to a group of students for whom we performed at a local school when they asked us why we seemed to be having so much fun onstage, “None of us get paid to do what we do, so we have to do it because we love it.” Comedy, like any art form, is a labor of love. Sort of like being a mom.
Friday, November 12, 2010
WICF's Weekend Write-Up: Witty, with a Hint of Class
Drumroll, please: dates and headliners are being published THIS VERY WEEK (ahead)! Aaaahhhhh! Commence screaming!
Check out a video from Goltermann and Cuddy's OBV! (with links to more).
Weekly website and show recommendations, hot off the keyboard:
While you're there, check out the links to Believer Magazine, the 826 charities, and this hysterical article by friend-of-the-fest Rachel Klein: The People in an Olive Garden Commercial Share Their Existential Pain.
This week, their guests are a second fab. girl duo, Bangs. Liz Caradonna and Stephanie Jones have been performing improv together for seven years, first in Massachusetts, now in Chicago. Look for an interview with Bangs right here on the WICF site, coming soon!
http://www.the-playground.com/index.php?page=calendar for info.
Runs Mondays weekly,
$5
Shows at 10 p.m.
Check out a video from Goltermann and Cuddy's OBV! (with links to more).
Weekly website and show recommendations, hot off the keyboard:
Website of the Week
McSweeney's Internet Tendency www.mcsweeneys.net
McSweeney's, the internet home of Dave Eggers' publishing house, is a compendium of satire and parody, written by a wide-ranging chorus of today's literary and comedic geniuses, both famous and unknown. Often thought of as an upscale/geekish counterpart to The Onion, we posit that it's the new New Yorker magazine. Written by mildy-unhinged people. McSweeney's Internet Tendency www.mcsweeneys.net
While you're there, check out the links to Believer Magazine, the 826 charities, and this hysterical article by friend-of-the-fest Rachel Klein: The People in an Olive Garden Commercial Share Their Existential Pain.
Show to See
Williams & Martinez, with Bangs at The Playground Theater, Chicago, IL
Williams & Martinez, the duo of Claudia Martinez and Lindsay Williams, met in the Second City Conservatory in 2005. They perform long-form improv weekly at The Playground Theater, along with a revolving cast of special guests.Williams & Martinez, with Bangs at The Playground Theater, Chicago, IL
This week, their guests are a second fab. girl duo, Bangs. Liz Caradonna and Stephanie Jones have been performing improv together for seven years, first in Massachusetts, now in Chicago. Look for an interview with Bangs right here on the WICF site, coming soon!
http://www.the-playground.com/index.php?page=calendar for info.
Runs Mondays weekly,
$5
Shows at 10 p.m.
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