Chris Reblogs
stuff. just stuff.
How Are You Supposed To Remember Stuff From the Opening? I Can Never Remember Stuff From The Opening! Do You Have Any Advice On Remembering Stuff From The Opening?
Be smarter?
Remember everything?
Enjoy it so you remember it like you remember your favorite movie/tv show?
I don’t know. Just do it. Remember stuff or don’t do improv.
I love this. I think “Remember stuff or don’t do improv” is a better motto than “don’t think.” Improv is not easy. It’s hard, and it takes a lot of practice. “Enjoy it” is also crucial. I’m going to put that in slightly different terms, because I’m better at following steps than I am at enjoying things.
My advice for remembering things from the opening: Listen & repeat.
Listen. You’re not doing the opening for the audience. They don’t fucking care. They think it’s weird, and they’ll ask you, in ashamed befuddlement, about it later. You’re doing the opening so your teammates can give you a bunch of ready-made ideas to steal. So don’t worry about what move you’re going to make, or whether it got a laugh. Look at the people on stage with you. Look them in the eyes. Listen to what they’re saying.
This may seem incredibly obvious, but many improvisors don’t do it. Most improvisors spend more time thinking about what they’re going to do in the opening than they do listening to others. Watch people do a pattern game. You will see entire phrases, or runs, get ignored because one improvisor, not really listening, makes a move that is a reaction from something much earlier.
Repeat. One of my roommates in college would always study in the living room, as I watched TV. Whenever she came across something interesting, she would say “Hey Curtis, did you know [blank]?” and repeat, in paraphrased form, what she just read. This was, to be honest, a little annoying. She did it, however, because she was honestly excited about what she was learning, and because that act of repetition helped her remember it later. Repeating it, in her own words, put it in her brain as a concept she could understand, rather than in the awkward way her textbook put it. I do the same thing when I come across something interesting. I’ll read, stop, and just re-tell, in my head, what I just read.
During the opening, whenever something interesting happens (anything I think we could explore more, or that gets a big reaction from the audience), I repeat the idea, in shortened form, in my head: “Star Wars hedge fund,” “mansion of stolen office supplies,” “wash yo’ ass,” whatever. When the opening ends, I repeat those phrases again in my head as we all walk to the back line. As the show progresses, and I’m watching the other scenes (or in my own), I’ll add more phrases, things I want to return to, and re-repeat the phrases in my head.
It’s not natural. I don’t remember everything. But I can’t remember 4 minutes of people wandering around the stage. I can, however, remember a couple phrases.
Yes.
Or don’t do openings. Although if you aren’t able to listen and remember stuff from the opening, you might have listening problems in the rest of the set.
