Sprezzatura #16 - What Santa Hath Wrought
It’s the holidays. A Byzantine labyrinth of food, friends, and family. Navigating the impossible geometries of capitalism and gift-giving. The parallel and diverging lines of warmth inside and cold outside (both temperature and myself). A Gordian knot of stress and relaxation, of obligations and freedoms. When we review and look ahead down an unending road in either direction, both unknowable and deeply embedded in our psyches.
At least we have cookies. I hope you find comfort and joy at the end of 2024.
[Music] Billie Toppy by Men I Trust
This song by Quebec’s Men I Trust is a couple years old but I only discovered it this year and it’s been playing on heavy rotation in my headphones. It’s the kind of music that plays on the radio of a TV show that is fifteen years ahead of its time. Guitars, bass, drums and vocals that drive along with the quiet force of a horse at a trot: simultaneously effortless AND you wouldn’t want to be in its way. My heart beats to its pulse when it plays and the doctors cannot explain it.
[Image] Sir Christopher Wren’s proposal for London after the Great Fire of 1666 by Paul Draper
I guess when a major metropolis burns down you have a chance to rebuild it literally from the ground up: tabula rasa. Sir Christopher Wren, who designed the current St Paul’s Cathedral, proposed this new layout for central London in 1666, roughly 200 years before Hausmann got his hands on Paris.
[MUSIC] "Denial is a River" / "Boiled Peanuts" - Doechii (LIVE on The Late Show)
If you haven’t yet seen the tour de force performance by Doechii on The Late Show yet, here’s your chance to correct that.
IMPROV
Let’s talk quickly about variety vs fatigue.
Imagine a pop song that was just the same note played over and over again. Intolerable, barely a song. Or a song that was just the chorus. Super boring, no matter how catchy the chorus is. We can’t even handle a song that’s just chorus and verse. Still boring! Humanity has learned to add a bridge after a couple loops before you can return to the verse/chorus again.
Improv scenes can be like pop songs. The same rhythm/game/routine is dull. It needs to be broken. The audience gets bored, loses interest. Varying things keeps them engaged attentive.
If you’re playing a scene slow at the start, speed it up at the end. Start quiet? Get loud! Start loud? Get quiet! Everyone’s arguing? Be agreeable. Not moving much? Get up and fetch a glass of water, look mysteriously out the window. There are so many dimensions of a scene that can be varied. As a performer, you need to be in tune to as many of these as your attention can handle. The more you do it, the better you get at it.
This also applies to scenes within a show! Lots of frenetic scenes? Start the next one a bit slower. Last couple scenes had strangers interacting with no relationship? Throw in a scene with a strong emotional connection. Two long scenes? Edit the next one to keep it short and sweet.
Being attentive, on and off the stage, to the energy of a show gives the audience a chance to have a breath of fresh air. Build an awareness of the patterns and break them in as many dimensions (energy, emotion, physicality, relationships, etc.) as possible.
EVENTS
It’s a quiet period for me improv-wise but I’m pretty proud of this project so I’ll just keep talking about it.
I’ve been working with a group of players for a French show here in Montreal called “J’aime l’amour”, which is essentially the show I developed for the Vancouver Improv Festival in 2018. It’s about all of the forms of love we experience, not just romantic but family, friendship, nostalgia. Not just victories but also the defeats. All inspired by real stories the cast collect from the audience before the show even starts.
We’ve put on two shows so far at the JIM space and they’ve both been exactly what we hoped: emotional and honest, funny and moving, and hopefully staying with the audience after they leave the room. It’s a show that incorporates just about every hard-won lesson I’ve accumulated over the years as a student of improvised theatre.
Our next show is Friday February 14th and if you feel like you’re comfortable with the French, we would dearly love to see you there. Ticket link to come when they’re available!
Also I compiled the songs released in 2024 that I loved deeply into a mixtape called VF 2024.
An Interesting Wikipedia Page: Preferred walking speed
l8r sk8rs,
Vinny