Archive for July, 2008
Feist on Sesame Street
July 17th, 2008 • culture
virtual penance
July 17th, 2008 • social gaming
Reading more about the world of Fable 2: today’s detail is that crimes within the world (violence, murder, theft) can be paid off with a stiff fine or community service, which apparently opens up an entirely new plot-line.
links for 2008-07-16
July 16th, 2008 • links
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Edinburgh bred artist, Joshua Sofaer has created the supreme scavenger hunt. On the morning of the hunt, Saturday, August 16, 2008, each of the 40 teams selected to participate will receive 100 clues.
fringe on flickr
July 15th, 2008 • research, scenes from the web
I’ve been playing with flickr’s API over the last few days, experimenting with the idea of visual communities. So, here’s my contribution to the numerous mash-ups on the internet: a live search of flickr images relating to the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
I’m still toying with a few settings, but it’s up and working. More on how it works over here.
learning when to say yes
July 15th, 2008 • improvisation, theatre
One of the rules drilled into me when I was first learning to improvise was near-unconditional acceptance: build scenes by saying yes, early and often. Like many other improvisers I’ve worked with, I’ve spent time working out when to ignore that advice. It’s not bad advice, per se, so much as conditional advice.
Reading Paul Clements’ account of Mike Leigh’s use of improvisation, I found this little gem:
There are circumstances when, as a theatre game, it might be useful to run an improvisation where the actors have to accept whatever information they’re given in the interests of developing their spontaneity or acceptance but where an improvisation is an investigation of content [...] it will kill it stone dead.1
There’s a distinction here between improvisation as instantaneous, disposable live performance, and improvisation as a medium for developing theatre; in Leigh’s rehearsal-room work, blind acceptance runs contrary to the process of actors creating individual characters with personal (and private) biographies and motivations.
So while in short-form or live improvisation, saying “yes” can be way of rapidly building content; in rehearsal or in the devising process, relentlessly saying “yes” can interfere with the exploration of that content.
There’s obviously the possibility of mixing and matching such those priorities - moving in live short form, for example, from establishing a scene (generating content) to building a narrative through reincorporation (exploring content).
The snappy capsule lesson here, then, is that the strategies we use to improvise should recognise what kind of outcome is desired (with the rejoinder that we should perhaps be sceptical of any claim to basic, infallible rules for improvising).
After the jump, Clements’ quick summary of Leigh’s process, which wields improvisation in the pursuit of realism. Read more »
- The Improvised Play: The World of Mike Leigh, Paul Clements, Methuen. p.48 [↩]
slightly less convincing than lara croft
July 12th, 2008 • culture
I’ve just watched the first episode of a new BBC series, Bonekickers. The climax involved a sword fight on abseiling ropes dangling above a room of burning crucifixes (including the one true cross) hidden beneath an ancient dovecote. As you might guess, that’s not a sentence that appears anywhere else in the history of the English language, and for that I’m grateful.
To be kind (and the first night reviews really weren’t) it’s a unique TV experience.
