Spontaneous Smiles on a Monday
I love things that make me smile. Spontaneous, silly, reality-bending things that jump-start the day and stick with me a long time and remind me that, hey, this is a pretty cool thing called Life.
Improv theater tops my charts.
I *adore* the theater but I *suck* at lines. They never, ever, ever sound like they are words coming from me unless they're, well, mine. Which is why I love doing improvisational theater. For a while, I tried comedy troupes but the truth is that I'm the one person who shouldn't be laughing, but I would end up cracking up in front of the audience because I think funny people are brilliant. The audience happens to love seeing the actors lose it but the directors don't think that's so great. (Maybe why I enjoyed watching Drew Carey in Whose Line Is It, Anyway? although I loved squirming to the original radio broadcast more. Blame it on a love of British radio like The Goon Show & Hold Your Plums.)
For over a decade, I was in an improv gaming group and made my way up the ranks from audience participant to staffer to writer/props hack to co-director to writing and directing events myself. The best was knowing that with a few hints of character, some motivation, and 1-2 goals you could set your trusted actors on their own path and watch them run with it. There were *SO* many times that I just sat back and marveled at what people would come up with that was far more intelligent, appealing, fantastically silly/clever/insightful/poetic than anything I might have come up with alone that I still yearn to go back and play, even if only to observe that sort of spur-of-the-moment epiphany in action.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, it's sort of the backbone of my particular philosophy of writing -- and of life, really -- that we can only know or imagine as far as our own imagination based on experience will allow. It's a pretty thin piece of pie. In order to learn something outside our experience, we have to go outside ourselves. We have to research, ask, know, grow...or you can cheat and use actors. I'll be talking more about this during my presentation this year at NESCBWI entitled Eavesdropping, Voyeurism and Other Inspirational Skullduggery. Stay tuned!
That said, there's something gorgeous in just being present to unexpected fun. If not in person, there's always YouTube! Here's one of my favorites from Improv Everywhere:
And a T-mobile chaser gakked from karenhealey:
Smile, everyone! You're on the spontaneously brilliant and funny thing called "Life." Enjoy!
Improv theater tops my charts.
I *adore* the theater but I *suck* at lines. They never, ever, ever sound like they are words coming from me unless they're, well, mine. Which is why I love doing improvisational theater. For a while, I tried comedy troupes but the truth is that I'm the one person who shouldn't be laughing, but I would end up cracking up in front of the audience because I think funny people are brilliant. The audience happens to love seeing the actors lose it but the directors don't think that's so great. (Maybe why I enjoyed watching Drew Carey in Whose Line Is It, Anyway? although I loved squirming to the original radio broadcast more. Blame it on a love of British radio like The Goon Show & Hold Your Plums.)
For over a decade, I was in an improv gaming group and made my way up the ranks from audience participant to staffer to writer/props hack to co-director to writing and directing events myself. The best was knowing that with a few hints of character, some motivation, and 1-2 goals you could set your trusted actors on their own path and watch them run with it. There were *SO* many times that I just sat back and marveled at what people would come up with that was far more intelligent, appealing, fantastically silly/clever/insightful/poetic than anything I might have come up with alone that I still yearn to go back and play, even if only to observe that sort of spur-of-the-moment epiphany in action.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, it's sort of the backbone of my particular philosophy of writing -- and of life, really -- that we can only know or imagine as far as our own imagination based on experience will allow. It's a pretty thin piece of pie. In order to learn something outside our experience, we have to go outside ourselves. We have to research, ask, know, grow...or you can cheat and use actors. I'll be talking more about this during my presentation this year at NESCBWI entitled Eavesdropping, Voyeurism and Other Inspirational Skullduggery. Stay tuned!
That said, there's something gorgeous in just being present to unexpected fun. If not in person, there's always YouTube! Here's one of my favorites from Improv Everywhere:
Click to viewAnd a T-mobile chaser gakked from karenhealey:
Smile, everyone! You're on the spontaneously brilliant and funny thing called "Life." Enjoy!