Improv class #7: And now for the weather
Class started off in an interesting manner. The adults, again, were the first to arrive; Josh came a few minutes later. He carried with him a walking stick that was at least a foot taller than he is. Kyle (aka Frank the Dog--kept forgetting his real name) came in a little later and of *course* wanted to play with the stick, but when we told him it wasn't Paul's and therefore was not a prop, he instead proceeded to sit in a large bucket Paul brought out as an actual prop. With Kyle in the bucket and Josh with his stick, I kept thinking of Whack-a-Mole. I love that game. I'm totally killer at it. There were two more buckets, and if we'd had a soft mallet of some sort I totally would have done something like that. But no. No Whack-a-Mole for you!
Everyone but Alejandra showed up in a more timely fashion this week, and we proceeded to play ball again. Paul went through some simple ball rules, like "What size is the ball?" (Today it was softball-sized.) "Can we catch it and make it tiny in our hands? No." We all had to show him the size of the ball...but Kyle was hiding in a corner and wasn't paying attention. Guess who was the only one who didn't use the correct size of the ball? (Can you tell he's not my favorite kid?)
We also pretended to jump rope (*pant pant pant*), play tug of war, and this version of statues, I guess you could call it. This came about after the kids were being whiny when he wanted them to improv a picnic scene. ("Can I be a ferret?" "I want to be the food!" "I don't want to do this!") The goal was for one person, and one person only, to make a movement. When somebody else started a movement, the first person stopped. Only one person could move at a time. The kids weren't getting the idea at first, so Paul ended up putting us in a circle and pointing to us, so when he pointed to a person that person would move, and when Paul moved to someone else, the moving person would have to freeze. Some positions weren't that hard, but some of the kids were doing splits, trying to put feet over their heads, and even jogging in place (I got frozen in that position), and Paul would get in several people before going back to the frozen people to un-freeze the uncomfortable position. I got creative and went around "duck duck goosing" people, so twice I got frozen in mid-duck. :)
The only kid-only game was one where Paul set up an obstacle course (hence the need for buckets, plus chairs and mats--which I dropped loudly, oops). One kid was blindfolded and set in a corner, and another kid had to guide them around by saying, go forward, go to your left, turn to your right, etc. Josh and Kyle went first, with Kyle blindfolded, and they did okay. Then older Haley and Calvin went to do it, and Calvin kept peeking or trying to peek, defeating the purpose of the game. He's too little for this class. He's too young to understand the concept of acting. I don't think he's too young for any sort of acting class, but if Paul does this again I don't think he should include the super-little kids. It's not fun for them and too distracting for everyone else.
Because we are putting on a show next week, Paul wanted to run through some sketches. The separate classes have been doing certain sketches since the beginning, and that's pretty much how they're broken up. The boys are doing the "dirty diaper" sketch; the younger girls are doing a "Goldilocks and the three bears" sketch (minus younger Haley, who won't be here); and the older girls have a driving sketch. Us adults are doing our "space shuttle" sketch, with Wayne as captain, me as navigator/co-pilot, and mom as a teacher in space. We are also doing the "mattress" scene, which is going okay. We read through the script today and were surprised how close our improv was to the actual lines.
After the read-through (by which time the kiddles were long gone), we sat and talked for a while. Wayne is in a local play (like, down the road from Paul's studio) and he was telling us about that. Mom asked how he got interested in acting. She was curious earlier and asked what he did for a living; he does computer stuff. Anyway, it turns out he studied meteorology in college at UW-Madison (where Cute Boy Jim went!!! Whee! *end tangent*) and got a job as a local weather man right out of school. He didn't like being on-camera--he wasn't a journalism major and didn't like being recognized at the grocery store--so he went into computers. Still, he'd gotten the taste of getting in front of people, and within the past year he thought, what the heck, I'll try out for a play, and voila. It was very interesting. We talked for probably half an hour after we stopped reading.
Next week we get to come at 10:00 instead of 9:00, and the show is at 11 at the studio. This should be interesting.