(no subject)
Kitten report:
The kitten is almost cat-like at this point. She is getting fatter and slightly less neurotic. The good news is that her poop is distinctly less stinky. My room is no longer embarressingly stinky. It is however, embaressingly messy. I have discovered the best cat toy ever. I got one of those picture mobile and hung all her favorite cat toys on it - rattle mice, feathers, catnip bags, and a bell. She loves it. Sometimes she just stares at it for hours, plotting her next move.
On a related note: is mobile (in this context) correctly pronounced "mo-byle" or "mo-beel" or "mo-bl", and is it different than a mobile home? I pronounce mobile homes "mo=bl" and mobile hangy things "mo-beel", and the ability to move "mo-byle". Since all have the ability to move I suspect that they should all be "mo-byle"s but it just seems wrong to me. Hmm.
Work report:
I finally reached the limit of how many times I can be late and was given a "talking to". Fortuntately my boss is pretty awesome and that talk consisted of "I need you to try harder to be here on-time" accompanied by an eye-brow lift. I hardly had a guilt pang at all. I never used to be so consistantly late to work. Rehearsal, yes. Work, no. I blame Devin entirely, dispite the fact that he was in Seattle last night/this morning and had nothing to do with it. His fault anyway.
Secondary work report:
I am going for a job interview in 2 1/2 hours. I am very nervous. So nervous that I decided that what I am wearing today is not good enough for an interview (stain on the front of the shirt, pants that I wore yesterday so are not as crisp as they could be) and I spent 35 dollars on a new outfit. In other news, I am able to buy a new corporate style outfit for 35 dollars. Good on me!
I will let you know how it all turns out soon.
Improv report:
I taught my first class last night. I have taught before as a substitute but never with the thought that I would get to work with this group again. I think it went really well. Actually, I feel very good about it. I worked on scene-work with the overall theme of "yes" running through each excercise. Of course we started with "Yes" the game. I forget how clunky that game can be with people who don't know it very well, but they got the hang of it. Then I realized that I wanted to do a name game, so I had them play "yes" using the person's name instead of pointing. It worked very well. Then I had them play freeze-tag so that I could just see them play for a while. I think one of the things I will have to work on is concise explainations for people who haven't done the exercise before. Some of these students really have potential. Oh, they have problems, but it was really fun to see them play.
After the break we did "yes, and" scenes which went over fairly well. Then I sat them down and had a conversation with them about what ingredients go into a scene. I got everything from characters to dialogue and plot to emotion and setting. Once we had compiled that we decided if every single scene needed each of those elements and which were indispensible and which were not. As it happened when I looked back down at the list at which ones were not necessary, they were all things like plot, conflict, dialogue, story. I pointed out that these were often the things that trip us up when we try too hard to make them work. A beautiful scene can consist of two people sitting on a bench just being with each other. So I told them to not worry about those things right now. Let the scenes happen as they might. They really seemed to get it. When we did some free scenes again, they were much more loose, and a lot less plotty. I was very proud.
At the end of the night I left them with the reminder of one of the things that never even made it onto the list in the first place: Funny. It just doesn't need to be there in order to have a good scene, so why do so many people try so hard to have it be there. I felt very smart.
The kitten is almost cat-like at this point. She is getting fatter and slightly less neurotic. The good news is that her poop is distinctly less stinky. My room is no longer embarressingly stinky. It is however, embaressingly messy. I have discovered the best cat toy ever. I got one of those picture mobile and hung all her favorite cat toys on it - rattle mice, feathers, catnip bags, and a bell. She loves it. Sometimes she just stares at it for hours, plotting her next move.
On a related note: is mobile (in this context) correctly pronounced "mo-byle" or "mo-beel" or "mo-bl", and is it different than a mobile home? I pronounce mobile homes "mo=bl" and mobile hangy things "mo-beel", and the ability to move "mo-byle". Since all have the ability to move I suspect that they should all be "mo-byle"s but it just seems wrong to me. Hmm.
Work report:
I finally reached the limit of how many times I can be late and was given a "talking to". Fortuntately my boss is pretty awesome and that talk consisted of "I need you to try harder to be here on-time" accompanied by an eye-brow lift. I hardly had a guilt pang at all. I never used to be so consistantly late to work. Rehearsal, yes. Work, no. I blame Devin entirely, dispite the fact that he was in Seattle last night/this morning and had nothing to do with it. His fault anyway.
Secondary work report:
I am going for a job interview in 2 1/2 hours. I am very nervous. So nervous that I decided that what I am wearing today is not good enough for an interview (stain on the front of the shirt, pants that I wore yesterday so are not as crisp as they could be) and I spent 35 dollars on a new outfit. In other news, I am able to buy a new corporate style outfit for 35 dollars. Good on me!
I will let you know how it all turns out soon.
Improv report:
I taught my first class last night. I have taught before as a substitute but never with the thought that I would get to work with this group again. I think it went really well. Actually, I feel very good about it. I worked on scene-work with the overall theme of "yes" running through each excercise. Of course we started with "Yes" the game. I forget how clunky that game can be with people who don't know it very well, but they got the hang of it. Then I realized that I wanted to do a name game, so I had them play "yes" using the person's name instead of pointing. It worked very well. Then I had them play freeze-tag so that I could just see them play for a while. I think one of the things I will have to work on is concise explainations for people who haven't done the exercise before. Some of these students really have potential. Oh, they have problems, but it was really fun to see them play.
After the break we did "yes, and" scenes which went over fairly well. Then I sat them down and had a conversation with them about what ingredients go into a scene. I got everything from characters to dialogue and plot to emotion and setting. Once we had compiled that we decided if every single scene needed each of those elements and which were indispensible and which were not. As it happened when I looked back down at the list at which ones were not necessary, they were all things like plot, conflict, dialogue, story. I pointed out that these were often the things that trip us up when we try too hard to make them work. A beautiful scene can consist of two people sitting on a bench just being with each other. So I told them to not worry about those things right now. Let the scenes happen as they might. They really seemed to get it. When we did some free scenes again, they were much more loose, and a lot less plotty. I was very proud.
At the end of the night I left them with the reminder of one of the things that never even made it onto the list in the first place: Funny. It just doesn't need to be there in order to have a good scene, so why do so many people try so hard to have it be there. I felt very smart.