Level 5 - Advanced Scenework, Class #4, Scott Jennings

As I arrived home from class this evening, Mars hung poised over the thin sliver of the crescent moon, as if at any moment it might lose its place in the night sky and just fall and roll back and forth along the curve…

Sorry. Wrong journal. It was pretty, though.

We spent most of the class today working on mirroring each other. We started in a circle, then face-to-face, and back in a circle, slowly mirroring each other’s movements. I saw some people doing tai chi by the lake yesterday, and this exercise reminded me of that.

Then we said “Hello” to each other. We stood in a circle and one of us walked up to another and said hello in some kind of character. The other person mirrored our hello and then walked up to someone else and said a different hello. We kept trying to get bigger and bigger.

And of course someone made me jump up and down. I have noticed that I wind up being led to jump up and down in almost every one of these classes. Since I decided I might occasionally use emoticons in this journal, I will now insert the following: :roll:

Fortunately, I happen to like my boobs. If I ever wind up at Mardi Gras, I will probably have to rent a U-Haul to bring back the beads.

After we all said hello in an amazing variety of ways, we did two person scenes where we were to mirror each other’s characters. Tom and I struggled for a long while trying to settle into what Scott wanted us to do, but we finally managed to be two little children having a tea party.

Both Scott and Ross are still really having to push me to take the initiative and make choices in scenes. I worry that I will never move past this problem. It is born of many long years of conditioning, coupled with a natural shyness and eagerness to please. I think I am gaining ground, but I may always be a follower.

Later scenes were more fun, with Dave and me playing church ladies gone bad and Tom and me again, this time touting the benefits of terminal illness. He could not have known that there was danger in this choice.

Again I see that I can now touch on those subjects most painful to my heart and not dissolve into a puddle as I once did. I grow stronger, and this is part of my growth as an improviser as well as my growth as a human, and so belongs in this journal.

We spent the last half hour being pirates. ARRRRR!!! At first we were pirates doing improv about pirates, but our pirate teacher growled at us and rattled his saber and we then began to be pirates improvising about fathers and sons and men and women and roommates and groceries and all kinds of ordinary things that pirates might encounter when they aren’t out raping and pillaging.

ARRRRR!!! Improv do be a rewarding pastime.