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Showing posts with label Toronto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toronto. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Friday, 21 February 2014
Mainstage!
It’s hard to believe that the big day is finally here. After ten months of taking Improv classes at Second City here in Toronto our graduation performance is tomorrow. Our 45-minute performance marks the end of Level E; having successfully navigated and passed each of the levels from A-E we’ve now completed the Introduction to Improv program.
I think the most intimidating part of this performance is that we are on the main-stage and performing in front of a rather large audience of friends and family. The show itself is made up of around ten scenes with varied twists and turns which should make for a fun time.
When I started this journey last year I wanted to give it a try and see what it was like, but it only took me a handful of classes and I was completely hooked. The whole Improv thing gets into your bones, the more you do it the more you’re addicted. I like to think of it as crack for the soul!
I can't tell you how many nights I would come away from class with a sore stomach because of the constant belly laughs, seriously you try it for three solid hours its painful…but in a good way if you know what I mean.
Seriously though the coursework was amazing, but what was more unbelievable were the people I met along the way. In each of my levels I had such an eclectic bunch of people take part, which, for the most part I likely wouldn't meet normally in my day-to-day world, especially given my work and family situation. People from all walks of life and all ages, a true slice of life with one thing in common - Improv. In addition to the crazy cast of characters I feel truly blessed with my instructors, they were some of the best and well known in the business…so yeah, pretty cool all round!
With this program coming to an end I've been thinking about what’s next… In fact last Friday I was lucky enough to audition for the Longform program in the hopes that perhaps I'd make the grade and continue on my Improv journey.
The audition was a lot of fun, but to be honest a bit of a pressure cooker type environment. I joined a group of seven others, some of whom had worked together or attended classes together. We started with a 15 minute warm up before being brought into the John Candy Box Theatre to face a panel of five well know and seasoned instructors from Second City...yikes! I then realized that perhaps I may have been slightly out of my depth. Ya think?
Our first activity was to play a series of scenes, with the direction being that there should be no “blank stage”. This led to some pretty fast and furious scene work from the eight of us, and after about ten or so scenes we were then asked to take a seat while they conferred . The selection panel had our photos and resumes spread out before them on the table as they discussed the next activity to test our skills.
When they say Longform they mean long….form! The next portion was a true test of our abilities in that each scene was close to five minute in length or until the panel got bored (yep that happened too). I was last, but my partner was awesome and we totally lucked out and were given the innocuous word “picnic” for our scene.
So many places to take it, and I must admit the time flew and we had a great time on stage with some funny twists and turns along the way. At the end of our scene, they thanked us and said they'd get back to us if we were selected for the program, as we were quickly ushered from the theatre.
Now although I'm generally a positive person, I'm not quite as confident about a call back this time around. The others in my group were amazing Improvisers and so if nothing else it was a great experience and definitely won't be my last audition.☺
Although its getting late tonight, I'm going to practice a couple of things before I go to bed. Firstly, I need to work on my opening for one of the scenes that I'm introducing. In addition, I also need to work on refining some of my opening scene work, practice some of my characters and accents etc.
In fact, last night I woke up at 4:00 am thinking about Saturdays show, slowly walking through in my head each of the scenes and how they'd play out. Clearly I'm feeling a little preoccupied with my particular scenes, but in reality I'm surprisingly not nervous about the performance...tomorrow - am I totally crazy?
Yeah, don't answer that! ☺
I think the most intimidating part of this performance is that we are on the main-stage and performing in front of a rather large audience of friends and family. The show itself is made up of around ten scenes with varied twists and turns which should make for a fun time.
When I started this journey last year I wanted to give it a try and see what it was like, but it only took me a handful of classes and I was completely hooked. The whole Improv thing gets into your bones, the more you do it the more you’re addicted. I like to think of it as crack for the soul!
 |
| You know you want to.... |
I can't tell you how many nights I would come away from class with a sore stomach because of the constant belly laughs, seriously you try it for three solid hours its painful…but in a good way if you know what I mean.
Seriously though the coursework was amazing, but what was more unbelievable were the people I met along the way. In each of my levels I had such an eclectic bunch of people take part, which, for the most part I likely wouldn't meet normally in my day-to-day world, especially given my work and family situation. People from all walks of life and all ages, a true slice of life with one thing in common - Improv. In addition to the crazy cast of characters I feel truly blessed with my instructors, they were some of the best and well known in the business…so yeah, pretty cool all round!
With this program coming to an end I've been thinking about what’s next… In fact last Friday I was lucky enough to audition for the Longform program in the hopes that perhaps I'd make the grade and continue on my Improv journey.
The audition was a lot of fun, but to be honest a bit of a pressure cooker type environment. I joined a group of seven others, some of whom had worked together or attended classes together. We started with a 15 minute warm up before being brought into the John Candy Box Theatre to face a panel of five well know and seasoned instructors from Second City...yikes! I then realized that perhaps I may have been slightly out of my depth. Ya think?
Our first activity was to play a series of scenes, with the direction being that there should be no “blank stage”. This led to some pretty fast and furious scene work from the eight of us, and after about ten or so scenes we were then asked to take a seat while they conferred . The selection panel had our photos and resumes spread out before them on the table as they discussed the next activity to test our skills.
When they say Longform they mean long….form! The next portion was a true test of our abilities in that each scene was close to five minute in length or until the panel got bored (yep that happened too). I was last, but my partner was awesome and we totally lucked out and were given the innocuous word “picnic” for our scene.
So many places to take it, and I must admit the time flew and we had a great time on stage with some funny twists and turns along the way. At the end of our scene, they thanked us and said they'd get back to us if we were selected for the program, as we were quickly ushered from the theatre.
Now although I'm generally a positive person, I'm not quite as confident about a call back this time around. The others in my group were amazing Improvisers and so if nothing else it was a great experience and definitely won't be my last audition.☺
Although its getting late tonight, I'm going to practice a couple of things before I go to bed. Firstly, I need to work on my opening for one of the scenes that I'm introducing. In addition, I also need to work on refining some of my opening scene work, practice some of my characters and accents etc.
In fact, last night I woke up at 4:00 am thinking about Saturdays show, slowly walking through in my head each of the scenes and how they'd play out. Clearly I'm feeling a little preoccupied with my particular scenes, but in reality I'm surprisingly not nervous about the performance...tomorrow - am I totally crazy?
Yeah, don't answer that! ☺
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