May 20th: Mindblowing Exercises!

Every Sunday for improv we start the workshop with warmups.  These are the exercises that get us in the right mind frame for improv.  These are usually high energy games, games to get our mind going, games to get us to connect to one another, and then games to get us to focus.  This Sunday was VERY different.

So those same guys that had the awesome show on Friday night also have a very different style to how they do their warm-ups.  I'm used to warm-ups like word-at-a-time story, or even word association, but apparently those warm-ups aren't quite good enough in Germany or Slovenia.

Try this: Pair up with someone.  Designate one of you as A and the other as B. Person A will be telling a one word at a time story, with B repeating the words ... but one word behind.  It ends up looking like this:

A - Fishing
A - is
B - Fishing
A - so
B - is
A - much
B - so
A - fun.
B - much (... and so on and so forth)

Seriously - try it.  WAY harder than you think.  But really good at paying attention and listening.
You think that was hard?  Now try this.  As a group, form a circle.  Start things off easy with a basic word association.  Someone start with ANY word, and tell it to the person on your right.  That person will then associate off the last word.  Pretty simple.  For instance it could look like this (in let's say a group of four people designated A, B, C, and D positioned counter clockwise.)

A - Shark
then B - Tooth
then C - Ache
then D - Pain
then A - Killers
etc.

NOW, let's try what we did on Sunday.  Instead of going one at a time in circle, the entire group is word associating at the exact same time.  Meaning that you are listening for a word at the exact same time that you are giving a word.  Confused?  I don't blame you.  So were we.  The key thing is that the entire group starts with the same word, and then you go from there.  Let's go back to that circle with A, B, C and D and see if I can explain how it happens.

All together: A - Shark, B - Shark, C - Shark, D - Shark
then All Together: A - Ocean, B - Tooth, C - Fin, D - Sea
then All Together: A - Saw, B - Blue, C - Ache, D - Land
then All Together: A - Earth, B - Cut, C - Yellow, D - Pain

Did you get that?  Yeah - MINDBLOWING!  And Awesome!  Yes, it's difficult.  But once you get into a rhythm and shut your mind off to the negativity of thinking you can't do it, then it actually start happening.  It's amazing what your brain can do when you actually give it the chance.