Impro Oslo weekend workshop

[Gary Schwartz]

I just spent a wonderful weekend with four improvisers from Oslo. It was my great pleasure to lead two full day workshops with them. Two men and two women, Karre,Gunnar, Annethe and Ingunn.

They are professional actors, working in Oslo and comprise 3/4 of an imrprov troupe that perform reglularly. Although they knew the book 'Improvisation for the Theater' by Viola Spolin, they had not played many of the games.
Because there were only four, I was able to introduce them to over 28 games, many they had never done.
I have rarely worked with a more cooperative, enthusiastic and creative group of players. It was heaven for me.

Their years performing a variety of Johnstone formats, gave them a solid foundation from which to launch into the spontaneous and playful state you need to be in when doing Spolin Games. Their level of work as improvisers made it possible to take each Spolin exercise and make it sing with great acting, comedy, pathos and theatricality. I was amazed at what the Spolin Games became for them as I coached them easily into wonderful scenes. They were perfect examples of what the games can do in the right hands with a good coach :). They equal the level of play in my own professional troupe, the Spolin Players and I would love them to use the same games as a performing company in Norway.

We did Spacewalks, warmup games like "Name 6", singing syllables, Magic Music and more. We did Mirrors with follow the follower and Where games and preoccupation games, . I gave them my latest thinking on why follow the follower is superior to "Yes, and..." as a technique in improvisation. More on that later, as I know that idea alone will spark a lively debate in this forum.

I showed them many Gibberish games that they are going to use in their future shows. Real gibberish communication was something they had never done, but took to instantly.
We worked with the Emerging Where to create environments that supported many a wonderful scene. Making the invisible space visible is rare, but they succeeded 90% of the time. This one thing gave the scenes such theatricality, I wish I had filmed it.

I showed them no-motion and it's a hard concept to get off a page, as in the book, but with a little coaching, it now will be there #1 tool for deepening their work onstage.

I cannot remember a more enjoyable weekend than coaching and playing with this wonderful bunch of players.
To get paid for such pleasure is a gift.

Thank you to Sven and the group of players Karre,Gunnar, Annethe and Ingunn for one of the best teaching weekends of my life.
.

Gary Schwartz Oslo, May 31 - June 1, 2008

[Paul Z Jackson]

Let the debate begin! Seriously (humourously?), looking forward to more on this - as the Norwegian experience is clearly under way. Am packing my bags now.

[Johnnie Moore]

Sounds a brilliant time. I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing more about your learnings about "follow the follower" as an alternative to "yes, and".