Create | Think | Speak | Present http://www.omniscium.com Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:38:22 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.omniscium.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.omniscium.com Create | Think | Speak | Present http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-1.html A while ago I decided I wanted to try improv. I have always loved watching improv, although it has always been on TV. Whoose Line is it Anyway used to be one of my favorite shows. Part of my reason for wanting to try it out was due to Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org/) . I had grown to like table topics enough that I wanted to get better. In addition some Toastmasters used improv games for table topics. The alphabet game was one that stood out for me. I signed up with ComedySportz (http://www.portlandcomedy.com/) for their 8-week Improv 101 class. I wasn't really sure what I was doing there when I went to the first meeting. I am hardly a big fan of being in a room full of strangers. They were not strangers for long though. We played the name game and soon could remember everyones name easily. It is going to be difficult to forget Misogynistic Michael. We played a game that involved some interesting rules. Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano (mailto:). The game is fun and involves thinking relatively quickly to avoid making a mistake. Some color was added to proceedings with extra words. James Brown being my favorite. Pat, our guide, and as it happens is also the GM, told us to leave the Judge and Editor outside. That is easier said than done, as most artists will tell you. I didn't think that very much at the time thank goodness. It seems you need to be rid of the Judge and the Editor to do improv well. It is hardy improv if you edit what you are going to say, or are judging everyone elses responses. There needs to be a spontaneity. A hard thing to teach. Seems like Zoom, Schwartz, Pafigliano is a means to that end. Creativity - Creativity Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:00:00 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Simpsons-300-Trailer.html I have seen some amazing things online. It never ceases to amaze me how much time some people have. Whether they are creating life-size viking ships out of lollipop sticks (http://www.festivalweather.com/forum/man-builds-viking-ship-from-15m-lollipop-sticks-vt7498.html), Escher drawings out of Lego (http://www.andrewlipson.com/escher/relativity.html), or walking on custard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIzSCadHph0). Nothing has amazed me as much as the work done by flashflare on The Simpsons 300 Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z4YZnja988). It is just simply amazing. Creativity - Creativity Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:03:41 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Toastmaster-Agendas.html One of the areas of Toastmasters that gives me a chance to flex my creativity is the agenda. I like to match it to the theme as much as I can. I plan to add the agendas I create up to this site so everyone can use them, either directly, or as inspiration for other agendas. This week I was Toastmaster and my theme was Getting Things Done . I chose to create an agenda in the style of Outlook as a lot of what we do in business revolves around that particular application. Here (assets/OutlookAgenda.doc) is the agenda in Word format. My first creative agenda was an attempt to have more than one use for the piece of paper. I chose paper airplanes as my theme, and made the agenda into a template for a paper airplane. Just fold along the lines in the order specified. Here (assets/Airplane.doc) is the agenda in Word format. If you use these agendas, please let me know. I would also be glad to host other creative agendas people have created. Send me a note on the contact page. Creativity - Creativity Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:58:19 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Time-Theme-Toastmaster-Agenda.html This week I had the role of Toastmaster. My theme was "Time". It is close to DST. Without the recent change in Daylight Saving Time we would change the clocks this Sunday. The theme seemed appropriate and gave me the chance to try out an agenda idea. I wanted to create the agenda in the shape of a clock. Our meetings are 1 hour long, so I could show the amount of time for each of the roles easily. Here (assets/TimeThemeAgenda.pdf) is a PDF of the agenda and a template (assets/TimeThemeAgenda.zip) in PowerPoint 2007 format. I started to do the agenda in Word 2007, but did not find a way to rotate text to arbitrary angles. PowerPoint was able to do that with ease. I guess you can do a lot more than bullet points in PowerPoint! If you use this agenda, please let me know. I would also be glad to host other creative agendas people have created. Send me a note on the contact page. Update: By request, I have included a PowerPoint 2003 compatible version of the template in the download. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:28:58 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Toastmaster-Newsletters.html Since joining Toastmasters, I have been interested in helping members stay involved in the club, even when they are not able to attend meetings. To that end, I have found that newsletters are an excellent way to achieve this. It is hard to stay away when you can see the fun everyone else is having! I have learned a lot by doing these newsletters. I hope to pass that knowledge on to everyone. I am currently on my third design. Each design solved a particular problem. Design 1 The first design was created as a way to get information out to our members. I wanted something that looked good, was simple, and looked like what I thought a newsletter should look like. Here is an example (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NNN_Vol1_Issue14.pdf), and a template (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NewsletterTemplate1.doc) you can use yourself (Word). Design 2 The first design was a great start. It conveyed information well. The only downside was that it took a long time for me to format the content. I decided I wanted something easier as I was creating this newsletter every week. I decided to use PowerPoint. Here is an example (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NNN_Vol2_Issue9.pdf), and a template (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NewsletterTemplate2.pptx) you can use yourself (PPT 2007). Design 3 I was happy with design 2 as I could get the newsletter out quicker. There were 2 issues with design 2. The issues revolved around printing. The newsletter is not well suited to printing. The colors make it difficult to read, and it is on many pages. We wanted to print the newsletter and give to guests so they could see how much fun our club was. Design 3 is a cross between design 1 and design 2. It uses the smart-art feature of Office to make updating content easier. It is much shorter and looks better printed. Here is an example (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NNN_Vol3_Issue1.pdf), and a template (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NewsletterTemplate3.docx) you can use yourself (Word 2007). Update: Due to popular demand (any demand is popular at this point), I have created a pre-2007 version here (http://www.omniscium.com/assets/NewsletterTemplate3.doc). Please note that the templates do not have a watermark set. This is an excellent way to spruce up the newsletter. Check out the watermark feature of Word to recreate what I have posted in the examples. Have fun! Please do use the templates for your own clubs. All I ask is that you let me know so that I get a warm fuzzy feeling and so that I can post a link to your club. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:36:19 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Hmmmm-pie-charts.html I just read an article (http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/08-21-07.pdf) by Stephen Few about the effectiveness of pie charts. I had known from other sources that pie charts were not as effective at representing information as other means. Edward Tufte put it well in his book, Visual Display of Quantitative Information (http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8 location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FVisual-Display-Quantitative-Information-2nd%2Fdp%2F0961392142%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1187741374%26sr%3D8-2 tag=powepoin08-20 linkCode=ur2 camp=1789 creative=9325): the only worse design than a pie chart is several of them. PowerPoint presentations seem to be littered with pie charts. I believe that people use them because they appear to be less cluttered than the alternatives. This does not have to be the case, but does require editing the default graph layout from your charting software. Stephen's article not only tells us that pie charts are ineffective in most situations, but also goes on to illustrate why, with excellent examples. In his wonderful book, Show me the Numbers (http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8 location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FShow-Me-Numbers-Designing-Enlighten%2Fdp%2F0970601999%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1187741374%26sr%3D8-2 tag=powepoin08-20 linkCode=ur2 camp=1789 creative=9325), Stephen goes as far as saying I don't use pie charts. Get a copy of his book and find out what graph you should be using instead. Always ask yourself what you are trying to convey with this graph. Stephen puts it very well in his article: Graphs are useful when a picture of the data makes meaningful relationships visible (patterns, trends, and exceptions) that could not be easily discerned from a table of the same data. I prefer cake anyway. Creativity - Creativity Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:19:55 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-2.html Coming in to week 2 I could still remember everyones name from last week with just a little effort. Amazing what a little association can do. This week seemed to revolve around trust. We played a 2 person game where one person was blindfolded. The non-blindfolded person lead them through a maze of objects using only commands. There was a 60 second time limit. Out of about 11 teams, 22 attempts, only 1 combination made it. We were then split into 2 teams. I was in the first team. We were asked to cross an imaginary river. The other team watched as we tried a number of strategies and finally made it across the river. The second team was asked to recreate a mega-block configuration from memory. Half of the team was blindfolded and they could touch the blocks. The other half could see but only communicate using musical instruments. I didn't like this week as much as last week. There was a lot of time spent doing passive things. Listening and observing. I understand that observation is important in improv, as is learning. I felt the blindfold game could have been more effective if we were split into 2 groups of teams, thus allowing us to try the challenge twice as much. I am hoping that this week sets a foundation for us to build on in coming weeks. Its importance is not readily apparent right now. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:00:00 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-3.html If last week was my least favorite week so far, this week was my favorite. The theme was story. We started off with a game to get our verbal muscles loosened. The game was One Hen, Two Ducks (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1063498). I was surprised that I could not keep up very well. I was fine for the first few, but then lost the thread pretty quickly. We then played a game of Bippity Bippity Bop. This was a neat game I could play for a long time! Then we moved on to stories. Everyone in a large circle took turns to add one word to a story. After that, we moved into groups of 2 people. We then created stories together using 1 word at a time, 2 words at a time and finally 3 words at a time. Three words at a time was hardest for me as it seemed the story had less flow. It would see saw from my ideas to my partners. With 1 word at a time, we moved along a shared path more. Next we each took turns on a chair on stage talking about a topic for 60 seconds. Wow! Everyone did an amazing job. I got the topic of hair. Not a topic I would have picked, but I talked about it for 60 seconds. Pamela did an awesome job with the word food. She almost did the whole 60 seconds using just that word! Finally, and most fun, we got to play the game Story. Pat would point to 1 of the 7 on stage and you would have to continue the story until he pointed at someone else. This week was perfect timing. On Wednesday I am giving an off the cuff speech for Toastmasters in a backwards meeting. More on that after I give the speech. Creativity - Creativity Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:14:12 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-4.html This week started out playing the One Hen, Two Ducks game again. While it wasn't as difficult as last week, I still found it difficult to keep up. I was comforted to see other people concentrating on nailing the timing of the numbers, Eight! , Nine! This weeks theme was space and movement. We started out with a circle game where we imagined a bowling ball going from person to person. We had to obey the laws of physics in that we couldn't just reverse the direction of the ball. Easiest was to just continue the ball rolling with a whooosh! We could change the direction by looping the ball back two people, missing the person who passed us the ball. There were other ways of changing the path, including Tron where you could send the ball to a random person. The laws of physics bend for Tron it seems! We did a number of exercises where we imagined objects ranging from a bowling ball to a feather. I wonder what we would use if bowling balls hadn't been invented? Maybe watermellons? Pat pointed out that when you grab an object, your hand usually snaps to the object. I had never noticed this before. Did I snap to objects before? Am I doing it now because I was told I did it? Hmmm.... Next we played a game where we imagined poles and then moved from our pole to someone elses. This was interesting as we ended up losing poles in the migration. We got better although we now find we could invent poles that didn't exist before! The next game was a circle game. We went around using the previous persons matter creation and then reshaped the matter into our own thing, passing it on to the next person. I had all sorts of ideas for what I would do when I was passed the matter. I wanted to do juggling balls, spinning plates, etc. I eventually decided to build on what was passed to me. This could have worked out great. Unfortunately, Nathan passed me toilet paper under the stall! His mime was quite off-putting! It threw me. I decided to make a ladder to escape the stall. This fit in with the situation, but did little to develop my spacial skills. I didn't spend the time to really develop my object. I also did a lousy job at creating a ladder! Lastly, we played a game where we had four frames to create a story. The audience would close their eyes, we would get into place, ask them to open their eyes for 6 seconds. Then they would close their eyes, we would move on to the next frame and do the same thing. This was my favorite part of the improv class so far. Our story was having a baby. We went from start to finish in just four frame. I don't believe I have laughed so hard in ages, and I was in the scene! I learned this week that I need to spend time developing my spacial interaction, paying close attention to how I interact with objects. I also stretched myself this week by doing the four frame scene. I didn't like the topic, but went with it completely. We created something great with little preparation. Creativity - Creativity Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:00:00 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-7.html This week was one where we were going to put together what we had learned the past 6 weeks. This means we would take teamwork, trust, story, physical space, status, and character and make a deadly cocktail. After some warm up games, we were told 2 rules of improv. One we could never break, and the other only when we really knew what we were doing. The first rule was to never deny the reality someone else has setup. This should never be broken. The second rule is not to ask questions. Patrick gave us an incentive to not ask questions. He would do 10 push ups for every question we asked. I would have thought having us do pushups would have been a bigger incentive, but I am not complaining. We played a game of lay-ups, where 1 person would go on stage, lay up by saying a line, and the other person would rebound by responding with a line. Each person would go to the back of the other line, thus alterntating roles. This was relatively easy. We did end up with one question, and it was silly. One player added an ok? to the end of their line!!! We played the lay-up game the rest of the evening with some variations. We went to 2 lines alternating with each player. Then 1 line but doing the scene backwards. Finally 2 lines alternating backwards. Doing it backwards is quite a challenge and a lot of fun. The 2 hours were over way too quickly and I found myself wanting to carry on playing the game for many more hours. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:27:39 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-6.html This week started out with a very challenging game. We had 3 progressions going around the circle at once. One progression was calling the name of the next person. Each person would call the name of the next person, continuing around as we got to the end. The second progression was making eye contact with someone and saying you. Lastly we would say a fruit or vegetable. When your fruit or vegetable came up you would say the next one in the sequence. Three progressions at once really stretched your listening ability. As if that wasn't enough, we had to move to the next person in the progression too!!! Patrick says this game is as close to improv you can get without it actually being improv. Next we had a party where we endowed other party goers to be a movie star, funniest person in the world, someone just let out of prison, or a fatally ill person. This game was not my favorite as it seemed quite predictable. I realize it gave us a chance to practice the same endowments, but I didn't get the chance to reflect to make the best use of that. Lastly we played a really fun game where we interviewed people for a TV show. You would play the interviewee, and then the interviewer. The best approach was to keep it simple. There were some awesome pieces done in this one. The knitting show was my favorite, although wine in a can was terrific too. We learned PEVO for endowments - Physical, Emotional, Vocal, and Occupational. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:28:27 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-5.html This week was all about status. We started with a warm-up game called Kitty in the Corner, then moved on to a game where status was assigned to us with playing cards. We each got one card but couldn't see what it was as we held it to our foreheads. We then had to treat everyone else with their assigned status. We played a few variations on this. Some unlucky people ended up with low status every time. It was hard not to laugh as you completely ignored them! We then played a game where we would have 5 people in a line in descending order of status. You could only talk to the person directly above or below you. Each group of 5 had a different scenario. It was interesting to see how little got done. This seems to be an excellent example of how lines of mangement can break down communication in a company. Creativity - Creativity Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:47:08 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Week-8.html The 8th and final week of the Improv 101 class at ComedySportz Portland. Even though it is the last class, it seems that most of the class are going to continue coming to the farm team. It will be just like old times on a different day. Today, we played 1 warm-up game and then a single game filled the rest of the 2 hours. The warm-up game had us alternately clapping and stomping our feet to a rythm. While that was happening, we called out our own number and then someone else's number. Deceptively difficult. I found it easier, the faster we got. The game we played was Doors. We had 2 rooms on stage, each with a person in them. Someone would go through a door into each room in turn. While in the room they would interact with the owner of that room, in the situation they concocted. The owner of the second room would vacate and so we made it through the entire class. We only went through 1 time which was a shame. I had a hard time with this game. I believe it was due to the lack of relationship in the situation. A dentist chair is ok, but on its own it doesn't have any intrigue. A son as the dentist working on his dad has much more drama. One rule of improv is that you don't waste any time getting to know the other characters. We are meant to already know the other person. Noone cares about us getting to know each other. I believe this caused me a problem. I limited who the people I knew could be. They could be anyone, President of the United States, Britney Spears, My Son, etc. Although I am a little dissapointed with my performance this week, I feel I learned more than if I hit the ball out of the park. Next time I play the game it is going to be all about relationships! Creativity - Creativity Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:49:40 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Transition-Week-1.html This week is the first of 3 transition weeks. These were created to give us newbies a chance to adjust to the rigors of the farm team. This week the theme is where. We spent more time doing and less time listening. This makes sense as we are putting what we learned in the 8 week course into practice. We started out with a game called Fuzzy Duck. One of the other students was first to mis-say this phrase, but I really took it and ran with it. It was the end of the game once I found 2 different ways to swear with this game. I figure I was well on my way to 4 different ways. I wonder if the game would be easier if you did the game with swear words to begin with, or would you revert to Ducky Fuzz? We played a game of ball throwing with beach balls, ping pong balls, bowling balls, etc. All imaginary of course. I liked the ping pong ball. It seemed to allow for more creativity. Next we played a game where we would act out part of a scene, adding 1 more object that the person before. This game I liked. You could find creative ways to interact with objects. I was faced with a furnace. The previous person dragged a bag into the scene and threw it into the furnace. The bag, burned beyond recognition. I interacted with the bag by trying to rescue it from the furnace, but unfortunately too late. Then we played slowmo. An interesting game of commentary while 2 people go head to head in slow motion. I was one of the contestants and found it difficult to go very slow. A nice challenge. Last game we played was What are you doing? A challenging game in a number of ways, especially when you have to use 3 given letters as the initals of your action. For instance, if the initials were GAP, I could say Generating Airplane Parts. I really like this week. Part of it was that there were just 8 of us. A nice small number and good for splitting up. The object exercises in the 8 week course were among my weakest. I felt much better about my abilities after this week. I am getting the hang of saying yes to everything, but having a harder time to remember that relationships are key. I am looking forward to next week. Creativity - Creativity Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:02:33 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/-Improv-Transition-Week-2.html This week we concentrated on the who of a scene. Last week we concentrated on the where . I cannot wait for the why week!!! We used a similar format to last week. Play a couple of quick warmup exercises and then get on to the games. We had 10 people this week which seemed a little more cumbersome than last week. I like having more people because you get better energy, but it means you sit out some games completely. I realize that observing is important, but I want to DO it! After a couple of circle word association games (thankfully not fuzzy duck) , we moved on to games. We effectively built on PEVO from the 101 course. Physical, Emotional, Vocal and Occupational. We had some fun and challenging games where I was pushed out of my comfort zone. Pushed moreso than with the 101 class. One game in particular, called monologue, we followed the PEVO of the first person as best we could continuing to talk about the same subject. Our subject was pizza and we had to use a very strange voice and a hunched over demeanor. I think it was really funny and I was surprised how the topic went. In retrospect, I think the voice dictated a lot of the direction. I tended to go a stranger direction than I might if I was doing a proper accent. Another game we played had us imagine the other person was 1 of 4 people we either loved, hated, feared or pitied. While not part of the learning for the game, choosing famous people worked well when the other person incorporated their characteristics into the scene. I really liked this week. It feels like some things are coming together for me. Next week is the last of the transition weeks. After that we integrate with the farm team. There are a lot of people in the farm team and it is a little scary thinking of doing scenes around that many people, especially when they have been doing improv for years! Creativity - Creativity Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:32:53 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Amazing-Photos.html Came across this amazing collection (http://photo.net/photodb/member-photos?user_id=1773259 include=all) of photos by Piotr Artemski today. I just wanted to share. Creativity - Creativity Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:10:05 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Transition-Week-3.html This week we completed the last of the three transition weeks with the what of a scene. I had a hard time this week because it seemed that we brought all 3 aspects together at once without spending a lot of time with solely the what. I had fun and we played some excellent games, but I felt we could have used a week concentrating on what and then spend 1 more transition week bringing it all together. Maybe I am a little intinidated about the prospect of joining up with the veteran farm team players? Just 1 more week is not much of a delay. One game I really enjoyed with 185 . This is a game I get instantly and can do. The setup is pretty much the same every time. 185 things enter a bar. The barman says, I am sorry, we don't serve things here. The 185 things... You can change it up a little if it fits the object better. I really got into my stride when the thing was Xerox machines. Here are my 2 efforts: 185 Xerox machines enter a bar. The barman says, I am sorry, we don't serve Xerox machines here. 370 Xerox machines enter the bar... 185 Italian Xerox machines enter a bar. The barman says, I am sorry, we don't serve Xerox machines here. The Xerox machines say Why are you takin' that a toner with me, eh? All said, I am looking forward to next week when we start doing the real work. Creativity - Creativity Sun, 25 Nov 2007 17:00:00 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Show.html I went to see my first show at Portland Comedy Sportz (http://www.portlandcomedy.com/) Saturday night. I was very impressed. The performers were very smooth. As a budding improv-er, I wondered what I could take away from this first experience. I have come to the conclusion that I can learn very little from these performers. The reason is that they are so far ahead of where I am now, that I cannot break it down to a level I can comprehend. The performers not only have been doing this for a long time, they also know each other. It would be like watching Tiger Woods as a beginning golfer and trying to pick a couple of tips from watching his play. It was illuminating to stay behind after the show to watch the notes. This is where everyone compared their notes on the night. I got to see what they thought of how they did. I really wanted to interject a couple of times as an audience member, but decided not to. One of the games was confusing in its setup. When you know the games inside out, I believe you don't think about how people get it the first time they see it. I was a little perturbed by the amount of singing that went on. Practically everyone sang. Even the worst were good, and the good ones were excellent. The opera scene really stood out. I look forward to going again once I have tried to do some of the game in the farm team show. Maybe that will give me a frame of reference to build from. Creativity - Creativity Sat, 24 Nov 2007 17:00:00 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Farm-Team-Week-1.html Yesterday was the first week with the combined 101 class and the Farm Team. We were split into 2 groups for the night. The Shining Stars and the Rising Stars. For each game, the Shining Stars would perform. Then the Shining Stars had a shot. Lastly, a combination of the 2 groups. Splitting up was a good idea. Most of the Rising Stars haven't seen many of the games, so it gave us a chance to watch how it could be done. It gave me a much needed reference point. As we had a bigger group there was less time to get hands-on experience with all of the games. I sat out a couple of the games so that others could play. This was unfortunate, although watching was good too. It was harder than I thought it was going to be, but at the same time easier to go up there are give it a go. There is a lot to learn. It is hard to point to what we learned on the 101 class and say how that helped this week, but I cannot imagine what this week would have been like if I had not done the 101 class. All in all, I am thrilled to be working with the Farm Team and look forward to many more Wednesdays. Creativity - Creativity Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:53:26 +0100 http://www.omniscium.com/Creativity/Improv-Farm-Team-Week-2.html This week I had a different coach. Herb went into the back room with the more experienced improvisers. Andrew was our coach tonight. First thing Andrew said was to forget the rules. Forget not to ask questions. Forget yes, and. Forget everything. Let yourself make mistakes and see where it takes you. Interesting... The evening consisted of a few games. There were 16 of us, which lent itself well to 2 groups of 8 to make 2 teams of 4. I am not going to describe the particular games this week as it doesn't seem as relevant as what I got out of them. We did end on 185 though, which I got to play. This game is my favorite. I love making puns and making people groan. As it happened, I did a couple of groaners during the games which seemed weird, but I went with them anyway. I tend to ask a lot of questions. I also have a difficult time with where to go in a scene. There is some initial momentum, but then I become lost. Andrew did an excellent job. He would stop us when we were not being effective and give us a gentle prod in the right direction. Sometimes I needed more than 1 prod, but eventually it worked. What came out after the 3-4 prods was awesome. It was like playing the game New Choice. I felt a little lost after the class today. It was hard work. I felt a little beaten down as I asked so many questions. Then, after talking to some people and a hefty dose of introspection, I believe I have made significant progress. I realized that I was having a conversation. A regular conversation. In regular conversations you have everyday, you ask questions. Lots of questions. It is like an interview. This is great when you are involved in the conversation, but generally boring as hell if you are an outsider paying to watch! Instead of having a conversation, you are having a relationship. You are displaying conflict between yourself and the other players. You need to create intrigue. Instead of questions, you need to make statements. It seems that starting them with You... is a good practice. Instead of saying Why are you so mean to me? , it would be better to say You ALWAYS pick on me. Even back in school you did that. You create a relationship. The audience wants to know more. Now there is intrigue. One technique Andrew mentioned to gain intrigue is to say I have to admit something. Even if you don't know what you are going to admit. Make it up on the spur of the moment! I like that. I am sure there are variations. You could admit something for the other person for example. The other realization I came to was around the audience suggestions. I would use them throughout the scene. I would cling onto them for dear life. I now see that you just use them as a springboard. It clicked for me when the suggestion was Table Tennis. Andrew told the people on stage that it would be ok to play table tennis, but not to talk about it. I need to let go of the suggestion and go with the scene, creating a relationship. Listening to what the other person said and really honing in on the interesting parts. This is cool. I really like this learning process. I am having a ton of fun! Creativity - Creativity Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:09:28 +0100