Actor's Notes Ep. 5 — The Most Important Lesson I Learned in Improv This Week

How can I improve? And I've taken Improv 1, which lasts eight weeks, Improv for Actors 1 for seven weeks, and then Improv for Actors 2, which lasts another seven weeks.

So in total, roughly around 15 weeks of taking...

Or how many? 15 classes.

Each class is three hours.

You do the math.

So I've improvised.

I've made mistakes.

I've laughed many, many countless times.

And I still feel, and this is the biggest thing that I wrote down, that something that we went through today, I felt like I just didn't progress.

I feel like I didn't do much today.

And this kind of goes to... acting classes.

This goes to anyone who's been taking a certain class or have been in the same routine and experiences that sameness, that dullness, because in improv class, I want to learn new things.

I want to understand, okay, why do you say, what's the point of this exercise? We played a very hard game and it was essentially, you take four people, Or you can take three or two and you improvise a scene, but you do it backwards, right? Instead of the beginning, you know, you establish who you are, where you are, what you're doing.

It's already been done, all right? It's already in the atmosphere.

But you begin the scene with the end.

So the instructor will write down one note and then will write down another note.

And these are sentences that you say.

So one person will say the last line.

I believe mine was...

I hate you people and I'm getting out of here and then you have to do the entire entire scene backwards like okay what made you say that someone has to justify it by saying something to make you say I hate you people I'm getting out of here and then someone has to justify that and then justify that and you just work this scene backwards and you actually have to do physicality backwards it was such a mind boggle it was such a fun time because it was funny to see people struggle but it was it was just enjoyable to do and during that scene i was thinking what's the whole point of this and this kind of goes back to when you blink when you don't know what to say i've been doing this for like i said 15 weeks so 15 uh improv classes three hours long and i still go to this this weird part of my brain where i think do i know what i'm doing I mean, this isn't new information.

What's the point of the scene? How can I learn something that I haven't learned before? Which is a great attitude to have, but this goes to my main point, how progress isn't linear.

And these past classes have been like this where it's just been games.

We've just been playing long form improv games.

And like I said, every single class is gonna be different for you guys.

So my class at the end of the seven weeks has a show at the end.