Farm Team Transition Class - Week 2

The three week followup classes to Comedy Sportz 101 in order are who, what, where classes. Three elements that are necessary for good improv. The first class last week was the who class, last night was the what class and next week will be the where class. There were a lot of warmup exercises last night and then on to the actual games that they play on stage in their professional shows.

The first game was the positive-negative game. Two people on stage. The person on the left always has to give the positive of the situation. The person on the right has to give the negative of the situation. This is an elimination game so when you get to the place that the ref thinks the scene is done one person is eliminated. Last night, however, they took the elimination portion of the game off of the table. Most of the night we were instructed that any line that followed the first line had to start with the words, "Yes and." With Farm Team Transition you never get to pick the focus of the story or the character. The audience does. The audience is also instructed to cheer all positive comments and boo all negative comments. Remember this is compeltely unscripted and no planning is allowed. Here is an example of the positive-negative game.

Audience: Redwood Trees.

Positive: The Redwood trees we saw were so big and beautiful. John enjoyed seeing them so much.

Negative: Yes and when John tried to climb the tree he fell.

Positve: Yes and Several branches stopped John's fall.

Negative: Yes and several branches then broke and John fell completely to the ground.

Positve: Yes and John fell into a big pile of soft leaves.

Negative: Yes and in the pile of leaves were several rocks that John fell on and had to be taken to the hospital.

Positive: Yes and at the hospital he met the love of his life, a beautiful woman doctor.

Negative: Yes and the beautiful woman doctor was married.

Referee stops the game there to give others a chance to participate in the game and also because the direction of the story was really about as far as it could go. This would be a great party game.

Another game had a name and I forget what the name of the game was but it involved story telling. Eight people on stage. In front of the eight people are eight imaginary cirlces numbered one through eight. The first person stands in slot one and gives the first line of the story. The second person stands in slot eight and gives the last line of the story. The other six choose when they go into the story and which slot they stand in and what line in they story they are to give. Although I won't do it here because of how long the post would be, every time a new line is told in the story everyone repeats their line. After all eight have participated then the story is told in proper order. In this game we didn't have to begin lines with yes and. Here we go:

Audience: Raccoon

Slot One: Herb started out going on a walk through the woods.

Slot Eight: Herb was happy to have found that the raccoon wasn't rabid.

Slot Four: Herb heard a terrible noise it sounded like racoons fighting.

Slot Seven: OUCH.

Slot Two: Where he went searching for his pet raccoon, Rocky The Raccon.

Slot Six: The damn raccoon bit me.

Slot Three: Rocky had been missing for several hours.

Slot Five: Rocky had been acting really weird before he went missing.

Here is the story in order (I was slot two)

Herb started out going for a walk into the words, where he went searching for his pet Raccoon, Rocky. Rocky had been missing for several hours. Herb heard a terrible noise that sounded like Raccoons fighting. Rocky had been acting really weird before he went missing. The damn
raccoon bit me. OUCH. Herb was happy to have found out that the raccoon wasn't rabid.

It was a really fun game. I found it a lot easier thant the positive-negative game. I also found it a lot easier than another game we played last night that I really stunk at. That is why I am not going to include an example of the game here that includes me lol. What the game was called was Freeze Frame Tag Team. Eight members on stage. Two of the eight began a scene and have to use pysical movements to define what you are doing. Maybe they start out making shovel movements and saying something like "I shouldn't have taken this job." At anytime during the scene one of the six remaining on stage not participating in the skit can yell "freeze". The two people in the skit have to immediately stop where they are at. Maybe one is at the bottom of the shovel movement and the other has the shovel going over his/her shoulder. That is where they stop. After the yelling of freeze two of the remaining six replace them and have to stand in the same exact position of the actors/actresses they replace. And it doesn't have to be the person that yelled Freeze. Now the trick is once they have replaced the two on stage they have to begin a new scene that can't involve shoveling. In other words they have to define the shoveling movements into something that would be another activity. Maybe in the this case it would have been someone one just saying "one, two" and the other saying "this is really good exercise." Of course they then can change movements and move on to another scene until the word freeze is shouted out again. People can end up in all sorts of weird positions, men can end up dancing with men, people can end on the floor like they are playing twister. What was amazing is the funniest scene of the night was when not a word was spoken. Two men on stage just mimicked each other's movement. It was hysterical.

It was an interesting night. I'm still processing what I learned last night. May all your scenes in life be positive!