Physicality in improv - usually a rich topic but how do we address it when we are improvising online in little boxes?

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This episode features:

Ramita Menon:
https://menononthemove.wordpress.com/ 
Instagram - @ramitamenon 
Currently Ramita is offering online one to one yoga and creative movement sessions . And facilitating improv sessions with Kaivalya Plays who have an upcoming Harold long-form show on 13th September - details on https://menononthemove.wordpress.com/ 

David Raitt:
David Raitt has nearly 25 years experience in improv performance and teaching. He is an alumnus of The Second City Canadian National Touring Company and Mainstage ensemble, was on the Training Centre's Education faculty for 17 years, and is a senior member of the Oakville Improv Theatre Company. He teaches specialty workshops in physical improv skills, and curates a website of exercises and articles for environment, object work, and physicality in character and performance. His first book "The Improv Illusionist" is currently seeking publication. For updates and his email newsletter, visit https://ImprovIllusionist.com

Liz Peters:
Liz Peters is an award-nominated performer who has spent the last decade helping people feel relaxed and playful in the spotlight.
She teaches improvisation around the world and works with organisations and individuals to improve human communication; both in how we connect and collaborate with each other and how we deliver in front of an audience. A regular contributor on leadership programmes, Liz helps build presence and agility in the change-makers of tomorrow, and has brought her innovative approach to communication training into countless organisations, from social enterprises to global corporations.
Liz’s book “Own It” 
UK link: https://amzn.to/34xCAuU
USA link: https://amzn.to/3aUqDR7 

2-Man No-Show:
The absurd and unpredictable improv/sketch duo of @IsaacKessler and @TheKenHall
See Ken in “The Umbrella Academy” on Netflix
Follow them on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/2MANNOSHOW
And on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/2MANNOSHOW

Episode transcript:

Physicality in improv - usually a rich topic but how do we address it when we are improvising online in little boxes?

As we enter that phase where improvising online on Zoom has become established albeit with the thought in the back of our heads that at some point we’ll be able to go back into theatres to improvise in a physical space beyond a Zoom box, how can we keep our physical improv skills alive?

I had an email a few weeks back from a Canadian improviser who is passionate about physicality in improv. We’ll get to know him in a second. First, some tips I found useful from an improviser with a speciality in physicality and movement from New Delhi.

Ramita: Hey, I’m Ramita and I'm an improviser based in New Delhi in India. I have been improvising with Kaivalya Plays for the last one year and I'm also a movement therapy facilitator and yoga teacher since the last five years 

Lloydie: So how was it being with the move online because in zoom improv particularly we're all stuck in these little boxes so how can you introduce physicality into, into improv when we doing online 

Ramita: I feel it's just a perspective of the mind and how we use physicality in an open space in a physical space when we’re there we still have the restriction of a particular kind of space and we use that space. In the online world of Zoom you have the restriction of the screen, of the camera capturing a certain amount of space, but you can still play with distance going far and coming close. Switching around the camera, like going upside down and also being with different parts of yourself being in the fame and out of the frame so it adds a lot of dynamic and also for the people seeing and for your partner it adds a lot of energy to the scene if you just like stand up even 

Lloydie: Would you recommend that people stand up when they improvise online rather than I mean I see most people sit down when I've done shows I've been sitting down would be better if people were standing? 

Ramita: I guess it depends. You don't need to be standing the whole time, that's the case even with physical improv right? You can often just get chairs in the space and sit down but whatever it is I think you need to justify the scene you need to justify why you're doing it. So if you're always sitting it doesn't justify a lot of scenes. In a lot of the moments, as soon as you stand up you open the space a lot more and there's a lot more movement with your hands that can be seen in the scene. If you're sitting you're that much closer to the scene and only your face is visible so I'd recommend standing quite a bit yes 

Lloydie: The challenges of zoom based improv real for those that thrive on the physical aspects of improv. The email I got the prompted this episode was from David Raitt who's a senior member of the Oakville Improv Theater company in Canada. He's an alumnus of the Second City national touring company mainstage and there's a link to his email newsletter which you might find useful in our show notes. He's all too aware of the challenges presented by putting improvisers into little Zoom boxes

David: It's been a real challenge for improvisers to keep themselves contained. To be forced into a square and to try to do something that's environmental or some sort of object work like we're used to doing on the stage, and now we're trapped with in that little frame and even though you can perhaps experiment with moving the camera around or different lengths of shots if you're doing the camera standing up adding other sorts of physicality in that way, it's difficult to still convey that sense of environment when you are the only person within that box and you're interacting with someone who's in a different box. So how do you work together to create that sense of a shared space where the scene is going on. Some of the tips that we've been working on our shared backgrounds not necessarily the virtual backgrounds that you can get with Zoom but even just having similar backdrops so if everyone has a black curtain behind them or a neutral wall roughly the same colour that visually that matches up and makes use more of a sense of the same space. Different shot lengths so if you are standing in front of your camera at sort of a medium length showing the head down to the waist perhaps your partner hopefully can do the same so that the shots visually, the body sizes are the same. There are a lot more visual things that you can do but one of the things that I think is even more important is just showing characters being affected by the environment. If someone does something physical on their side of the screen, to try to match that on the other side of the screen so for example if you are going to hand an object to someone else, we have a lot of fun with people actually reaching towards the camera with their object work and the other person reaching forward as well and bringing it in and occasionally two players will have the same props which makes it look really freaky because say for example someone needs a tissue and you can hand a tissue to the camera the other person can bring that tissue in on the other side so that gets a great audience reaction when we're able to do that. 

Liz: Hi I'm Liz Peters I'm an improviser in Brighton in the U. K. I played with the Maydays I also play with Bumper Blyton the improvised adventure and as well as improv I coach people with embodiment and I've written a book called Own It.  

With us moving into Zoom-prov as a way to have to do improv, we’ve had to shrink everything so much and not just in our physicality and and and how much space we can take help but also with our focus and attention as well. If you're being seen in a head and shoulders shot if you stand up suddenly you’re out of shot, so you're kind of having to limit the movements that you do to be able to be within within the Zoom shot. I really try to encourage people to use proximity to the camera and trying to use the space and stand up and things like that but your camera is only in one place it can only take up so much space so you do have to limit your physicality to be in frame, otherwise you're not on the stage in the Zoom stage, you know?

Lloydie: There are two people who come to mind instantly for me when I think about physical improv and talking to them was, well it was chaos of the most glorious kind I'm just sad I couldn't include all of it although I'm glad that there are a couple of bits I didn't include, Just their intro is pretty much a rollercoaster 

Ken: I’m Ken Hall, I'm four seven and three quarters and I am that based out of Toronto Canada, one half of the award winning actor comedic comedy duo 2-Man No-Show also improviser and actor I'm currently on a show called the Umbrella Academy which just came out a few weeks ago on Netflix and I play the body of Pogo and the character of Herb in that show

Isaac: My name's Isaac Kessler, I’m on half of the award winning comedic duo 2-Man No-Show with Ken Hall who is seven four four score and [unintelligible rambling for a bit] I'm based in Los Angeles but not anymore because of the corona virus pandemic and I'm currently in Toronto Canada. I currently work for my brother in law I work on a lot of spreadsheets every day and I you know I used to have a dream and that dream is now gone much like that Les Mis song. In my dreams I am an actor and a physical theatre performer, do a lot of clown, improvisation I have not worked professionally in quite a long time but I am working professionally on a lot of spreadsheets  at the moment. You can find me on Dodo Kids as the bird Seamus. It was a cash job so please don’t tell my agent. [laughter] 

Ken: I direct a group here in Toronto doing what's call idiot work and it's something that Isaac has basically imported here, it came from LA this sort of improvised clown meets storytelling improv kind of thing in there. We just had our first meet up a week and a half ago in a park, just someone playing some tunes, so we just get up one at a time use and you know do some dancing and moving kind of thinks that it was so weird to actually physically move and be an idiot in front of an audience even though it's our friends at a park. I was like ‘oh man, I haven’t moved like this in so long in a intentionally comedic way to please people and then get responses back’ it was this weird your warm tingly feeling that I had since March when I last performed on the stage. There's a lot of uncertainty about this I mean can you bring physicality on to on to Zoom and does it translate in that same kind of way? Yeah I'm I'm so curious and does that mean, I just wonder right now like, does that mean if the physicality isn't there what we rely on then? Do we focus more and just go back to just verbal and clever, you know what I mean? Or like the words or the story, the narrative, the plot I'm not sure. 

Isaac: I think that training is important. I think that if you want to go to a park and you want if you want somebody to say ‘Hey I like I know how to lead you in yoga for thirty minutes or sixty minutes like yeah, do you want to like play frisbee yeah let's do that! I think the idea of being in a communal setting or or or not communal or or you know with yourself but training, I think training your body is so important and again I don't mean become ripped and swole, The beautiful thing about  movement and the body and I think this is for able bodied and not able bodied to is is understanding our bodies understanding what we can do and honoring our body and also not just understanding what it can do but but getting more in touch with our body and understanding how the brain connects to the muscles and tendons and ligaments and also training that to be better when I say better I mean stronger, more flexible, more mobile. I think the one danger is that we can just like I'm getting stuck every day on a laptop being sedentary and the movement of the body and training is going to help out on stage when we get back to do theater. 

Lloydie: Movement and training is a huge part of it but David thanks there's another part to it as well 

David: Physicality is to me it's more than just moving your body it's about creating a sense of the environment so it's really a lot more about being affected by things that are happening but a lot of the physicality and environment and object work exercises are meant to help give the improviser a sense of the detail involved and how we can communicate details. Details and specificity as everyone knows are the keys to performing a good scene because you are providing more information to the audience and to the players without having to be specific in your dialogue in that way and when we focus down on the specifics for recreating that detail and noticing it in our  in our improv then we can find a lot of ways of communicating without saying anything. 

Lloydie: The lack of space in some of the homes doesn't have to limit us. Ramita thinks that that’s something we can work around 

Ramita: I understand that for a lot of people it is difficult to continue working on it all in their homes with the limited space that they have so in that case you can, when we do get back, even right now even if you have enough space to just stand, you can keep simple motifs in your mind like just moving with your head or thinking of an activity that you could do and doing it with different body parts. Like blowing a balloon but with different body parts - whatever that means to you. So moving different body parts with different motifs can really like just keep your body moving and just kind of practicing your breathing with movement just every day can really help with bringing back physicality 

Lloydie: So training yourself to do different things physically and with space environment work is something we can still be doing. Here’s Ken again…

Ken: You mentioned a really great point this idea that even though you're not physically performing you can be training and the training, the technique, the mechanics and all of that and I think actually does translate. The great thing about this there is a silver lining to what we're experiencing on top of the opportunity to do personal work on ourselves is that we can train. We can train anywhere so it's not just contingent on geographically where you're living you can be jumping in and out of classes anywhere in the world and jumping into shows actually like Zoom shows. So you can you can have that part satiated you can continue your craft it's going to be a bit different but at the same time the mechanics are still there and again the idea of finding play and pleasure that's something you can always continually do and even within this work too is like learning other things taking other classes that may or may not be related to improv or may or may not be related to physicality so that when it comes time to hop onto a stage you have more life experiences you've given yourself more knowledge you have exposed yourself to other things that you can gain source and mine for content later on 

Lloydie: Eventually will go back into physical performance spaces but will we be able to perform physically when we get back into them. Liz thinks some people will relish the prospect 

Liz: There will be a cross section of people who will be like they've been left out of the cage and they will be throwing themselves around the stage and you know, really using it as much as possible. I went, as a side note, I went down the other day because I I was feeling like I hadn't done, I can't really express myself in my house and I went down to the Maydays Studio which is currently not in use because no one's no one's allowed to use at the moment for workshops and I played the game, at the Indiana Jones game, The Temple of Doom which is a physical theatre game where you set up a bunch of traps for yourself and you would normally play it with a group of  improvisers and set up traps physical around the space and you get killed by the traps, or you get through the traps and you have to remember what they all. I went and played it with myself just by myself the other day because I really wanted to move again and play again and I did notice that my at my object work skills were a little bit flabby, a little bit less precise, a little bit under used and certainly having to brush up on object work precision, that sort of thing which I haven't really done in lockdown because I’ve not really mimed objects on Zoom, I’ve used cups. I’m not set traps for Indiana Jones 

Lloydie: Dave is looking forward to those first few live in person improv shows 

Dave: Yeah it's really going to be interesting to watch those first few shows. I know a lot of people have said to me that the first few shows back are going to be terrible just because everyone's skills have atrophied a little but you know they will be also just so freeing and enjoyable because everybody's just so happy to be back doing it. So that enthusiasm carries through the scenes and I feel like because of that people will want to be more physical but I do take your point that since we have perhaps grown used to staying in one place whether you're improvising in a chair or just standing in front of a web cam that impulse to want to move may have been depressed a little bit 

Lloydie: There's one person I know who he's massively looking forward to feeling all the sensory stimulation of in person performance again 

Liz: I think with the range of expression that will come back to us a little more when we come in the space I think that will be a real delight I look forward to being back into real life space where I guess three hundred sixty degree perception of what is going on around me because your embodiment and your movement and stuff is not only just coming from you it is it's coming in response to everything around you and when we are in a Zoom space when we're just looking at the camera, all of our attention is focused forward and we are less embodied in that sense because we were focusing on a tiny pinprick in front of the camera in front of us, whereas in a real show you know I can sense someone coming on from stage behind me and I can feel whether that person is is in an angry state or something you know there's a there's a visceral surround sound of sensation that you get in a real world environment that you just simply don't get in the Zoom room and so to be able to step back into the environment and to be able to fill three sixty in your body in all the sensory capabilities that it has is gonna be so sweet it's going to be so nice I can't wait 

Lloydie: Next time, on the improv chronicle podcast…

We need to talk about Harold!

As a form, the Harold is lauded by some and treated less reverentially by others… hear from one of the main developers of this improv form who worked with its originator Del Close to bring The Harold to the stage and hear from others who feel differently about its relevance.

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