Muprov Musings: Exceptionally Average Improv – Details, episodes & analysis

For the final episode of our A New Play series, Julian interviews Hal about directing A New Play. 

Apologies for the upload delay, Hal was running the UnScripted Shakespeare Festival! We are right back at it debriefing the final two nights of A New Play! Our intro music by Sebastian Blue Hochman famously comes from night four!

Night Three watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y_G9zNJv3Q

Night four watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5lApi_65io

TW: Child abuse and sexual assault.

This episode is a rare LIVE interview with two of the most brilliant impro minds out there! Impro Amsterdam reliably curates the best improvised shows that I have seen anywhere in the world, and standing out from the pack this year was Festen. Based on the movie by the same title, Festen takes place over the course of a family dinner during which one member of the family reveals that they were abused by another as a child. The show is political, dramatic, healing, and unlike anything that I had ever seen improvised before. I was lucky enough to interview the show's creators, Aymeric Desjardin and Charlotte Méniére in a nearby wine store.

If you want to find more of their incredible work you can visit the website for their Théâtre de L'Esquive in Bordeaux or go to Aymeric's website. 

https://theatredelesquive.fr/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabYuhqmODz1i0pcBKLBWAB64tOHx8zpFHZXtifBzDgTiuNZaZ1v5w5KGnY_aem_sOb4FUCO-hLXv-1teDKzlw 

https://www.aymericdesjardin.com/ 

In practicing for A New Play we sought to expand the world of what is possible to improvise! To do this we broke away from the traditional "rules" of impro and rebuilt our own looser guidelines to play by. In this episode we also talk about how you can safely explore and expand the comfortable boundaries of of contact, combat, content, and intimacy. I you are interested in having your shows feel more like scripted theater, it is important to adapt the safety procedures from theater so that they work in an improvised setting!

In this episode we explore the subtle difference in thought process the separated A New Play improvisation from other types of improv. If you are wondering why this is such a challenging form, here is your answer, but the payoff for learning to play in this way is enormous :)

Sasha Sokolova joins the podcast to talk about the biggest innovation of A New Play: The Physical Improvisors. If you want some brilliant insights in to how to add movement, visual artistry, and technical elements to your improv, tune in to here what Sasha has to say!

To apply to take the 3 day workshop at the UnScripted Shakespeare Festival, got to https://www.thornandpetalstick.com/festival and fill out the individual application!

Read along with this one: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2016/02/taoteching-Stephen-Mitchell-translation-v9deoq.pdf

or listen to the full text:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7sIyojwbx9eaKqkoPL3DDH?si=1dadcab6edf44c79 

At the far reaches of the possible, A New Play, is unlike any other improvised piece of theater. In this first episode we break down the vision for creating the show, and the ways in which we dreamed of expanding the the art form of improvisation. If you also have the dream of elevating improvisation into the realm of theater, tune in to this season to see how we tackled each problem and made this dream a reality!

Check out the visuals here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=861yDZ1jwwk&t=186s 

Apologies to the Brave Little Toaster, which, as it turns out, was a book. 

Everyone's favorite award show :0

This one is a little self indulgent, but was delightful to make! Congrats to everyone who won a Mu-ie this year! 

Thanks to Limited Resources for inspiring this episode (and honestly the whole podcast) 

Also, I realized we missed the Tesuji of using the delayed Tesuji point to bring it to a tie... That is why it is such an important concept.

Goodbye Slasher, Hello reflections on what we learned!