Pérolas de Sabedoria

Encontrei este site (http://www.improvinterviews.com) que tem entrevistas às grandes referências de improvisadores (long-form). Vou lendo devagarinho e pelo meio encontro algumas pérolas que aqui partilho.

CHARNA HALPERN

"We can't screw each other over for a joke.' That's what Joan Rivers used to do to him. He did a scene with her, this is the famous story, where she initiated the scene and said 'I want a divorce.' From her initiation he understood that she wanted him to play the distraught husband, so he said 'But honey, what about the children?' She said 'We don't have any.' It got a huge laugh, but he looked like an idiot. What man doesn't know if he has children or not? She would get a laugh at the expense of her fellow players, as a result people didn't trust her on stage. She became a stand-up, but she's not an improviser. It's a different animal, because an improviser should take care of their partners. You're taking a risk to be out there every night. You have to make sure that your partner has your back."

"I always tell my students 'It doesn't impress me if you can make me laugh. Anyone can make me laugh, but what will really make me take my hat off to you is if you can make me go 'Oh,' then I think you're good.'"


SUSAN MESSING

"Your first 30 seconds of your scene is your promise to the audience about who you will be. We will discover where you are and what’s up, because scenes definitely aren’t about plot and it’s definitely not about your funny. It’s about people. I don’t care where you play. It’s got to be about people. So, ringing a bell could be a game. It doesn’t have to be wacky, but if I get lost in a scene and dropping it and go on to something that I perceive would be better, i.e. I suck, and recommit to the choice I made at the top of the scene and heighten them I will discover a new plot or at the very least the reason why I was doing this. I share that and something happens. Or somebody else comes up with a reason for it."

"It’s not just object work, not the coffee-stall-until-the-argument-in-your-apartment-scene anymore. It’s going to be that you’re drinking coffee. Now throw out a reason. ‘I was up with the baby all last night.’ Boom. Or ‘If I don’t I have a migraine.’ Now you have something in your arsenal to work with."

DAVID RAZOWSKY

"The difference between dramatic improvisation and comedic improvisation is how far do you take it, how absurd to you take it, how seriously do you take what’s going on, because the more seriously you take it the funnier it’s going to be, the deeper it’s going to be, the more shocking turns it’s going to take. What I got out of that, when I kept heightening and heightening and heightening, I realized ‘Oh, that’s the difference between dramatic and comedic improvisation.’"

DAVE PASQUESI

"The disruption of a routine is conflict, and that's where the dramatic tension occurs. That's what some would say. TJ points out that conflict is going to happen. Let's try to postpone it as long as possible. It's going to show up. If we create it at the beginning, we haven't established anything these people before the conflict, so there's no change that can take place. The conflict should affect some sort of change in the relationship or within these characters, but if we don't know them already, we don't notice the change. That's all we know them as. These are those guys who react this way when the car blew up, but we don't know what they were like before the car blew up."