26.11.11

Super Saturday

Super saturday or as its better known blacker-day or satyr-buy.   These are the kinds of creative things that we can open ourselves up to whenever we're misshappen or put off.   It's easy to smile about it, much harder to think or frown upon it.   Literally the muscles it takes to frown and the energy it takes to think are up around the same expenditures each, and when coupled with the fact that we exert so much energy each day working toward inevitable and futile ends, why not feel every bit as complacent as the guy next over?  For we sappy few, the answers never seem to come easily;  I propose a change to the order of things at least once a week  to  do something out of character or rather in character (or as Dr. Phil would suggest in an insulting southern drawl "fer therty days, try hex,why, and zee").  What  this means is open to interpretation and experimentation, but mainly the solution that I'm thinking off is taking improv classes or getting a troupe together. 
Recent history references the troupe in the pejorative sense mostly.  From critical reviews of up and coming improv "teams" to flat out denial of the art as a legitimate form of theatre.  What makes this harder is that there is so much associated with the late night skit show circuit that it seemingly makes the hidden goal of all who take a few second city classes to be accepted into the ever morphing mother that gives birth to successful professional actors/improvisors.  To clarify this further, there are very (*emphasis) few successful improvisors (95 percent of improvisors are mediocre at best).  Improvisors have a difficult time taking into account all the stimuli which is given to them, much like most people, and then processing and producing appropriate meaningful responses.  
If anything this bit of flavorless diatribe seeks to accomplish some basic level of understanding as well propose legitimate experiments that may benefit the form.   A troupe might achieve better understanding of themselves and exactly how to listen by devoting say three of four rehearsals in a month to group study(i.e. taking an alien concept, defining it, and playing around it).  They may also use the time to volunteer at a relatively unknown organization, soup kitchen, or townhall meeting.  As a final note of doctrine, this method of introspective and extroverted free-form should not seek to disclude potential audience members or local personalities from the final products in peformance, and in so doing the audience is drawn even further into the form maybe for at least an hour or so (making sure not to draw things out too much, because the human attention span has been greatly reduced by hot mediums such as half hour ready baked arrested development style comedies).  

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