Tysonian · Institute · of · Sport

Well today was supposed to be the first session of the comedy course I have enrolled in. Unfortunately there was a change of times that I was unaware of, it will now be starting from next week. So, here's to a great night of running around on the northern line tube betweek mornington crescent and chalk farm....

Well, the radio is up once again though now has to be accessed through a separate web site www.rampart.net.tc I do not know why. Tonight's show went quite well I think despite the fact that there were only the two of us to build all stories, act all parts, operate the equipment, and come up with our own suggestions (I know that somewhat defeats the purpose of impro, but when there are no audience you have to improvise....).... We still pulled an hour 1/2 show which I am pretty pleased with actually.

In other related news, I am planning to attend an information night this wednesday about an upcoming stand up course being run by amused moose here in London to help give me a bit of a leg up in attempting stand up. We'll see how that goes, I still feel a little unsure as the prospect of writing and then performing stand up material at an open mic night in a comedy club still feels pretty intimidating. We'll see.

Time for bed

Well I am back from our first in a new series of impro radio shows at radio rampart (www.radiorampart.co.nr). I think tonights show went well actually, despite having only three players present meaning that poor old Milo had to run backwards and forwards between the 'contol desk' and the celing mike to participate in the sketches.

We also introduced a new game, the noam chompsky game where two or more of us take turns in a boring debate about something quite straight forward while looking for obscure references to US foreign policy. I suspect it was a very self-indulgent game that few others are going to apprecieate, but we thought we might try it all the same, who knows?

Why is it that some people are just pricks? Is it that they feel that being a dickhead is a good way of deflecting attention from their own lack of substance? Tonight i was approached by some guy who told me 'you can't be here; it is men only' (I have long hair), very lame power-trip shit, but it was not expected and I was momentarily intimidated and so acted shy. That pisses me off..

Had a great evening tonight. I went to a 'once-off' improvisation class run by a canadian guy from Loose Moose theatre company in Calgary; we got to focus a lot on physicallity. What I think I got out of it, and feel so excitied about, is that we got to learn some basic principles of mime, not so that we can annoy people in parks wearing face-paint and painfully stripy clothes, but because these skills will be of great use when creating on the spot scenes involving objects that simply do not exist on the stage. This is often a vague thing with a lot of improvisers giving the audience a rough idea of what the story is about, but hopefully, if I can develop some of these skills more, I will be able to be very clear about what I am doing on stage and thus make a squeaky-clean scene (physically). But then again, it is impro, so probably not...

all part of the fun!

Now for sleep.

Went to my improvisation class today, thought I would not make it there after arriving at my tube station to find it unexpectely closed.... Ended up having a great time though, we worked a lot on offer and acceptance to address issues of blocking ideas inappropriatly and stifling narrative.

Now I am home, i've had a nice stir-fry, the sphere is on, and all is good :-)