Acting Workshops Nyc Ny: On Camera Acting Workshop
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Gary Jacobs, artistic director and founder of Precipice, tells us about what it's like to act on the edge.
Q: How did your improv troupe "Precipice" come about?
A: In 1979, I started acting, directing, teaching, and producing conventional improv shows. They consisted of the standard short improv games and scenes. After ten years, I was ready for a new challenge. So, I asked myself: Why not improvise an entire play - a play that looks just like a scripted play, but is improvised, with nothing decided in advance. And not just any play. But a great play. A play that could be recorded and transcribed and performed as a great scripted piece all over the country. And I didn't envision that happening only once. Rather, I envisioned directing a theater company that could improvise a completely different wonderful play at every performance.
Q: Didn't this seem incredibly ambitious?
A: Yes. Because even the most experienced playwrights and screenwriters take months, even years, to write a play or screenplay. How could a group of actors create a good or great script in an hour-and-a-half, in front of an audience with nothing decided in advance? This project seemed even more daunting because there was no roadmap to follow. But I was excited by the prospect of taking a journey into uncharted territory. As a result, I read every published book on screenwriting, playwriting, and improv, and created hundreds of exercises that I used to teach a Master Class in improvising plays. That was eighteen years ago. The culmination of all my work is my theater company, Precipice. Now in its 13th year, Precipice creates a completely different comic play at every performance. Some of the plays Precipice improvises are wonderful. Some are not. So, we are still learning how to make this new art form work. I expected this to be a multi-decade project. After all, we are learning how to create great art in a completely new way.
Q: What's the difference in what you're doing and long form improv?
A: The term "long-form improv" is usually used to describe improvised pieces that last more than ten minutes. Many long-form improvs consist of short unrelated scenes that are connected in some way. Others are improvised plays developed from a detailed plot outline and pre-set characters. Precipice's plays are a radical departure from these two structures. Because Precipice does not use a plot outline or preset characters. Nothing is decided in advance. And because Precipice's plays follow a single set of characters for 90 minutes. As a result, Precipice melds the excitement of short form improv - where the actors discover their characters and the plot at the same time as the audience - with the intense enjoyment of becoming involved with a well-told story about compelling characters who grow and change in surprising ways.
Q: So, what you're doing really is new.
A: Yes. To get a feel for the radical nature of our work, let's briefly review improv history. The history of improv can be divided into three phases. In the first phase, when improv was new in the United States, in the mid 1950's, actors who were willing to improvise without a detailed plot outline improvised for a few minutes in front of audiences. In these short bursts, actors could hold the audience's attention by the sheer bravura of their spontaneity. It didn't matter if the piece meandered or had no structure because it was over quickly.
But after a decade or so, some improvisers wanted the improvs to go longer. They needed a structure to do that; a structure that wouldn't interfere with the intense in-the-moment spontaneity that creates such excitement on stage.
Del Close created such a structure in the 1960's. Called "The Harold," this form consists of a series of games and short unrelated scenes. The scenes recur at least three times, and each time the actors connect the scenes with the other scenes in some way. Because the scenes are short and because the actors are not trying to follow complex playwriting rules that would diminish their spontaneity, well performed Harolds can be as exciting as short form improv scenes. And if the actors are inspired, they will forge connections between the scenes in surprising and resonant ways.
And because the Harold satisfied the collective hunger of the improv community to perform longer pieces, it has become very popular and ushered in the second phase in improv history.
Starting in the 1980's, a few improvisers (such as Michael Gellman of Chicago's Second City theater company and I) imagined a different vision for improvisation. We wanted to create entire plays improvisationally - plays that retained the excitement of short improv scenes and provided the satisfaction of a two-hour story. Michael and I and a few others in the United States are at the vanguard of that movement, a movement that I believe will eventually be recognized as starting the third phase in improv history.
Q: This "third phase in improv history" sounds exciting. How have you gone about implementing it?
A: Back in 1989, once I decided to work on improvising plays, I began teaching a Master Class on this subject. I used the Master Class as a laboratory to experiment with many diverse techniques to teach actors to improvise entire plays. After six years of teaching, Bob Adler and John Daley, two actors I'd known for many years, who had been in several improv troupes I had directed and had attended my Master Class, dared me to start a theater company that would perform only improvised plays. Our vision was the same - to create a company that would improvise a completely different high quality play at every performance, without any plot outlines or pre-set characters (the audience only suggests two contrasting locations).
With Bob and John's help in 1995, I founded Precipice Improv Theater. The troupe gives 15-20 performances a year, and true to our original vision, every play is completely different. Our current members have been together as a group for 5 years and include Bob Adler, Ric Andersen, Daniel Mont, and Michelle James.
by: sdgreen912
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