"The Field"

This seems, to me, to be the year of Improv. In the last month I have jump-started my Improv again, and it feels great. To recap, I have been taking classes with Washington Improv Theater, I auditioned for and got into Baby Fat, a long-form troupe being directed by my good friend and former Erasable Inc., Natasha R., when we went to see Comedy Gumbo in Ballston Mall, Josh and I were invited to start coming back to ComedySportz rehearsals, and this past weekend, I was invited to take part in "the field." Now, "the field" is an invite-only program through WIT that essentially amounts to weekly improv dojo,where WIT players and the best students get together to play, learn, and get better. Matt had already been doing "the field" and I had heard about it through Natasha. But my longform teacher, Patrick Gantz, gave my name to one of the people who does invites to the field. So I went on Saturday to the super secret meeting place and gave the passcode and did some sweet improv. The instructor for this past Saturday was a gal named Rebecca, who reminded me of Gwen G. It was a good rehearsal, and I learned some new exercises. One was called the "goodbye scene," where you are at the door and one person is leaving and the person must leave eventually, and it is just about finalizing a conversation and making the conversation real. Another exercise was all about maintaining characters, Rebecca called it "the Five Obstructions." We did one scene, and then Rebecca would give us changes to work with and things to keep in the scene. Example, I and this guy Jim did a scene that took place in a Turkish restaurant, and I was the owner and he was the help. Rebecca said she like our characters and our relationship, but she wanted to see us in a different environment, she put us in a high school setting. It was really comfortable to play in the characters during the second scene because we had already explored the characters in the first scene, dealing with their quirks and tics. That was a real fun exercise.