Lincoln Drama Students Get a Lesson in Improv
Theater students at Lincoln take part in a workshop on improvisation hosted by the Whirled News Tonight troupe.
In life the seemingly best-laid plans in action oft times are really just smooth improvisation.
Practice and improv are contradictory terms, aren’t they? Not necessarily. It’s possible to work at spontaneity and thinking on one’s feet, and that’s exactly what’s been going this week during a series of workshops at DMPS high schools courtesy of the Whirled News Tonight troupe that’s in town performing at the Temple for Performing Arts. As part of the Des Moines Performing Arts educational outreach, cast members Adal Rifai and Marla Caceres have visited Hoover, Roosevelt and today, Lincoln, to work with theater students on honing their improvisational instincts and reflexes.
Rifai and Caceres know whereof they teach. The show they’re part of here is literally an original every night. Its basis is newspaper clippings provided by the audience. This group is out of Chicago comedic traditions like Second City and the two companies have scattered their alums to national mainstays including Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central.
Caceres studied journalism at the University of Florida. A Miami native, she moved to Chicago to study improvisation and experience snow for the first time in her life. Mark both missions accomplished.
Rifai has been performing improv in Chicago since 2007 and coaches it all over the country. That’s right, coaches it. He’s a former football player so no wonder the paces the Lincoln students were put through on their auditorium stage had the feel of stretching calisthenics and the effect of loosening them up as the role plays they were assigned got steadily more complex.
At first a little stiff and apprehensive with one another, within half an hour the players were eagerly scaling a range of metaphoric mountains – all the way from Harry Potter to Miley Cyrus. You had to be there.
“Definitely,” Rifai said when asked if the apparent parallels between sports, which are thought to be so carefully choreographed and game-planned, and theatrical improv are valid. “Improv is all about teamwork. It’s not about the individual, it’s about having your teammate’s back and playing off of one another to build and achieve something together.”
First the group formed a circle that included teachers Karen Sissel (drama) and Luke Lichty (math!?) and relayed physical cues around it, like a simple handclap passed from one person to the next. Then came some free word association designed to tap into the natural human tendency to embellish. (Amazingly, when Caceres used the prompt word “winter,” no one’s response was “endless.”)
“Remember,” Caceres shouted as the ideas whirred faster and faster around the group, “always respond to the last thing said. You may recall what someone said over here, but always respond to the last thing you heard.”
No wonder rumors, facts, good news, bad news, secrets, whatever, you name it, travel so fast- especially in these Twittery times. Some of us may be more reluctant than others but down deep in the hard-wiring we’re improvisers and team players or we’d probably be long gone. Because the realest, oldest truth about those best-laid plans is they oft times go awry. Or as the poor man’s Socrates, Murphy, decreed: “Anything that can go wrong…” So it’s not a bad idea to practice filling in the blanks on the fly.
At its best it’s an art form.
