This weekends IMPROV Class!

So today was class 4 of 8 hosted at the Hyperion Theater (right between Hollywood and my home in Glendale CA, although classes are really UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade Theater) classes which I now have my class ID with. An excellent recommendation from my friend Romi Dames (Hannah Montana's Tracie Van Horn who is Hannah's friend and party planner with the nasal voice on the show). My teacher is Joel Spence who is as excellent as Romi said he would be, he has an IMDB page and has been seen on 'How I Met Your Mother' playing 'Toy Guy', if you watch that show you know how awesome it is!

Anyway, the class is PURE WORK, no kidding here, today was the first day it was more fun and mostly shot right by, well at least the first half anyway. We did almost like a game where we (16 of us) got into a circle and the teacher shouts out one word to start our direction and one of us goes in the center and sings out loud a song that that word reminds him of, (the class has to sing along if they know the words) then the class can't leave him up there singing, so if he says a word or phrase that reminds you of a song, you have to enter the circle and tap him, he is then relieved of his singing and you start your song and everyone now sings your song, and it keeps going. Man that was fun.

Joel said this exercise will be your worst nightmare or you were BORN TO DO THIS GAME. Well, me and the class were Born to do it because, we rocked it! One of my songs was from an OLD TV show theme song (show was 'Greatest American Hero') so I sang "Believe it or not, I'm waLKIN ON AIR, i NEVER THOUGHT i COULD FEEL SO FREE-EE-EE", (sorry bout the caps), I didn't think many would know it but they did and supported me immediately! Ahhhh, good times. I think being soo vulnerable like that singing when none of us, (ok one of us was good) was a good singer. But singing quality was no factor in this game, it was the continuation of a word or phrase in the song inspiring you to be next to save your buddy. You definitely see how the songs are cleverly connected! We definitely bonded during that exercise.

Next came 2 person improvisation scenes which simply cannot be predicted if they are good or bad or great or hilarious. You need to establish who you are in relation to each other and where you are during your dialogue, and sometimes you have to use an imaginary object before you can reply to each other, that was a blast!

So next week on Saturday, I resume my mentoring classes with my radio show mentor (a 20 year veteran in radio here in LA), I will be at a hub of 6 radio stations in a real radio studio and practicing announcing, voice-over and commercials, right here in GLENDALE of coarse (I got side tracked with these mentoring sessions because of my move).. And then on Sunday I will be at my IMPROV class so I will be pretty beat during my work week.. This IMPROV class has inspired me to take a 'scene study' class..and be part of a play or show here at the UCB theater. I definitely have the bug to act, some of my earlier shows I acted for comedy reasons and I enjoy physical comedy. I really want to do more than I let on that I want to do, even start an animation studio. When I went to Design school on the east coast, I learned Lightwave 3D and still have passions for 3D animation.

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed my first blog!
Rob Redstone