By LEIGH VASALLO
STAFF WRITER
During the week of March 10th, St. Lawrence University had the pleasure to host the Waterwell Theatre Company.
“Waterwell is a New York-based company of artists dedicated to the collaborative creation of new works for the theatre. Its continuously evolving body of work encompasses original plays, adaptations of classic texts, solo shows and performance pieces. For each venture the actors, writers, directors, composers, musicians and designers work collectively to build the piece from the ground up. The Village Voice calls them, “Dynamic, resourceful and relentlessly entertaining,” TheaterScene says.
And TheaterScene says, “There’s no way a written description can do justice to their blazing energy and inventiveness.” (waterwell.org)
While they were here with us, they attended classes in the PCA department and conducted two interactive workshops and also performed a staged reading of their upcoming production A.Jax.
The first of the two interactive workshops was specializing in improvization comedy. Luckily, I had the pleasure of attending and learning all about the art of improvisation, and what makes something truly funny to an audience.
Tom Ridgely, Hanna Cheek, and Arian Moayed lead the group of roughly sixteen people. Some were there for extra credit, to fulfill a class requirement, while others were dragged by their friends or simply just there to learn and have fun. All reasons for being there were welcomed and embraced.
The exercises got more advanced as the workshop continued. For a warm up, we played games that were not unlike games that we all played during Freshmen Orientation. Firstly, for our minds to be warmed up, we had to warm up our bodies. Combining the body, the mind, and the voice is a major component of being able to perform. While we all stood in a circle together, yelling things that made no sense to a third party observer, we warmed up for the more advanced games that required more language than, “beep, bop, and boop.”
In the following exercises, we separated into pairs before expanding to the rest of the group. In order to advance the storytelling process, one person would ask a question, while the other would answer and build on to that same idea. This exercise taught the group to not reject an idea but to say, “Yes, and…” When there is a positive response, the situation has room to grow and evolve.
The final and most advanced exercise that our group did was a game called “freeze tag.” It combined the body, the voice, and on top of it, the situation was always changing, therefore requiring all of the players to be ready to jump in and keep the game going. When there was a lull or a period where there was nothing happening, the game lost momentum and it was that much harder to get back to the flow of the game. The faster the game went, the funnier it was, and that was the goal of the entire game in the first place.
Overall, this workshop that they composed was a run through of what a normal improv comedy practice would be like. It takes time, patience, understanding, and dedication, but it is all worth it when the perfect skit gets a big laugh.
If any of what I have described in the above paragraphs interests you, the budding improv group here at SLU is still looking for people to be involved and get the ball rolling. Contact Leigh Vassallo at levass12@stlawu.edu for more information about the group and its meeting times.