Madness awaits those who avoid their emotions. How else will you know if you are free, if you know not how you feel?  

After about an hour of saying little, the maestro paused to share some words,

"Where else do we get to be human?   When we come together on the improv stage we have an opportunity to ‘Yes And’ ourselves and each other.  We get to discover and share the movement of our emotions in a safe place.  Out there, on the street, you better pull yourself together.  You go walking around “Yes Anding” everyone out there on Grand you gonna end up taken.  You ride the bus and “Yes And’ your way home you gonna be carrying an arm full of cellphone batteries, blue tooth headphones, and a quarter ounce of shake.  You go see a show at the FOX Theater across the street and have your emotions on full blast, they will boot you out before you have a chance to watch Steve Martin and Martin Short do a banjo tambourine toe step. You want to go to the Steak House or the Blues Club, or hell even walk inside the Church, you had better get a hold of yourself and act normal bro.  That is the world we live in.  We are expected to act like bots, at work, at home, and in transit in between. "Obey" they say. I’m not saying we should be able to go around screaming our heads off.  That’s not humanity, that’s madness.  Yet we are driven to madness when we are coerced to bottle it all up.  Madness is watching TV for 4, 6, 12 hours a day and allowing the ‘programming’ to program our behavior between one another.  When we come together for art, music, dance, theater, and especially improv we have an opportunity to ‘Yes And’ rediscover our humanity.  We have an opportunity to see each other, witness each other, appreciate each other.  We have an opportunity to focus on each other’s positives, create something out of nothing, and discover everything in between.  Computers can not do this.  Cute cuddly polar bears can not do this.  Only you, a human being along side other human beings, can experience and comment on the human condition. Through improvised comedy we have an opportunity to rediscover our humanity through humor.  We cool?  Let's continue." 

Rehearsal Outline with HÖWL on The KDHX Stage at Washington & Grand.

1. Snap . Clap . Moose 
   1. Circle Up
   2. Group passes a ‘snap’ around the circle. The Giving & Receiving Players focus on allowing the snap to happen at the same time.
   3. A ‘clap’ is added to the circle.  Now a ‘snap’ and a ‘clap’ are being passed around the circle.
   4. ‘Moose Hands’ are added to the ‘clap’ & ‘snap’ being passed around the circle. (‘Moose Hands’ is when you hold your hands up to either side of your head to look like moose antlers. Also, it helps if you wiggle your fingers.)
2. Viewpoints Group Move
   1. Viewpoints Connect with Group in General
   2. Group Moves with an Emotion focussing on Happy, Sad, Angry, Afraid
   3. Lone Wolf with Emotion
   4. Duet Moves with Shared Emotion
3. Shotgun Scenes
   1. Step towards the center of the stage, allowing the momentum of each player to crash into each other like waves.
   2. Eye Contact, Breathe, Begin….
   3. Discover and Appreciate
4. Freeze Tag - with Adjustments
   1. Two Players Begin a Scene. Team allows a scene to develop.
   2. Upon an appropriate edit, someone on back line claps hands and says, “Freeze!”
   3. The original players freeze, maintaining a frozen physicality.
   4. Two players from the back line then tag out the frozen players and assume the exact same physicality as the now tagged out players.
   5. The two tagged out players then make a quick and tiny adjustment to the new players’ physicality. 
   6. The two new players then begin a completely different scene, using the physicality to discover an initiation.
   7. Repeat….
5. Emotional Initiation Harold
   1. Emotional Opening - Using Viewpoints, the ensemble moves together, discovers an emotional movement together, and brightens that emotion until it transforms into another emotion movement to brighten until a third emotional movement is discovered to brighten by the group. Each player will then have three distinct emotional movements to use as inspiration for the initiations of three scenes.
   2. Scene One
   3. Scene Two
   4. Scene Three
   5. After Three Scenes, HOWL came back togethet and discovered three more emotional movements.  This second time however they began to add a few words to the physicalities. Each player then had three more possible initiation inspirations for scenes
   6. Repeat….

Much like a human hand whose thumb assists the four fingers in grasping an object, so too does joy allow us to gently hold each fleeting emotion. Though we will play Happy, Sad, Angry, & Afraid, we can play them with Joy.  

HÖWL  is  Courtney, Annette, Ian, Allison, Zach, Kevin, Austin, & Cole.  

Thank You for Supporting Live Theater & #Improv Comedy

i Appreciate the Up Votes & Comments 

All the Best, Jacob TS