Play by Play Tour

A lesson plan for when you're a wee bit tired

Photo by Lee Cartledge on Unsplash

I’m halfway through a mini UCB tour with the show “Play by Play.” One more show Monday night Feb 9 7pm in NYC (featuring my brother Kevin, The Stepfathers and Chris Gethard). Before this we stopped at BIG Theater in Baltimore and also Bottlerocket Social Hall in Pittsburgh. Really fun shows in both places.

The most fun is not usually the big tourist things but the little places you drop in to grab something to eat or drink when you’re in a hurry and just need something nearby. We had a terrific breakfast in Pittsburgh at Shelly’s Diner, and tonight I had a great tapas at Tapas Teatro in Baltimore.

Workshop Lesson Plan

Scheduling randomness meant I was teaching three workshops in a 24 period — 1 in Pittsburgh and then 2 in Baltimore.

To avoid getting too tired, I did a simple lesson plan. All two person scenes. Minimal notes. No warm up.

Each round of two person scenes had a different focus.

1. Agree on who-what-where, don’t worry about game. Then I say the base reality and unusual thing after each one.

2. Each person has to say “Can I be honest with you?

3. Treat a low stake activity with high stakes emotion (“everything matters”).

4. (10 minutes break)

5. Someone initiates with a “bad idea.”

6. Someone endows the other person with unusual behavior (“can you tell me what you always…”)

Less notes than you might get, but if you manage your time right everyone does 6 scenes. The first few rounds tend to be a little cautious, but momentum builds and everyone gets confident for the last few rounds.

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Plugs

• The World’s Greatest Improv School: The improv school I run with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell. We’ve got classes online, in LA and even a few in NYC! You can join our mailing list if you want our weekly announcement of shows.

• How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print (also on my web site for more if you don’t want to buy from Amazon). It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re short of funds and want a free PDF version just email me and I’ll send it over.