"Action is king, emotion is queen and words are the jester" - joe bill

Here are my notes from the Joe Bill workshops. He talked so fast and said so much that a lot of this is me paraphrasing, but I tried to be as accurate as possible...ha, the order is also sort of wild.

Intellect/Emotional P.O.V. 3-26-10

-"Evil Listening Devil Shit" (in reference to what we would be working on)
-Subjectively, with an expectation of doing shorter scenes people attack harder. The longer scenes give you time to start thinking, to start considering. 15 seconds is what it takes for an improviser to start hating their first choice.that second 15 seconds is deciding how you are going to react to the first 15 seconds. In that second 15 seconds, feel ok about how you have started.
-"Character- How you do what you do is who you are".
-When starting scenes, do you that 1st thing with confidence. Initiate with initiative to avoid getting to the end of a short form joke to find out that you have nothing else.
-Emotion first. Connect to that 1st thing...people who panic tend to negotiate because they don't know who they are.
-Scenes are about conflict vs. alignment, fucking vs fighting.
-Characters must either align, or change.
-There's no room for the consideration of right or wrong.
-Its not your job in scenic improv to explain shit, its your job to just be and let the audience put it together.
-Can you be secure enough in the choice you've made to allow yourself to listen to the other person and be effected? And react to them in a way that honors your initial choice?
-you weren't playing a dumbass, you were presenting a dumbass to us. It incorporates self-consciousness into it.
-we want to play void of self-consciousness
-emotion doesn't like stopping.
-Silence gives us time to act, and time to listen, and to react.
-Acting is the willingness to change. The acting happens in the wilingness. We see the willingness for the characters to change, and allign...or the lack of that.
-Shut the fuck up enough to just explore this moment to moment.
-They'll take that ride if we believe ourselves.
-With longform improv the source of tension for the audience is "Do I believe you" and for bonus points "do I continue to believe you when you surprise me".
-Focus and Intent. Invested.
-Getting better at improv takes reps. The teacher's job is to show you which machines to work out on to get stronger faster.
-In theater you must heighten, amplify, or change.
-It will be ok as long as I have the confidence that I will be fine...as soon as you joke out the moment, you're doing short form.
-Hold on to your shit.
-All you can do is initiate and then be.
-All you can do in the golden time is tell you brain/fear/self-consciousness "Shut Up!"
-When we start scenes like this there is always something there (referring to partnering)
-Right now you're in hyper logic mode. allow yourself the silence to figure out what's there, really connect to and invest in it so that you know who you are as that character.
-Yes, I see your choice and that makes me feel... (yes,and!)
-Part of the golden time is letting go of opinions to get to the clarity of what the truth is.
-Why doesn't matter...why's will come to you if its supposed to come to you...the audience will see why's that you don't.
-The magic happens when we are not thinking of ourselves in the context of the scene.
-If we attack scenes quickly with a definitive energy directed internally (emotion, spaciallly (environment)) to the partner...there will already be something there, and it will be there more immediately.
-Improvisers spend a lot of time moving objects, and not enough time letting objects move them.
-Listen to him with either curiosity or suspicion.
-Don't be afraid to lose your shit (he meant "go wild" not "drop your shit")
-Discoveries are just instantaneous decisions embraced.
-By thinking, you've already made yourself usual.
-What if we don't have to start from a place of concern? What if we just start some shit without thinking?
-Take how she's treating you personally
-"Our Job is to enchant and Horrify" -Del Close

Ah yeah, thanks Cody! I had the camera running to extract the audio later, but there are certain things that were inaudible. This helps a lot.

Thank you.