Somehow, I seem to have pulled out one of my better nights of improv in a while. All the while, while I was doing my scenes, I didn’t feel like I was contributing all that much or hitting high notes, but my classmates seemed to respond well, and the teacher did point out that we seemed to be on our game today. So, who am I to argue? My memory is a tad hazy, but that could be the beer talking. Let me try to remember what happened.
The last activity of the day was called “one-sentence scenes” which has everyone involved speaking in short statements, relying on other scene members to carry the scene forward as necessary. For my turn, the three of us were given the suggestion that we were soldiers. At the beginning of the scene I just went up and said that I was surprised that they let us hold onto the guns so early on. I didn’t really have any intentions going in, but from that line I decided I was a bit bumbling. Another guy came in and said it was a wonderful night there on the firing range at Fort Bragg. I called him lieutenant. In that moment we managed to establish the who, what, where as necessary, so we were off to the races.
I just continued to be entirely happy with the fact that I was holding a gun. I stroked in gently in a suggestive manner. The third actor came in and me and the other guy just kind of stared at her unsure what to say. I think the other person finally broke the ice telling her to sit next to me. She stated something about having killed someone, but the lieutenant told her that I was going to show her how to do something a gun. I’ll be honest here and just say that I truthfully didn’t fully pay attention to what he requested me to do, so I just pretended to play dumb and inept. With a blank look I asked him “What do you want me to do?” The lieutenant yelled at me then patted me on the back. It was at that point that it was established that I was just a sad case that just wanted to hold a gun.. He started complimenting the private and her abilities. I wanted attention so I suggested that we clean our guns some more. The lieutenant yelled at me to shut up. I put on a sad face, got up, and just turned around looking slumped and defeated. With my back to the audience I turned my head and put on the most pathetic sad face I could to the other two, and the lieutenant yelled at me to shut up again. I cowered.
The private started talking about the fact that she killed someone again. I walked back to my seat and looked at her. She said she had seen some crazy things that made her hard. The lieutenant asked what things. I guess the fact that she shot someone wasn’t really doing it for us at that point so the private raised the stakes. “I shot him.” I asked who she shot. “I shot Private Smith!” The lieutenant was shocked. I did my best “Whoa…that was you?????” She lamented that she thought he was a rat.
The lieutenant walked off in disgust. So the two of us just sat there staring at the night sky in silence. She sadly insisted that she thought he was a rat. I uneasily agreed with her: “Well…he did kind of have a rat face.” She nodded in agreement. I forgot what she said next but it described another rat-like quality of his. Perhaps it was, “…and he was kind of small.” I tried to one-up her with “…and he did have two little buck teeth.” She ended up with the blow line “…and he liked eating cheeeeeeeese.”
And the lights went down.
And the class was in an uproar. The teacher seemed ecstatic. It was all a shock to me, because while I was in the scene I didn’t notice how anyone watching was reacting whatsoever. I didn’t know it at the time, but the three of us reportedly put on something really awesome and funny. There were great beats: the one-sentence structure seemed to work well for us). Each of us had equal attention with our own cool moments during the scene. There was a lot of strong emotion, from bumble-fuck excitement, to graveness, to flashes of anger, to humiliated sadness, to lamentation. A game was found in exploring how Private Smith was rat-like. We each had strong characters in the dumb-ass private, the riled up lieutenant, and the hardened private. I guess everything aligned correctly for that scene. What I described here doesn’t do it justice. In any case, I’m damn proud of what happened.
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