Fixing Bad Habits

Welcome back actors today we’re going to talk about space work as it relates to improvisation.

DON’T USE REAL OBJECTS ONSTAGE

When you show up to improvise, you don’t want to ever use something that’s actually yours or on your person.

You WOULDN’T pull out your actual physical wallet and try to use this in a scene. If you did that and said “Okay I can pay you” but your actual wallet is empty, it limits what you can do

You WOULD Pull out your space work wallet, it has unlimited potential. You could…have a thousand hundred dollar bills in there.

Then your wallet could be made out of gold and you could be Scrooge McDuck . Anything is possible in improv when you use you imagination.

DON’T LIMIT YOURSELF BY WHAT YOU WEAR

Do not limit how an audience sees you based on the clothing you are wearing. We recommend wearing maybe jeans or just a pair of plain pants and like a black shirt something like that that you know you go any way you want. The idea is that if you show up in a dress with high heels then you’re gonna have to play a girl or be harder for the audience to imagine you as not being a woman and so you want to think about starting with a blank slate. You don’t want to be limited to the clothing that you are wearing because in improv anything goes

EXERCISE IN PRACTICING SPACEWORK AT HOME

You’ll never use real objects onstage, however, to practice your space work ahead of time you will. This is how you figure out how you really do things Let’s go back to our wallet example. What you do is, you open up the physical wallet in your hand and then just pull the wallet out and now you are holding a space work wallet. What this does is open you up to notice details you wouldn’t normally think of this when doing space work

Excuse me thats my phone.

M – “Hey baby you’re on my actor made easy video.”

L – ”Ohhh, Hi honey.”

M – “I love you but I’m talking about space work. Do you have any advice for our students?”

L – “About space work specifically?”

M – “Yeah, about space work specifically.”

L – “Actually, something that really helped me with space work was to remember how much the thing weighed first. As apposed to fixating on the shape of it, I try to remember the wait of it. That was more informative for me.”

M – “Honey that is brilliant. You are just gorgeous and brilliant as always.”

L – “Honey, you’re handsome and charming.”

M – “Well I wasn’t fishing for a compliment but thank you okay love you.”

That was Leeann. She brought up a really good point too which is the weight of the object so going back to my wallet here, what’s the weight of the object?

I feel sort of the weight, what does that feel like in my hand and, The mistake actors will make is they’re gonna go “Oh wallet” and then they open it up and they do something weird with their hands or it’s like too light or too heavy or something and it doesn’t make any sense.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

Here’s another cool example I happened to just literally just answer the phone with my watch. I happen to have one of these watches which didn’t even exist let’s say 20 years ago. Back then there was not a phone on your wrist. So, if I took this watch off physically that’s not a possibility anymore. However, with spacework anything is possible.

What I could think to myself is, I have an imaginary phone in my spacework glasses. I put on the glasses and then I go “Excuse me. Yes honey hi, you’re on the actor made easy video. Yeah I love you too baby, no honey I’m, not right now I’m doing a video. Okay bye.”

That’s it. I just made a phone call with my imaginary glasses on. The point being, anything is possible with improv anything is possible but you want to ground it in some sort of a reality. So, don’t be lazy with your space work, practice with real objects and then from those real objects think outside the box and think how could I come up with something really creative that doesn’t exist yet that might exist sometime in the future.