The “I found some of your life” post that did the rounds a few weeks ago was amusing. Not because of what happened, but because of what could be. Some background, a guy found a camera and didn’t know who it belonged to, so he posted one photo per day online and added his own candit comments about each photo. Eventually someone came forward and the site was taken down, but not before it did the rounds of the blogosphere, and finally made it to Slashdot, where someone put the pieces together and found other photos online of the same people.

Anyway, the interesting part is that this is effectively an old impro game we call Pop-up Storybook, where each scene is a frozen piece, improvised by on stage players, with an off stage player providing an improvised commentary. It is tempting to take a couple of dozen photos from a night out, and have some of Sydney’s top improvisers provide a running commentary online. There are sites for photoshopping contests, and photo caption contests, why not Pop-up Storybook?

Which brings up the issue of what other impro games could be played online?

Of course if you’re in Sydney, you could always see the real thing with yours truly, tomorrow night at the Clarence Hotel. 🙂

Not often, but every now and again I get a little guilty about my Google ranking for a particular query. At the moment I’m getting a lot of folks looking up The Clarence Hotel in Petersham, which is our new Sydney Scared Scriptless Theatresports venue. Unfortunately though, I don’t blog that much about it, even though I’m sort of directing or producing the show or something like that.

I mean we have a Scared Scriptless web site, which is unfortunately not really functional at the moment, but it will be up real soon now. Ryan?

But for news about the shows, people are still somehow finding their way to my blog, and certainly the first paragraph of this post isn’t going to change that too much. At least the title isn’t going to top things off.

The thing about Google, is that it is supposed to level the playing field, find the things you need, with the rankings you want, filter out those who are trying to stack things in their favor, and everyone’s happy. The problem of course is that most people don’t actually understand the mechanics and structure required of a good site to support Google and it’s peers, meaning that to keep a level playing field, I should really dumb down my site’s data quality.

But then who am I to complain if I get a higher ranking? If my Google referers are anything to go by, I should keep writing for my audience of people interested in Kristy Kreme (check the spelling), Oriental Lillies, How to win lotto and of course Scared Scriptless in Sydney.

The answer of course is for web site authors to do it right the first time, a good starting point being Gina Trapani’s Scribbling.net post on helping Googlebot to understand your site.

I saw quite a few impro scenes the other day, 50 or so high school kids learning the ropes, and saw lots of great examples of how society negatively indoctrinates us as we grow up. We’re taught subconsciously (conciously even) that the individual is the most important, and that not knowing something, or not being good at something is embarrassing or inferior to our peers.

There’s a few studies going around at the moment showing that communal families, like prides of lions, are the more traditional and genetic programmed form of society for human beings, and only the last x thousand years of civilisation and religious belief has brought us this monogamous and egostistical structure of a society. I don’t know if that’s the case, but there’s some pretty strong programming inside the human animal that seems to take to egotism like a duck to water.

Or as Ripley in Aliens put it…

I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!

Protection from being embarrassed or appearing inferior, usually ends up in a high status competition, a simple fight or flight response, and in impro most often as fight, as again, we all think we’ve got a chance if there’s no physical fight required. Ooh, do we love to argue?! You see it in adult impro too, but with kids, it’s so much more pure and obvious.

Here’s a classic scene from today with four year 11 students, set on a beach.

Cassy: Look, what’s that?

Nathan: I don’t know, what is it Karen?

Karen: I don’t know.

[ at this stage, they’re all standing there pointing at this space on the floor ]

Kelly: I know what it is.

Nathan: What is it?

Kelly: I don’t know [ turns away from the audience and walks to the back of the stage ].

[ commit damn you! name it! (i said to myself) ]

Cassy: It’s a hole! [ Yes! A hole to another dimension? A city under the sea? Let’s see where it leads! ]

There was another scene with two blokes watching TV, changing channels, which ended up in a verbal slanging match “you want to have go?”, “no, you want to have a go?”, with the other two players trying to hold them back physically. All because they couldn’t think what would happen next. Kind of an implied “I can’t think of anything, but I’m not going to look uncool as well.” Get sucked into the TV, a celebrity comes out of the TV, the remote control starts changing life itself… It’s easy to see it from outside the scene, but not so simple when we’ve been taught from a young age that there’s lots of wrong answers, and wrong answers are bad.

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I love impro, it helps break down those emotional and egotistical barriers, teaches team work, and promotes free thinking. It should be mandatory for high schools students. If only it were available when I was at school.

Not bad for a walk down King St. Stumbled into some op/junk shop and found this $30 pot plant holder, which I then cleaned up and will use as the Scared Scriptless Cranston Qualifying trophy. Sweet.

Yes, we have a new venue for our Scared Scriptless impro show in Sydney. After many a year, we’re moving back to the Clarence Hotel on the corner of Crystal St and Parramatta Rd, Petersham. First show of the new season is 27th August 2004, and we kick off with the Scared Scriptless Cranston Qualification competition. And there was much rejoicing…

Speaking of Impro and Theatresports, I feel a bit guilty, because I have the no. 1 Google ranking for sydney scared scriptless and numerous other combinations, so I guess I should give a little news about it.

We’re still looking for replacement venues, since we lost the Arthouse Hotel about a month ago. Basically they were concerned that our crowds weren’t buying drinks, which is unfortunately the business that they’re in. Of course table service would no doubt have solved the problem, but that’s what happens when you hire bar staff to run a hotel. Did I say that? Hmmm… that will probably get me in trouble. No matter.

So we’re still looking, we have about a dozen venues to choose from, but arranging a meeting with the appropriate people has unfortunately been difficult for various reasons. My being in Canberra for several weeks also hasn’t helped.

So if you’d like to have a regular weekly comedy show at your Sydney venue, then let me know.

Sydney is a small place, even though we have a population of 3 879 400 people. And the centre of Sydney’s small placedness is Impro Australia.

My wife (at the time “to be”), got me into Theatresports, although I’d seen it many a year ago on the ABC in the 1980s, as did everyone else so it would seem. I figure that’s half a point for my wife, and half a point for the TV. Her brother is a bit of a Theatresports legend, as is the school friend of my last ex-girlfriend, that’s gotta be two points. Then there’s the degrees of separation, the Theatresports guy who works at an R&D lab where a friend of mine used to design graphics imaging chips, another’s brother has done work for our company and knows my boss who in turn now purely coincidentally plays as well, and our excessively overskilled accounts chick used to play with my aforementioned brother in law. My best friend, who I got into Theatresports, at one time shared a court with another friend and main stage player. Then there’s the coincidences, the friend (and player) that snuck into the Midnight Oil Goat Island gig when I was stupid enough not to*, the Mac-centric guys who started their own impro troupe, the list goes on…

But none of this helps when trying to get ahead and get roles in impro shows. If you’re not consistently annoying people for stage time, or you accidentally (or intentionally) get overlooked for a certain show, then you’re set back for up to a year before you can continue the climb. And of course lack of stage time means lack of experience, which makes the job even harder. Throw in the politics, and well, it’s tough…

Anyway, all this started when I got an email this afternoon from a friend/player saying they were looking for a solution to a spell check problem with Microsoft Word, and coincidentally my site popped up in Google with the answer. Small world…

Then there’s the intra-work coincidences. I’m at the MC5 gig on Friday night, and who do I bump into, but a Canberra based client of ours, rocking away as I was. Small world…

Speaking of Theatresports, this Friday 6th August 2004, I’m extremely lucky enough to play with some of the nicest and most talented new players around, when we compete in the St George Theatresports competition. 7pm, at the St George Bank Auditorium, Montgomery St., Kogarah. Come along and check it out, you’ll have a cack.

* 2JJJ ran a contest back in 1986 as part of their ten year anniversary, asking listeners to write in listing their 3 favourite bands. Midnight Oil was my favourite, but I wanted to support my fave indie artists, so I put The Celibate Rifles, Lime Spiders and someone else who I’ve forgotten. What they didn’t mention was that anyone who said Midnight Oil, got a free ticket to the secret Goat Island gig. Since then I’ve always been honest about my favourite artists.

I don’t want to harp on about having blue hair or anything, but at least it’s something unique to bring to the blogosphere.

Anyway, I recently spent some time in our wonderful capital, Canberra, speaking with government I.T. people. When confronted with the blue hair, especially when it matches so well with my black suit, I often get the comments I wrote about here, but more often than not with work relationships, I get the more neutral:

So why the blue hair?

And when I reply with:

Oh, because I do part time theatre and impro comedy.

…they usually nod their heads knowingly. This wouldn’t be so strange if it weren’t for the theatre and impro comedy people asking the same question, and me replying with:

Oh, because I’m in I.T.

They nod, knowingly.

If you’re in Sydney this Tuesday evening, come and see the opening night of the 2004 season of Scared Scriptless (new web site still in progress), Sydney’s longest running Theatresports^® show. We have a new venue this year, The Arthouse Hotel in Pitt St., opposite the old Greater Union Pitt St. cinema. While the building used to be the The School of Arts and dates from 1830, the site uses stoopid Flash and frames and so technically (and inaccessibly) dates from the mid-90s.