Don’t Pray For me, I’m Already Dead

Here I sit in my campanile, listening to the breeze, gazing out on the town of Reading as it sprawls below

me. A place for dreamers, a place for mad prophets. Or something like that at any rate. How should I

know? I very rarely leave my campanile. I leave my campanile to go to the store, I leave my campanile to

do go to my real job, and sometimes I leave my campanile to go do my real job at the store. But on the

other weekend I left my campanile to go to BIP, which is none of those things. And they told me to write

an article about it. They said one page, normal spacing, no specified font or size. So if we suddenly slip

into wingdings you will know why. I also didn’t ask how many stock photos I’m allowed to pad it out

with, and I’m hoping the answer is “a lot”.

So to summarise: things what I gone done received at BIP

1: A Cold

I lost track of how many conversations that weekend started with “oh I have a cold”, but it happened at

least twice. And now as I sit here, in my campanile, my head throbs and my nose runs. Because it got me.

The cold got me.

Spare me your tears, I’m already dead.

Though actually, as I proofread this, the cold has gone. It has been replaced by a different cold instead.

The sneezing season strikes again.

2: A compliment on my ability to drag out scenes

At least I think it was a compliment on dragging out scenes. I did the... well I can’t remember the name

now and I left the timetable in my car parked at the base of my campanile, but it was a workshop on

getting back into your head and slowing down scenes in order to give them time to flow and develop

organically, for all too often do we try and make our scenes go much faster as speed is often seen as

“funny”. Which is too verbose for a workshop title, so I’m glad they chose something far more succinct.

But there I was, sat quietly on stage with a partner. The premise was we had just awoken from slumber

and to take the day as it came. And so we did. We all had long and drawn out conversations without

moving from the chairs, by taking time to think and breathe between each sentence. We don’t need to be

quick to be witty, and in fact the pause is often the best part of the joke. It gives time for an obvious

punchline to grow, to tease us. We know it’s coming, but timing is everything in comedy. For more

information see my as yet unwritten article “a tube”.

The advice given to those with anger management issues is “take a deep breath and count to ten”, and

maybe that’s a consideration we should be doing in improv.

3: A lesson on how to talk over people

This section would be funnier if another article was randomly splicing words in periodically. Maybe now

is the time to use the threatened wingdings.

PEOPLE DON’T TALK POLITELY IN THE REAL WORLD. Unless of course you’re aggressively

British, in which case you wait until everyone else is silent before saying your piece, and then you usually

give it a few seconds just to be sure. And of course there are those natural introverts who never talk

anyway, or they spoke once twenty years ago and were instantly interrupted so now remain silent through

choice. Whatever the case, as somebody who has sat through a ninety minute workshop on talking over

each other I give you permission to stop being polite and start making more noise. Even if it is just as

simple as repeating what your partner said.

Then they will repeat your repetition, and you will repeat theirs. This will continue for ten seconds. It will

be very funny.

Trust me. 

4: End a scene whenever you feel like it.

You’re a grown adult I assume. You know what’s funny and what isn’t. You know when you do and don’t

want to listen to a suggestion. If something makes you uncomfortable, don’t do it. Some teachers make a

concerted effort to remind us all of this before a workshop, some don’t. Especially if you’re with new

people and you don’t know their limits and they don’t know yours. And of course there is an audience. I

think the best summation is “don’t be a dick”.

That’s something we forget all too often in this art of ours. So let’s make a concerted effort not to forget

this time.

No. I won’t be pretending to be in a German exploitation movie, and you can’t make me.