Posts Tagged ‘Mark Piebenga’
A Long Ass Email
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Talkin' Shop - We talk improv, Writing Staff
Twitter @USSRockNRoll / FACEBOOK Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) – More from Mark can be found at www.wikipiebenga.org or follow him at @wikipiebenga. Something I noticed during a show this week: at some point, it doesn’t fully matter what exactly the two players are doing for a scene to work. With a bedrock of general [...]
A Pilfered Posting Notion
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Twitter @USSRockNRoll / FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/USSRockNRoll Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) – For more from Mark you can find him at Wikipiebenga.org or on Twitter @wikipiebenga. This entry originally appeared on my website wikipiebenga.org: With little of the expected shame and embarrassment befitting the act, I have stolen the idea for this post from Carson Cistulli, [...]
Consider These Dinosaurs
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) – For more from Mark go to www.wikipiebengs.org How about this drawing by a six year old kid in the after-school program at Rowe Elementary where I work? They are stencils, and he decided randomly on two colors. He may have just laid a big stencil down and colored [...]
Real Life Is Funnier Than Any Comedy
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers
Written my Mark Piebenga (Staff) – For more from Mark, check out his website www.wikipiebenga.org One of my favorite improv class platitudes is “be real,” because the funniest moments in all of our lives come when we’re not trying, and real life just happens. Aspects of it are tragic, but there is a tremendous amount [...]
Suggestion: The South
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Writing Staff
Written by iO Chicago’s Mark Piebenga (Staff) – www.wikipiebenga.org My friends Tim and Shad and I get together and sometimes we do timed writes: set a timer for ten minutes and just write on an agreed upon topic. This idea is simple enough, but would never have occurred to me. We took a [...]
90% of improvising is mental. The other half is physical.
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) — You can read and learn much more about Mark at www.wikipiebenga.com. I think that about a third of a being good improvisor is being an invested human being. Another third of it is being a good listener. And then the final third is being a real weirdo, [...]
Sour Grapefruit
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) Tuning in to spring training baseball is simultaneously fascinating and boring (presupposing avid interest the game). There are many side plots[1], but a main factor of interest for me are the lesser-known young players scrapping for roster spots, fighting to be the 1% of the 1%[2] who make it. [...]
There Will Be Time (?)
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) St. Louis-born T.S. Eliot swore loyalty to the British crown and renounced American citizenship at the age of 39. His accent is very anglo, and the sound of his voice is ridiculously poncy. The last few years I’ve developed an arbitrarily strong distaste for his change of allegiance. American letters [...]
Taking One Thing With Another
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) Sometimes I am uncertain! This is not unusual, but today, trying to write, I am worried that it will not be exceptional. So I will use a favorite tactic, and lean upon others. There are a lot of great lines in Kurt Vonnegut books. He drew great pictures in Breakfast [...]
Free To Fail
Posted by Piebenga | Filed under Resources for improvisers, Writing Staff
Written by Mark Piebenga (Staff) An ensemble I was in a while ago did a form devised by our director TJ Jagodowski called The Fibonacci. You start with an opening scene, A, which goes for maybe two minutes. Then you have a second scene, B, which is related thematically or somehow inspired by scene A. [...]
