How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth By Will Hines
Das beste Impro-Buch, das ich in den letzten Jahren gelesen habe. Auch für Fortgeschrittene und Profis sind einige Perlen und sogar neue Spiele zu finden.
Will Hines muss ein lustiger Mensch sein. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth This is a great book on improv for people who are already familiar with the basics of it. Hines assumes you know what you're doing and focuses on skills and abilities that are not connected to the rules of improv. The chapters are Be Brave, Be Present, Be Authentic, Be Healthy etc. It's good advice for improv and life and will make you a better improvisor and actor. I very much appreciated the chapter titled Be Healthy where Hines basically tells us to chill the f* out and do other things except improv. He gives advice on when you feel bad about yourself and what to do in a slump, how to approach auditions and not to drink too much with your friends. All solid stuff. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth This book is awesome! Its short and sweet and fairly easy to read book. I never felt like the chapters were to complicated or to tasking. I do recommend you take UCB classes first though, or at least read the manual or else most of the book will be confusing. It mostly talks about how to keep improv simple and why the rules they teach you in class are more like guidelines making them ok to be broken sometimes. So go with the flow is the theme of the book. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth After my second improv class, I have a distinct memory of coming home and preparing myself to quit. I was terrible and I couldn't believe it. That night, instead of giving up, I ordered this book. Will Hines (the closest living thing we have to Del Close) has an improv blog and compiled all of his salient advice into How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth. This book will not give you the foundation the the UCB Improv Manual will give you. Instead, it provides playable skills. It told me that I was terrible, of course I was terrible! I had taken two classes at that point. This book gave me confidence to get back up there, keep on trying, and set me on track to become the greatest improviser on Earth. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth I am an improv teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in NY and I recommend this book to students all the time. Will Hines is incredibly thoughtful, practical, and clear in his explanations and examples used to illustrate and explain long-form improv concepts that can be confounding to students.
As a teacher, the book has been very useful. It includes loads of exercises that pinpoint how to increase skill levels in specific aspects of improv in scenic and fun ways. When I teach an exercise from this book, I can visibly see realizations about their approach wash over students faces.
There are a few improv books out there nowadays but I believe this one is the greatest - it's written by a teacher for students with much consideration and that is felt throughout. Highly recommended! How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth
Become great at performing long-form improv! We skip the basics and get into advanced topics like: being truly present, being authentic, dealing with difficult performers, being actually funny (!) and the rarely discussed but essential skill of being healthy.
How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth
When I see a particularly good band, my fingers start to twitch: I want to get up and play guitar, to sing, to make music. While reading this book, I kept wishing that I were doing improv at that very second, that I could instantly jump up and put Will's clear, measured advice to practice. No book on improv tackles what it means to be an improvisor better than this book does: the ruts, the team dynamics, and the million little things that make you great in addition to the simple task of saying yes, and. This a book on technique, on honing your craft once you know the basics. It should be required reading for anyone who has done improv for 6 months. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth I wrote this book! Parts I love, parts I wish I could do over. On the whole, I like it a lot. How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth No one will take this review seriously because the author is my brother and I have to say nice things or he won't pass the mashed potatoes next Thanksgiving, but even without that threat I'd still say nice things.
This is a very funny, easy read with lots of great advice for improvisers. Tons of ways to simplify the complicated parts of improv and hopefully get you out of your head. This is like having a great one-sided conversation about improv with a guy who really knows his shit.*
Again you won't trust this review, but that's your hang up and I can't help you with that.
*can you swear on GoodReads? How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth
Characters should know what they're doing, care about whatever the main issues of the scene happen to be, and say how they feel about things.
Know, care, and say could be distilled down to the simplest decisions we all can make, but at a time of extreme uncertainty and movement, they might as well be the cornerstones to unlocking truth. On the other hand, these unusual times have placed genres like improv at the cusp of existential extinction, especially when other entertainment content is proliferating. Logically, you could probably conclude with a decent degree of certainty that this book wouldn't be worth committing to, regardless of your experience or familiarity with the subject...
...but there's something oddly powerful and so satisfying about jam-packing a quick and easy 200-pager full of juicy concepts of an often underrated and under-appreciated artform - so much so that this has become my new bible for both scenework and life work! As a novice to the craft, I was hesitant to dig into such an ambitious concept, keeping in mind that it'd be way harder to play with the author's best practices directly with studios and theatres being shuttered. However, Hines' compelling commentary and exploration of improv through almost a meta tongue-and-cheek method were captivating, and offer three benefits to the casual reader.
1. Simplicity: Hines' writing is accessible, colourful, and playful, all the while staying true to the goal of the title. To his credit, he not only makes a good case of achieving this hairy objective, but also manages to masterfully bridge the gap between the science of improv and the art aspect.
2. Variety: Extending the simplicity argument further, I was surprised to see how much ground Hines was able to cover while still keeping structure and flow intact. Notably, he succeeds in synthesizing key parts of scenework into bite-sized pieces (theory), while providing practical games and situations to make the elements come to life (application).
3. Applicability: Among all other parts of this book, the sheer fact that each chapter and concept is framed using endearing imperative statements (e.g. be present, be authentic, be healthy) suggests that this isn't just about learning techniques for improv; rather, it's about building your toolkit to interacting with people and thinking about life.
Yes , this book is great - and , I'm confident to say you'll get something out of this fun and fresh read no matter what! How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth Will Hines is the kind of improv genius who should have written a book like this years ago! He's one of the funniest robot improvisers out there—always cool, calculating, and ready to make a fantastic justification or detailed addition to a scene. I miss seeing him perform in NYC.
The book would have been a much quicker read if I hadn't been in the middle of two others. The short chapters make it perfect for a quick refresher any time you need it, and the exercises given at the end of each chapter make it feel like it'd be a great workbook for a new team not lucky enough to be in a major metropolitan area (probably in conjunction with The UCB Manual referenced toward the end).
I love the way the book is written—not too scholarly, but still smart. It's almost like sitting down and getting a friendly lesson in improv. I like to read these types of books with a highlighter, to emphasize key sentences to make re-reads quicker, but the way Hines wrote made it sometimes difficult to mark one specific phrase; often the key lesson was a whole paragraph or page!
Some of the sections felt familiar (I probably read them on his Improv Nonsense blog before) but there was still plenty of great advice in here to earn its spot on my bookshelf next to pretty much every other improv book that's ever been written.
How To Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth
