Aiming towards narrative Improvisation in a theatre setting.

RAMP is a group of 5 performers who have been together since 2000. They perform every two or three weeks in their upstairs space to a nearly sold out audience of 100 -120 people.  Sven Veine of RAMP  is arguably responsible for most of the improvisation in northern Norway and has been to the Loose Moose Summer School many times and a number of workshops around the world. RAMP is a great, warm bunch of people.

THE WORKSHOP

*highlights and brief notes

Thought it would be interesting to open the workshop with an improvised  note session.  I wanted to hear how they 'generally' talk about their shows when they are done.  GREAT WAY TO START A WORKSHOP!!!  "How"they talked told me as much about their work together as what they talked about.

The members of RAMP say they try to get narrative into their shows.  They REALLLLLY WORK on it.  The big discovery for me came in seeing the "frustrated" tone in their pretend meeting session.  The group understood what to do to create stories.  The only problem seemed to be the PRESSURE they put on themselves to do it. 

The THEME of our time together seemed to be
"RELAX, TRUST YOURSELVES and PLAY & RELAX".

I think their workshop was well set up.  We had a short session together.  Then, they had a show (and dragged me on stage for a brief KING KONG appearance - SVEN!!!) And then we worked for the next two days on sometimes difficult work and sometimes goofy play. 

Frode has a comfortable sofa - Thanks Sveinung, Frode, Eva, Maya, and Sven!

CHALLENGES

Interestingly, I found the biggest challenge was to find ways to keep the group from making more problems for themselves than they actually had.  (especially in the story department) and to encourage Playfulness.

PLAY - is integral to improvisation and an environment that allows "play" is a sometimes difficult place to create.  I believe it comes from a CERTAIN kind of safety and a CERTAIN kind of risk mixed together. 

Confidence in your fellow improvisers and in your skills is the safety and openness and fearlessness helps the risk. Both work together.  Taking a risk without skill to know what is a beneficial risk will not pay off and is detrimental to the group

 WEB SITE

"Shawns workshop was immensely good for Improkompaniet RAMP.  To my surprise the method of working against storytelling or to be more relaxed on it,
pushed us all forward into a spontaneous space finding ourselves playing even more riskier scenes.  As a strange result of that, we ended up from time to time with stronger and more meaningful narratives which left us feeling much more relaxed and happier with ourselves. In short, this workshop showed me the genuine talent Shawn has to understand very quickly where a groups work needs a fix and  his long collected rich bag of tricks to help fixing it.  The Impro World tour is a unique opportunity to let one of the world's best impro coaches (I promise I know many to compare with) work with every member of a group and by
doing that lift the hole groups performance to a new level.  We want Shawn back to Trondheim and Improkompaniet RAMP some day soon!"

Sven :-)