I went to a Musical Improv class on Friday. Lisa Lyn was the instructors name, and she’s in Acaprov. She was taught by Showstopper in the UK.
Here’s a new song form that really appealed. It’s called Counterpoint. Counterpoint of course means multiple tunes all going together and is a feature of many musical musical finales / ends of act 1s. This form reminded me of the revolutionary song format that Jeff Bouthiette at Second City teaches. Just a little simpler.
First offer, which alerts the cast that you’re doing a counterpoint is to take your place front stage centre (they never use this position for any other thing). You sing a stanza.
Second person comes on and takes a position behind and to one side (so that as the cast lines up it creates an arrow pointing to the audience). They sing a different but similar stanza with the same final word(s). (e.g. Eve sang in Spanish and her last word was “familia”, so people used “familiar”, “unfamiliar”).
Third person, up to 5 in total, lines up and sings.
Then the person at the front conducts the final lines – indicating a crescendo, a hold and then a stop (Lisa’s signal for finishing is a tying a big “bow” with your hands in the air).
it works so beautifully and is very simple.
