Voicebank.net’s VoiceRegistry Blog

What Do You Do When You Don’t Have Any Ideas? Improv Class part 2

In yesterday’s Voice Registry blog I described my evening at Bill Applebaum’s improv class. We did warm-ups, then slowly graduated to more involved improvisations; A stream of consciousness circle with each player adding their words. Then we got up one by one doing sort of a monologue of stream of consciousness words.

So, how is this all related to voice over? How many times in an audition (or even at the job) have you needed to come up with a “button” (a phrase or word at the end) to add sizzle to the spot? Or perhaps your own unique verbal stamp that could get you the job? How many times did you feel like you couldn’t think of anything?

These stream of consciousness exercises loosen up our idea muscle so we free ourselves of too much judgment opening the flood gates of creativity. As the class went on we got more and more comfortable with just letting it flow. And what I found is, the more you take your creative self out for a test ride, the better you run. Voice over is like any creative career, the more we bring ourselves (that truthful, authentic one) into the mix, the more successful we can be.

For our final stream of consciousness exercise, we had to get up and deliver a story (made up or true) by just letting our ideas stream into one another, trusting that they’d just build into an improv monologue. The audience helped with a “location” or “object” suggestion to launch us.

It was my turn. I kept thinking (more like over thinking) “should I choose a location or an object?” Stressing a little about wanting to be perfect (death to improv).

“A bank” someone yelled out. Yikes! what could I say about a bank? How can I do this? I grabbed a chair, sat in it backwards (I think I felt protected by the wooden slats) and just started talking. Then my worst fear emerged. I just couldn’t think of anything. I felt myself sinking into nothingness, repeating empty words. I was about to say it aloud. “I can’t do this!” Then something happened. The more I just relaxed, talked and allowed myself to fail, the more I started to succeed, launching into this story I’d forgotten about. A story I loved telling. I pretended to be a home buyer on an open house Sunday in Brentwood, sharing a tall tale with the realtor. That was improv in itself.

At the end, I felt creatively satiated, and grateful for the opportunity to test myself, to fail and get up again. I realized it was that stumble that gave me more confidence than if I had sailed through this improv with loads of ideas from the start.

So, what do you do when you don’t have any ideas? Trust. Open your mind. See what happens and try not to say, “I can’t think of anything.” Because you can. Yes you can.

-Tracy Pattin