Opening
The basic form starts with an "opening." After eliciting the audience's suggestion, the ensemble explores it for a few minutes in either an unplanned or a predetermined structure. Textbook structures include:
- A cocktail party that ebbs and flows between conversations.
- Monologues that rotate among cast members.
- Invocation of the suggestion in the style of an occult ritual (It is, you are, thou art, I am).
- Organic involving morphing sound and movement exploration.
- Pattern game where word association is used to generate ideas, often referred to as a clover leaf because the pattern arcs out with associated words and returns to the suggestion, and is repeated two additional times.
- Source scene or scenes which are used to pull ideas and which might return in the 3rd Beat.
Rarely is the opening just about the literal suggestion. The suggestion serves a starting point to discover greater underlying themes. Del Close stated that a suggestion should be elevated from the commonplace to the extraordinary.
Read more about this topic: Harold (improvisation)
Famous quotes containing the word opening:
“Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these points.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)