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A film director, like an orchestra conductor, is the lord of his domain, and no director has more power than a director of animated films. He is set free from the rules of the physical universe and the limitations of human actors, and can tell any story his mind can conceive. That's no doubt why Chuck Jones, after creating the characters of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, immediately wrote down the rules of what could and could not happen in their universe. If anything could happen (and it could), the comedy would be lost in anarchy.

This lesson uses video segments from Great Performances: The Little Mermaid from San Francisco Ballet to help students explore the role of the author in relation to his/her work. In the Introductory Activity, students discuss the structure of the original The Little Mermaid tale as they remember it. Students then read the original story and compare their memories to the original text. In the Learning Activity, students examine John Neumeier's artistic interpretation of the classic fairy-tale by looking at two video segments that feature the main characters of the ballet. Finally, for the Culminating Activity, students craft their own contemporary interpretation of a classic fairy-tale (e.g., Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty).

In this lesson, students discuss the meaning of clowns and explore the themes of spontaneity and laughter as well as vulnerability. Guided classroom discussions help students to explore misconceptions about clowns as well as how the clown could be a "master of failure." Reflective writing prompts are also included for students to demonstrate their understanding of the story.

Welcome to learnimprov.com. This site is devoted to the art of improvisational comedy theatre. Learnimprov.com contains the most detailed and approachable collection of improv comedy structures on the web. Improv comedy structures are one of the key tools used to create improvisational comedy theatre. From games to warm-ups they are detailed here. It is unlikely that you will be able to learn improv comedy from the Internet. Improv comedy requires hours of rehearsal, coaching and dedication to the craft. This collection of improv structures is designed to help you along your path. Whether you are a recreational improviser, or a professional you can join the thousands of improvisers from around the world that have used this resource to make our world a funnier and more improvier place. Learnimprov.com is divided into two distinct parts: structures and tools.

Rowan Atkinson talks about what makes visual comedy funny through the use of humorous vignettes and Monty Python footage. Part 1 of 5.

Preparing a trendy audition song seems a logical choice to many. The piece may have universal appeal, and a sense of it being "safe" material. Many actors fail to see that though this may be "popular" to perform in front of their peers, directors might have a slightly different take. Directors are looking for unique & creative individuals, and having "fresh" audition songs can separate you out from all the others. As an actor, you also show the ability to stretch yourself and take a risk on something that no-one else is doing.

This collision of real-life tragedy and satirical ambition is much discussed at the Times Square headquarters here of Nickelodeon, a unit of Viacom, mostly because a day of trauma for America is also the birthday of a gentle and singularly optimistic character who, over the next 16 years, would prove eminently capable of soaking up at least a least a little bit of the world's ongoing sadness.

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Reading and watching William Shakespeare's plays shouldn't make you feel stupid. But the 400 years between when they were written and today have put up barriers of culture and language that make it hard to read or watch them clean. People (alive and dead) are always telling you what to think about these plays instead of just letting you engage them yourself.

Highlighted by songs in which women celebrate the murder of wayward men and a lawyer demonstrates the art of manipulating the media, musicals don't get much more cynical than Chicago. A ripped-from-the-headlines jazz-age play by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins turned into a 1975 musical by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb in collaboration with Bob Fosse, Chicago enjoyed an initial run of qualified success, overshadowed by the crowd-pleasing A Chorus Line. It makes perfect sense, however, that it found a second audience on Broadway in the 1990s

Equally comfortable playing romantic leads and action heroes, he has never been quite a force in theatre. This is partly a matter of choice. He has prioritised screen roles over stage opportunities. The last time he acted on stage was in 2009 in a popular West End production of Richard Greenberg's three-hander Three Days of Rain. In the mean time he has been taking a while to shake off the halo of urgent youth. He has tended to play callow characters more sinned against than sinning - the closest he's come to anything like villainy is as Idi Amin's morally compromised medic.

I adore using questions and answers as part of the writing process. It's an excellent way to get yourself out of writers block. It's a great method for creating specific characters. For creating a thesis for your work. It's something that should be at the heart of every project: what question is being answered here?

While that might seem semantic, the feedback effect is significant. Rather than reject ideas in their entirety, Pixar creates an additive approach to sharing feedback. It actively encourages artists to come up with their next steps based on the leads they receive. The process borrows from the tenets of improv, in which partners keep the sketch alive by "accepting all offers" and mining for comedic wrinkles in each other's ideas. People who operate with "yes, and…" thinking use their words to amplify ideas, not silence them.