Cooperation And Comedy: Joel McCrary Shares Techniques With Students During Improv Workshop
Texas A&M University students experienced the art of improv on Sept. 29 during a workshop session with Joel McCrary, a veteran actor and improv comedian, at the Black Box Theater in the Liberal Arts and Arts and Humanities building.
Participants learned that improv is the “art of cooperation,” according to McCrary, who engaged in in-depth improv scenes and one-on-one techniques for three hours with the students.
Some of the Los Angeles-based professional’s roles include Prime Minister Motaz in “The Princess Diaries” movies and in TV shows including “Kickin’ It,” “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Seinfeld.”
The workshop was sponsored by the Texas A&M School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts and its Performance Studies program. Dr. Michelle Simms, lecturer, and Anne Quackenbush, assistant professor of practice, served as facilitators for the session.
“I think it was a huge success,” Quackenbush said. “The students were able to hear his backstory and have the input of someone who has made it in the industry — to acknowledge it’s something that is achievable.”
Before the fun and games began, McCrary shared the origin of his love of improv. Each Christmas Eve, his family would gather in the living room of his grandparents’ house and put together a performance.
“Every year I would do a sketch of ‘Saturday Night Live’ or a sketch from ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’” McCrary said. “But I wouldn’t write it out. I would wrangle my mom, my sister or my cousin — but somebody different each year — to perform a skit with me.”
The initial reaction from his grandfather, known as “Big Slick,” forever resonated with him. “Big Slick” had an injury that left him in chronic pain in his back and legs. Because of the pain, he had a constant scowl on his face, McCrary said.
“I was improvising a scene with my mom, and everybody was laughing,” McCrary recalled. “In the midst of that, I have a snapshot in my head of seeing ‘Big Slick’ laugh, and there was no pain on his face. I felt like I was seeing my grandfather’s face for the very first time in my life.”
McCrary said it was a life-changing moment. He realized he wanted to dedicate his life to performing and giving people a sense of relief through laughter.
“As performers — whether it is dancing, writing or anything else — I want you all to know it is a noble profession,” McCrary said. “All of the arts are important. People need it.”
Members of Freudian Slip, Texas A&M’s student improv-comedy troupe, participated in several sketches with McCrary. “My Movie” was an improv game in which four people stand side-by-side and repeat “My movie” three times. McCrary then called on one of them to say a made-up movie title. If he deemed it interesting, the group would then improvise a scene from the made-up movie.
Another game was “Expert,” in which someone portrayed an expert in a topic chosen by the audience. McCrary acted as the interviewer and took questions from the audience. Govind Joshi, a first-year graduate student in computer science, volunteered, and the audience requested that he be an expert in time travel.
McCrary asked what type of “being” he was, and Joshi said he was an alien.
McCrary’s question for the alien time-traveler: “Often we see in films that you can’t travel back into time and see yourself, otherwise all existence will fall apart. Is that true?”
“You all have gotten dangerously close to the truth,” Joshi whispered in reply. “And what you mentioned is true.”
Joshi said he participated in the workshop after hearing about it in his Special Topics: Improv class, instructed by Simms and Quackenbush.
Following the workshop, Joshi said he learned more about himself through McCrary’s lessons about using storytelling skills as a form of communication, listening and responding to offers and being definitive in responses. Joshi said he is hoping to apply the communication skills he learned in improv to his social life.
“I want to learn to think on my feet,” he said. “And coming to this workshop, I think a lot of the fears that you have, you have to placate them. As a weird comparison, it’s almost like a vaccine. You face the difficulty in a controlled environment, and then when you are out and about in the real world, you have to face whatever comes at you.”
Simms said it was rewarding to see the students move out of their comfort zones to be present in the moment, especially those who were new to improv.
“That is the beauty of the arts,” she said. “Improv is a different soft skill set that is so valuable. Whether you are majoring in this or not, you can translate it to everyday life.”
