Clown, Conceptualiser or Adaptive: Our Habits and Fears

By Katy Schutte

I know it isn’t always realistic to pigeonhole improvisers into one bracket or another, but in planning a rehearsal for the Maydays I realised that there are things that we get into the habit of practising and avoiding depending on our innate style and on what the groups we play with NEED.

I read something interesting in a book called Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps.  It points out that in a romantic relationship, we sometimes work like a two-person ant-colony; if one of us can do one job, then there is no point in the other taking up brain space to do it too.  One of us learns everyone’s names at a party so the other one doesn’t bother, one knows how to make the surround sound work so the other one doesn’t bother.  We have one double-sized brain between us.  In an improv troupe, there is something similar.  After years of playing with the same people, we can end up having a specific role in our company shows and rehearsals.  The positive aspect of this is group mind.  The downside is habit and stagnation.

Without really thinking about it, I know that within the Maydays, we have improvisers who are stand-out aces at character, singing, rap, game of the scene, follow-me initiations, object work, clowning, emotion, lateral thinking, topics, support and of course cock jokes.  Because individuals are so good at their particular forte, sometimes it is easy just to leave it to them.  The only reason we don’t leave it to them the whole time is because we generally have a cast of 4-5 per show and our company has 12 improvisers.  Each show has a different vibe and we find that there are golden combinations.  An argument for getting good at all the stuff you normally avoid is so that when you’re in a show where everyone you’re on stage with is character-driven, you can be the one remembering names at parties or sorting the surround sound. 

I guess what I’m saying is; to be the best improvisers we can be, and to be able to play excellently with improvisers we’ve hardly even met, we have to have the whole set.  If you don’t practice all your improv keepy-uppy, you won’t be good enough at it when the nerves kick in, when you’re under the weather or tired, or when your mind goes blank. 

What type of improviser am I (or what role do I play in my company)?

The Clown

Clowns love to come on stage with a strong character or emotion.  They sometimes pull their character idea off the call-out/scene before and sometimes just pick an arbitrary emotion, choose to lead with a certain body part (stacking), or alter their face or voice.  They love to sing or rap - and find it easy - because it is a way of channelling their emotions.
Clowns avoid driving the plot of a show or the journey of a scene and they don’t like to be the initiator.  Their reasoning is often that they aren’t ‘clever’ like that or that they can’t think of anything in time.  If they do initiate, it is often just an initiation for themselves.  They don’t want to be in charge of the other improviser and their journey through the scene.
Bad clowns are particularly scared of initiating and just wait for their scene partner to do the work, partly out of misplaced politeness.  The other type of bad clown is someone that will just cock-about until they get a laugh.  It’s often funny, but can end the scene abruptly and make the show pretty shallow.  Bad clowns can also get stuck in stereotypes or in their regular go-to characters. 
Good clowns really listen to the show as a whole and allow their rich characters to embody the themes and feelings tackled.  They can change the rhythm of a show and take the audience into deeper states of emotion.  Good clowns often get the audience feedback ‘wow, you were just like this person I know’.

The Conceptualiser

Conceptualisers love to initiate and drive scenes and help tell the story of a show.  They love to talk.  They’re very good at conversational topics, verbal games of the scene and reincorporation.  They always remember names at parties.
Conceptualisers avoid playing big characters or characters that are wholly different to themselves.  They also don’t tend to go for full-on emotional responses or very physical scenes.  Their songs will be all about the lyrics, less about the melody.
Bad conceptualisers tend to talk about action or plot instead of showing it to us.  They get cross when the scene or show isn’t panning out how they thought.  They fight against ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ moves by other improvisers (which are actually just different than theirs).  They sometimes announce out loud what will decidedly happen in the next scene in order to control the show.
Good conceptualisers are ready to drop their heavy concepts at a moment’s notice.  They also let the show as a whole be determined by the group and not by them as an individual.  They are great lateral thinkers and inspire originality.


The Adaptive

Adaptives love to help their scene partner.  They see what’s happening in a scene and do whatever is needed.  They are just as happy playing strong characters as they are initiating a verbal follow-me scene.  They will initiate just as much as not.
Adaptives avoid freedom.  On paper they are the perfect improviser, doing whatever is needed.  And though you’ll get a good solid show every time from an Adaptive, it won’t be a life-changer.  Adaptives avoid just fucking around.  They want to know what is needed and how they should do it.  They don’t take enough risks or really surprise themselves.
Bad Adaptives do too much.  They see a fun scene going on and they want to get in there, as a walk-on, as a scene-paint, as another character.  Sometimes scenes need it of course, but bad Adaptives overdo it.  It’s not a lack of trust, they just want to play.
Good Adaptives are just as happy ending up as the lead as they are being one of the chorus line.  They see what the show needs and they do it.

No one type is better than another.

We talked about whether it was a good idea to have a balance of these types cast in our shows, but were more excited by the idea that we could all be freed up to serve the show.  

How Can I Work On This?

Well, that's a whole other blog for the future, but here's a taster: I gave the Maydays piles of post-it notes for each type to draw from.  Each had a mission on it, based on what their type avoids doing.  They used these as the inspiration for a set of scenes.  We did a few sets with everyone working against their fears and into the skills of other types before looking at how that worked out or didn't work out.

We learned that when Clowns initiate a game, when Conceptualisers do a silly voice and when Adaptives fuck around: magic happens.  

Longform is not long, shortform is not short

by Alexis Gallagher, of The Maydays & Silly String Theory and director of Katy & Rach. Alexis trained in New York with the New Actors Workshop and with the improv troupes Burn Manhattan and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and in Chicago with the Annoyance Theatre. At the UCB theatre he regularly performed Del Close's signature form, the Harold. He has kissed the ring of many improv popes, including Paul Sills, Mick Napier, Ian Roberts, and others. He has written plays and screenplays, and appeared in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival production of The Spanish Interludes.

This post is for improvisers who haven't had the chance to visit Chicago. Please forgive me! I am going to risk wasting a few minutes of your time by telling you something that you probably already know. Why do I do this? Only because right now, somewhere out there, is an improviser who doesn't know this yet, and because this thing is easy to miss even though it's pretty fundamental. I was once that improviser, maybe you were too.

Here's the point: longform is not about being long and shortform is not about being short.

You can have a longform show that lasts five minutes, and you can have a shortform show that lasts an hour. I've seen both. Length is not only incidental, it is completely irrelevant.

Then why is it called longform? The truth is, that's an accidental and misleading name. It is a lot like if we called Shakespeare's sonnets not "sonnets" but "ten-line poems", and the poems of ee cummings not "free verse" but "poems that are longer or shorter than ten-lines". It misses the point.

Longform is not narrative, shortform is not non-narrative

Here is another thing it's not about: narrative. Longform does not mean "all my scenes add up to make a long story".

Let's say you're in a shortform troupe. Let's say your troupe is great at improvising funny scenes that fit various shortform games.

Now you get bored and want to do a show where you spend an hour telling a story (perhaps in a genre, perhaps showcasing your special skills with singing, or acrobatics, or puppets, or whatever). So you sit down and think about how every story has parts X, Y, Z, etc. (maybe: hero, villain, love interest, etc.). Then you outline a loose sequence of scenes that will use all those parts.

And you perform your show, and it's awesome. Congratulations! You've just made a one hour shortform show, with a narrative. I have also done this. It can be great fun!

And when I did this, my troupe and I all thought it was "longform". Why? Basically, because we didn't know any better. Because we were in Boston, where there was no longform for any of us to see. Because what we were doing had a "long" story and that's what the word sounded like. Because -- although we didn't know what longform was -- we had the vague idea that it was something ambitious and a bit pretentious (which appealed to some of us and annoyed others) and it must be longer, so this must be it, right?

Longform is not the absence of games, shortform is not the presence of games

Here's the thing about my old college troupe's attempt at longform.

Although we weren't playing our old shortform games, our "longform" show ended up having exactly same feel as our shortform show. The scenes had a lot of random, whacky elements. They had a lot of quick thinking to make all the elements fit. They were spirited and fun. They were fast. They communicated a vague undercurrent of "Oh my God can you believe we're doing this tricky thing!", which was fun for that kind of show and for that kind of audience. The scenes were not especially subtle, strong on naturalistic characters, or emotionally resonant, but that's no crime.

Still, this was puzzling. Although none of us had seen much longform, we had seen one show in New York (Burn Manhattan), and those performances were palpably more rich, varied, subtle, intelligent, and funny. We noticed they didn't use shortform games so we made a show without shortform games. But our show was nothing like theirs, because we didn't realize that the difference was much more radical -- that longform is not the absence of games. In fact, they were playing games at a deeper level that we did not even know how to recognize.

I have since realized that our "longform show" was not unusual. It is exactly the show you get whenever a group of shortform improvisers try to do longform, based only on their knowledge of the definition of the English word "long". Since then, I have seen this show over and over again.

Open-form vs closed-form

What is longform? Longform is a tradition of performance improv, originating and most deeply rooted in Chicago, USA, defined mostly under Del Close, which is now also practiced in other cities as well (e.g., New York, Los Angeles).

What is it like? How does it work? Really, it's a loose word that covers a multitude of sins, but if I could go back in time and save my earlier self some confusion I would say that it should really be called open-form and shortform should be called closed-form.

In shortform (closed-form), you know before a scene begins something about its structure. In longform (open-form), you are improvising the essential structure of the scene while in the scene. You are also improvising the structure of the show itself. Notice there are two points here -- improvising the scene (in-the-scene), and improvising the show (between-the-scenes).

It is obvious that longformers improvise the show itself, often using a well-known format like the Harold, or an Armando, or whatever. Because it is obvious, people fixate on this. This is a shame. The format is the easy part. It takes five minutes and a pint of beer to invent a decent format. (Here's seven for free: improvise a movie! no, a tv channel! no, a musical! no, something where time goes backwards! no, something where every character has a second character who speaks their inner thoughts! no, something where everyone's trapped in a room! no, something where no one can step in the same room twice! etc. etc.) Formats are superficial, and a good format does not redeem bad scenes.

What more usefully distinguishes great longform from other traditions of improv -- and as an art-form in general, for my money -- is the improvising in-the-scene. Among other things, longform teaches a discipline of deep listening and identifying and developing implicit patterns in scenes, a discipline which allow you to create deep, funny, and interesting work that (as far as I know) cannot be improvised with other methods.

Describing how it works takes a lot more than a paragraph, so I'll save that for another day. But the point is, it's your technique within the scene that determines if what you are doing is longform. Of course, if someone is really good, you might not even recognise that they have a technique…

Longform conquers the world?

Why define longform based on its roots in Chicago? Because that's just the fact of the matter. That's where it started, that's where they do it best. Or maybe it would be better to say, "longform" is just the name for this thing that came out of Chicago.

Can you do longform outside of Chicago? Well, can you play Jazz outside of New Orleans? Yes, obviously! Duh!

But at the same time, you may be swimming upstream. For instance, Keith Johnstone has written brilliant books about improvisation. His work has shaped the tradition of improv in England and Europe. That is a different tradition. Does he use the word "longform" anywhere in his landmark book Impro? If not, why would you think that tradition has anything to do with longform?

Can you play Jazz outside of New Orleans? Yes. But what if the year is 1935, and you're living in Moscow, and you're the only Jazz musician in the city? It would be hard. This is despite the fact that Moscow surely had some amazing musicians in 1935. Jazz is not just what you get when a musician looks up the word "jazz" in the dictionary and reads that it probably comes from the word "jasm" and meant something like "spirit" or "vigor" and therefore all he needs to do is play with spirit. No. It's a specific artistic tradition, coming from a specific place, with a non-trivial depth and history to it, and to learn it you need to work closely with people who know it.


Original article found on The Maydays weblog.

Zen and Improv: Fingers Pointing at the Moon

“All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty.”
— Zen Saying

Earlier this year I became obsessed with improv. I went from knowing of improv only through “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and a couple of ComedySportz shows to watching ten hours of the 2011 Hideout Improv marathon including a caffeine-fueled midnight Saturday to six on Sunday morning stint. I was hooked. It was hilarious, charming, and amazing. I’ve done a little acting (including some pieces that encouraged improvisation), some voiceover work, and been part of a comedy podcast that was primarily improvised. So I also had the feeling that, with practice, I might be able to do some improv myself, which brought me both joy and fear.

The thing that most intrigued me about improv was, “How do they do that?!” It was amazing, but clearly it could be done. I think it was the qualities of the improvisers when they were at their best that hooked me. They were generally not self-conscious, and when they were, they made a joke about it or used it in some way. They seemed calm, yet energetic. They were willing to take risks. They seemed to have an open channel to the creative part of their minds. They could laugh at themselves and had no problem playing ridiculous characters. They were open, shared control, and took care of each other. And perhaps most importantly, they were having a lot of fun. I was totally impressed. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that improvisers are like most humans with all the standard foibles and faults and a few that are particular to the breed as well. They were sometimes the opposite of all these positive qualities as well. However, they had a lot more access to those positive qualities than most people I know, including me. There was something here I wanted in addition to making comedy. I was totally intimidated, but I signed up for classes and got started.

As I started learning improv it began to remind me of something else. Many of these qualities I saw were similar to the qualities I had seen in meditation practitioners. Many of the lessons I heard in class, or read in improv books reminded me of things I had heard in dharma talks. I’ve been a pretty consistent meditation practitioner for a few years. I dabbled for many years before that. I practice in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Master and peace activist.

Here’s the thing though, I’ve learned a lot from Zen practice, and I’ve grown as I’ve practiced. I know about the eight worldly dharmas—that sometimes things will go my way and sometimes they won’t, and that it’s best to accept both, but of course I often don’t. I know that how I look to others is not anything to be terribly concerned about, but of course I still am. I haven’t completely accepted that sometimes I will fail, and that failure is not only OK, but actually good if you learn from it. One of the things that most attracted me to improv was that improvisers at their best seemed to not just understand these lessons, but put them into practice. I watched them do it. Just like with Buddhist meditators, I wanted what they had.

I’ve come to see that the qualities that meditation and other mindfulness practices develop are some of the same qualities that improv develops. That is to say, improv can be a form of mindfulness practice. Please understand I’m not going to quit meditating now that I’m learning improv. In fact, improv is just extra motivation to meditate. However, I think improv is helping develop some mindful qualities more quickly than meditation does, at least in my case. After all, most of our life is not spent sitting quietly. Most of our life is interacting with people and doing things. (At least in my case.) Improv is like an active form of meditation.

In meditation we can achieve moments of perfect mindfulness, moments when we are completely present. Other, more active mindfulness practices seek to move that mindfulness into our daily lives. Walking meditation is one step (groan) beyond sitting meditation. It adds in a very common, simple activity, walking. We are now challenged to find and maintain mindfulness while conducting a simple activity. Another common mindfulness practice is mindful eating. We usually eat every day. This practice challenges us to bring mindfulness into this common and important activity. You can bring mindfulness into any activity. Improv can be a very active form of mindfulness.

As it turns out, I’m not at all the first person to notice the similarities between Zen and improv. In fact, some folks have been working on combining the two for a few years now. If you’re not familiar with the Zenprov podcast by Chicago Improv Associates, check it out.
I wish I had a grand unification theory of Zen and Improv, but alas, I am a beginning improviser and only a slightly more accomplished Zen practitioner. The Buddha loved lists as mnemonic devices, so I have a list.

Six Things Improv Can Teach You About Zen, or Vice-Versa

1) Be in the Present Moment

“Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

It could be said with some accuracy that the ultimate goal of all Buddhist practice is to live fully in the present moment. The future isn’t here yet, and the past is gone. All we have is the present moment. If you’re missing the present moment, you’re missing everything.
I believe it was the third week of class when my improv teacher brought this up for the first time. Be in the present moment. Don’t be off thinking of what to do to be funny. Don’t be worrying about the scene you just did. Be right here, where it’s happening. An engaging and interesting scene doesn’t happen back there, or in a minute, it happens now.

2) Embrace Whatever Comes
The Buddha taught that clinging to a desire for things to be different than what they are causes suffering. Embracing whatever comes your way is a key to happiness and enlightenment. You won’t necessarily enjoy every minute of it, but the less you fight what can’t be changed, the less you’ll suffer.
In improv, we embrace what comes our way. This is the “yes” of “yes, and.” If our scene partner offers that we are a humpbacked leper, we lean over crookedly and pick at our sores. You are likely to be a very frustrated and ineffective improviser if you fight what comes your way.

3) Don’t Talk About It, Do It (It’s a Practice)

“You are not an observer, you are a participant.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

The Buddha taught a practice. It’s often an odd shift for those raised in western religions to get that Buddhism doesn’t involve belief. There’s no revealed truth. There’s a suggested practice. You practice so that you may discover truths for yourself. If you’re not practicing, you’re not following the teachings. Yes, there is a lot of spoken teaching, and written teaching, but most of that teaching centers around practice. Doing it is where it’s at.

I have yet to see an improv teacher lecture for more than 30 seconds or so. Admittedly, my experience is limited in this area, but I don’t hear about improv lectures. I hear about improv workshops. To learn improv, you do it. It starts with simpler practices (easy games) and moves on slowly, step-by-step, to more difficult practices (long form narrative, I assume, I’m not there yet.) And just as in Zen practice, you return to the simple things regularly. Warm ups are important. Both are (at least potentially) lifelong practices. You can always get better. Practice can always lead you to a new and interesting place.

4) Failure Happens (The Eight Wordly Dharmas)
The Buddha taught that life will give us both good and bad. In every life you will experience pleasure and pain; praise and blame; fame and disgrace; gain and loss. Happiness lies not in trying to only get the first part of each pair, but in recognizing that both will come.
In improv we accept that sometimes we will fail. (*BOW* “I failed!”) It’s just a normal part of the process. In fact, “failures” can be a great way to learn.

5) Mistakes are the Way to Getting Better/Suffering Leads to Enlightenment

“We made a mistake. That’s good. We just learned something.” — Keith Johnstone

“Make more mistakes faster to get better faster!” I don’t know where it comes from originally, but it’s something I hear improvisers say. I can’t tell you how many times when someone failed or was uncomfortable my improv teacher would say, “That’s what we’re looking for!” Our failures actually lead the way to our successes.
The dharma teaches that awareness of our sufferings can lead to their cessation. The sufferings themselves can serve as a roadmap. They let us know where to look and what to let go. I have experienced this at times myself. There can even be an attitude of joy at difficulties because they are an opportunity.

6) Have Fun

“I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

When we let go of our clinging we can realize that we already have everything we need to be happy.
Day one, level one, lesson one is, “Have fun.” As I hear at improv shows all the time, “If this looks like fun, it is…”

Fingers Pointing at the Moon

“Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

All teachings are fingers. Zen is a finger. Improv is a finger. They all point at the same moon. The moon is truth. I would describe the moon for our purposes as a place where your self is set aside so you can be present in the moment and allow your natural joy and intelligence to arise and come out to play, but this sentence is just another finger. To see the moon you have to look beyond the finger.
The thing is, the truth is out there, in life. There are an infinite number of ways to discover it. We are surrounded by bodhisattvas, by people who have discovered bits of the truth and are giving it to others. Some are MBAs, some are homeless people, some are Zen practitioners, some are improvisers.

- Ryan Hill, level 2 student at The Hideout Theatre, Austin, TX

Impro at the Edinburgh Festival - a short documentary

Interesting short film about Impro from The Guardian website:

Brian Logan explores different types of improvisation on the Edinburgh fringe, and takes a Chaucerian workshop with the 'hard bardic' group The School of Night

He meets the Phill Jupitus Quartet and finds improv breaking out of its Whose Line is it Anyway? box: taking suggestions from the audience, channelling the spirits of Sylvia Plath or Chaucer - and even daring, sometimes, not to be funny.

Also featured are the brilliant School of Night and the energetic Noise Next Door.

Improsium 2, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Hello Fellow Improvisers!

We'd like to invite you to this years Improv Symposium - "Improsium 2!"

Last year (2010) the Improv Symposium brought together over 70 representatives from around 30 improv companies, from around the world. The event was hosted by The Maydays and the panel was made up of Dylan Emery (Showstopper!/Grand Theft Impro/School of Night), Katy Schutte (The Maydays/Katy & Rach), Tom Livingstone (Noise Next Door) and Mike McShane (Whose Line is it Anyway?/Paul Merton's Impro Chums).
It was so much fun that this year we're doing it again and we'd love you to join us.

Improv Symposium
Wednesday 24th August 2011 - FREE
10:45am - 12:00pm
White Belly
Underbelly
Cowgate

Calling all improv companies at the Edinburgh Fringe...

There is more improv at the fringe than ever before. We're very excited about that, so we thought we'd get everyone together for a panel discussion/networking event, followed by a bit of a social. There will also be a photocall at 12:00pm

The panel will include representatives from Showstopper and The Maydays with more to be announced, to share their thoughts and answer questions on topics such as improv as a comedy career and how the entertainment industry views improv.

All members of improv teams performing in the festival (or indeed improvisers coming up to perform in the future) are welcome.

Please wear your performance kit as we'll do some photos and there may well also be a press photographer or two there as well.

If you want to get in touch or have any enquiries email us at maydays@themaydays.co.uk or call Heather on 07818290562
www.themaydays.co.uk

www.musicalimprovcomedy.co.uk

What makes makes people watch...?

For my first entry into this blog, I'm going to try and answer a question that I really don't know the answer to, or even know if there is an answer.

Anyone who's watched a lot of Improv will be able to tell you that there is some sort of indefinable quality that makes some improvisers more watchable on stage than others. This has nothing to do with talent or experience, but it's just a quality that's there that makes it difficult to take your eyes of someone.

I'm pretty sure Keith Johnstone (I can't find the exact reference in his books) said that an improvisor should try and make the audience want to take them home at the end of the evening. Whether this is for the same reason you'd adopt a kitten or for more morally corrupt reasons I can't recall, but I think this is a good aim.

We make snap judgements in everyday life, I know for one that when I meet someone I decide in the first 10 seconds or not whether I like them of not. Likewise with art, we often just know if something is good or if we like it, regardless of what sort of art background we have. Another example, would be looking at flats, from experience the worst flats I have lived in have been ones where my gut told me this wasn't right yet my analytical mind over-ruled this initial instinct. More often than not these instant judgements are correct, but why? I don't think anyone really knows, but millions of years of evolution probably has something to do with it.

But this doesn't answer the questions as to what makes some improvisers more watchable on stage than others? I've though about this a lot recently, and although I can't put my finger on it, and here are a few traits which I think more watchable improvisers have, you'll note that I'm more certain about some things rather than others:

• Does not appear to dominate scenes, gives the other actors space;
• Not afraid to make mistakes, constantly pushing themselves and getting themselves in trouble;
• Plays slightly low status to the audience;
• An egoless performer (conversely an ego driven performer is nigh on unwatchable), unaware of how good they are;
• Happy to play furniture, make a small addition to the scene;
• Never look like they are trying too hard, make things look effortless, as if they are not even thinking;
• Emotionally honest with themselves, they allow a little peak into their or their character's soul;
• Can see their enjoyment, they look like they want to be on stage.

By no means is this a full and thorough list, but I do think it answers a very small segment of the question (or at least serves as a useful list of performance skills). In fact I am probably more confused now as to what works than when I first started writing this what I like and what I don't. I also know that this doesn't even gets close to identifying what it the watchability factor actually is.

It should probably be pointed out that I don't want to give the impression that other improvisers are unwatchable. This certainly isn't the case, what I'm getting at, and I'm going to paraphrase Orwell - "All improvisors are watchable, but some are more watchable than others".

Perhaps we shouldn't think too hard as to why we like something and just accept it for what it is as some things just can't be answered.

Community Improvisation

A message from a fellow improviser:

Community projects, eh? They may be pinched for cash nowadays, but they find ways to make up for it through enthusiasm, access to wonderful spaces, and dialogue with local people hungry for something a little bit different.
Improvisers are a little bit different. And many of us love to grab a chance to perform for a curious audience.

It should be easy as pie to put the two together. Community Improvisation is a step towards that goal. It's a site to publicise events looking for performers, whether it be for charity fundraisers, community markets, or school fetes. And it's a space for performers to self-organise to get involved with these events, figuring out whether they can rock a Harold together, or throw together some fiendish games to entertain.

All are welcome. The site is what you make it!

Best,
Alex Fradera