5th time's a charm

5th act-olution tonight, and it was a blast :) Just the right kind of audience - lots of participation and some absolutely mesmerizing acting! (Kudos to all those who had the guts and the glory to act!! :))

Ok, so you can only see guys in that pic. There was gender diversity too, prawmiss :)

We started off with a quick favorite ice breaker - whoozit! We've tried this with 14 year olds, and with 20 somethings, and this works each time! It's basically a guess who's the leader game, with the leader doing all kinds of random movements which the entire group follows! Looked something like this:

we moved onto the foreign film exercise, where we had to translate gibberish! Always gets people excited :) we did a few interesting scenes from movies: the intro scene from Scream - played by two girls! (That's one of the things that I personally love about the wheel - how we can change gender roles and achieve something in a scene that was never there in the original movie :)) We spoiled Fight Club for some people after that - because we did the ending scene which revealed the mystery behind the entire movie! We did scenes from the chick flicks He's Just Not That Into You, Reality Bites, and the oldie Ghostbusters!

We broke the tempo with some more games, and got a surprise hit with the Alphabet Game! We heard interesting conversations about unicorns and zebras and lots of xylophones. We also did scenarios with funny sounds - people mistook whistles for dogs and ambulance sounds for...not quite sure what. Hit though, and quite a ladder-up on our usual simple scenarios :)

Khurram led an awesome emotional orchestra - a replica of what Blackfish used to do in some of their gigs too :)

We finished the act-up with more scenes - Good Will Hunting, a second scene from He's Just Not That Into You, a monologue from The Network (the performance of the night) and the intro scene from Yes Man! Our audience was so awesome that they didn't wanna leave!! We ended up doing our bonus scene as well as all the scenarios we had planned :)

Check out the video of our emotional orchestra trial before the audience got into it :)
The best thing about the act-up I think was the audience this time! We had a super quiet, super respectful and yet very responsive audience, who loved making weird sounds, encouraging people during brain hiccups, and loved applauding awesome performances!

Keep coming back for the wheel :) www.facebook.com/theactingwheel =)
-Nausheen

Memorable scenes from The Acting Wheel

Things we'll remember for a while, with a shout-out to the guys who created history!
 let us know if you agree, disagree or feel that we've left anyone out!

• Jerry Maguire - Show Me the Money. Sahar's rendition of Cuba Gooding Jr's character was awesome! Her energy was contagious and she BECAME all about Show Me the MONEY!

• When Harry Met Sally - Fake Orgasm scene. Role Reversal! Khurram played Sally and Shazaf played Harry. Who else would've dared to fake an orgasm in the middle of 30 strangers? Quite unforgettable :P

• Legally Blonde - courtoom scene. This little girl was AWESOME. She played Elle Woods' character - a blonde who's anything but dumb, and stole the show with her rendition of the climatic speech which won her the case!

 

• Lord of the Rings - Gollom. This was inspired and almost transcendental in it's other-worldliness. Out of nowhere, we had a new performer go into Gollom's character and make it his own!

 

• Twilight: When Bella discovers that Edward is a vampire (can't find a better picture of this :(). This was the first time that we really saw (and fell in love with, theatrically speaking) Akbar! He played the vampire Edward who's rather desi and not terrifying at all! Very memorable and funny - especially supported by the very funny german guest who had joined us that day!

• Dead Poet's Society - the barbaric yawp. I was in awe of these two guys! One played the professor, Robin William's character, and the other played the student. They were so good that they almost didn't even have to look at the lines! Bravo :)

 

• Acting Games:
• Auntie and cop in traffic. We've had many amazing improv scenes, and these are only a few of them. This particular sequence was particularly hilarious - especially Salman's acting! He played an auntie who breaks a traffic signal and is adamant on not admitting her mistake to the greedy cop.

• Guy who finds out his wife's cheating on him. This (by now) famous improv scene made Aadi famous! He played a husband who is distraught by his wife cheating on him, and a scene between him and his ex-girlfriend ensued which had somewhat not-so-straight turns :P

• Courting 101: We had this improv scene during the Actor's Nightmare game in the 4th act-up. The script was with the girl, and the guy had to improvise. Another very memorable scene by Akbar and Kiran, who was the indignant girl.

4th act-up!

read a detailed account of it on Khurram's blog
http://agentdodo.com/2011/04/acting-wheel-4th-act/