January 1st, 2007

Helge Schneider and Improvisation
(From an interview in Galore Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007)

January 5th, 2007

Heckling

Reacting to hecklers during a performance is a kind of an art form.  As a rule, you should just accept them as cheerfully as possible. It’s difficult, though, when you can’t quite understand them because the heckler is just saying something to his friends – in that case, you can usually just ignore it. Hecklers in the front row can make audience members in the back of the theater feel that they’re missing something, especially in larger performance halls. Never tell the hecklers off unless it's absolutely necessary, though.  In retrospect, when I think back on situations like this, I’m always able to come up with a better solution than telling hecklers off.

January 7th, 2007

Success

The greater the success with audiences (measured in money and the number of audience members), the more easily internal problems in a group can be covered up or tolerated, and the more likely it is that the group will be content to rest on its laurels.  A lack of success, on the other hand, carries the risk that minor problems – both artistic and personal – will get blown out of proportion. In either case, you need a kind of fundamental enthusiasm, fueled by the desire to create.  This desire must be entirely independent from money (or lack thereof).

January 8th, 2007

Taboos

Whether a scene is tasteful or tasteless usually depends not on the subject of the scene, but rather on how the subject is handled. This is especially noticeable when dealing with sensitive topics, like physical disabilities, just to name one example. At the end, it comes down to the attitude that you take towards the subject. If you have the right kind of attitude, you can even create comical scenes without being funny in a tasteless way.  I saw a scene like this in an improv theater in New York – the protagonist was deaf, and the other characters made fun of him.  In the end, though, the characters doing the teasing became the “deaf” people, who couldn't understand the world around them (a theme similar to the Paris scene in the Jarmusch film “ Night on Earth").
We shouldn’t be scared to deal with taboo topics - these scenes are usually less harmful than we think. Sometimes it also helps to think a step beyond: the idea of using the bathroom as a setting for a scene, for example, is usually rejected out of hand, even though there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be an excellent place for scenes to be acted out. It’s not like the actors would have to take a crap or anything.
You never know where the boundaries of good taste lie until you come close to overstepping them – and there’s always the risk that you will overstep them. But if we don’t test these boundaries, we remain in the realm of the virtuous, and often, the boring.

January 10th, 2007

Teaching Refinement

The piano teacher Fee had a clumsy, seven year-old student who always played so loudly that the keys on the piano clacked.  She decided to teach him how to play with his fists: she taught him a particularly simple piece that could be played by rolling his fists along the black keys on the piano.  He proceeded to play until his knuckles bled.

January 12th, 2007

Permissive and Strict

“The most important thing when teaching,” according to piano teacher Fee, “is to avoid making students feel guilty, regardless of whether they are beginners or advanced learners. They should always feel like they are discovering something new. They are allowed to make mistakes – that’s part of the learning process.  I'm only strict when it comes to fingering!"

January 13th, 2007

Technique and Elegance

Listeners of jazz singer K. sometimes pat her appreciatively on the back: “I can see that you have had voice training!" they say.  You can actually see her concentration during performances, how she forms the sound of a note, how she increases and decreases the note’s nasality to give it a particular color, how she demonstrates practiced scat-technique, etc. For her own sake, it’s good that she can accept this kind of compliment - training is the last thing a listener should want to hear in a singer’s voice. Listeners want elegance. They want to be carried away by the singer’s interpretation.  They want to smell the sweat of ecstasy, not the sweat of concentration and training. A singer should have technique, but she should also be able to forget that she has it.

January 27th, 2007

Eyes

A little smile, with your eyes down and to the left, makes you look deceitful. You see school children making this face when a teacher catches them doing something bad.
What’s interesting, though, is that you also feel deceitful when you make this face. This feeling doesn't last when you look your conversation partner in the eye. This shows that the speaker is, in a way, forcing the listener to conform to his rhythm and his perspective. You can avoid this control by looking away and smiling which makes you look deceitful

January 30th, 2007

Acceptance Test

Blockers on the stage just never die.  They can be injured, or they can just barely save themselves, but they always have at least three important lines that they just have to get out.

English version (excerpts)

2007

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