Yes, and That is True

Gerick Go, Willem Sergei B. Lim, and Teo A. Ricaforte Blue Bird Improv

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Everyone who has ever performed comedy has their own definite ideas about how to be funny. But the simplest and most basic concept may also be the most effective.

The truth is funny.

— Del Close, Truth in Comedy: The Manual for Improvisation

as the performers of a live show talk about a question posed to the audience (“What’s a weird thing to happen during the Olympics?”), suggestions swarm the comments section. One comment is selected:“Three kids in a trench coat.”

From there, the performers begin Newsroom, a game where they create a whole newscast devoted to the audience’s suggestion. An opening theme plays, before the anchor announces the top story from the Olympics: the Russian contender for the discus throw, Grigor Basinovich, is revealed to actually be three kids stacked in a jumpsuit and disguised as one athlete. The whole scene is up-tothe-minute coverage; this “news team” gets interviews with the International Olympic Committee, one of Basinovich’s fiercest rivals, and two of the kids making up Grigor.

We later find out that the third kid was thrown with the discus to get a higher score and, before Russia can send another kid to replace him, the IOC disqualifies the two kids making up Grigor, since they don’t fulfill the three-kid-minimum for athlete composition. It’s rough, spontaneous, unhinged, and most of all, imperfect. But, in a world where everybody is expected to be perfect, that might not be so bad. Blue Bird Improv strives for something not quite perfect; it aims to be authentic.

Blue Bird Improv, or BBI, is a college organization that specializes in improvisational theater, an art form where unscripted scenes are created through suggestions from the audience. Each

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scene is an amalgamation of the audiences’ suggestions and the ways improvisers make use of them. These scenes can manifest in the form of various games, each with its own sets of guidelines and rules to create a whole new scenario. Take, for instance, New Choice, where two performers act out a scene, but have to change their lines when the director exclaims the phrase, “New Choice!” Why Are You Late? on the other hand, is a game where one performer has to guess the reason for their tardiness with the help of some of their fellow performers in the scene. These are just some of the many games and exercises that members of the organization do in their sessions (see improv performances).

Blue Bird Beginnings

The organization was formed in A.Y. 2018-2019 by Raphael Chua and Miguel Dobles out of a shared interest in improv. They, along with a few other friends and interested students, trained under Exie Abola, a current lecturer at the Fine Arts department and a graduate of Manila-based improv school Third World Improv.

BBI then held their first show, Blue Birdies: Exposed! in May 2019 and registered as an official organization a few months later. The organization teaches and promotes improv mainly through semestral courses, open and client-applied workshops, and live shows. According to current organization president Luis de la Vega, IV, BBI is “the best student-run improv organization in Ateneo (until someone starts a second one).”

Although a young organization, BBI has firmly established itself within the Ateneo community. Its wide portfolio of live shows, open workshops, and org collaborations have fixed BBI as a mainstay when it comes to entertainment and skills building. That said, BBI tends to be misconstrued as the funny org, or a group that strives to achieve comedy.

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While that may be a stereotype, BBI makes use of its moniker to help ease its members and other students into the process. Comedy, at its heart, is meant to entertain and bring to our attention other topics in a digestible, almost lighthearted way. In the pursuit of authenticity, comedy just so happens to be one of the more accessible means of getting there.

Improving the Self

BBI members are regularly encouraged to think out of the box and explore various subject matters that come to the minds of the performers as the scene unfolds. Ann de Guzman describes her experience with the org as such, “on the occasional times that we are funny… we just learn more about what we can be when we are our most authentic self.” Ann, like all other members, is a graduate of BASIC, or the Birdies’ Authentic Self-Improvment Course. All new members, or eggies, are required to attend and graduate from this semester-long course in order to become birdies, full-fledged members of the organization. It is in BASIC where newbies are introduced to improvisation and its tenets.

These improv tenets set the foundation for members’ improv skills, but also have philosophical value when applied outside the stage. The first and most important tenet taught is “Yes, and.” When something is presented in a scene, agree with it and add to it. Improv is a barebones art form with no set design or props so you have to collectively agree on the reality of the scene you’re in or else it becomes confusing for everyone. If one player is miming the dribbling of a ball, you have to agree with those actions. They have a ball and they’re dribbling it. “Yes, and” encourages you to be open and accepting of what others have to say or offer, both in and even beyond the scene.

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The other tenets build up on and augment “Yes, and.” “Don’t think” forces you to say the first thing you think of (with filtering, obviously) to prevent you from overthinking your character’s decisions. “Embrace failure” removes any ideas or standards of a “perfect scene” and instead offers a different viewpoint: The best scene is the one you’re in. “Be average” doesn’t demand that you bring your “best foot forward” by trying to be funny or entertaining and instead asks you to make truthful and genuine decisions, whether as a character or as yourself. The course and its tenets promote a way of thinking that discourages preparation, perfectionism, and pretentiousness. It only leaves you with one option: being yourself.

With all the on-the-spot thinking improvisers have to do, what usually comes out of their mouths is drawn from their own experiences. This leads us to the idea that improv brings to light improvisers’ most authentic selves within the improvisers, their scene partners, and their audience.

Ria Ramos, a member of the organization’s house team (the flagship team of performers), speaks about her experiences in the group sessions:

From the start of each session, [improv] is already making you vulnerable. Like, they literally ask you—‘How are you? Can you check in? What’s worrying you and what’s cheering you up?’… And from that on, throughout the session, we kind of like [to] play with your emotions and try to manage them…You, yourself, are the agenda of the org and discovering yourself is the goal of it.

The check-ins and check-outs are integral parts of every improv session and workshop. In check-ins, participants are asked to share how their day has been and how they currently feel going into the sessions. How much they want to share is up to them, but they all must share something. Check-outs work the same way, but members share how they feel the session went and what they will

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bring with them as they leave. This activity promotes safe spaces within the team, building camaraderie and trust among members and allowing them to be vulnerable in front of each other.

Together with check-ins, the members are also heavily encouraged to keep their cameras on throughout the sessions. In the online setting, students tend to shut off their cameras. In what would normally be a setting where personal relationships can thrive, the classroom and school, these students instead have what amounts to live-streamed lectures.

In these sessions, the members have radically different experiences. They can see their fellow performers, their mentors (called Coaching and Performance Organizers, or CAPOs). They can watch each other emote, struggle, fail, think, and succeed. Even via a screen, each session finds this intimacy. Apart from fulfilling the need of the performances to have the actors see each other, these rules inspire a level of vulnerability and trust shared between the group members.

Building Scenes

Truth accompanies authenticity. As improvisers subject themselves to their vulnerabilities in the scenes they play in, they foster a space where people can be real with their scene partners by being real themselves. Through this, a layer of trust is created within the organization’s members and it becomes a safe space for them to share parts of themselves with one another.

Upon the set-up of these safe spaces, one of the core principles of improv is taking care of one another. With the bonds and trust that form from their respective groups, the members become comfortable with one another. In scenes, improvisers do their part in making sure their scene partners have an easier time through

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the skills taught in weekly sessions. Reflecting on his online experiences, member Mik Paras shares his thoughts:

[Improv is] a way to also, like, interact with people especially in the pandemic…A lot of people in the Ateneo community right now…They don’t really talk to fellow Ateneans. It’s either group work: they message, [or use] whatever’s convenient—anything to avoid [interaction], like a lot of students don’t like showing their faces in camera…They [would prefer] chatting. So, improv is a way to interact with people, get to know people, and you know, have fun doing improv.

Due to improv’s collaborative and social nature, improvisers get to interact in an online setting in an unconventional manner. Most Zoom calls would normally be a single presenter with a shared screen talking to names that only react through chat and reactions. An improv session encourages its members to turn on their cameras and microphones when they enter the scene.

All of this stems from invoking each other’s vulnerability that the members feel safe to allow themselves to see, learn, and accept one another. Because of this, BBI fulfills a unique role amidst the lack of face-to-face interactions; it allows its members and audience to form authentic human bonds.

As college life is a time of self-discovery, BBI offers this safe space to the Ateneo community, where its members have the opportunity to share part of themselves and laugh about their shared experiences. As an improv organization based in Ateneo, most of BBI’s lessons are shaped by the college student’s lens and how authenticity is important to their context. Too common is the pressure to get high marks and accomplish many things in college, with zero room or tolerance for mistakes. But in BBI, “mistakes” don’t exist. There is no right or wrong way to conduct a scene, so

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anything thrown at the wall will stick (provided it’s not in poor taste).

Improv, in the eyes of the college student, becomes funny because it reflects the relateable lived experiences of improvisers toward its audience, and it also becomes liberating as it eases the pressure of performing for an audience, one of the most difficult and nerve-wracking feats of all. Luis’ sentiments echo this:

If you think about it, college is one of the most integral parts of our lives because it is a part where we search for our identity as well. And what’s better to learn more about your identity than being your most authentic self, to be more comfortable with yourself in that manner. That's what we try to do. Not just in improv but in BBI specifically, we try to get you to be more comfortable with your awkward side so you don’t think about it. You don’t feel, ‘I have to follow this, I have to follow that, I have to be this, I have to be that,’ when at the end of the day, we just say you’re good enough.

Blue Bird and Beyond!

Apart from promoting authenticity and fostering safe spaces, improv is inherently adaptable, a useful trait to have bearing in mind the COVID-19 pandemic that hit last 2020. Improv’s adaptability as a performing art has also allowed the org to transition relatively quickly to the online setting. Although the sudden intrusion of the pandemic as well as its associate lockdowns did put a stop to Blue Bird’s first Improv Month in March 2020, the organization was able to resume its activities in April that same year with Birdtual Reality, BBI’s first live online show.

Council member (BBI’s equivalent of an Executive Board officer) and finance officer Senna Bustamante recalls their group’s

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discussion when the pandemic hit: “Having been there at the transition, I don’t think it slowed us down at all. It took, like, twelve hours of brainstorming to come up with, ‘Let’s do it on Zoom’… and then we tried it out, and then it worked. So we started doing it, like, literally the week after and we had a show three weeks after.”

BBI has since hosted fifteen more shows via its Facebook page and hosted workshop sessions with various organizations such as Ateneo Lex, the Ateneo Association of Communication Majors (ACOMM), the Ateneo College Arnis Varsity Team (ACAVT), the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo (COA), the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral ng mga Paaralang Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila, the League of Independent Organizations (LIONS), and even the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health’s (ASMPH) Orientation Seminar (OrSem) hosts. They’ve also held several open workshops wherein Ateneans and non-Ateneans can try out improv. Several attendees of these workshops have since become members of BBI.

BBI is only three years old yet it has done a lot in showcasing and teaching improvisation in a context helpful to the Atenean. From being one of the fastest to adapt to the online setting to establishing a growing presence in the Ateneo community, it’s fair to say that it still has much to accomplish and new territory to navigate in a blended school setting. But, there is no doubt that it will continue to say “Yes, and” and try to find authenticity in what is to come.

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Luis de la Vega IV and Miguel Dobles (Performers). Wet & Wildlife. Improv Performance. From https://fb.watch/ceDUycVWZB/.

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Teo Ricaforte, Luis de la Vega IV, Angela Ozaeta, Andrina Mukhi, Earl Decena, and Joaquin Basas (Performers). Flyathlon. Online Improv Performance. From https://fb.watch/ceDWeimwku/.

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Riel Tanaliga, Bench Santos, Althea Santos, Sergei Lim, and Ria Ramos (Performers). Lovebirds. Online Improv Performance. From https://fb.watch/ceDXzp-SXr/.

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