Open Forum in The Villages, Florida

Back Ground in Improv & Laura Hall - Show 1 of 3

Mike Roth & Bob Baker Season 3 Episode 15

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Welcome to today's episode of "Open Forum in The Villages, Florida". In this exciting edition, your host, Mike Roth, sits down with the multi-talented Bob Baker, who is an improviser, musician, author of 16 books, and YouTube star. Bob has made a significant impact on the online world with his uplifting content and positive affirmations.

Over the past six years, Bob has cultivated a thriving community on YouTube, where he shares his expertise and wisdom. With his channel dedicated to positive affirmations, Bob has amassed an impressive listener base, with over 1,000,000 people tuning in to his inspiring messages.

During this engaging interview, Mike delves into Bob's journey as an improver, musician, and author, uncovering the motivations and experiences that have shaped his creative endeavors. Listeners will gain insight into Bob's creative process, the impact of positive affirmations on personal growth, and how he has harnessed the power of YouTube to spread positivity on a global scale.  Bob also share how he met Laura Hall, the Musical Director of Whose Line is it Anyway.  Bob co-authored a book with her on Improv music.

Tune in to "The Mike Roth Show" as we explore the life and work of Bob Baker, a true inspiration and advocate for personal development. Get ready to be uplifted and motivated as we dive into the world of positive affirmations and the incredible impact they can have on our lives.

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Open Forum in The Villages, Florida is Produced & Directed by Mike Roth
A new episode will be released most Fridays at 9 AM
Direct all questions and comments to mike@rothvoice.com

If you know a Villager who should appear on the show, please contact us at: mike@rothvoice.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Open Forum in the Villages, florida podcast. In this show we are going to talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs and interesting folks who live here in the villages to give perspectives of what is happening here in the villages. We hope to add a new episode most Fridays at 9am. We have converted all of our shows to Buzzsprout. Of course, you can still listen to Apple Podcast, amazon Music and about 20 other podcast platforms. Your favorite podcast player will still work. We are now a listener-supported podcast. You can become a supporter for only $3 or you can choose to pay more per month. Go to openforminthevillagescom and click on Support in the black box. There will be a shout out for supporters in episodes. This is a shout out to supporters. Tweet Coleman, dan Capellan, ed Williams, alvin Stenzel and Major Supporter, doctor Craig Curtis at K2 in the Villages. We will be hearing more from Dr Curtis with Short Alzheimer's Tips each week.

Speaker 2:

This is Mike Roth. Thanks for tuning in and listening to us today. Today we have a special show. We have a guest, Bob Baker. Bob, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3:

Mike, it's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me on Awesome show.

Speaker 2:

Great Bob. why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background before you started coming to the Villages?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'm from St Louis, missouri, born and raised and visiting here for the second time in the Villages. I just love the area here, and so a lot of my life has been immersed in the arts, And since a young age I've been involved in both music and the written word, and those two things came together for the first time for me. And back in the late 80s I started publishing a newspaper or magazine that covered the local music scene in St Louis. I was an active musician in my hometown and then I became a journalist of my own making and did that for 10 years, and then during that period, my first opportunity for my first book was published in like 1993. And over the 25 years since then I've actually published 16 physical paperback books on a variety of topics, from music marketing to helping to inspire creative people to pursue their passions and build careers in the arts.

Speaker 3:

And then you're going to keep going to the present. Yeah, i've done a lot of things that. Yeah, i've done a lot of traditional theater And, as you know, i also do improv comedy, which has been a passion of mine for many years, which is how we met, because I attended one of your classes here in the villages the other night and that was fabulous. So, yeah, i specialize in short form, what's called short form and musical improv, so that's basically what you see, on whose lines that, anyway, show we all know, know and love. And then a recent sort of unexpected twist and turn in my life and my careers about six years ago on my YouTube channel I started posting like affirmations, guided meditations, but really specializing in like morning affirmations to sort of uplift people, and the channel has become extremely popular. I think I'm not 338,000 subscribers, more than a million views a month across the entire channel. So I've just lived a life, very blessed to live a little life immersed in the arts and also kind of in the business of inspiring people to be their best selves.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's really good. When I was at Sanlon, one of our workshops was called the Belief Building Workshop.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I'll tell you it was not the most popular of the workshops.

Speaker 3:

It was the people didn't believe in the belief.

Speaker 2:

A lot of them didn't. A lot of them didn't, but it was one of the few workshops that we actually incorporated music into the training, Oh nice. Yeah, for some people it worked very well. For other people it was like two hours of wasted time, yeah, but that was okay. Before we get started, i always like to add a little joke from my grandson, evan, into the show. So, bob, what do you call a couple of chimpanzees sharing an Amazon account?

Speaker 3:

A couple of chimpanzees sharing an Amazon. I give up, mike. What's, what is that?

Speaker 2:

They're called primates.

Speaker 3:

Primates, i love it, i love it Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, so, bob, let's start by talking a little bit about your, your improv experience. How did you get started in improv?

Speaker 3:

So yeah, I first did improv in actually 1985. It was the tender age of about 25.

Speaker 3:

And there was a group of us So I had just started doing theater in community college And I think she'd taken five years off from high school before I even went to college and got involved in taking acting classes and was involved in the theater department And we did a show. I guess that that involves some amount of improv. We were also big fans of Saturday Night Live And we knew that they had had improv training to the, to the second city in Chicago and other things that had developed over the years, and we one of the directors or the theater department decided to to like basically created for us like an advanced class on improv that we did one summer in the in the summer of 1985. And through that we formed a performing troupe called the Way Off Broadway Players. It was inspired by the Not Ready for Primetime Players And so we performed for like a year and a half And this got a lot of.

Speaker 3:

that's how I got my feet wet in improv. But then I was in it. I was out of it for many years but formed another troupe with some three theater friends maybe in the later nineties, then was out of it for a long time And about 12 years ago I started. I got the. I always wanted to teach short form and musical improv And I started teaching in St Louis then really got immersed back into it And and we can talk about maybe my relationship with Laura Hall from whose line too, and how that kind of came about. If you, if you, if you'd like, can we go talk about that now?

Speaker 2:

So you know you say short form. A lot of folks don't realize that there are multiple forms of improv. Right, okay, this is long form. There's a theatrical long form here in the villages of. One of the directors in drama named Dean Corbett produced a long form murder mystery. Oh wow, as an improv. There was no script, just characterizations, and each night of the performance there was a different villain who performed the murder And the audience didn't know till the end who was going, who the detective was going to accuse and convict of being the murderer.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, a lot of those of those murder mystery dinner theater things. They the actors, they have a structure, they have characters that they play, but a lot of the what happens is improvised. So, yeah, maybe we should clarify for folks that are familiar with it. So, if you've ever seen whose line is it anyway, whether it was the Drew Carey version or the newer version with Ayesha Tyler as the host, that's pretty much short form. They're short games.

Speaker 2:

Short games. Everything is three to four minutes. Yeah, some of them are shorter than that.

Speaker 3:

And so, and basically, what I love about short form is that you're all is that the audience is engaged throughout an entire show. So whenever you do a new game, you're getting a new suggestion from the audience and then you're working that into that, whatever that particular gamer or scene is.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever done a long form Herald?

Speaker 3:

I've only dabbled in long form. So yes, a long form for those who don't know is yeah, you get whether it's a and a. Herald is like one of the early. It was developed by a guy named Del Close, i think, in the 60s, along with Sharna Halpern, and basically you get as a group of performers, they get one word at the beginning and then they go for like 20 minutes just doing a series of scenes. That has a structure. And I've seen I've seen a lot of bad long form. If it's not done well, it's like a long stretch of you know.

Speaker 2:

I think it's terribly difficult And yeah we haven't attempted it in our group.

Speaker 3:

It's very challenging and when it doesn't go well, yeah So, but I've seen some good long form too. So it really depends on the players and you know that particular caliber of the players, the confidence they have in each other right.

Speaker 2:

And the look of the draw of what that first word is going to be from the audience And what they discover, how they use the word Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3:

But I like short firms. you're always mixing it up And if one game is not going well, you can bail on it, or you end that there's another game with a different structure, right?

Speaker 2:

Well, we do a show like the one that's coming up in November. We're going to have some place between 17 and 22 scenes ready, Wow okay, that's a lot, yeah Well they're all planned for two or three minutes.

Speaker 2:

You know someplace at least 15 of them will get on stage. But I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there as the MC and I got a long list And if a scene is going badly, that's supposed to last for four minutes. It's going badly, at the end of one minute They're gonna get the bell and we're gonna go on to the next scene, but the next seat. Yet, or sometimes we get a great suggestion from the audience And the scene that's supposed to go two minutes is gonna go four minutes. It's go.

Speaker 3:

Well, let it run.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, if it's, if it's dragging down a lot of laughs.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that is the challenge. But I haven't you found that audiences are very sympathetic To knowing that the players are making this up on the spot and sometimes, even if there's a mistake or somebody You know stumbles over there their words, you can actually use that, you know, as fodder for humor And audiences, quite, you know, quite often the mistakes get bigger laughs than those clever things that you, you know yeah, yeah, you never know what's good to go.

Speaker 2:

Well, we, we did a scene called eulogy for a dead aunt.

Speaker 3:

Oh well, yeah and the.

Speaker 2:

We put an attorney in as the person who was crying and grieving for the dead aunt, and It turned out to be hysterically funny, right, okay, one of our players, rick, was playing the dead aunt.

Speaker 3:

Well, laying on the table, okay.

Speaker 2:

And he didn't have any lines. He was supposed to be just a prop, right, but he can't work like that. And He ended the scene. He got up As the dead and said something that was the black outlaw.

Speaker 3:

Oh, my god, that that would be funny. To save it for that last piece. We do something called superhero you eulogy. I don't know if you've ever heard of that, but you get a, you get a very strange superpower and then a name for The superhero and it could be weird, maybe spitball man or something you know and then and then you have different people from that Superheroes life come up and tell their story as a childhood friend, the co-worker, the lover, the arch enemy, and this really funny how you you know how you can turn spitball man into all these. You know he was. he was a great friend of the in the classroom where he would hit my enemies.

Speaker 2:

With spitball.

Speaker 3:

Yes, exactly So. There's just so many games and there's so many iterations of them in different cities. That's right names you know the names change.

Speaker 2:

That yes you know, we have a game that we play called Pick up lines, and that's where we take lines from the audience on three by five cards, fold them up, throw them on the floor in front of the players right and They have to bend down and pick up a card. Of course, that limits which players can be in that scene was a convent over and then get back up again safely.

Speaker 3:

Right, we, we call that blind line again. Every city has. I think it was originally called sentences, but that game works so well in so many levels and we, to avoid the bending over, we actually put them in like like a bucket and put it on a stool.

Speaker 2:

So we can just reach into it. Okay, as players get older, you have to have some improvisational way to make it still work.

Speaker 3:

But that way it's great, because the players are in the middle of saying something and they and they, and they and they, and, as they're searching for their line, they reach in and read that random line and it's almost like a no fail, because, no matter what you say, people are gonna laugh at it and everyone in the audience is on the edge of their seat going on. They're gonna use my line right Right right and so that's one of my, one of my favorite, a crowd favorite to one of my favorites.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we played a game. We give the the players an option to take the card out and, if they don't like it, rip the card up And pick another.

Speaker 3:

I just they go ahead and use it, and then you have to justify why that makes sense in that moment, right, sometimes it does it exactly great.

Speaker 2:

Let's take a moment and hear from our major supporter, dr Craig Curtis, with an Alzheimer's tip. Dr Curtis, how important is it for people to keep their brain?

Speaker 4:

shop. It's extremely important. So we all lose a little bit of our cognitive abilities as we age. Everyone's brain starts shrinking in our 50s. However, we can still maintain good cognitive health into old age by making a few good daily choices, including Keeping your brain active. Crossword puzzles, seducu. Just getting out and socializing is good for the brain, good Thank you, dr Curtis, you're welcome, and I'm back here with Bob Baker.

Speaker 2:

Bob, let's talk about your experience on the set of whose line is it anyway?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, maybe I should just real quickly how that came about, and so I been a big fan of whose lines, already mentioned it several times here in our little chat. And in about 2014, laura Hall, who was the piano player, the music director for the show, for all the all the American run of the show, her and her husband, rick, were coming to St Louis to teach a musical improv workshop. I saw that signed up immediately. It was like a total fanboy when I arrived, like, oh my god, it's Laura Hall And we did a class and then we actually did a show that night with with like a student show showcase. So that was a wonderful experience.

Speaker 3:

Then I reached back out to her a few months later and I have a podcast. I've had a number of podcasts over the years and I invited her to be a guest on my podcast, which got connected us a little bit more, led to a conversation about why she didn't have a book out on musical improv And she said, well, i want to independently publish one And I don't know really how to go about doing that. People keep asking me. I said, well, i've done that a lot And I know music, i know improv And because I'm a what I didn't mention, maybe as well. I'm like, yeah, i'm a guitar player, singer, songwriter, played in tons of bands over the years, continue to perform and write music with my wife, pookey Lee, but anyway, so, mark and I.

Speaker 2:

You're what we call a wordsmith.

Speaker 3:

A wordsmith Yes.

Speaker 2:

Yes, we, we, we tend to start most of our large shows with a parody song, Okay, Written by one of our two wordsmiths in the group Awesome. And you know they'll pick a song like Run Around Sue, And we change. He changed that song to Round About Guy.

Speaker 3:

Oh, people wave from Round About Guy.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

I've written a few parodies of my of my own over the years. Yeah, that's it's. It's like we a la weird, al right, so but anyway, 2015,. Laura and I started writing this book together and it came out in 2016, i believe. But in but halfway point of writing the book together, they were doing a series of tapings for Who's Lime, and I flew out to LA and she got me into two of them And, just as an FYI, they recently actually recorded their final episodes. So this current in. So they're finally, even though they're going to be broadcasting the episodes that they recorded recently, over this past winter. Who's Lime is apparently coming to an end after 20 year run, or?

Speaker 2:

whatever That are producing any more new episodes.

Speaker 3:

Correct, yeah, but I luckily went to and what they when they do record them. what I discovered working with Laura and getting the inside scoop is that they'll do like they'll set up a, a rent a theater, set up the stage and the audience and the and all that the desk and the chairs and the carpet and all that And they'll do like five nights of taping within a one or two week period. Each night of taping is like a five hours. It's a long night for the audience And so I went. well, the first night I sat in the audience because I wanted to get that experience. then I went back and get sat in the VIP room, which is where, like friends and family, the casting cast members sits.

Speaker 3:

So both experiences were equally awesome. But what I so it was just great to be there, like, like was going to the visiting the mothership. you know, this thing I admired from afar all these, all these years. What was interesting is that they yeah, they just record just tons of games and out of a five hour taping in a single night they might get four shows out of out of out of that. And I think I shared with you the other night when they I know you like the game scenes from a hat right.

Speaker 2:

Love it, love it. We always attempt to include that in the show where they pull out a scenario and then they go up.

Speaker 3:

So I remember when they redid the scenes from a hat segment At the taping, it lasted like 20 minutes and it was like a long. They just kept on one after another and they and there were these long pauses with the guys or the actors were on the side and Ayesha's going. You got anything else for this? this one, you hang on. I got one of the come out and so This long I think you drive a truck through these pauses.

Speaker 2:

But when they edit it all together, it seems instantaneous yeah, it's boom, boom, boom boom when we do it on stage live, we're going to instantaneous right and they did a lot of that.

Speaker 3:

So don't get, don't get me wrong I they were just amazing what they could do in real time, but it was just. It was very eye opening for me how they put that show to tick, tick together and it also made me realize Editing. Doing an improv show for TV is different than from a live audience. Obviously you wouldn't do that in a live show. But they have to keep it snap in moving along and only have the highlights, you know. But even there, look, but that's a, that's a thing away from them, because they were still that stuff they came up with in the moment. Was this amazing? Even when they were doing like ho down, like some of the musical?

Speaker 3:

stuff, musical stuff and there were times when Wayne Brady or somebody would walk forward and sing a line and botch it and he would step back and give another shot, but when he came up, he was using a different, different Lyrics, so he, like he, didn't rely on something that he had already pre planned, he was. I really wanted to be in the in the in the moment, and they added that together to. So, yeah, there was just a great experience seeing how that was all done and this actually being there. Watch a taping right, right.

Speaker 2:

I hate to think about the effort to Cut apart five hours yeah, four shows, oh sure, that's a lot yeah. I've been known to do video editing and although in a way I like it but I also in a way hate it right, you know I'm supposed to cut. We have the video of the February show that we did this year and it's hundred thirty seven minutes. I'm supposed to cut that down into a five minute preview, real well, yeah. It's tough.

Speaker 3:

I'm sure I don't know a whole lot about like Hollywood know that. But I guessing, compared to other dramas or productions, i'm sure the production you do, that get four shows out of a one five hour taping, is probably a lower cost show than many others. You know.

Speaker 2:

It's probably why it ran for so many years, you know it's a it's a great, great methodology when you have great performers and they do have some great performers like Wayne Brady, colin yeah, i got to meet Colin mockery, couple couple of times, brad Sherwood, to Yeah, right, that him briefly.

Speaker 3:

And there's Ryan Styles, of course. Yeah, but yeah, what? so just what? yeah, who's line just did a wonderful service that it may have brought improv into the public consciousness, which so usually and now, like a lot of people have taken improv classes they have in high school, high schools. I'm really glad to see this becoming more common, right. Is it so many life. I sure you found this to Mike. There's so many life skills you can learn from learning improv right and right listening being in the moment, not being attached to it.

Speaker 2:

Outcome and this something to learn all the time Where I don't know if you're aware of the Sarasota improv festival no coming up, but on July twenty second that was not aware twenty first and second and third down in Sarasota a number of us from the improv.

Speaker 2:

We now have a new name for the club. It's now the the village is improv club. We had to get special permission for the villages to say villages in In the in the tile. So our legal name is still improvisational theater club of the villages but we are advertised now as the villages improv club officially sanctioned Well officially sanctioned to use the name. The name the village is okay and we have a special release to do that well, i'm blessed.

Speaker 3:

I'm glad I found you, mike, and you have a great, great group. Encourage anyone to know that you're. Use a few more folks to come and join the fun to attend.

Speaker 2:

It's a lot of fun those on a Monday night. We meet the first four Mondays of the month at Rohan Recreation Center and you can come as a pure audience member And sit in the back of the room and laugh and carry on. That's just great for us. And we also are always looking for new players, people who have no experience, novelists, people who have some experience and advanced players. We're looking for everybody to build the club up.

Speaker 3:

Awesome, i'm happy I'll be back while we're here in the villages the next couple of weeks, right and Next Monday.

Speaker 2:

I've invited you back to the improv talk about Improvisational music.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, i'll bring my guitars. I'll do as many lead, as many games as you, as you would like to make up some lyrics on the spot great, great.

Speaker 2:

That's going to be the 22nd of May.

Speaker 3:

So it's a little air before that. I assume maybe, if Maybe well, maybe if not, you'll just you're fighting out about what you're gonna miss out on. Yeah, i'm looking forward to do it, to do in that great.

Speaker 2:

So, bob, thanks for being on the show, and in our next episode we're going to be talking about your experience with Laura Hall and Writing the book on improv music that bear sounds great great extra being with us today, bob bet my pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Remember our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 am. The content of the show is copyrighted by Roth voice 2023. All rights reserved.