Preliminary Ideas for Project the 3rd

To my understanding ethnography is stalking and creeping on a certain group of people and writing up a case study on that group. Sounds weird and wrong but as long as no one does anything illegal I think we'll be okay. So the first group that popped into my head when you were describing this project was to observe different improvisation teams. This Saturday I will be seeing the College Improv Tournament at Mercury Theatre where sixteen different college improv teams including ISU's very own Improv Mafia will be competing to earn the top place for this international competition. Having already seen a few different groups from regionals and studying with Improv Mafia, it is actually fairly obvious to tell the distinct differences in styles of each team. Some teams like to have more musical improv or more two person based scenes, or even just have a higher energy than other teams. Bottom line is that each team is different depending on their preferred style of improv which is also affected by what part of the country (or world) they are from. Chicago is the hub for improv. It is where improvisational comedy was created. So of course Chicago based teams all relate to each other in their own developed styles, however the cool thing about Nationals is that there will be teams from all over the country and even one team from Canada which brings in so many new styles of improv to watch and learn from. If this idea does not pan out, I am not too sure what I could do. I am going on spring break which narrows down the possibilities of groups I can observe. I guess if all else fails I can observe the group of people at the local grocery store or park. I would however feel way more creepy doing that than watching people perform at a comedy festival.