ASPIRING S.D. COMEDIANS PLAY SWITCH WITH A PRO

The young man on stage doubles over and clutches his stomach as if in pain. “Oh, my back,” he grimaces.

The young woman standing opposite him squats down so the two are eye to eye and puts her left hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know what to do!” she shrieks hysterically.

A voice from the sidelines yells, “Freeze,” and both actors oblige. Jim Belushi dashes up and taps the woman on the shoulder. The woman walks off stage; Belushi assumes her frozen stance.

“Hi, I’m Jerry Lewis,” he says, facing the audience. “Let me tell you about my kids.”

Before the laughter from the crowd subsides, another voice yells, “Freeze.” Seconds later, Belushi, still frozen, is facing a third young actor who assumes the doubled-over position of the first.

But only for a moment. The newcomer nimbly bends his knees so that he, too, is squatting, and then says to Belushi with a grin, “Hey, I don’t know about these adjoining outhouses!”

This theatrical version of freeze tag goes on for several more minutes. Beforehand, Belushi had stressed the importance of this exercise, known as “switch,” to the crowd of more than 200 aspiring actors and actresses who had come to San Diego State University’s Backdoor nightclub Saturday morning for a three-hour improvisational workshop.

“The directors of Second City use this game to audition players,” he said, referring to the famed Chicago improvisational troupe that spawned not only his own career but the careers of his late brother, John Belushi, and such other notable comic actors as Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner.

“And if you want to break into the acting business, this is one way to test yourself and really sharpen up your techniques.”

Belushi spoke from experience. Constantly playing improvisational games like “switch” was how he broke into the business more than a decade ago.

And now, three years after the death of his brother, Jim Belushi is finally considered a big star in the highly competitive worlds of stage, film and television.

Belushi, 32, has spent two years as co-host of “Saturday Night Live,” the long-running television comedy series that relies heavily on the improvisational abilities of its stars.

He has appeared in the Broadway production of “The Pirates of Penzance” and in such popular movies as “About Last Night” and “One Red Shoe.”

And he’s working on another film, “Real Men,” which is scheduled to be released sometime next year.

Before leading the audience through “switch” and four other improvisational exercises, Belushi explained how improvisational theater differs from conventional theater.

“In conventional theater, you have a writer who sits in a room and writes dialogues and scenes,” he said. “But with improvisational theater, everything is spontaneous.

“Actually, it’s a lot easier than it sounds. You just have to talk--talk, and lie. Think back to when you were in high school, and you had to think up an excuse when the teacher asked you where your homework was.

“You basically made up a story as you went along. At the time, it may have been very dramatic, but now, if you’d take that same scene in front of an audience, it would be funny.

“And that, in essence, is what improvisation is all about.”

Because each actor might have his or her own idea of a certain scene’s direction, Belushi said, it’s important to play along with whatever comes up.

“You can’t stop a scene and say, ‘No, George, let’s do it this way.’ The moment you do that, you lose your audience,” he said.

“You’ve got to make sure the whole thing flows together, and that means you have to be prepared for anything. Most likely, the scene won’t turn out the way you or any of the other actors would have written it--but that’s the whole idea.”

Belushi also talked about his own experiences with Second City, the constant problems with censorship he encountered while filming “Saturday Night Live” and the value of using personal experiences to devise scenes and bits of dialogue.

When it was all over, the crowd was duly impressed.

“It was great--really helpful,” said Jeri Scace, a 23-year-old model who moved to San Diego six weeks ago from Seattle. “I’ve acted on stage and been in pageants, but I’ve never done improvisation.”

Scace, who hopes to be an actress, admitted she was nervous while participating in one of the exercises, “but I think that’s just because I was up there with Jim Belushi,” she said, blushing.

Darren Brook, 26, is another newcomer to San Diego who used to act with the L.A. Connection troupe in Los Angeles.

“Like Belushi said, the great thing about improvisation is that you never feel more alive,” Brook said. “How the next scene goes can make you or break you. That’s why learning improvisation is so valuable to anyone who wants to be an actor--it prepares you for anything.”

Belushi’s improvisational workshop was sponsored by New Talent Management, a personal management company with offices in New York and San Diego, and the firm’s instructional offshoot, the American Television Acting Workshop.

“This is a first for us,” said George Ballow, president of both the management company and the school. “We believe that San Diego is filled with exciting new talent and that’s why we decided to open an office here.

“But the industry, for the most part, still considers San Diego as being in the shadow of Los Angeles. Bringing a national figure down here to acknowledge San Diego talent and work with them for three hours is our way of letting the industry know that that’s no longer the case.”