To have another language is to possess a second soul.
- Charlemagne (apparently)
I'm taking this quote to encourage everyone to keep playing with new people. When you're very comfortable with another improviser, it's like you share a common dialect. You can grasp subtext and meaning from the smallest move, and you can understand far more because of you intimacy.
This comfort can breed complacency. There is something scary and refreshing about sharing the stage with someone new, especially in a format that is extremely focused like a duo. But it's in this environment that you can figure out new and interesting things about yourself and learn how to listen and play in ways you may have forgotten how to.
Take a chance. Ask a stranger to do a duo. If there's an improv jam available that lets you play with your own team, take advantage of that and make it happen. You may find your self pushed in new directions, and in that, you may find yourself growing.
Don't let you ego get in the way. Don't let you preconceptions of someone else get in your way. Reach out, be open, and you can discover something new an satisfying.
23 - Set Yourself Up For Surprises
I had lunch with Karen today, and at one point we touched on a move that she's been doing lately that I love. Karen will start a scene by toppling a chair over on stage. The more I think about it the better this is.
It makes the chair very not chairlike but it's still there one stage taking space, waiting to be discovered or endowed with meaning. The fact that's it weird, out-of-place, and "wrong" makes the eventual use of it all the more interesting. Is it a set of drawers? A bush? We know what it ain't, so whatever it is is surprising and (hopefully) interesting.
In forcing a unusual choice, you can stumble out of your comfort zone and into some great scenes. It's like playing Switch in your head in a scene: occasionally just throw out the first gut reaction, and then just react some other way: maybe the opposite, maybe something completely different.. Follow your mouth, commit extra extra hard and see what happens.
It is natural to want to control as much as you can, it feels safer. But it's the moments that get out of your hands and into the space between you and your scenemate that are most magical and collaborative. Let your self have the opportunity to be off-balance, sometimes be your own spanner in the works.
22 - No Sorry
Attention new improvisers, please stop saying you're sorry. With your mouth or with your body.
Stop saying it, stop doing it. They are poisonous.
I resolve in 2014 to yell at you for this if I'm in a position to.
You have to, have to, accept your actions as they are. Take your notes as avenues to improvements not as you being chastised. It's not personal. It's making what you do better, it's not about making you better.
If you continue to let yourself say you're sorry, you'll do it on stage. And that's breaking, and that's not commitment, and that's not support.
You did what you did, it's over, no take-backs and the intention doesn't ever matter. You have to own everything you do, you have no choice. There's no such thing as a take two here. You will make mistakes, that's fine. We don't care about you last scene, even when it's great, even when it's terrible , even when it's just ok. We care about the next. We always are looking for the next.
Don't say you're sorry. Listen, care, and work hard.
21 - Short Form is Hard Work
I have no idea if that whole short-form vs long-form thing is really a thing. Maybe in our little hamlet it's not as big of a deal, given the strong history of short-form shows here.
But having just done a show with short form games, with little preparation it has reminded me:
Doing short-form right ain't easy.
I think the same skills that make for good long form, largely translate to short-form (agreement, engagement, commitment), but there's definitely stuff that exists exclusively in the short-form. Like...you have to work to make the game theatrically interesting... you have to really understand the constraints and how to play off them in a way that lets you do good scenework in addition to fulfilling the writ of the rules... you might just have to damn practice an idiosyncratic skill like rhyming couplets in order to even do it without looking like an idiot.... etc &c.
Lazy short form, like lazy anything, is terrible. But when you see pros do short-form right, there's no denying that it can be really good improv.
Plus! Switching it up and playing some short-form, or even practicing it, might just stretch and strengthen the muscles you need for your long-form work.
The idea of consistency for a character can be very tricky in improv. You never know what kind of crazy endowment you might get from your partner. It can be incredibly stressful, if you're in your head, to try and make a call between "Am I denying?" and "I need to stay true to my character".
Complete crazy bombs aside, things are going to go best if no matter what you keep to come core conceits of your character. They are what make you recognizable and relatable.
This is another, no-quick-fix reality of playing but it bear mentioning that staying true to what you believe you character is and not letting that go is not necessarily being selfish, it's being more honest.
studied nonchalance : perfect conduct or performance of something (as an artistic endeavor) without apparent effort -Also an album by Jimmy Pardo
What a great word! So much fun to do in an over-the-top Italian accent. Almost as good as "Mootz-za-rell" for mozzarella.
Anyway.
The concept of effortless for something that you're working hard on, is pretty much just what practice gets you, right? Improv has the same requirements and the same pay-off. The more work you do, the more classes and study you do the more natural you'll play. Call it what you want: muscle memory, trained instinct, sprezzatura: it comes from work.
Mike Krol has put out two discs of great rock and roll and you should check them out. Like early Weezer, part of what makes it charming and approachable and fun is that he (they?) write the songs straight from the heart of a 17 year-old. The music is loud and distorted, and the lyrics are honest and simple. It's a really refreshing change from say, Reflektor.
Which brings me to: there's an improv saying about young children being the best improvisers because they just play, man.
But let's hear it for the teenager.... well at least the stereotype of what a teenager is. They are emotional, overly so, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. They are 100% certain in what they know.They can be monomaniacal in pursuing what they want. They're terrified a lot of the time. And they are capable of revelatory change. They're awash in hormones, and those chemicals call the shots. They strongly define themselves by their choices. They are sometimes way too honest. Other times they are transparently full of shit. Even when acting tough, they are very vulnerable.
Tonight was the last Totally Free Monday at the Steel City Improv Theater. TFM was the free Monday night show that featured the house teams of the SCIT. It was all long-form, it was always free and it had been going on for over two years.
I was on a team, The Owl Room, at the first TFM.
I was on a team, Hotel Nowhere, at the last TFM.
I made some of my best friends at TFM.
I got to do work, at this point, probably the majority of my total work at TFM
I got to learn how to coach at TFM.
I got to get inspired weekly.
I got to see people get their start, improve, and blossom into the performers that they are now.
I got to see people leave for greener pastures, and knew the cocktail of pride, excitement, and loss in that.
If it wasn't for TFM, I definitely would not be the person I am now. I would be a different, poorer person.
And now it's gone.
We will all still do work.
People will still be on their house teams performing weekly on Fridays.
People will continue to come in, break out of their shells, get on stage, and prosper.
People will continue to do hilarious, magical shows that will make us laugh long after we've all stopped doing this.
People will continue to have bad nights, but keep going, knowing that the only cure for a bad show is a good one and that that is the engine of this art.
People will continue to leave to pursue their dreams.
We will continue to love and support them, and we will continue to do what we do because we are compelled, beautifully, to do it.
But this one specific thing we had is now over.
And it's sad, but that's okay. Because it is sad because it was so great while we had it.
Thanks: Justin, Kasey, Emily, Woody, Brian, Michael C, Keara, Ayne, Fawad, Alex T (new Alex), Alex L (old Alex), Eric, Anna, Jocelyn, Brett B, Brett G, Umar, Dan, Jerome, Dillon, Cassie, Conner, Ben, Tessa, Nicole, Alex R, Andrea, Nathan, Matt, Justin V, Derek, Lorin, Renee, Karen, Tom, Brad, Travis Chris W, Pete, Mike, Dave, Steve, DJ, Jamison, Patricia, Tamara, Jasmine, Molly, Tami, Mary, Sara, Jamison, Ben, Graham, Remy, Ciaran, Kyle.... and the people I'm forgetting because I'm trying to do this by memory after going to the Parkhouse, my sincerest apologies.
Today I had the opportunity to play with a guy I don't play with anymore. Scott had a bunch of things come up ( a baby) that took him out of the improv game, I didn't realize how much I missed him.
Even with all of the rust playing with him today was amazing. Before his hiatus we had played for years together and there is no substitution of that kind of bond.
What I want to say is twofold: when you find someone who you have developed connection with you need to cultivate and nurture that. Don't let that work fall away.
Also, be greedy. Make a point to work with the people you want to work with. Take the time and make the effort to do shows with the people you love. You don't know how long you'll have opportunity
Flubs, trips, missed-marks, bum notes, dropped props: unfortunate things in theater. Things that an audience knows to let slide. Bumps in the road that, unless particularly grievous, are quickly forgotten by the viewers. Because we're good a figuring that out and giving leeway to those kind of accidents.
In improv, there's not script to forget, no blocking to mess up, no score to get lost in. So, then, everything that happens is exactly how it was supposed to happen.
There still are honest mistakes: a stutter, a trip, an accidental walk through a couch. These we can still just notice but disregard.
Everything else though, is being noticed, digested, and held on to as meaningful. In your talking heads scene were you and a partner are just arguing six feet from each other in who-knows-where, the audience is starving to find out more of the meaning of what they're seeing on stage. They want to see more context, more information. Do they need it? Not always need. But they do want it, and will be delighted to discover it.
Everything you do on stage looks intentional, so even if you're not thinking about it, the audience is.
Preface: I was not good at SF2. I would pretty much just use Chun-Li and headstomp over and over.
But stick with me. Remember Street Fighter? In a match you couldn't turn around, you always faced your opponent. If you threw the stick backwards you'd walk backwards and go into a block. If you put the stick back and down, you'd turtle up protecting your shins. Blocking was very important. Blocking was also very boring when both players were conservative. Even then, if a player went on the attack his opponent could just keep their guard up, and unless the aggressor was good at it the match would become a boring ol'blockfest in the corner.
Action only progresses with risk. You have to open up yourself to getting hurt to have something happen. That means in your characters, they have to be able to be hurt. And that comes from being active, from accepting and giving as good as you're letting yourself get get. When people think of blocking in a scene, think of it as literally putting your hands up and preventing anything your partner is doing from landing. Think of the most boring Street Fighter fight: two Blankas, in opposite corners, cowering (or just doing that electrity thing) as the timer ticks down.
For a fun match, especially from the POV of the audience, there has to be the back and forth. YHou try a punch, it might land, it might get countered. But something happened. You have to take open yourself up to take some licks too for it to be interesting.
HERE COMES A NEW STRAWMAN
But wait!I'm really good at Street Fighter! I know how to do unbeatble bullshit! You won't even be able to get a move off, but there will still be action!
The novelty of an unbreakable combo or glitch expires pretty much after you see it once. Similarly an untouchable character is fun for a little bit. But then we get it, and then it just gets annoying. In fact everyone just wants you to lose. But you can't do that can you? No because you're character doesn't want to lose, so why should you?
You should because that doesn't exist in real life. You should because it's really hard to have a interesting scene with a superman. You should because playing invincible is unseemly, annoying, and bratty. You should because you've accidentally got some of your ego invested in your made-up, disposable puppet.
You should because you'll have more fun playing when you're not afraid of getting hurt.
What’s the trick to writing believable dialogue? Write out the scene the way you hear it in your head. Then read it and find the parts where the characters are saying exactly what you want/need them to say for the sake of narrative clarity (e.g., “I’ve secretly loved you all along, but I’ve been too afraid to tell you”). Cut that part out. See what’s left. You’re probably close.
A slight continuation from #11. This is more of the "show don't tell" part of the equation. When you're really in sync with someone you don't need to hammer on the "things that come next". You can concentrate on the emotionally charged lines that surround the implied next action.
When you're in this kind of groove, it's just about the best feeling in the world. Next to when you actually have the dramatic reveal.
When you're comfortable and good at informing you partner in a scene, using choice specifics, emotional acting, and clear subtext.... remember that subtlety and inference are what make scene not just work, but shine.
If a mad tattooist is to attack you, it's a mistake to discuss the rumors about a mad tattooist, but a stranger an admire your skin, and force you to strip, because the audience still won't know what's intended.
There is a line that's important not to cross with specificity. Too much explicit leading in a scene diminishes the surprise. It blows the joke. Too little, and you might not be communicating enough with your scenemate.
Young improvisers tend to do this swing of the pendulum: OK I need to be specific and add information! And then everything about a premise is made perfectly clear very early on... which means you get locked in to a trajectory. And the funny reveal has been ... well... revealed. So now you're just doing the things we expect you to now. The magical has become procedural. The tension has been dropped.
This gets easier as trust and confidence with who you're playing with increases.
But, hell, most things get better with that, right?
Good point! I'll just keep talking constantly in scene! Finally, some advice that validates my motormouth style!
Take Two - A Take I Like Better
Good point! I don't have to worry. I can just let the scene go, the funny will come out of me eventually because I'm a funny person. Just relax and go with the moment, I'll get there.
Take Three - A Take I Like Even Better Even Though It Gets Persnickety With Semantics
Good point... with some additions. Don't worry about saying something funny, something funny will happen naturally through the work. In fact, nothing that's said or done might be funny in of itself at all, but as long as everyone plays honestly what happens in the reality of the scene might be funny because life is funny sometimes. So don't sweat it and just be in the moment.
9 - Shaking hands and kissing babies
Improv is not a big community. It's very much a niche type of theater. The disadvantage to this is that it can be difficult to explain (No, it's not like stand up. It's not always like Who's Line... uh ... it's like SNL but we don't have a script. No really, we don't know what we're going to do....), but the advantage is that the people who are committed to it are really committed to it.
I'm in Pittsburgh, at best a tertiary market, and I'm really lucky to be doing my work during a serious upswing in interest. What this means is it is extremely important to be supportive and open to other people who are getting into and working on their craft. We're all on the same side, and it'll do you craft and soul good to make sure that you're out there getting to know and finding the time to support you colleagues.
There are only so many hours and nights in a week, but find a way to go out and meet the local people that are passionate about improv like you are. You don't have to make it a full-time job (as exciting a prospect that is) but make an effort to keep abreast of what's going on in your backyard. You never know who could be doing things that will inspire you. You never know if you'll meet someone who you can help on their journey. And we all need to pitch in to maximize success.
Not all improvisers are extroverts, but even if you're not (I'm definitely not) go out every once in awhile. Shake hands, see what's coming down the pike, kiss babies, encourage young talent. It's easy to indulge in dismissal and negativity, I'm as guilty as anyone, but for an artform that is predicated on agreement and collaboration that kind of attitude is poison. Give a hand, guide when you can and but out when you know you should.
Rising tide lifts all ships.
At least where I am, we're not gunning for writing jobs, we're not fighting to get parts, we're all in this for the love of it. Approach it all with that love.
I may be a Pollyanna in the worst way but that's the truth: Love all the people.
[What do you think an improviser absolutely needs to know...?]
Trust your partner, the audience is already on your side, and above all else ... listen.
-Randy Dixon, in The Improv Handbookby Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White
I'm pulling this quote because I was reminded of it it this weekend. I was talking with Laura Lind from The Amish Monkeys. When I asked Laura about what she's learned over her career of playing, the idea that the audience is already on your side came up similarly.
Improv, for the most part, has an audience that is ready to go with you. Unlike, say, stand-up [Derek Minto, am I way out of line here?]. There's the old high-wire act metaphor, the danger and unpredictability and... frankly... gimmick of it does get you some slack.
That's good to know, on some level, because you need to trust your audience to go along with you. To be as smart and patient as your partner on stage should be.
Don't just do the easy stuff to please them because you'll end up insulting their intelligence. Just like if you blew a scene for a joke and hung your teammate out to dry.
Trust and respect them when you're performing.
And I say this as a guy who says "Fuck the audience" before shows a lot.
Please, please make sure to do things besides improv. I know it's addictive but you have to keep a life outside of it. Every once and a while take your team and do something not improv related, it'll do you all good.
That quote is specifically about working on a format with a group. I think there is wisdom in there generally. We as performers know what works, what we're good at, what character types, voices, and tics get the audience going. Subconsciously we build up rules: I can do a british dude but is has to be a RP British guy / I should bring out my hilarious salesman character now / People like my dinosaur walk, time for a dinosaur walk on ... etc and we follow them without thinking. These are the patterns that naturally evolve with performances. Fine, it's normal, it can be great. They give you a style.
But when you plateau, or start feeling like you're stuck, that's when it's most important to scale back your habits.
It can be a real hurdle for nice people to act mean, even when playing. Pleasant people spend 95% of their life being pleasant, fact. But when you're working on stage, you can't limit yourself to what you, the actor, is comfortable with in everyday life. On stage with partners you trust you're free to use everything at your disposal, even those meanie muscles you've worked so hard at atrophying.
Be conscious of this, because you can forget that you have it in you.
Sennett used to hire a “wild man” to sit in his gag conferences, whose whole job was to think up “wildies.” Usually he was an all but brainless, speechless man, scarcely able to communicate his idea; but he had a totally uninhibited imagination. He might say nothing for an hour; then he’d mutter “You take…” and all the relatively rational others would shut up and wait. “You take this cloud…” he would get out, sketching vague shapes in the air. Often he could get no further; but thanks to some kind of thought-transference, saner men would take this cloud and make something out of it. The wild man seems in fact to have functioned as the group’s subconscious mind, the source of all creative energy. His ideas were so weird and amorphous that Sennett could no longer remember a one of them, or even how it turned out after rational processing. But a fair equivalent might be one of the best comic sequences in a Laurel and Hardy picture. It is simple enough—simple and real, in fact, as a nightmare. Laurel and Hardy are trying to move a piano across a narrow suspension bridge. The bridge is slung over a sickening chasm, between a couple of Alps. Midway they meet a gorilla.
As I continue to chip away at my larger history project I'm snailing away on, I'm going to start doling out some bite-sized posts all the way up to Christmas.
1 - Ben Hauck On Back Line Support
In long-form improv, the backline actor never directs the scene. The backline actor only describes a scene, and it is up to the frontline actors to figure out what the description might mean in terms of direction.
The backline has a lot of power and a lot of responsibility. But you have to never forget that anything you add from outside of the scene should be in service of the scene as it is, not how you want it to be.
This can be tough when you're having fun and oh-man-wouldn't-it-be-great-if-instead.... stay strong!
