Improvised X

I took in a workshop a couple of weeks ago on improvised story-telling, which got me immediately intrigued, because it's the one type of improv that I've done very little of. The improvised movie workshop I took focused partly on “linear, improvised story-telling”, but was light on stringent “this is how you tell improvised stories” info. Improv (longform especially) is largely the way it is by the sheer nature of improvising with a bunch of people: the strange, disjointed sequence of scenes tumbled together (like we see in a montage, Harold, etc.) wasn't done because we are as an artistic collective consciousness challenging artists who are interested taking the juxtapositional approach to thematic presentation. We don't want to be weird, elusive and challenging showmen, it's just that improvised story-telling is hard. Keeping a story on track, and having it make sense and be logical is difficult when you have a bunch of players all pulling it in different directions.

What I've noticed though, is that the improvised stories that really seem to work well are ones where there is a mutually agreed upon theme or genre being improvised. This is commonly known as an improvised X, where x equals the genre being done up, be it “Star Trek”, “Zombies”, “Shakespeare”, or whatever. These are the ones that appear to work the best, because there is mutually agreed upon framework that makes the whole process easier, and because everyone is essentially using the same palette. You know walking into an improvised X show what types of stories, characters, and motifs are likely to be seen. When we learned the improvised movie, one of the first things we learned was genre recognition so that we could rapidly identify the genre we were working in. Even the guy teaching our story-telling class has been having success with his show, which he describes as being the in style of Alfred Hitchcock/Twilight Zone. The shows I've seen where the improvised story doesn't work are ones where there is no agreed upon palette, and as a result the audience gets a strange hodgepodge of stories, none of which seem to jive, and then there's a clumsy rushing together of all the plot (a shoehorning, if you will) at the end, seemingly just so the players can say “See? We did it! It was all the same story all along!”.

You could make the argument that this is the same reason why just basic scenework doesn't seem to work. I'm a big advocate of specifics and details giving scenework it's definition and easy-to-follow-itude. Or rather, scenes that are strange and non-definitive are hard to follow. At the same time though, I also promote the idea of “following your obvious”; an obvious being a piece of information that can easily be deduced from previous information. What the obvious is can differ from person to person, based roughly on how his or her brain works. For example, a couple of years ago I was hanging with a friend of mine and his brother, and we were all taking about this story my friend was trying to write. Based on the simple idea he had, I proposed a spy twist and his brother wanted a vampire edge. Neither of us was wrong, but the difference is in what our go-to's or obviouses were. I knew spy stories and his brother knew vampires, so that was where we felt the most comfortable. (Possibly an extension of write what you know?)

Thought of in this framework then, where two people are in a scene together building the scene from the ground up, providing information, the scene converging on being defined (essentially becoming “this scene is about X”) can be thought of as a coalescing obvious. Or: what I think of as obvious based on the known information is now the same as what you think is obvious. We now know we are in the scene where X happens. When the obviouses have not coalesced (which is to say one or more players is confused about the current scene facts) is when moves are made which don't seem to make sense. Looked at from the opposite end, bad scenes arise from two players who have not agreed upon what they are doing. (If my friend's brother and I were doing a scene and were both being either obstinate or non-specific, the bad scene would be because I think we're in a spy scene and he thinks we're in a vampire scene. Possibly very interesting provided we are providing definition like crazy, but a bit complex and confusing to nail down in three minutes.)

The only real problem is everyone has a different obvious, and you need to find a common ground of interest for everyone to do an improvised X. If you're going to be pursuing the same story for 30 minutes to an hour, you want all your players to be invested in the genre. My group toyed with a number of concepts last year, and we never could find a common ground among six people. “What about improvised 'Lost'?” “I've never seen it, but I'll give a shot”. I appreciate the flexibility, but unfortunately, not good enough. If you're going to be picking apart a genre well enough to put it back together on the fly in new ways, everyone has to love and know the style.

No conscientious objectors, only invested and involved people, playing to the obvious.

Expert or Fun?

I recently lost two players in my improv team for identical reasons: both people told me that they felt that were now so good that playing with the rest of the team was a waste of time for them. They indicated that they were now too talented to be working with their team-mates. This of course is disappointing: no one ever wants to hear that their fellow improvisers no longer want to spend time playing with them, especially when someone tells you you're not good enough – what a blow to the ego. This of course is one of the ultimate dichotomies of improv – talent versus playability. Or rather: is it better to find team-mates that are in equal or greater talent than ourselves, or work with who we're with?

I would never begrudge someone the desire to push their talents and improv limits in pursuit of better, more challenging work – I haven't had many, but I've had enough of those moments, the ones where everything goes right and all the disparate elements seem to run together into a critical mass, and step off stage charged by that feeling of, for lack of a better word, magic. Those moments remind us why we do this in the first place, and that rush is improviser's equivalent to heroin – it's what keeps pushing us to achieve more challenging and interesting pieces, and its my hope that every improviser will feel at least one of those just once. But the question is, should we be so hard up to play with other talented folks that we treat ones we consider under-talented with such callousness? One thing I've noticed is that everybody wants to be on a Trophy Wife, or a Beer Shark Mice, or a Cook County, or a Deep Schwa, but no one wants to actually exert the effort required to reach those points. Those teams I just named have been playing for five plus years together, with few, if any, cast changes. Just those guys and gals, every week, stepping on stage together, everyone yearning for the same thing. You, unfortunately, can't just walk on to teams like those. I'm reminded of a statistic I've seen quoted at least four times in as many weeks that it requires 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a craft. We often tend to forget that, and blame other people for “holding us back”. The problem is, if everyone only played with people that were already “good”, then there would be no new improvisers, because we all suck in the beginning.

Let us not forget that improv is not just about being the talented, funny independent proprietor of the craft, and that easily half of the entire craft of improv is about learning how to work with others. Improv is, and always will be, a team sport – one where a group of people work together to create a product greater than the sum of the parts. Sure, there are one-man shows of improv that exist, but nothing will ever match up to watching a group of people playing together to create a mutual art piece. It's this half of the craft that is often under-taught, because you can't really teach how to be a good troupe member. But make no mistake about it's unending importance in everything you do in improv, we love to watch these teams perform not just because they are funny people as individuals (as they often are) but also to see how funny they are together.

Now that having been said, you should never stay in a group you don't enjoy being a part of. As I and others have said, look for people to play with who you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with. If your team passes that litmus test, then stay with them; the most talented person in the world who is an insufferable prick will always be remembered as a talented prick, but there is no replacement for a good attitude and someone you enjoy being with. It's only when we value talent over personality that we run into trouble. You certainly don't want to be known as the “guy who only plays with people who he finds talented”, sure people may be flattered at first with your seeming honor, but deep down everyone knows that your loyalty is skin deep and you will be the first to run when the going gets rough. And if your team members can't trust you and be open with you, you'll only ever do the kind of shallow, vapid improv you were hoping to avoid in the first place.

Remember that talent is only half the game, and the other half is learning to love the people you're on stage with. They were willing to risk their selves with you, the least we can do is offer the same in return.