The Abyss of Status

As a second entry into my series of Things That I Have Learned Doing Improv That Were Ill Understood And Yet Still Taught To Me, this week we will be discussing status. Status is the dynamic between two people as expressed in how they either command or acquiesce to each other. Improv teachers say that well defined, big status offers are interesting and powerful to watch. A teacher and a student traditionally have a fairly large status chasm between them, because the teacher is in charge, and the student(s) have to follow the teacher's instructions. (This is, as is turns out, quite necessary, as anyone who has ever tried to control a large group of underage children and also teach them something). The teacher and the principal also have a fairly large status chasm between them, as the principal is the teacher's boss (and can also fire the teacher). When discussing two characters, we usually say that one character is “high status” and the other is “low status”, though bare in mind that these are only relative terms.

A high status character is usually more still (little head movement, gesturing, definitely no fidgeting or nervous twitches), speaks and moves with brevity and purpose, is comfortable, and makes themselves seem bigger or taller.

A low status character is usually more fidgety, nervous, rambles, tries to keep distance from others, and tries to make themselves seem smaller.

Ultimately, status is a relative measurement of how more or less in control, and confident a character is (but always compared to a second party). We typically associate high status with police, judges, bosses, soldiers, while low status are usually employees, students, or children. The examplar exercise for this is the card game – affix a playing card to each player's forehead so that they do not know what they have, and everyone treats everyone else based on what they know about other people, with Ace being lowest and King being highest. At the end, have everyone get in a line of increasing status, and then take their card down and see how well they did. The concept of establishing status is very Johnstonian (and as a result the people I see teach it the most are either Johnstonians, TheaterSporters, or ComedySporters) and is often one of the first concepts taught to new improvisers. Establish the status, establish the scene.

There is nothing inherently wrong in pursuing strong status at the start of a scene – finding out who the boss is and who the employee is tells us a lot about the relationship, dynamic, and setting of the scene with very little effort. However, the way the concept is taught is often to make big status offers (“I'm the King, you're the peasant.”) which, while very edifying, make scene management very difficult. One of the most common questions I hear from improvisers is how to make a scene last longer – and often the answer is one of status. A scene between a king and a peasant has a very large abyss of status – the king is very high, he is, after all, ordained by God to be the supreme ruler of the kingdom, whereas the peasant is, quite literally, a nobody (no offense to any feudal era peasants who may be somehow reading this – now back to the field!). As you stare into an abyss of status this deep, know that it stares back into you.

What you can do to make your scenes last longer is to narrow the abyss of status. The slimmer it is, the longer, richer, and more interesting your scenes become. The first strategy is to make offers of slim status difference between you and your scene partner. The vast majority of truly amazing scenework I've seen has been between two equals (for example, friends) – you may not feel like the scene is going anywhere, but it is – it's just not going as fast as would with the king and the peasant, a dynamic that has a lot of power, but can't necessarily continue forever, and often will burn out much sooner. The other tactic is what often termed a status shift or switch, but is often just a narrowing of the status abyss. The boss and employee are talking, and the boss admits he's broken up because his wife is sleeping around – now the boss is closer to the same level as the employee, and they can communicate.

This all really boils down to the capacity to be changed, that is, your character's capacity to be changed by what's going on – static environments are boring, dynamic environments are exciting. That's why your big status offer stalemates the scene after 60 seconds – a high status boss who won't be changed preserves the status abyss, and it swallows you whole. But show me the king who is conflicted about being supreme ruler and confides in a lowly peasant or two guys sitting around drinking beers commiserating about women mistreating them, and you'll see a chasm that can be crossed, and it will seem all the more interesting for it.