Special Affects

One summer before college (probably 2002), my friends and I got together and hung out, and one of us (I think my friend Harrison) brought along a blue foam paddle. I don't know where he got it, or why he had it, but we discovered a wonderful game, of which the only rule was: hit each other with said paddle. While not a complicated game, it was a whole bunch of fun, and we set about boxing each other around with this thing, smacking each other wherever, with the other goal being to catch someone when they weren't expecting it. Now, I should point out, these paddle hits weren't painful – in actuality, they were little more than mildly irritating, but that didn't stop us from howling in (faux) pain every time we were socked with it. My friend Josh and I were both working at the movie theater, and this being a rare night when neither of us were working, and this also being one of those dog summer days when we actually had all night to do anything, and had planned on doing nothing, we ended up trucking down to the theater anyway to say hi to our fellow employees slaving away. We brought along the blue foam paddle, as this game was nary three hours old, and had nowhere near lost its luster. When we got there, we ran into Genghis (so named because he got a hold of the name tag maker and made himself a name tag that said as much), who seemed interested in our game, but upon being hit once with it, remarked that it didn't hurt. That poor blue paddle went into retirement that instant, and we never played that game again.

Our game had been deflated by someone who poked a hole in our logic – there was simply no point in playing a game that had so summarily had it's effects removed. And this point is a singularly destructive element that can cripple scenes: stimuli must affect change. Hitting each other with that blue paddle, we all now knew, would be fruitless, so what was the point? Similarly, two characters in a scene who are not affecting change are going through the motions (pointless, blue paddle motions). It's been called the “ABC's” by multiple writers and instructors: Always Be Changing. The bottom line though is that a cause has to create an effect – that's how the human brain works; we're always looking for causal relationships in the universe, but in an improv scene, there is actual opportunity for someone to break down a causality by not reacting (or, usually, reacting in a way that actor has deemed as “funny”, which is a hollow choice). For our blue paddle, the hit elicited howls from the target, and once we knew that it was just an act, it no longer seemed interesting – prior to that, with the veil still pulled, we could pretend that the affect was honest.

The so-called modern “existentialist” dilemma can be drawn back to a feeling that we are ineffectual in our worlds. (In “Something Wonderful Right Away”, Del even says that the improviser lives out the existential choices on stage.) In existentialism, we, as the individual, are ultimately responsible for providing our own lives with meaning, and living that life authentically – which is to say, passionately and sincerely, and for expressing ourselves. When we inhabit lives that are ultimately ineffectual, or feel meaningless or pointless, we are encountering those prevailing forces. I think of it this way: when you use a computer, you feel productive. You can type documents, surf the web, or listen to music, and we feel fulfilled in the use of the computer. However, when you click on a button and the computer freezes (I'm talking no hourglass/spinning pinwheel), what do we do? You click the button again a bunch of times. It doesn't make sense to our human brains that the clicking didn't produce an effect (because in all other cases, a click did produce an effect – maybe we missed?). So when you're in a scene and someone drops a bombshell like “I want a divorce” we expect to see some effect. It violates the audience's known existence for it not to.

When I see the dreaded transaction (salesman/customer or teacher/student) scene not working, I see ridiculous offers and ridiculous responses that don't seem to match, and I see two characters not reacting. That's it, bottom line – no mysteries here. Want to have scenes with life? Pick an offer and be changed by it; have a strong reaction to it. The more honest the better, but really any reaction is better than no reaction. When fire touches paper, we'd be bored if it didn't do anything, we're interested when it bursts in to flame and is reduced to ash. (If your a twelve year old boy, you then want to see other things be affected by flame). Our whole universe is built on reactions, A and B meet, and C happens. This is important, and should not be overwritten.