Improvisers talk a lot about stakes, which, in my effort to de-mystify a lot of terms that get used, but are not well defined, will be part of this essay's topic. What stakes are is a very ambiguous thing to define, so it's easier to think of them as “what's at stake”, rather than remaining nebulous. In gambling terms for instance, we talk about the stakes being what's at risk; what has been wagered is what you stand to lose or win based on the outcome of whatever event is being bet on. Now when we talk about stakes in improv scenes, so what is your improv director actually looking for? The improv stakes are just the same as in a chance game (when really, isn't improv a chance game anyway – in that we don't know the outcome at least) – what is this character risking in the scene? A character has to have something in danger of being lost, and that thing has to have personal or emotional weight; as in the loss of this thing is of interest, involvement, concern or share to to the person in question.
Okay, easy enough; so we know what stakes are, so it's pretty easy to see why they need to be there. If the two characters in a scene don't have anything at risk (or things at risk they don't care about), then they don't have any investment in the outcome and won't fight to win, and the struggle is where the drama is at. Compare these three scenes:
[A] Ralph has taken Martin's car on a Tuesday night. Martin is okay with that, because he wasn't going anywhere that night, he stays home and watches T.V.
No stakes, nothing at risk, right?
[B] Ralph has taken Martin's car on a Tuesday night. Martin really needed to run some errands that night, but now can't and will have to do them on Wednesday instead. This will cause him to be late for a meeting, which he kind of wanted to go to.
All right, something at stake here, but the problems are relatively easily solved.
[C] Ralph has returned Martin's car on a Friday night completely totaled. To top that off, Martin had a date scheduled that night with Stacy, a girl he really likes, and now he will be late to meet her at the restaurant and his car is destroyed.
Now we've got some stakes – Martin stands to lose the girl of his dreams (I'm editorializing him here a little) because Ralph took the car and wrecked it. Martin stands to lose something that he had at risk (and has lost something else, which may lead to confrontation with Ralph) and it's something he really cares about. Stakes we see, really have one important dimension – importance. Example:
[A] Will loses a plastic sword he used to play Knights and Dragons with. Now with no sword, he plays Cops and Robbers instead.
[B] Sir William loses the Sword of Destiny in a battle, and now cannot defeat the evil dragon.
Option A feels anti-climactic, because there is no consequence to the loss. B feels like the start of a story because there is already a lot at risk.
So stakes are the result of a) someone risking something, and b) the something has to have importance to the character (it should be noted that the stakes don't have to be world-ending, just world-ending for that character). I, for example, am a boring gambler. I don't like the idea of losing money (or at least a lot of it), so when I bet, which is rare to begin with, I don't bet much. The last time I gambled, I put a total of $30 on the line, which is a risk, but doesn't really have a lot of importance to me, and thus would make a very boring scene. Now, had I bet $30,000, then we're getting somewhere. Make that 30 grand the property of a notorious gangster because I was trying to impress a girl, and we're really getting somewhere good. The sub-dimension of stakes, we now see, are consequence. The loss of $30,000 if a I'm a millionaire may have some importance, but if there is no consequence, then the stakes are lost again. The audience needs to feel the risk that a character losing will be important, and have effect to that person. Heightening the stakes, then, are just putting more on the line – the bigger the bet, the bigger the odds; win or lose.
