Defining You and Me (AKA Us)

“The relationship is the most important thing in every scene you will do.”

As I discussed in my last post, there is a danger in attempting to apply hard rules like “You must know each other for X amount of time” and “It is only sufficient to name the relationship” to found dynamics in scenes, but how can we teach these concepts? Here are three exercises I created that I've used with my group that illustrate the concepts and give players practice with stepping away from those previously named crutches.

Relation Dash – Take two players, and give them a relationship; for our example, we'll take the relation of roommates. The players are going to do two scenes – the first is these two characters meeting for the first time, in our example, maybe it's move-in day at the dorm. The point is, we are going to specifically outline that these two people do not know each other and see the dynamic that develops (maybe it's your classic party animal/studious roommate dynamic, or maybe it's a freshman and a junior who transferred in from another school). Next, we're going take the same two players, and have them play the same characters and relationship, but with a certain amount of time passed – in this example a year might suffice, and we can take them on move-out day. The exercise has two goals – one, to mandate two people meeting each other for the first time so that players can see what that kind of dynamic feels like; defensive, nervous, eager to please, etc. You don't shy away from that, you embrace it, play it honestly, and keep accepting the reality. The second goal is to see how a dynamic changes over time (rising hate, perhaps, to a loud, disrespectful roommate or a comfort to someone you got to know, for example) and to see what the difference between a new and an established relationship is.

Click, click, mom – I've adapted this one from a Bill Arnett exercise; two players, and give one person a slip of paper with a relationship written on it (e.g. Mom/Child, Boss/Employee). Have the two players start a scene and after 30-45 seconds or so, have the player read the slip of paper and drop that relationship into the scene. Again, we're looking at two different things; the first is that what the relationship is doesn't really matter (although I should point out that it is hard to maintain some dynamics, say a resentful one, when you discover you're the other character's mother – coach the players to maintain their original point-of-view in the face of such adversity) there are an infinite number of variations on the same named relationship, because (and this is the second point) dynamic (which is to say point-of-view, attitude, etc.) is independent of relationship. You might be surprised at the kinds of dynamics that can emerge, and seem completely organic in relationships you would never expect to support such a dynamic. You can, additionally, coach players to ask themselves “If this is true, why is it true?”

Relationship Drills – Two players; assign them a single relationship (e.g. Teacher/Parent), and instruct them to do four different scenes which will all have the same relationship. Each scene should be two minutes or so – long enough to establish the dynamic. The characters can change, as can the setting, but the important part to coach is that we don't want to see the same dynamic played out four times; in our example, we don't want to see concerned teacher/apathetic parent four times. Encourage the players to test the boundaries of the relationship to see what kinds of dynamics can emerge; we did a really great one where a single parent asked the teacher out on a lunch date to hit on him. The goal of the exercise is to get the players to not go for the most obvious dynamic, because other possibilities do exist, and can all be equally entertaining. Basically, not every older/younger sibling scene has to be an authoritarian dynamic.

These exercises have worked well for me so far – feel free to use them at will, develop them, and provide me with any feedback on them. The most important thing is to continue to foster a philosophy in your group that emphasizes an open mind, and honest dynamics. Happy relationship hunting.