Back in December, I talked about my realisation that characters are interesting when they are being human – namely, that they are flawed, and act on those flaws. The human condition will always be endlessly fascinating and intriguing, and funny as well. My group has been working to try and capture some of the capacity for this kind of play, so I present to you now some exercises that dovetail nicely into “Being Friends and Acting Like Idiots”. As a sidebar for when working on this type of exercise is that everyone should be in the mindset of being affected majorly by everything that other players offer, and also that characters are human and are fallible and do have flaws.
“It's Tuesday” - this exercise is all about overaccepting offers; split the group in half onto opposite sides of the space – a person from line A steps forward and offers any line of dialogue, preferably something fairly mundane, and a person from line B overaccepts that offer. This could be thought of as yes anding in all capital letters. Players should be encouraged to make the overacceptances intensely personal in nature – it is very easily to fall into the trap of accepting an offer in a way that doesn't invest the players on a personal level, or to be dismissive but in a big way. Alternative: That's a great line because; A steps forward and initiates with a minimal line as before, only now B steps forward to the audience and says why this is the best initiation that could ever be given in the history of the world. After a two line exchange, switch sides. After a few goes, repeat with A delivering rich lines.
Character Monologues – player steps forward and delivers a character monologue about a subject, specifically detailing the character's opinion about the subject; good/bad, and most importantly why this subject is that way. Players should not be hesitant about playing characters with ridiculous opinions or ridiculous motivations or reasonings. Stupid or irrational characters make for great theater.
Two person opinion exchanges – forgive the rather clumsy title; as before, A steps forward, only this time, giving an opinion about a subject to B. B can then choose to agree or disagree with the opinion, then both sides provide supporting arguments or additional details for why they feel the way they do. Remember to maintain a balance of agreement and disagreement scenes, and also that both parts have to try an maintain their points-of-view in each scene, and continue to dig deeper into their supporting arguments.
Party Scenes – Four players, and each player silently labels the other three players with how they feel about them: stupid, smelly, and attractive (so one of the those labels to each other player). These four players now treat each by those silent labels, and the scene is that all four characters are at a party. It is important to maintain a level of treatment that allows the scene to proceed (treating someone someone as stupid too strongly, for instance, can alienate the character and grind it to a halt. The location being a party is because there is an obligation to be polite given the social situation – remember that you're not trying to solve the problem of someone being smelly or stupid, you need to find civilized ways to deal with it.
NPC's – one of the key elements of these types of shows is the interplay between the main players, but it is contrasted by the existence of, in role-playing game parlance, a non-player character (NPC). These are characters who are not part of the main group, have distinctly lower or higher status, and are ones who behave more reasonably that a PC. They often have everyday functions in the real world (e.g. cop, lawyer, boss) and act as foils to raise the stakes or frustrate the PC's. Playing with NPC's can be accomplished with the two person opinion exchanges as above, by either a) when a shared opinion has been reached, by acting as the opposing opinion (expressing it in a non-extreme way) or b) with an opposing opinion, but having the “b” player be more rational than his counterpart. As another tangential possibility, having any NPC act as a heavily characterized person (e.g. heavy accent) is usually a surefire way to make someone outrageously more extreme than a PC.
MAAP(ing) – the remaining element is to heighten the language that the characters talk in; this is done by deploying: Memory, Aphorism, Analogy, or Philosophy (MAAP) in the dialogue. Memories are any remembered thing that happened to a character (they usually being with “Remember the time...”). Aphorisms are colloquial sayings, e.g. “A stitch in time saves nine” or “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Analogies compare something to something else, usually using like or as (to quote “The League”: “You're like a gay Iron Man.”), and philosphies display a person's viewpoint on the world (to quote “League” again: “Hey, I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make it not have sex with me.”). It's best to try deploying these one at a time, so have two players step forward, and do a scene where they only have to worry about doing one of the MAAP elements. After, you can have the players use them ad libitum.
Good luck friending!
No comments:
Post a Comment