Close Encounters of the Longform

I was speaking with the director of one of my short form groups a few weeks ago, and we started talking about how much we both want to see and do more longform in San Diego, and I confessed my love of longform; namely all the different kinds of forms and how they’re all useful, and how I want to see more groups capable of improvising beyond form. I didn’t realize it, but I was actually being interviewed, in a way. He asked me about different forms that I knew, how long it would take to do them, etc. Then, he asked me to teach his group some longform. He didn’t know anything about longform, and I said I would love to teach some workshops on longform. When I asked which one he wanted me to teach, he replied with the words it seems everyone would love to hear, but no one really wants to hear, “Whatever one you think is best.”

I’m certainly not an expert by any means on longform. I’ve seen a bunch of it, taken a bunch of classes, and asked as many questions of performers as possible, but that doesn’t mean I know everything about it. (I asked one of the Cook County Social Club members what their form was after a show, to which he replied “It’s not so much a form as it is a style.” Good luck to any other group trying to replicate their show, but no improviser should ever get their hopes up for cloning success.) Now, I do have a real love for longform – I love the things that it’s capable of doing, by being free to really run, and I love the philosophy associated with it that improvisers can actually be artists and make something on-the-spot and meaningful. But I was suddenly saddled with representing longform to a longform-naïve group, and hopefully making it interesting enough to make them want to do it again. Essentially, I was given two hours to introduce longform, conceptually and functionally. The one thing I can applaud the iO with teaching me that was more important than just how to improvise was how to yearn for expression, but heck, it took me a year of being there and almost a whole other year to begin to comprehend that concept. How do you convey that kind of mindset and teach a group how to longform in two hours? I feel that the two are intertwined: you can’t really do a Harold until you appreciate the “Theatre of the Heart”, and you can’t full comprehend formic creation until you’ve done a few by the book Harolds.

Now, that crisis avoided (by sheer virtue of probably being unable to convey it), now I have to decide which form to teach. Which form sums up the entire longform experience? Which one is the ultimate in inspiring creativity and play? Which one has the most room for artistic expression? Which one is easy? (I do only have two hours here, people.) Not to mention I want one that will allow everyone the chance to experiment around with it a bit (so Shotgun! and Dinner for Six are out) but also won’t require any special new skills (so long Armando, Orlando, and Eavesdropping). One that isn’t too complicated (sorry Close Quarters and JTS Brown), but that also fits the style of this particular group (Living Room, Deconstruction; gone, gone). Of course, there’s always the mainstay of the Harold, but I always feel like people who haven’t seen a few already seem a little daunted by the Harold.

These two crises now in full place, I thought about it in this way: if a group of aliens from another galaxy descended on to earth after hearing about longform but only having done shortform and only had two hours to learn before they had to return home, what would you teach them? What single longform structure and philosophy could you give them that they could take back to their home planet so that they could start exploring longform on their own? I spent a year studying in Chicago, and I only now just feel like I could go to some completely unknown place and inject new thought about improv.

Of course, I know that this will probably not be my only chance to teach improv to this group, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is my one chance to really get this group started off down the right track. This single ideological shift can change everything, if I can just get the points across right. After all, I really could teach any form (that is to say, there’s nothing stopping me), but I don’t want to teach just form – I want to teach the mysterious force about long form in general that I am so enamored with.

A Philosophy of Teaching

It was in "Truth in Comedy" that Close, et al, told everyone that an improviser was actually a number of different roles rolled into one: actor, director, writer, editor, sound man, special effects, props, and scenery (and realistically caterer and producer as well).  It's really no wonder this craft is so difficult to master, and that so many of us become permanently enthralled with it - to improvise is not just make a few laughs, it is to do a near overwhelming amount simultaneously.  But it is not only very difficult to master, it's sometimes very difficult for beginners to do successfully at even a minimal level.

Most improv is taught in a very top-down method.  Typically, throw people into things with a little explanation, and then tweak things as needed to get performers into a desired state.  In fact, I'd wager that every teacher I've had has taken this approach.  It's just easier, since there are so many things that have to be juggled at once, to let the human naturally fill in the gaps of the performance than to force a player to have to think about everything all at once.  I think of this as a holistic approach; even though a smart instructor will know to break down certain skills or simplify scenework to narrow a student's focus, it's still necessary for a pupil to be developing a number of skills concurrently.  I believe the result here is why I am constantly teaching (and learning) active listening as a basic skill.

This is quite different from other arts/crafts/skills; I remember learning to drive and first learning street signs, right-of-way, and blind spots before being allowed behind the wheel of a two-ton steel death machine.  Artists learn composition and point-of-view before painting the Sistine Chapel, woodworkers learn how to cut straight lines before building a house, and you learn to read by first learning sounds - you don't jump from "c-a-t" to "Anna Karenina".  When I was first learning to play an instrument, you start with a few notes, then you play "Mary had a Little Lamb", then scales, then time signatures, then space chords, and eventually you work your way up full orchestral pieces.  I think of this as a reductionist approach - where the focus is on building individual skills before putting them all together.

The reductionist approach is easier for learning complex skills, so why don't we approach teaching improv in that manner?  Quite simply actually: "Mary had a Little Lamb" is fucking boring.  And even more importantly, the basic principles of improv, like "no planning", translate into the uninitiated as "you don't need to practice this, you just get up and do it!"  The seemingly low entry requirements are a welcome encouragement for neophyte players, but also make it difficult to focus the naive to work only on skills for the first few lessons.  Or, is it maybe better to throw new players completely into it right away?  Screw basics, just give them the piano and the sheet music for "Flight of the Bumblebee", and let them figure it out on the fly.  Watching an experienced player rip through something difficult effortlessly might make you think you could, but new performers have to learn the scales first.

A Writer's World

In An Evening with Kevin Smith, Smith said something along the lines of “the writer creates his ideal world when he writes.” For him then, he said that apparently in his ideal world, people have endless conversations about pop culture and relationships. By that same token, in Tarantino’s world, violent criminals wax philosophic and then maim each other, and in Scorsese’s criminals try desperately to keep a clear conscience in the face of doing bad things for family. Pretty cool actually. The writer allows us a brief peek into not how he sees the world, but how he wishes the world could be.

I’ve read and heard a number of times, from countless sources, that the improviser is more than just an actor in a play. The improviser is the actor, director, editor, stuntman, costume designer, set designer, and writer all in one, doing every conceivable action simultaneously. Well, if we’re technically writing our play, in the moment, then by extension of the previous corollary, then we are also showing the audience our ideal world (albeit a mutually agreed upon and group derived ideal world). This is one of the things that propels improv from just jokey stuff into a much more meaningful experience. Or as Jason Chin once said, “You have to have an opinion about what you’re talking about.” It’s not enough to merely explore mousetraps (very basic scenes; I mean, how many scenes can we have about mousetraps?) we need to explore what mousetraps are symbolic of (I don’t know, stifled domestic life?) but also to have an opinion about it. The audience doesn’t necessarily have to agree with it, but that’s okay, because stuff that you’re opinionated and passionate about makes for great improv.

Now, what I’ve said is no big revelation. I haven’t exposed any great mysteries about improv, or art, or life (not the least of which because I don’t presuppose to have any). But here’s what is important; the first rule of writing is “write what you know”, so the improv corollary is “improvise what you know”. It’s not really a big surprise that most improv pieces revolve around relationships and superheroes; look who is improvising them. When I was playing with my college group, we invented and modified a number of games to make them more superhero-esque. Why? Because were a bunch of comic book nerds. That’s what interested us. My San Diego group, the Ugly Truth, struggled for a little bit when we tried to experiment with more slow, dramatic improvised scene work. Obviously, things weren’t going well because we weren’t improvising what we liked. Show me an improv group that is struggling with a new form or technique, and I’ll guarantee that they’re doing something they don’t enjoy.

Without a doubt, I’m a big advocate of fun first when it comes to improv. A group that is enjoying what they’re doing will be immensely more watchable than a team that is doing something meaningful and hating every minute of it. Or rather, we’re not all Scorsese or Tarantino, some of us are just Smith. Find, as a group, what you enjoy, are passionate about, and interested in, and the rest will follow suit.