Not Emotions

For a lot of us, the word emotion when it comes to improv is a scary one with a lot of panicking connotations. Most of the modern improviser are logical, right brained ones, a product, most likely, on an emphasis on game play. Game play is by it's very nature analytical requiring the ability to identify and amplify “unusual things”. Even game heightening, though necessitating a finesse best exemplified in ways that math cannot quantitate, can be broken down into a series of moves – that the UCB improv handbook reads like a science textbook is no accident. Combine this with the fact that most “comedy nerds” are comedy historians raised typically on static, witty comedy programming and you have a recipe for the typical improviser – smart, word-based, unphysical.

As a result, improv spends a lot of time on workshops about “emotions”. We're trying to remove improv from being a purely intellectual exercise into one that respects that it is a performative, acting experience. For new improvisers, the idea of emotions feels absolutely terrifying – I know that I feel a knee jerk response to avoid emotion workshops when I see them offered. Our western society frowns on the idea of “emoting”. Emotions are seen as being volatile, unpredicatable, and mercurial, which are not viewed as valuable in a society that likes consistent, objective, and reliable. Emotion also carries with it the “actor” connotation – which is to say big, theatrical emotions. This baggage presupposes that all “emotions” must operatic or at least soap operatic. We assume that to “emote” is to be melodramatic, which is the other incorrect assumption about emotions – namely that they must be maudlin or depressing.

Other synonyms also fall short; “feelings” for instance, conjur up ideas of either new-age frufruism or being on the psychiatrist's couch. Terms that equally do not achieve what we want: “sensitiveness”, “vibes”, “sentiment”, “sensation”, and “inspiration” all either fail to fully describe what is happening when we “act”, or go to far. This inaccuracy in terms makes it difficult to describe and to teach people how to do them.

If you've watched a really good improv show (or TV or movies), you've seen people playing humans, which is what makes them interesting and engaging entertainment. If you've taken enough improv workshops, you've probably also noticed an identical-ness in the way we teach two “separate” ideas. Namely, that we teach people that playing characters and emotions are distinct, discrete concepts, but in reality they are nearly the same thing. Both concepts talk about commitment to ideas, point-of-view, and being affected. This gut-reaction stuff is about being more human, playing more than just ourselves, occupying fictional spaces on stage as though they were actually happening is: (drum roll) acting. (Another scary word.)

I think we can roll all of this stuff up into a single unifying concept. These are all just “states of being”. You, as yourself, is a state, where you as a cowboy is a different state. Angry is another state, and angry cowboy is another different state. States make you reactive (and sometimes even proactive) rather than “bulletproof” as a state. If you've followed me so far, let's evolve this into chemistry. All elements are constantly in search of making complete electron shells, 8 being the ideal number for those of you keeping count at home. Those elements on the far right are called the noble gases because they don't react with anything, because they have completed outer electron shells. The entirety of the rest of chemistry in pursuit of completing those shells, either by gaining, losing, or sharing outer electrons with other atoms to get to the magic 8 number.

What I'm preferring to think of emotions as now are “valences” - valence states being the difference in atoms to make molecules. Valence, in operative improv terms, being the difference in self to achieve something else – either something lost to another, gained from anther, or shared with another. How much valence dictates how different from ourselves the state is. This doens't really change how we do things, and doesn't change the necessity for being human and reactive but hopefully may give some solace of a new term to people wh oneed something that feels less terrifying and more analytical.

How To Be Friends and Act Like Idiots - Toolkit

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!

How To Be Friends and Act Like Idiots

When I first moved to San Diego, I played with the (now sadly defunct) longform group the “Ugly Truth”. At the time, that group was playing around with different forms – some of them very Harold like, others not so much – when we got to talking about some shows we had seen that we had wanted to emulate. Those shows at the time that were mentioned in particular were “Seinfeld”, “Arrested Development”, and “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, though now you could also throw “The League” on that list of shows about groups of friends acting like idiots. Our conceit was that these shows were endlessly funny, and seemed to have natural, organic scenes, with very fleshed out, fully realized characters; we didn't want to do an “improvised Seinfeld” per se, but we did want to figure out how to incorporate that kind of storytelling stylistically, to be able to walk out into a scene and instantly have these kinds of arresting, filled out inter-personal dynamics.

My initial hypothesis about what common traits these shows had was that they were about selfish people. This does, on the surface, appear to be a unifying element to all shows: Gob is typically only interested in pursuing either his own magic or sex related desires, Kevin underhandedly messes with a suspect pre-trial to get a better draft position (in the first episode no less), and Seinfeld et al go to jail because they can't be bothered to help someone being mugged. These shows seem to be riddled with examples of being being completely self-serving to only their own ends. And yet, this explanation didn't feel quite right – my teammate Chris Rubino accurately pointed out that this didn't sufficiently explain these characters completely, or even mostly. These people do act selfishly at times, but to call them blanket “selfish” wasn't precise.

My next theory was that the status differences between all the characters is very narrow (an explanation I love; see my previous essay), and this is true – none of those various characters really has a very high status over anybody else, and even when there are, there are lots of status shifts: George Sr. runs the company, then Michael, then Gob, then back to Michael. All the members of the various groups of the League and the Sunny folks don't have a leg up on each other, ever, really, and they're always joining forces and then dispersing, so the status balance is always dynamic. This does explain a lot of the relationships in all the shows, but it's an incomplete explanation, more functional than philosophical, and that's the point I needed to get to. Perhaps the stakes are the issue; in all those shows, the matters at hand are often trivial or inconsequential (“Seinfeld” is, after all, a “show about nothing”), but this also falls short, as the stakes are high for the characters (i.e. the things going on are important to them), and in “Arrested” can often be quite actually high (“mild treason”, anyone?).

Then, I found the heart of what makes the characters functional in the ways that they are (I should point out this is two years after I originally asked the question, so kudos to me for sticking it out) – these characters are vain. Vanity – plain and simple – the need to feel attractive, talented, smart, loved, respected, feared, is what constantly drives these characters. It's not enough that Dennis Reynolds thinks he's gorgeous and rich, he needs other people to feel those things too; Ruxin will fight tooth and nail to feel superior to his friends, and even Michael Bluth wants his father to give him control of the family business, because he feels he's earned it (a characterization that drives a good chunk of the show). These people are vulnerable, low, petty creatures, that just want to feel like they have a leg up on those around them. The only other archetype is the “idiot” (Kramer, Taco, Charlie, and Tobias-Gob-Buster), a foil that is often not even aware that they are doing strange things – all the better to set off the status grubbing other characters.

This lead me of course, to my final realization about how these characters work: they're human. What James Bond, John McClane, Luke Skywalker, and countless other action heroes have in common is that while they can be physically injured, and potentially emotionally affected, these people don't really have basic desires. Our other characters of interest are far more human: they have weaknesses, bad habits, and foibles. They're irrational and quick to make rash decisions. Sometimes they just want a marble rye or the waitress – these characters are fascinating to watch because they are so unabashedly human, and playing them is as simple as not being perfect; flaws are what make us so damn interesting. Doing a show that plays these kinds of dynamics is as simple as being human, and being affected.

Three years to figure out that good characters are human? Yeah, that was time well spent.

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.

It's not you, it's not even me. It's more "us".

There are new people in two of my improv groups, so it's got me thinking about basics again. There is so much “basic” stuff that we want to get across to new improvisers so that they'll have a good foundation, and while at the same time we like blank slates to draw on so we don't have to fight against any preconceived notions and habits (good or bad); it is however, certainly an easier climb when they already know some of the “stuff”. I was talking with one of the new peeps who was telling me that she had never done improv previously, but was really enjoying learning all the keystone elements, yes, anding, listening, and building the relationship. It was this last one that really stuck out to me, mostly because it was probably two years into my improv training before I heard of this concept, yet I have heard probably every teacher and coach I've had since then try to pound that concept home. It's a good idea, don't get me wrong, but it's also one of the worst understood basic concepts in all of improv, and if there is but one thing I could do to right any listing on the part of a new improviser, it would be on this one.

I say it is poorly understood with the full knowledge that I didn't understand it for quite some time. If you were to believe most improv teachers and coaches, “finding the relationship” is as simple as just naming the relationship between two people. In other words, just look across at your scene partner(s) and just name a relationship. In a shitty scene? Apparently all you have to do is say “Gosh, I don't know dad/mom/sis/bro/boss/co-worker/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/friend” and your scene has just been saved. Tied into this poorly understood concept is that idea that every relationship has to have been previously established for X amount of time (the length of time appearing to vary depending on what books your teacher has read or who taught them). The problem with this is that if just naming a relationship was all that was needed to rescue a flailing scene, why doesn't everyone do such a simple thing? (And more importantly – how could a scene ever fail with such a simple lifesaver?) The answer is that just naming the relationship means absolutely nothing. Not a single frickin' thing. I've been in a number of classes where this exchange took place:

Teacher: Pause. What's the relationship here? Continue.

Player A: [Pausing a moment] I'm tired of this, mom!

Rest of class: [Laughter]

The reason they laugh is because there has been such an obvious correction at the prodding of the teacher, but really, we all know deep down that just naming the relationship is worthless. The relationship I have with my mother is unique (because I'm a special boy) and is completely different from the relationship you have with your mother. Even the relationship I had with a girlfriend is unique from the relationship you would have with the exact same girl, despite the fact that in either case we would still refer to her as The Girlfriend. What the teacher is looking for, but often can't articulate is that we were looking for how you relate to this person. Do you care for this person? Put up with their bullshit, regardless of how strange it is? Treat them like shit? There's a game I've played before where you get four people, and each person is tasked with silently choosing another person that they will always treat as smart, funny, or beautiful. That's what's interesting. Any teacher's misguided prods are often just trying to get you to treat your scene partner like a real person, or as Gellman would succinctly say: “do you like or not like this person?”, which is the most basic level for relating to another person, but serves as a nice jumping off point for the infinite levels of subtle ways we treat everyone around us. Asaf Ronen uses a good vocabulary for this by calling the relationship the logistical circumstance, and the emotional one a dynamic – a term that I like a lot.

The second problem is in the “you must know this person for X amount of time” corollary to the Relationship Rule. I want you to right now think of any movie, T.V. Show, or play where there was not a major relationship that started with the two characters not knowing each other. Did you come up with even one? (Following this rule would mean we could never do scenes of job interviews or even worse, first dates – a scene whose humor lives on the awkwardness of meeting someone for the first time. Part of how I can prove this one as being misleading is that there is no established minimum length – I've heard everything from 3 months to 3 years.) In everyday life we regularly encounter people we have never previously met, and have absolutely no previously established relationship, and it would serve well to remember the Arnett Axiom: if you can say it in real life, you can say it in a scene. This relationship corollary likely spawned itself from the reverse logic we have for looking at scenes (as Napier described in his book, only looking for the problems in bad scenes, and not looking at the successes in good scenes). It's true that doing scenes with characters who are just meeting for the first time is difficult, but not impossible. The same with the first half of this conundrum is that what's important isn't that you get to put a name on it as soon as possible, it's that you treat the other character like a real person – listen and react to them, form opinions about them, like them or hate them. These were guidelines that were created because they do make scenework a lot easier, especially in the beginning; the problem is that somewhere along the way they became gospel, and often get taught in concept as such, because people didn't think to analyze and digest what was being taught.

This concept is unfortunately rarely analyzed, so we get a lot scenes like:

Player A: Mom, I had a hard time at school today.

Player B: That's okay, son. School will get better.

Rest of class: [Quietly checking their cell phones]

Which is not necessarily a bad scene, and following the “name the relationship” rule is technically perfect. It is however, a tad boring. Nobody cares if you're parent/child or boss/employee or lonely housewife/pool boy; we care that you understand interpersonal relationships well enough to make those exchanges more than just a name or a time limit.