Top Five!

Let's do an experiment, right now: write down your top five movies of all time. These are what you consider the best movies you've seen, hands down. You know, top notch film-making – great writing, acting, directing, the whole works. Movies that you think everyone should see as a lesson in “great films”. For the sake of the experiment, I'm going to say the best movie I've ever seen is “Requiem for a Dream”. Now I want you write down your top five favorite movies of all time. These are what you consider the kind of movie that if it comes on TV on a Sunday afternoon, or if you're bored, you're gonna watch this movie, beginning to end – the kind of movie that you tell friends “Oh, I've seen that movie a million times”. For the sake of the experiment, I'm going to say my favorite movie is “American Pie”. Now that you have your two lists – compare them. Do you have any cross over between what you consider an example of “great cinema” and what you consider a “great frickin' movie”? My money says you have few, if any movies that have found a home on both of your lists.

This disparity, I think represents the problem that you get with a lot of intermediate improvisers. On one hand, everybody has a thing that they love to do: dinosaurs, mad scientists, pirates, whatever – something that really entertains them. At the same time though, everybody has a list of things that they think that they should be doing. Usually scenes about heartbreak, death, dying – you know, heady, “important” topics. Nine times out of ten, I would wager that when you ask people to list the five best movies of all time, they aren't even listing movies that they even like. 'Oh, “Citizen Kane”, “Casablanca”, “The Bicycle Thief”' they'll say, listing off a whole slew of movies that AFI or Roger Ebert or someone else listed at some point, that they think they should like. I've seen “Citizen Kane”, and it's a tad long and overwrought, and I'd wager to say that it's a bit over-rated (there, I said it – and by the way, no one was even in the room when he said “Rosebud” - deal with it). But we do improv the same way – we think we're supposed to be doing serious, dramatic scenes where we tackle the great mysteries and problems of the universe (especially longform, this is our biggest weak point). In fact, even though I think “Requiem” is an unbelievably good movie, I don't think I could ever watch it again – it's just too freaking intense. But we worry that if we don't like these cinematic masterpieces, we'll be seen as uncultured, uneducated, and worse, not interesting. Or as Keith Johnstone said: “'culture' is a minefield in which an unfashionable opinion can explode your self-esteem.”

I , however, could (and would, and have) watch “American Pie” or “Ghostbusters” a near infinite number of times and not get bored. Now are these the great examples of movie-making, the kind that changed the art of the cinema forever? Not even close, but they are fun and enjoyable, so isn't that what we should be striving for every time? We definitely shouldn't steer away from something important when we get there naturally, but isn't striving for that at full sprint the opposite of an organic discovery, even if it is in pursuit of some universal truth? We are, at our most basic, entertainers, but our first audience is ourselves.

This all runs back to that same basic lesson of improv: being honest on stage. These attempts to make deeper and emotional (and in our heads by extension, more interesting and enlightening) scenes are just another try at keeping our own internal truth from shining forth. We're afraid that if we do an improvised “American Pie”, that won't be seen as good or unique or clever compared to an improvised “Requiem for a Dream”. But that very move makes our improv not good because it's not real and honest. We should never try to guess what an audience wants to see, we should always try and do what interests and entertains us and do that to the best of our ability. Besides, which would you rather watch over and over again?

Better yet, which would you rather perform over and over again?

Improvised X

I took in a workshop a couple of weeks ago on improvised story-telling, which got me immediately intrigued, because it's the one type of improv that I've done very little of. The improvised movie workshop I took focused partly on “linear, improvised story-telling”, but was light on stringent “this is how you tell improvised stories” info. Improv (longform especially) is largely the way it is by the sheer nature of improvising with a bunch of people: the strange, disjointed sequence of scenes tumbled together (like we see in a montage, Harold, etc.) wasn't done because we are as an artistic collective consciousness challenging artists who are interested taking the juxtapositional approach to thematic presentation. We don't want to be weird, elusive and challenging showmen, it's just that improvised story-telling is hard. Keeping a story on track, and having it make sense and be logical is difficult when you have a bunch of players all pulling it in different directions.

What I've noticed though, is that the improvised stories that really seem to work well are ones where there is a mutually agreed upon theme or genre being improvised. This is commonly known as an improvised X, where x equals the genre being done up, be it “Star Trek”, “Zombies”, “Shakespeare”, or whatever. These are the ones that appear to work the best, because there is mutually agreed upon framework that makes the whole process easier, and because everyone is essentially using the same palette. You know walking into an improvised X show what types of stories, characters, and motifs are likely to be seen. When we learned the improvised movie, one of the first things we learned was genre recognition so that we could rapidly identify the genre we were working in. Even the guy teaching our story-telling class has been having success with his show, which he describes as being the in style of Alfred Hitchcock/Twilight Zone. The shows I've seen where the improvised story doesn't work are ones where there is no agreed upon palette, and as a result the audience gets a strange hodgepodge of stories, none of which seem to jive, and then there's a clumsy rushing together of all the plot (a shoehorning, if you will) at the end, seemingly just so the players can say “See? We did it! It was all the same story all along!”.

You could make the argument that this is the same reason why just basic scenework doesn't seem to work. I'm a big advocate of specifics and details giving scenework it's definition and easy-to-follow-itude. Or rather, scenes that are strange and non-definitive are hard to follow. At the same time though, I also promote the idea of “following your obvious”; an obvious being a piece of information that can easily be deduced from previous information. What the obvious is can differ from person to person, based roughly on how his or her brain works. For example, a couple of years ago I was hanging with a friend of mine and his brother, and we were all taking about this story my friend was trying to write. Based on the simple idea he had, I proposed a spy twist and his brother wanted a vampire edge. Neither of us was wrong, but the difference is in what our go-to's or obviouses were. I knew spy stories and his brother knew vampires, so that was where we felt the most comfortable. (Possibly an extension of write what you know?)

Thought of in this framework then, where two people are in a scene together building the scene from the ground up, providing information, the scene converging on being defined (essentially becoming “this scene is about X”) can be thought of as a coalescing obvious. Or: what I think of as obvious based on the known information is now the same as what you think is obvious. We now know we are in the scene where X happens. When the obviouses have not coalesced (which is to say one or more players is confused about the current scene facts) is when moves are made which don't seem to make sense. Looked at from the opposite end, bad scenes arise from two players who have not agreed upon what they are doing. (If my friend's brother and I were doing a scene and were both being either obstinate or non-specific, the bad scene would be because I think we're in a spy scene and he thinks we're in a vampire scene. Possibly very interesting provided we are providing definition like crazy, but a bit complex and confusing to nail down in three minutes.)

The only real problem is everyone has a different obvious, and you need to find a common ground of interest for everyone to do an improvised X. If you're going to be pursuing the same story for 30 minutes to an hour, you want all your players to be invested in the genre. My group toyed with a number of concepts last year, and we never could find a common ground among six people. “What about improvised 'Lost'?” “I've never seen it, but I'll give a shot”. I appreciate the flexibility, but unfortunately, not good enough. If you're going to be picking apart a genre well enough to put it back together on the fly in new ways, everyone has to love and know the style.

No conscientious objectors, only invested and involved people, playing to the obvious.

Expert or Fun?

I recently lost two players in my improv team for identical reasons: both people told me that they felt that were now so good that playing with the rest of the team was a waste of time for them. They indicated that they were now too talented to be working with their team-mates. This of course is disappointing: no one ever wants to hear that their fellow improvisers no longer want to spend time playing with them, especially when someone tells you you're not good enough – what a blow to the ego. This of course is one of the ultimate dichotomies of improv – talent versus playability. Or rather: is it better to find team-mates that are in equal or greater talent than ourselves, or work with who we're with?

I would never begrudge someone the desire to push their talents and improv limits in pursuit of better, more challenging work – I haven't had many, but I've had enough of those moments, the ones where everything goes right and all the disparate elements seem to run together into a critical mass, and step off stage charged by that feeling of, for lack of a better word, magic. Those moments remind us why we do this in the first place, and that rush is improviser's equivalent to heroin – it's what keeps pushing us to achieve more challenging and interesting pieces, and its my hope that every improviser will feel at least one of those just once. But the question is, should we be so hard up to play with other talented folks that we treat ones we consider under-talented with such callousness? One thing I've noticed is that everybody wants to be on a Trophy Wife, or a Beer Shark Mice, or a Cook County, or a Deep Schwa, but no one wants to actually exert the effort required to reach those points. Those teams I just named have been playing for five plus years together, with few, if any, cast changes. Just those guys and gals, every week, stepping on stage together, everyone yearning for the same thing. You, unfortunately, can't just walk on to teams like those. I'm reminded of a statistic I've seen quoted at least four times in as many weeks that it requires 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a craft. We often tend to forget that, and blame other people for “holding us back”. The problem is, if everyone only played with people that were already “good”, then there would be no new improvisers, because we all suck in the beginning.

Let us not forget that improv is not just about being the talented, funny independent proprietor of the craft, and that easily half of the entire craft of improv is about learning how to work with others. Improv is, and always will be, a team sport – one where a group of people work together to create a product greater than the sum of the parts. Sure, there are one-man shows of improv that exist, but nothing will ever match up to watching a group of people playing together to create a mutual art piece. It's this half of the craft that is often under-taught, because you can't really teach how to be a good troupe member. But make no mistake about it's unending importance in everything you do in improv, we love to watch these teams perform not just because they are funny people as individuals (as they often are) but also to see how funny they are together.

Now that having been said, you should never stay in a group you don't enjoy being a part of. As I and others have said, look for people to play with who you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with. If your team passes that litmus test, then stay with them; the most talented person in the world who is an insufferable prick will always be remembered as a talented prick, but there is no replacement for a good attitude and someone you enjoy being with. It's only when we value talent over personality that we run into trouble. You certainly don't want to be known as the “guy who only plays with people who he finds talented”, sure people may be flattered at first with your seeming honor, but deep down everyone knows that your loyalty is skin deep and you will be the first to run when the going gets rough. And if your team members can't trust you and be open with you, you'll only ever do the kind of shallow, vapid improv you were hoping to avoid in the first place.

Remember that talent is only half the game, and the other half is learning to love the people you're on stage with. They were willing to risk their selves with you, the least we can do is offer the same in return.

Lessons Learned

Next week, I will have been teaching and coaching my first group for exactly one year – exciting times. I thought it might be a good idea to go back and share what I feel I have learned from teaching these new improvisers. These are my lessons learned, and maybe if I had read this article this time last year, things would have been easier, but there's no reason others can't learn from this – experience comes cheaper second hand. Coaching, directing, and teaching are all peculiar skills for the improviser, in that there isn't a class to learn it from, and even most improv books only dedicate a single chapter or part of a chapter to the subject. Even Spolin's fantastic book is more concerned with learning the craft with the end game being putting on a scripted play of some sort. (And teaching children. Are improvisers like children? Discuss.) Instead, I feel like this sub-artform is a melange of what we have seen other people do and sheer terror, or to paraphrase Astronaut Jon McBride: a director who doesn't have any fear probably isn't operating his troupe to its maximum.

Be prepared for disappointment – unless you are fortunate enough to operate a group that is sponsored by a theater, you won't have a regular practice or performance space. Despite all attempts to secure said space, it will always fall through. Practices will be inconsistent in the beginning, schedules will get in the way, practice spaces will be lost and replaced with who knows what, so just be prepared to face the inevitable that things will never go as planned, or even an approximation of that.

Set goals and objectives – this is for two reasons: one, without anything to measure against, you can't know how you're doing. Attempting to compare your group to any other group is tragically misguided, because no two groups are alike, and those variables can never be accounted for. Second, as the director, you need to have good solid answers to questions. “I don't know” is acceptable (provided you can come up with an answer after a little research), but the director is the steady hand that guides the group in a single direction. Instead, decide what you want to see, and keep nudging the group to that destination. Give options, and you might as well not even be there. Also, if you don't set goals, how will you be disappointed when you don't make them? (see #1)

Try and find a few people you like – improv is a team sport, and a social activity, and you're going to have to hang around these people at least once a week for a few hours. This is the great thing about starting your own group outside of any sponsorship – you don't have to keep people you don't like, and you shouldn't.

Let the reins out a little bit – so much of improv is figuring these things out for yourself; there are a whole bunch of things that you just can't teach, and you just have to work the puzzle out on your own so that you can see how it fits together. The director should never be “mom”, and hopefully one day they'll be able to run off on their own.

You are responsible – I don't mean this in the sense of “show up on time, prepared”; (you should be doing that anyway). What I more mean is that you are Dr. Frankenstein, and this is your monster – be prepared to deal with your creation. After you've set your goals, given your objectives, and let out the reins, don't be surprised to find that you've created exactly what you wanted, and maybe you wanted things a little different than what you ended up with. Ah, the hubris. Sadly, the director is responsible, and you get what you ask for.

Some people can't be saved – Hi, Hubris again. Remember me? We like to come in thinking that we'll be cowboys and astronauts, taming the wild frontiers, breaking new ground, and making every person in the group an integral and talented member of a well oiled and imminently watchable team. Sadly, you can only help the people who want to be helped. Focus on the people asking you for help, and hope the other ones will come around.

And would I do it again? Oh, hell yeah.

The Harold Theory: Part 2

The twelve questionnaires for the first show revealed the following data: six subjects had seen some form of improvisation prior to the show, six answered that they definitively had not (one sheet put it simply: “No.”), had not seen any live, or did not answer the question. Of those that had seen some form of improv previously, there were three instances of 'Whose Line', three of NCT, and four I defined as “other” (meaning any reference to a group not explicitly named in the question which did include one instance of iO West). Note that this adds up to more than the number in the “yes” group – multiple named groups on a single sheet were each counted. One individual noted four different group instances as well as noting that he was an “improv junkie” (glad we could provide a fix). One individual in the “non” group stated that he had only seen primarily stand up. As this was not improv, this was not counted into the six affirmative improv watchers group.

The four questionnaires from the second show, one instance of Second City was mentioned, the other three mentioned no other groups or organizations.

A number of subjects used the questionnaire to air grievances (“Music is too loud”), or to single out specific players or scenes. This occurred both in positive and negative lights. Most took the sheets to provide constructive criticism on scenework technique for the group as a whole. From the first show, ten individuals responded yes to whether they enjoyed the piece, the other two did not answer the question (hope we did, guys). In the second show, all four responded positively that they did enjoy the Harold. In the second set, half (n=2) replied that they enjoyed how the different “plots” interweaved – one individual even stating that he thought the beginning was confusing, but then he “caught on.” Only two people answering the sheets in the first show explicitly stated that they would like an explanation of what the Harold is (17%). No one explicitly made that request in the second show. Of those two, one stated “Maybe an explanation of what the Harold is?”, so the author is not sure if this is trepidation about asking the question or perhaps not being sure if he needed a reply. A few in show one (n=3) replied with some variation on wishing for more structure, or being a little confused, but none of these sheets said they couldn't understand the piece. Instead, it seems that there was only difficulty in understanding the show (which may be related to us, in my objective opinion, no where near our best work in the past). Three people also replied that the piece was either “slow”, “too long”, or should have been “shorter”. Clearly, longer, meandering and confusing scenework may contribute to some difficulty in understanding the piece. If the players are struggling and the piece becomes amorphous as a result, then it will be difficult to follow for even experienced and informed players.

These results are comforting; they seem to indicate that a minimalist approach to explaining the Harold is sufficient to ensure an audience's enjoyment. I have on more than one occasion witnessed an audience glaze over during an explanation of a game or piece, so my recommendation would be to skip explanations of games and forms entirely (I'm looking at you “What are you doing!”) whenever possible. Certainly, the fewer hard rules in a particular section, the less needs to be explained. Games like “Fresh Choice” rely on the rules in order for the scene to function, but contrast to the Harold, which really has no rules, and can function with only a minor amount of structure.

The current study instrument is sufficient as a questionnaire, but the questions will need to be reworded for future work, as they don't currently assess the proposed theory sufficiently – instead, most subjects focused on answering whether parts of the show were confusing, instead of whether knowing the “rules” was instrumental to understanding. The difficulty is in designing questions that keep the focus on this area of research without leading audience members to a particular conclusion. This study is being expanded, so if you have a group that would be interested in joining the study, please contact me for instructions. All improv, short and long, is currently being investigated.

The Harold Theory: Part 1

A couple of months ago, I talked about a theory that the Harold does not have to be explained for audiences to enjoy it and appreciate it. Basically, the way I see it is that if an average individual who has never had a music or painting class can sit down and enjoy Bach or Van Gogh, respectively, then why do we feel the need to try to over explain improv to people? Most improv teams outside of the Big 3 improv hotspots that I've seen always try to give the audience a “crash course” in Harold theory before jumping into it: “First, we'll do an opening, then three scenes, then a game, then three scenes that are somehow related to their respective scenes, etc.” Why do we do that? The audience doesn't care, and I believe they don't need a road map to enjoy the journey. Mostly, it's a knee jerk reaction because we explain games in shortform, so surely we must explain structure in longform then too, right? I believe that is not so, provided the players are competent enough to make strong choices, and stick to them. Lead strong, and the audience will follow. Bill Arnett wrote in a blog post that because he was an artist that he didn't have to subject his “research” to peer review, but I've always been more of a scientist anyway, so I will; I am testing this theory. For those of you who didn't really pay attention in science class – a theory is only good until it is tested, and proven over and over again.

Here is my testing instrument: at two recent improv shows of a group that I direct but do not perform in (and hopefully will continue to do so in the future), theater staff passed out an anonymous questionnaire to the audience immediately following our presentation of the Harold (the first of which followed an opening of a “Shotgun!”) during a brief ten minute intermission (for the second show, the Harold was preceded by two stand up performers). Audience members, who had paid to attend the show, were encouraged to fill out a sheet, but not required. 26 copies of the questionnaire were prepared, and twelve and four, respectively, were returned to me at the conclusion of the evenings. No inquiries were made as to where the missing questionnaires went. The sheet consisted of three questions:

1.Did you enjoy the piece? What did you or didn't you like about it?
2.Was there anything confusing about the piece? If so, what do you think would have made the piece easier to understand?
3.If you've seen any other improvisation before (National Comedy Theatre, 'Whose Line is it Anyway?', etc.) how would you compare the Harold to that?

The National Comedy Theatre (NCT) is a local shortform-only improv house well known in San Diego. The selection of these two examples of shortform were selected as what I felt was an obvious and well known counterpoint to traditional longform improvisation. The entire questionnaire was designed with the intention of not leading potential subjects one way or the other in regards to my theory, while also evaluating audience's perception of whether or not an outright explanation was needed to enjoy the piece.

The testing instrument does have some fault in that according to the sheets, some individuals were not sure which piece (Harold v Shotgun!) was the questioned piece, and some people only answered questions about Shotgun! Additionally there were four practicing improvisers from the San Diego scene in the audience at both shows, two of which (at the first show) did fill out sheets. The author is not aware if any of the others also filled out sheets.

Next week: the results!

Sean and I

So, can I prove that the group dynamics exist the way I claim they do? Well, the difficulty with any theory is proving that it exists absolutely (making it a law) but I can provide supporting documentation to support my theory. The first improv group I was in, I was a member of for a long time – four years nearly, with the last three spent acting as second in command of the group (officially: “Minister of Misinformation and Propaganda”). The president of the group was my good friend, Sean, so right off the bat, using the information I presented last week, one of us was the hero (or leader, chief, etc.) and the other was the second banana (“Lancer” to use the TVTropes parlance). As he was officially above me, there's no reason to believe that he wasn't the hero, and I the lancer (no complaints here, cooler title anyway).

Sean and I couldn't be a better case in point for the “five and up” man dynamic; Sean was fun, charismatic, creative, optimistic, energetic, easy going, and level headed. I, on the other hand, was strict, cold, a stickler for details and rules, pessimistic, cynical, angry, and volatile. Together, we filled out the dynamic at the top of the group, whether we knew it or not. (Of course we didn't, but I do remember talking with him at one point about our dichotomy.) Despite these facts, we were still friends, and our interplay allowed our group to work: we had two of the jobs filled in the group, the conflicting points of view, giving the group balance. Everyone else filled in the rest of the roles: logic, heart, etc. No one told us to behave like that: we just did, it was who we were, and the resulting self organization allowed the group to operated. I personally think that was some of the best times I've had in regards to a group of people I like to just hang out with.

On a side note, Sean may have realized the balance, because he occasionally called on me to be the enforcer. Sean knew he didn't want to be “that guy” who forces people to do things (even if they needed to be done), and that I had no qualms about it. The result would be that he was the inspired dreamer, and I was the hard authoritarian. Sometimes we may not like the job we have and would like to be the fun guy – alas that's not the way the world works. We sometimes have to play our strengths, regardless of the consequences.

My last thought – groups need not understand or even recognize the details of these circumstances for it to work (they if you do, you have greater freedom in playing with concepts and roles). These dynamics arise on their own, reorganizing if necessary. The most important trait is to just love the people you're on stage with. They're really the only ones that matter, anyway.