To Err is Improv Part 2

So how do mistakes ruin a scene? I like to think of it this way: imagine your scene is a ship at sea, thousands of miles from home, no land in sight, driving into the great blue unknown. Now, any mistake made on this ship could potentially doom it: steering, navigation, morale, food, disease and any number of other things that could potentially go wrong. Now with your scene, you have an opportunity after each mistake to treat it as a gift instead; to make it an offer instead of an error. Small mistakes are easier to correct than others – calling a character “Tom” instead of “Tim” or “Bob” are relatively minor errors, in the same magnitude as maybe a minor miscalculation in navigation. An error that small can sometimes be ignored altogether; it doesn't really matter what the character's name is, and a small miscalculation might still get you pretty close to your destination, or at least not that far off course. The larger the error gets however, the harder it is to ignore and still keep the ship together, and the more the error needs to be justified and incorporated. Making multiple mistakes back-to-back without opportunities to justify them drive the ship to the briny deep much quicker (rotten food + off course + dangerous storm + disease = Davy Jones' Locker; rotten food – rationing + off course – course correction + dangerous storm – more beer + disease – medicine = OK).

“You learn more losing races than winning them.” - Frankie Avalon, Fireball 500

It's a little too easy to get bogged down in the details of failure – this is exemplified by what is called hindsight bias. Essentially, when you know the outcome of something, the events that lead up to that conclusion seem inevitable, and significantly changes how we perceive and remember those events. In retellings, irrelevant or inconsistent data is discarded for those data points which bolster the ultimate finding. But before we get to that final destination, the finality is obfuscated and buried in conflicting information – this makes sense, since after all, a good improv scene does not have a predetermined, fixed point prior to the scene, but afterwards all of the information presented make where we got to become the only available option. Which is a sign of a good scene – no conflicting information, or other possibilities, just a singularity of conclusion. The issue becomes that the more familiar we are with something, the less we tend to notice – we assume things as we think they should be, not how they are. The brain doesn't tend to notice a difference between an improv scene and real life, so when we step on stage, we don't tend to notice some things because on a subconcious level, we think we're observing real life, and we have a list of things that we do normally in real life. Except, these are imaginary situations we are presented with, and we need to pay a little more heed to pick up some of the abnormal minutiae. The noticing is what is important, usually as part of an active experience, not a passive one.

To Err is Improv Part 1

From the very first time we start improv, we are taught that one of the basic rules is that there are no mistakes (or at least I hope you were). The very nature of the craft is that nothing you can possibly do is wrong because, since there is no script, technically nothing can be a mistake. By definition, a mistake is a wrong action, and how can anything necessarily be wrong when there is no “right”? After all, improv is in the interpretive, and what is right to you is correct – there isn't a test proctor who can grade you against what the right answers were. On the flip side however, everyone who's ever gotten notes after a show or class knows that it is possible to make mistakes, but how is this possible? A quick check of scenes that are “right” and ones that are “wrong” shows where the rubric lies: it's not in the individual answers, but in the piece as a whole, and from that perspective, we want something that is entertaining for an audience. But that still doesn't satisfy the dichotomy in mistake making.

“The Buddha said each mistake is a rebirth ... don't you want to get reborn?” - Charlie Crews, Life

Improv is, in a strictly technical sense, a practice that is built for failure. When systems or tools are designed to maximize success and minimize failure, they are built with what are known as constraints – devices meant to block failure. A Phillip's head screwdriver has the familiar plus sign shape that locks into a Phillip's head screw, and as a result it is difficult to use incorrectly because the system doesn't allow for many configurations. This may explain why some people prefer multiple choice tests over essay ones; multiple choice answers effectively constrain the possible answers. Improv has no such constraints – anything is possible, which means there are an infinite number of ways to make mistakes. There are also an infinite number of ways to be correct, and a lot of improv games and forms are actually just a system of constraints meant to block the capacity for making errors, and drive you down a road of success. Because there are no errors in improv, we build the constraint that as information is added to a scene it becomes fact. (The first “Kitchen Rule” - don't deny the established reality.)

Then how is it possible that mistakes can drive a scene off the rails? First, it may be helpful to indicate a few common types of errors: errors of commission and omission and errors of wimping and waffling. An error of commission is one where someone intentionally goes against the scene, for example: calling someone “Dad” when they previously established as “Mom” simply because you didn't like the original decision. Errors of omission are ones where something is forgotten, not seen, or not heard – there is no malicious intent here, just human nature (more on this later). Errors of wimping are ones where a player prefers to keep things vague instead of concrete, for example, compare “Hand me that over there” with “Hand me that rifle next to the zombie head”. This is because when we are going to make a mistake, we would rather make that mistake by failing to do something as opposed to doing the wrong thing. Errors of waffling could also be thought of as errors of committing, where ideas are tossed away because we either don't feel like keeping it in the air or because we want to try another idea. It's also important to look at errors in terms of their significance: minor all the way up to major.

American Pie versus Technology, Part 3

(This is part 3 in a series - part one can be found in the archives over there (->) in November of 2010, and part 2 in January 2011.)

Kevin deserves special mention, largely due to the contributions made to the anti-tech argument made by his girlfriend Vicky. Kevin manages to win his girlfriend over with sexual techniques learned in the “Book of Love”, and there can seldom be a more non-modern tool than a paper book. Vicky on the other hand, has the hardest time losing her virginity – she is the only character who must be “talked into it” - and no surprise here, she is the one seen using the most technology. She is the only person in the first film seen driving (though early in “Pie”, Finch attempts a dramatic exit on a yellow Vespa, saying “Gentlemen, destiny awaits”, only to have his vehicle sputter underneath him. Clearly, he will travel to destiny on motorized transportation), and minutes later is seen using a vending machine, and a few scenes later again, is discussing manual stimulation with Jessica referring to it as “double clicking the mouse” - a direct reference to what is arguably the most powerful piece of technology today. Jessica even refers to Vicky's statement that her first time must be “the right time, the right place, the right moment”, by telling her it's just sex, and not a “space shuttle launch” - real modern rocket science! And her eventual realization that she wants to lose her virginity comes while she is doing homework with Jessica in a library, again paying homage to the power of the written academic word (and also possibly tying into the place where Kevin found the Book of Love, perhaps representing the purity of their previous physical interaction). Kevin does however benefit slightly from a modern staple – a phone call connects him with his brother in both “Pie” and “2”, and receives useful advice: the Book of Love in the former, and the idea to get a summer house in the latter. Why then does these phone calls actually result in success? Well the answer is that, while the phone calls do provide Kevin with useful information, it is incomplete. The Book does not get him laid, that honor falls to his being able to tell Vicky he loves her, and the lake house does not settle his concerns about his fading friendships, it is only a third act revelation about the friendship he has. Even at its best and most helpful, it would seem technology is still incomplete – it can only open the door, it is up to us to walk through it.

It would seem that technology is out to get anybody anywhere – Stifler's hotel reservation in Wedding is canceled by phone (in actuality at the hands of Finch off-screen, but only made possible by the lack of personal, face to face communication that a phone call provides). Additionally, his decimation of the flowers for Jim and Michelle's wedding in the same film is as a result of his incompetence in using technology as simple as a light switch (his flipping of random switches accidentally switches off the cooler keeping the flowers fresh). Stifler would seem to deserve special attention, however – he is three times embarrassed, none of which seem to have an underlying tech behind them: by drinking a cup of beer that Kevin has ejaculated into following fellatio with Vicky in the first film, by being peed on while wooing a freshman in the second film, and by being caught covered in cake and being licked in the crotch by dogs in the third film. This continual humiliation which does not come as a result of tech would seem to fly against my theory of the trilogy. But Stifler, if you will recall, is always presented as an outsider. He is popular, in that he hosts parties that are seemingly very popular, is capable of getting laid, however, he is always presented as being outside the primary group of friends of Jim, Kevin, Oz, and Finch (indeed at the end of the second act in “Pie”, Finch asks: “We were friends with Stifler?” Even these four do not see themselves as his friends, merely acquaintances.). Instead, Stifler has a number of people who watch his antics – he is seen entertaining the lacrosse team about Heather's possible sexual noises, gathering a crowd to make fun of Finch as he leaves the girl's restroom after putting laxative in his coffee, and uniting his football team in “Wedding” to make fun of Jim, but all of his bluster with these large groups of friends are largely one way – him telling jokes and other people watching and laughing. In this respect, Stifler is more like a blogger, tweeter, or message boarder. He has no real friends, only “followers”, in today's parlance. He is punished because he actually is technology, in a metaphorical sense. He chases after the kind of instant, self-gratification that has become so common in our interconnected society, and he is punished for it, until he begins to make real friends in “2”, and finally a worthy mate in “Wedding”. The first two films both feature a tracking shot following Stifler from room to room as he says hello to the respective party-goers, but he has no meaningful conversations with anyone he talks to, instead just resorting to witty, snippy, and snide comments – a sort of wiki-walk/commment hybrid.

If anything, the films make the statement that modern technology stands in the way of real intimacy and real relationships – though at the time the internet was limited, today it is possible to have an entire life on-line with seldom having to venture into the real world. “Pie” seems to take the stance that real life is better – for example, even though Jim is a stammering idiot around Nadia, she still has a thing for him. The films tell us one simple thing – people who use technology are made the worse for it, and those that choose a simpler, more social experience are made the better for it. In order to grow up, you gotta unplug, go out, and live a little.

For Charity!

A few weeks ago I caught a disaster movie marathon at a local theater, the centerpiece of which was Irving Allen's disaster epic “The Towering Inferno”. “Inferno” is a movie on a grand scale, and is first and foremost proof that viewers had an obsession with procedural dramas well before “Law & Order”. There are some things that are a little dated, but what sticks out the most are some rather clunky dialogue bits – ones that don't advance plot, deepen characters or stakes, and are often uttered by random characters: for example a shot of people evacuating the building holds on an older couple who say that there were supposed to be fire drills, but none were ever conducted. There is a clear point to the movie – entertainment, but the filmmakers took the opportunity to deliver important (though not subtle) messages about fire safety.

As artists, our goal is often very basic – to entertain (or on a deeper level, illustrate on the human condition). This doesn't make what we do normally ignoble or unvirtuous; something could be said for providing laughter to the masses, but often that is as far as we go. The possibility is there to do something good with our craft either by message (even if it is the hamfisted approach that “Inferno” takes) or by product. Improv is actually a very useful tool for both kinds of change – it is unique in that it is able to instantly change to meet developing pop culture, news, or social changes as well as being an exceedingly populist craft in that its inspiration is derived directly from audience influence.

I've now organized two different improv charity shows, and I firmly believe that this craft can be very useful for doing good, and appropriately so – it is the most populist art form, one where even the objective audience gets to participate and also because it is cheap to produce. Most improvisers are used to doing gigs for no money, so you typically can get away without having a limited (or no) performer's budget; the only true cost that you won't be able to escape from will be space rental. If you want to do a charity show, you can always look into cheap options: the first show I produced was on a university campus and because we were a student organization, we could rent a very large, very nice space on a Saturday afternoon for no cost. With enough logistical working and sufficient advance notice, you may even find a space willing to allow you to use their usual space for free. (People are very rarely loathe to help out a cause, they usually just lack the initiative.)

As for the show itself – I recommend the simpler, the better. You may have a fantastic, high concept idea that you have been just dying to put in front of an audience, but the key is to make the show lean & accessible. Something fun, and light – with emphasis being on things that anybody can step in and enjoy – is better. Save your new, experimental 'prov for your regular showcases. What can often work well is a drawing: at the university show, we had a bunch of local businesses donate some gift certificates and the like which we raffled off (mostly because university regulations prevented us from selling tickets, so this was how we raised money). For the current show, we're just charging admission, and everything over cost (which is, with free actors, only space rental) we're donating. Beyond that you just need to market the hell out of it. Unfortunately for productions like ours, which have limited budgets, you need to get creative, but the internet actually provides a bunch of cheap alternatives which have varying levels of success. Any free print listing is a must get, but never underestimate the power of word of mouth; the strange energy of these kinds of shows is a product of the “special” or “one-time-onliness” factor, but also the rather common desire among people to help others, especially if you're giving them something in return (that's the performance!).

Now, go out and spread some cheer; for charity!

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.

A Longform Workshop