Our Scenes are Our Children

I still remember the first scene I ever saw that I actually knew was going on too long. It was Fall of 2004, we were playing a game of "Stand, Sit, Kneel", and after a minute or so of some intermittent laughter, the scene suddenly went decidedly unfunny. This isn’t to say that all the sudden someone was getting raped, or there was talk of killing puppies - it just ceased getting laughs. And it wasn’t that it just became unfunny, it (even worse) became uninteresting, and unwatchable. And gradually the audience began to tune out, and very quickly a feeling of panic swept over all the performers.

Everybody wanted the scene to end, but we also distinctively wanted the scene to have just one more laugh to end on. I was the one in charge of the bell during this little fiasco. Afterwards, I silently cursed myself for letting a scene run WAY too long, and also for not saving my fellow improvisers.

Generally, only very rarely will a scene pop up that is this bad, but boy when they do, they can easily cripple a show, especially if they come near the end. And they don’t always have to be three minute fiascos; I’ve seen thirty second scenes that have already gone on too long (though they often feel much longer).
It’s too easy and by definition wrong, to say that a scene was just doomed to failure from the beginning. (How depressing is it to hear that? That statement says that no matter what you did or how hard you worked, you wouldn’t have succeeded anyway.) As a general rule, a random combination of any number of performers from all across the universe should never be the death knell for a scene. This is because the basic dogma of improvisation is to just let any two people interact and enjoy the sparks that fly from basic human interaction.
It shouldn't be the premise; the previous scene's premise was a Boy Scout leader and two scouts at a strip club. Sure, maybe a premise that is a little too SNL, but certainly no one can say that that scene can't be funny or at least interesting to watch. And any postulating post-show with your fellow improvisers will undoubtedly prove any idea can become a funny scene (or course the difference here is the amount of time you have on stage versus the bar).

Here, though, the real question isn’t why it failed, but more why it failed so hard. And as a result, when and why we edit. As improvisers, we are all taught a basic rule, that all scenes have the potential to be great. If we can just be patient and follow all the improv rules we have learned, every scene can be a winner (hence all the talk of performers and premises). At the same time, we know that not every scene will work; something which we prove all the time in the laboratory of the stage. But just like any great theory, it’s still hard to say that this one is unproven (see the previous bar comment). This firm holding to this very basic rule of improv is what makes us hold on to scenes for dear life. Even good ones. If we take the time to get on stage with each other, we feel the need to explore each scene all the way out, often well past the edit point.

The other problem is part of our basic programming that we get from watching T.V., reading books, etc. We want to logically end our scenes. A big laugh, a logical conclusion to the plot, a change of heart in a character, or at a cliffhanger. Sure this is all well and good, but we operate in a universe where those things are not guaranteed, or even possible sometimes. So instead of holding out to tie up our work perfectly, or hanging on to our scenes like they are the only ones we will ever have, remember your primary obligation: to your fellow performers.

But possibly remember the even more basic tenet of improvisation: nothing is planned or pre-written, so who says you have to keep doing anything if you don’t like it?

The Interpreter

Back in 2004, I used to write movie reviews for the USM student newspaper, the "Student Printz". Because I occasionally feel lazy, and it seems a shame that all of five people ever read these, I've decided to repost them here, in the original versions that I emailed to my editor, Noel, all those years ago.

Sometimes the distances that actors and actresses travel in terms of characters is monumental. Take “The Interpreter’s” primary stars: Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. It was less than a decade ago that Kidman was following George Clooney around trying to disarm nuclear weapons in “The Peacemaker”, and not that long ago that Penn’s Spicoli was ordering pizzas to Mr. Hand’s class in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. “The Interpreter” shares this kind of idea: it’s a classic feeling film, very personal, small cast with a Hitchcock-like plot of a geopolitical who dunnit. But in modern times, this classic kind of movie is much more of a supercharged tale of revenge and political suspense.

“The Interpreter” opens up with Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), a United Nations interpreter, going to the U.N. general assembly sound room late at night to retrieve some personal items when she hears a conversation regarding an assassination on President Zuwanie, the genocidal leader of the small African nation of Matobo. The Secret Service dispatches Tobin Keller and Dot Woods (Sean Penn and Catherine Keener) two agents with Foreign Dignitary Protection. As they investigate the possibility of assassination, they turn up an enormous amount of dirt on Broome, who used to be a revolutionary in Matobo following the death of her parents. Keller may not believe her at first and has more mounting suspicions, but there are definitely dark hands at work leading to mysterious masked men and ruthless assassinations of President Zuwanie’s only remaining opponents.

The melting pot of New York City and the global unity of the United Nations building act only as a stage for dual plot of both personal and global struggles for forgiveness and revenge. Both Broome and Keller have semi-dark histories of loved ones lost to tragedy, which focus both of their current efforts to try and save people. These interpersonal struggles act to mirror the bigger plot as to whether or not Zuwanie should be assassinated to better the people of the nation he has oppressed.

A movie with a plot about political turmoil would have been traditionally treated as a sufficient film, but apparently someone felt that additional, deeper subplots were necessary to drive the concept. Though the presence of these subplots never brings the film to a “halt”, they do serve to drag the plot down to a “yield”. This isn’t helped at all by a possible romantic interest between Keller and Broome. What really drives this movie is the international turmoil, as it is far more interesting than morbid lists Broome’s brother kept of dead Matobans or Penn’s constant look of pensive severity. This film is greatly benefited by strong supporting cast, including Keener and Jesper Christensen as a Dutch ex-mercenary and security officer to Zuwanie.

“The Interpreter” sums up to being a pretty good movie – not necessarily “fun”, but definitely interesting and exciting. The theme of pacifism is an interesting complement to a film that highlights some of America’s biggest contemporary fears as well as some neat action sequences. You can always count on a movie like “The Interpreter” to make you feel good: the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and hopefully the world is made a better place. At least until next week.

Character Arrested Development

I still occasionally get emails from my old college improv troupe, and I'm always excited to read ones where they're discussing improv theory; I love it primarily for nostalgia, but also because I like reading how the philosophies of people I trained and performed with have evolved. For a lot of college troupes in the hinterlands, each group is its own little microcosm of improv exploration, and as a result, they're generally limited to things they learn through books on the subject.
 

My favorite pops up like clockwork once a semester: the "character development" email. It goes like this: "we had a rough show, we need to work on fundamentals, so next week we're going to go over character development." But why do we pick character development over things like scenework, being "in-the-moment", or a bajillion other skills? It's the improv scapegoat. Had a bad show? It was probably bad character development. Why? Because I have no idea what it means, so I probably don't have it. It's a term that falls into the same category of "process development", "synergy", and "paradigm shift" of abstract things that sound great on paper, but have no real definition. I don't even remember how the term entered into our vernacular; I've never read it in a book or heard any teacher use that exact term anytime since. It was always just there.

For years, I broke the term down to define it. "What is character development?" someone might ask me on an improv game show. "Why, it's the development of a character arc throughout the course of the scene!" I would answer proudly. While it's true that that kind of character development (which is probably more likely to be called emotional development, scene development, or some other such acting term I'm too ignorant to know) is important, that's not what's meant by character development. The problem with trying to do it that way is we get a bunch of scenes where person A is trying to change person B in three minutes! 

Our character development practice became, every semester, two hours of scenes about breakup, love, or death. They were boring and uninteresting, and we would immediately go back to doing other things the next week.
What we all meant (but were unable to articulate, and, even worse, unable to teach) was creating rich, unique characters. Characters that were more than just a funny voice or a strange bodily affliction. What we wanted was to create characters that the audience would be interested in long enough to want to see a character arc.  (Something compounding the problem: improv shows like "Whose Line" rarely, if ever have richly defined characters.  Their scenes tend to, unfortunately, be just a funny voice or strange bodily affliction.)

So if we're not trying to negotiate a character change, what is character development actually supposed to be? The now-me, on the same gameshow, would answer "creating a character on the fly that can survive on his/her own in the universe we've created". What you need to take away is this: a character needs at minimum, two things to survive. One, a point of view, and two, a want. The other stuff (occupation, mannerisms, etc.) is good, but you've got to leave that to be discovered. And most importantly, just relax in the scene and remember that this is the universe that your character inhabits and to try to react as that character would.

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.

Personal Statement

When I applied for grad school, I had to write a personal statement, so naturally I chose to write about superheroes. To this day I believe that this essay is the primary reason I was accepted.

Batman and Superman. To many, they are the two most well known comic book heroes in the world. But to me, the represent the dichotomy of humanity: what we would like to do, and what we can do. While it would be great to be able to crush coal into diamonds in our bare hands or fly across the planet in the blink of an eye like Superman, mere mortals are not capable of such feats. Instead, we must be like Batman, and do everything we can to do some good in this world. To me, I’ve always seen science through the eyes of Batman: still dreaming, but dreaming about what good we can do now, with what we already know. This is why when the majority of my classmates went the way of research, I went the way of analytical work.

I have always been interested in science; even in high school, I was one of the few students who were actually interested in pursing any form of science beyond graduation. I took every science course offered and was always at the top of my classes. I was respected among my teachers as being a very capable lab student. When it came time to attend college, I chose chemistry over other sciences because I felt that chemistry offered a many more opportunities for direct use of its principles in every corner of the world and in everything that we do. Also, my father had been a chemistry student and I always appreciated his analytical abilities and felt like that was a trait that I wanted to learn.

In college, I worked hard to learn the basic scientific principles I would need later, and I always became a student that my fellow classmates relied on to be a leader in the lab groups. My hard work made me eligible for the senior honor’s program at the university, and my research in unnatural amino acid synthesis gave me the opportunity to become familiar with a number of analytical methods well beyond the scope and duration that the regular class laboratories allowed.

Since graduation, I have been employed at an environmental testing company in the organic analytical department. I have been solely responsible for the volatiles analyses we conduct, and as a result I have learned an enormous amount about the maintenance and operation of the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer as well as about the ability to analyze problems and figure out their solutions.

I believe a master’s degree in forensic science will give me the knowledge I will need to be an effective and positive addition to this growing field. It is my dream to continue to use my knowledge of chemistry and my analytical disposition in new and exciting ways, and I feel that forensic science is the best way for me to do that. Most importantly, I don’t feel that I have learned enough yet to be as effective as I could be and continued education will undoubtedly be the best course to take. As for specifically selecting the University of Illinois at Chicago, UIC consistently came up at the top of lists when I searched for forensic science programs as well as being recommended by the criminal justice faculty at my undergraduate university. And while a number of universities may offer forensic science master’s degrees, UIC has the added benefit of a big city experience. I have resided in Mississippi for nearly my entire life, and while I have definitely enjoyed my experiences, I would love the chance to live in different part of the country and in a different kind of environment.

I selected forensic science because I enjoy its practical applications as well as the tremendous good it can do in using our knowledge of science to protect everyone. As I gradually developed as a scientist, I came to understand what I enjoyed the most about chemistry: using a set of clues to solve a problem. Everyone enjoys a good mystery and I enjoy solving them.

Pieces of the Whole

I overheard one of the local improv teachers here give the following advice to a student: “shortform is for the audience, longform is for the improvisers”, which is a very distressing argument for a teacher to make and is, while very ignorant, one that comes up time and time again as an occasionally legitimate argument against longform improvisations: longform is a artistic device where nothing happens.

The AV Club published a very interesting article that explored the modern style of storytelling in some of the more “acclaimed” programming (e.g. Breaking Bad, Luck, The Sopranos). The way seasons, and in some cases, entire shows are divined now to reward sustained and completist viewing of seasons – the emphasis has shifted the emphasis to how an episode fits into the greater picture of the show. This is very similar to the way we think longform should work: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A great longform piece is enriched by the order and placement of the pieces therein, elevating it in meaning and purpose. But this means that we may sacrifice making those parts worthwhile in name of focusing on the “bigger message”. This precocious, and dare I say pretentious approach to creating is what threatens to drag any unit of art down.

Shortform's strength is also it's greatest weakness: a slavish amount of attention heaped on a single game, that comes at the expense of fitting it into the fabric of the larger piece. Shortform is as guilty of being shortsighted as longform is of being farsighted in this respect. We spend an inordinate amount of attention in a Harold trying to say “the something” that we can potentially hobble the entire production. This slavish devotion to perfection in the piece is an admirable and lofty goal, but the focus must always be on the present. The great improv questions of 1) if this is true, what else is true, and 2) if this is true, why is it true suddenly become more about the entire act of improvising, rather than just tools to play good scenes. (Del even said that the end is in the beginning.)

An over-attention to detail, one that is meticulous, even compulsive and obsessive, can derail attempts to be experimentative and explorative, stagnating innovation. The entire piece should be reflective, not the scenes. The scenes should be concrete, and something should happen in each and every one of them. These concrete blocks build on each other to create something meaningful – hollow, empty bricks build nothing of significance.

So how did we get here? Well, I have to agree with the AV Club's conclusion that “creating a lengthy, layered narrative is really fucking hard.” People like that teacher up there have no doubt seen some improv group that got in their own way of having fun in the moment and got caught up in being profound, which groups will do as they learn to master the craft. You see those kinds of shows in an audience mostly full of improvisers, because improvisers are far more forgiving of an ambitious move that completely fails than a typical non-improviser audience would be. But you don't get to the point of being able to tell deeper stories by refusing to take the risk.

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.