A to C

I’d like to propose a simple change in terminology for analyzing comedy and improv scenes. Often two person comedy scenes will have one character who is inappropriate, absurd, irrational, illogical or weird, and another character who’s role is to react to this strange character as we think an average person might. This other character is usually more reasonable, skeptical, logical, or rational than the strange one. 

The term that most people use for this is “straight man.” I love the concept, it’s extremely useful, but I hate the term. Every time I hear it, it sounds more and more tone deaf. Instead, I think we should use the term “voice of reason” instead:

the voice of reason (definition): Often when one character in a scene is odd, weird or strange, we need another character who is the voice of reason. This character’s job is to react as an ordinary person might to the absurd character. They might be skeptical of the other character’s point of view. They might react by being annoyed, or amazed, or shocked, or nonplussed.

The voice of reason does not have to act straight, or like a man, they have to react as a person, a person usually very similar to the real life performer behind the character. 

Actor/comedian Jason Mantzoukas comes on our show to talk about IMPROV. Are we breaking the rules of our show not discussing a person’s career? We are, and we don’t care. Because we love talking about improv.

We go deep. What’s good about it? How do the various shows that Jason regularly plays in work? What’s the best opening? How did The Sleepover (an improv show from UCB-NY in the early 2000s) work? What was Amy P. like as a teacher? ALL THIS AND MORE.

We loved this talk so much we let it go way long. AN HOUR AND FORTY MINUTES, geez louise. But you improv nerds are gonna love it. Everyone else: see you next episode!

Plus Will talks about the Magic Eraser and Anthony talks about seeing a punter who tried to be a hero and failed immediately.

As I have said before, most scenes that go bad go bad in the first ten seconds. In my previous post I explained the importance of listening to the person who starts the scene. Now, what are you listening for? For me, I am listening for scene type (Blog #3 - An Introduction to the Four Scene Types), and my position in the scene.

Take this scene start:                               Player 1                 (Obviously cooking over a stove)                 Breakfast is almost ready, dear.

What I hear/see is that we are in a kitchen and my partner is preparing me breakfast. Our genders will be determined by our actually sexes or by how player one chooses to play their character’s gender. In this instance lets assume Player 1 is a woman. I now know that I am in a kitchen and my wife is preparing me breakfast. I would only choose to play another woman if Player 1 indicated that I was one. I also choose husband because of “dear.” This scene appears to be normal so I can assume I am in a Realistic Scene. The scene type or dynamic may shift, but for now, my first response, I will try and present a normal husband as I perceive he would exist in reality. I would likely respond with something like:                               Me                  (Pouring myself a cup of coffee)                  Smells good.

Brilliant! I am a comic fucking genius! No need to add more at this point. I have accepted the reality of Player 1’s initiation and know my position, husband, and my scene type, Realistic. But I didn’t add anything. Aren’t you always supposed to add something? You know, yes, and? Yes, and is not about adding, it’s about agreement. I have agreed with my partner’s initiation and my position in it. What I am giving Player 1, my and, in this instance, is space, time to get to what they were thinking of when they started the scene. I always assume the player who clearly starts a scene has at least a basic idea for the direction of the scene. If they don’t, very common, that will become abundantly clear in a few more seconds. In which case, I can then do whatever occurs to me to do to best further the scene. It has also been my experience that if you treat a player like they have an idea, they will get to one.

Recapping: If a player starts a scene in a way that feels normal, with no indication that you or they or the situation is anything other than normal, then you are in a Realistic Scene. The player starting the scene may clearly indicate who you are suppose to be. Yes, and is not about adding, it’s about agreement.

Now take this scene start:                               Player 1                (Said through no defined character, more as                themselves, but angry)                You’re such an asshole, Blane. I can’t believe                you slept with my girlfriend.

There are a few lessons in this one. Nine times out of ten if I start a scene with a student by saying, “You are such an asshole.” Delivered realistically. The student will become defensive and likely respond with some variation of, “No I’m not, you are. What the fuck?” That seems to be our natural reaction to being called an asshole. But you aren’t being attacked, the person you are supposed to play is being attacked. And the attack is the gift. You are being told to play an asshole. So just play one! It’s fun!

This initiation also has what I call a loaded name, Blane. Jeeves is a butler, Cleetus is a hillbilly, Poindexter is a nerd, etc…You get my point. Blane isn’t as obvious as the aforementioned, but, for me, Blane is or was the quarterback of the high school football team and is a dick about it, probably refers to himself in the third person etc…that guy.

Back to what I hear. What I hear in this initiation is that I am an asshole, named Blane, who slept with someone I know’s girlfriend. I am perceivably flawed or wrong, Player 1 delivered his line realistically, therefore Player 1 is the Straight and I am the Absurd. The scene type is, of course, the Straight/Absurd scene. Player 1 is angry so I will choose to be happy. Ninety percent of the time the Absurd position is better served by being in a positive emotional state. The Straight almost always winds up in a negative emotional place because they are calling attention to behavior that they believe to be wrong and is upsetting them. I would likely respond with something like this:                               Me                (Smugly, as a Blane and delivered out towards                the audience rather than to Player 1)                Blane had a good time.

Brilliant! I am pretending to be an asshole named Blane who slept with someone he know’s girlfriend and is happy about it. I’m a fucking genius! Why? Because I did exactly what Player 1 told me to do based on the rules mentioned above. Did I think about all of this before I did it? No. The rules, and there are lots of them, become part of your reaction once they are learned.

The reasons why I chose to deliver my response towards the audience rather than Player 1 are these: One, it’s a great way to clearly present your character/Absurd to the audience. Two, the more we stare at the other player on stage the less we play our character and the more we think, both bad. Three, my job/focus as the Absurd is to play them, be them, heighten their flaw and reveal them to be even worse than they were at the start. All of which feeds the Straight. And four, to help avoid the argument.

The job/focus of the Straight is very different. Where I think of turning away from the Straight when I realize I am the Absurd, I think of turning toward the other player when I realize I am the Straight. Because my job/focus is not to miss anything. Every little behavior, any misspeak, any further presentation of flaw I want to call attention to, attack and take apart. When I am the Straight I will have to react and deal with almost every line. When I am the Absurd I listen opportunistically, choosing only lines that are useful to me to react to. The primary way to avoid the argument in a Straight/Absurd scene is for the Absurd person to never engage it. The Straight is basically always presenting one half of an argument. So, as the Absurd, if you hear something that you find difficult to deal with or that makes you want to argue, ignore it and keep your focus on furthering your absurdity. Argument avoided.

Back to what I heard, or in this case, what I didn’t hear in this opening line. What I didn’t hear was who exactly we were to each other or where we were. Since I did hear my position and scene type, these immediately become tools for heightening. The simple question is what would make this situation worse? Or, who shouldn’t we be and where shouldn’t we be? What pops into my mind is I am the guy who has been dating this kids mother and we are at the church where I am about to marry her. Any answer to the question, what makes this all worse is probably a good idea.

Recapping: The attack is the gift, be it. Names can be loaded. The player who is perceivably flawed or wrong is the Absurd. The Absurd is most often best served by being in a positive emotional state because the Straight is almost always in a negative emotional state. The Absurd should not focus on the Straight beyond what is useful to them. The Straight should overly focus on the Absurd to make sure nothing slips by. The Absurd should try to never engage the argument of the Straight. Undefined scene aspects, who we are, where we are, can be tools for heightening.

This covers the basics for listening for position in the first two scene types. That’s a lot of rules! Like all rules they are not absolute, but, just like our beloved yes, and, they are pretty fucking good rules. All rules in improv are breakable and if you are going to break them you should have a good reason to do so. You should probably also know them first.

Next week I will cover listening for position in the Character Driven and Alternate Reality scenes.

Please feel free to ask questions.

Do a scene. Now what type of scene did you just do? I have asked this question many times of improvisers in the first day of my class. I am generally met with a room full of confused looks. Some try, but almost always just wind up telling me what went on or happened in the scene. I understand the confusion because I know we are all taught to view all improvisational scenes as equally spilling forth from the fountain of yes, and. The scene winds up being whatever it was.

Yes, and. The first rule of improvisation. All improvisers have their first awestruck moment with yes, and, “Yes,…and…..it’s so simple….so beautiful….” And it is. It is a great fucking rule. But it doesn’t help a lot when it comes to analyzing the work, your work. All you can ask is did I say yes, did I add something and could I have done either of those things better? Better. Better in terms of what? The scene. Again I ask, what type of scene did you just do?

What if I told you that all scenes that exist could be seen as one, or some combination, of four basic scene types, each of which has a set of underlying rules that makes them successful? That would be good to know, right? Right?! Who’s with me?! Good news. It’s true.

All scenes that exist can be seen as one, or some combination, of four basic scene types, each of which has a set of underlying rules that makes them successful. That’s my contention, anyway. And it is not arguable. What I am going to tell you is a true as math. You may choose to view your scene in a different way, but I have never encountered a scene that I can’t fit neatly into my four scene types.

So what are they? I separate them as follows: Realistic, Straight/Absurd, Character Driven and Alternate Reality. For the record, I did not invent these types of scenes. I did, however, separate and name them as I went about identifying the rules that I believe govern them. Their names, in the improvisational context, are my jargon. What follows is a brief introduction to my understanding of them.

The Realistic scene is a good place to start because it is just what it sounds like it is, realistic. The goal of a realistic scene is to present a moment onstage as we imagine it would happen in real life between characters we perceive to be normal. Now most of life is boring as shit. So the moments we choose to present realistically are those that involve some element of tension or conflict. How our characters react to that tension is the built in game of this scene type. The RULE is to stay true to your character’s realistic reaction. If you invent or exaggerate a response that we don’t believe your character or a “normal” person would do, you will have changed scene types. The perceived “normal” can be a fine line and will likely be the subject of another blog entry,

The Straight/Absurd scene is the most often started scene as well as the one most often fucked up. It is the most often started because most players coming in are not comfortable playing big defined characters. They have an idea they want to play with, something they think is funny, an absurdity. They present their absurdity through their normal ass selves. The other player yes, ands them through their normal ass selves and we watch two otherwise normal ass people doing something ridiculous and wonder why is this happening. RULE one, play the character who is doing your absurdity. RULE two, feel free to react to an absurdity like it is absurd. The yes, and, the agreement in a Straight/Absurd scene is that one person is straight and the other is absurd. This is also, and will always be, the built in game of that scene.

The Character Driven scene is one where the characters presented are either archetypical or with such a defining point of view that all we want to hear is what they will say next. Example, two old war veterans talking on a park bench. We just want to hear what they say next. The RULE, or built in game of this scene, is to just let your characters perceive the world. They may have something else going on between them, great, but built in is just letting them talk about anything.

The Alternate Reality scene is when we take something that we could otherwise treat as absurd and instead turn it into a defining rule of the world we are playing in. Not as hard as it sounds. Say I start a scene by saying, “ Man, I am so sick of these vampires.” Now vampires don’t exist so I could treat that statement as absurd, but clearly this person wants to play in a world where vampires exist. That becomes our alternate reality. And it is a known alternate reality. We all know a lot about vampires from movies, books. And yes, all movies and fictional books are alternate realities. The RULE of Alternate Reality scenes, the built in game of them, is to simply fuck with already known story lines and characters. When you build an alternate reality from a random absurdity, great fun, make sure you build the world to a point where we recognize it as some combination or variation of known alternate realities. If we can’t recognize the alternate reality we just view it as nonsense.

Again, this is an introduction to the four scene types. I have been putting them together for the past twenty years so there is a lot more I can say about them. There are a lot more RULES that make them work. I will endeavor to go more in depth in future blog posts.

I encounter a lot of students and players who struggle with thinking too much onstage. What’s generally happening is they are trying to figure out what to do, or the best thing to do, rather than just doing what has already occurred to them.

The fact is that we are always thinking, in the sense that our brains are never off. When we sleep, we dream. Try not to think of anything and you’ll find yourself thinking of something. People who meditate generally try and focus on something simple to drown out the noise of their own thinking. So we can’t actually not think, but we can choose where to put our focus.

For example, I am sure we have all had the following experience. You are about to meet someone for the first time and you begin preparing to say your own name. “Hi, I’m Miles.” “I’m Miles, what’s up?” etc…Then you introduce yourself, say your name and realize that you didn’t catch the other person’s name. Your focus was on preparing to say your own name, kinda stupid, when it should have been on listening for the other person’s name. Just that little bit of thinking caused you to miss the entire point of the exchange.

So when we are improvising where should we put our focus? Simple, our focus should be on listening. What we actually do, choose a character, play a game, further a story, etc… is just a matter of trained reaction.

Our mental, emotional or physical reaction to stimuli represents who we are at any given point in time. For example, a child might first think that fire is pretty and reach for it. Upon learning that it is also hot the child will no longer reach for it. Who the child is, is now changed. We are the same. Our lives up to this point determine how we react to any given stimuli. This is also true when we improvise.

When I started improvising I was not very good. I would say I sucked for about four years. This was primarily because I was trying to figure out what was going on rather than just reacting to it. Now eventually, slowly, I got better and better and better. I thought it was because I was figuring it out, but what really happened was that over time my reactions to certain stimuli, a character, a situation, a line, etc… had changed. Who I was had changed.

Your reaction is all you get. No one is more than they are right now. In trying to be so is where we fuck up. We hear a line of dialogue, we have a reaction, we ignore or try to be better than our reaction, we think, we come up with a second or third option, but now we are no longer in the moment, we aren’t focused on listening or playing our character, we are in our head. We think we can’t come up with anything when actually we have come up with too much. What we should have done was the first thing that occurred to us.

I can’t tell you how many times in a class I have watched a scene go bad and in my notes said, “Well, at the beginning of the scene my first thought was this…” Only to have the student tell me, “ I had the same first thought, but then I thought…” It drives me crazy. They had the exact same first reaction as I did. The only difference between them and me was they chose not to trust it.

Much more often than not, our first reaction is the best possible move. I rarely, if ever, see a student think their way to a good move. If you think your way to a mistake, which I see all the fucking time, now you have to analyze your thinking and the only real lesson is you shouldn’t have been thinking so much. When you trust your first reaction, correct almost all the time, and it winds up being a mistake, well, we just learned something about ourselves and, if we own it, we are changed.

Any questions?

China, Day 8

Level 1 grad show: they crushed it.

All long-form. No short-form. No apologies. Minimal explanation. They got a suggestion, told a monologue, did 4 scenes, another monologue, 4 scenes. Then the other half did the same thing. 

And it went great!

Now, are we gonna be improv nerds about it? Sure: their scenes did not really have strong games. But they got laughs off of agreement, point of view, reactions, saying things that were real and making things true. They made the audience laugh by playing together well. The simple joy of one person says THIS and then you say SOMETHING THAT FITS WITH THIS.

The question I had was this: would an audience like a long-form show by a LEVEL ONE class, if they didn’t have a group like the UCB to introduce them to it. Tonight’s answer was: fuck yes they like it.

After the show, the class was talking a million miles a minute. The snippets that were translated to me was all improv nerd talk. What worked, what didn’t. How much they got out of times when someone just said the word “yes.” How much the audience liked it when they just demonstrated whatever was just said in the previous line. How much they liked it when a character said something real.

All week they have been nervous about having a good enough idea. They’ve been cramming their scenes with ideas. And then tonight the simplest ideas worked best. The ones that don’t even sound like ideas.