#long-form

I'm starting a new series called, "You Should Be Able To Do...", where I explore ways of doing scenes we're told not to do in improv. There are a lot of place holder rules that we teach newer improvisers as a way of avoiding difficult scenes, but I think it's easier to equip them with the tools they need for these scenes. Scenes like: Transaction scenes Teaching scenes Argumentative scenes All of these things are actually going to be fairly common scenes, so instead of steering our students to just avoid them outright, what if we taught them how to navigate the pitfalls these scenes have? Instead of kicking the can down the road, and saying, "Just avoid that for now.", what if show them how easy these scenes can be? Today, I want to start with the most common one of these. DON'T DO STRANGER SCENES Stranger scenes can be tricky for a few reasons. The most glaring reason is that these are two characters who don't know each other, and almost any good improv scene is going to be built on the relationship of the characters in the scene, so if you don't know each other, what's your relationship? I think this is an inherently incorrect line of thinking that just keeps getting passed down through the generations of improv schools, and it's one of the main reasons we don't do stranger scenes. We equate knowing each other as having a relationship, but your relationship to someone isn't solely defined by HOW you are connected (mother/brother/friend/wife/teacher/etc.), but the way in which people regard and behave towards each other. For example, I have seen a lot of scenes go wrong with a husband, and wife even though it was completely obvious to the audience that they were husband, and wife. What made these scenes fall flat isn't that I didn't know how these characters knew each other, but that I didn't know how they felt about each other, or why they felt that way. A good way to think of this is by doing an exercise called "showing your relationship." I have two people do a scene, and I whisper their relationship to them individually, and how they feel about each other, but I don't tell their classmates, and they aren't allowed to say the relationship in scene. After the scene is over, I have the class try to guess the relationship, and how long they've known each other, but guess what? There is a twist! I told each of them a different relationship, and a different amount of time they've known each other. That must mean these scenes are just a clusterfuck of miscommunication, right? Actually, they are almost always really good scenes because each improviser knows who they are, and assumes the other person is thinking the same thing. So, if I told one person "You're happily married for ten years.", and the other person, "You're a newlywed who immediately regrets that decision.", even though those are two different viewpoints, they are two CLEAR viewpoints. Each improviser is able to just listen, and react to the behavior their scene partner is giving them, and they know their own behavior, so these scenes are grounded on two clear points of view, even if they are contradictory. The relationship doesn't need to be named because the audience clearly sees how they feel about each other, and each person is a character with a clear emotion, or point of view. It all goes back to that thing of "Show. Don't tell." If you are trying to avoid being in a stranger scene, and so you say things like, "We've been married for 10 years.", or, "We've been best buds since high school.", that's fine, but your behavior has to mirror that choice. Your words don't matter if you don't show that relationship in your physicality, and in your actions in a scene. Often, improvisers will add, "I love you.", as a means of making it clear what their relationship is to the other person, but if you say that, and it sounds forced, or none of your other actions in the scene show you love them, it comes across as a false choice to the audience. Whereas if we both play two characters who are deeply gazing each other's eyes, and holding hands, and just hanging on each other's words, the details of our exact relationship aren't nearly as important as our physicality, and your behavior. I have said it here before, and I will repeat it again just because it's a timeless piece of acting advice from Meisner. AN OUNCE OF BEHAVIOR IS WORTH A POUND OF WORDS. Just to clarify, that doesn't mean don't be specific. Labeling your relationship is fine, and specificity is always great in improv. Just know that saying your relationship title means nothing if you don't show it to an audience. Specificity of behavior trumps specificity of titles. And this gets me back to stranger scenes. Say you are two strangers waiting for a bus. How do you do this scene since the two of you have no deep emotional connections, or history? Well, you start by figuring out your rapport right now. By this, I mean make observations about each other, and also, give gifts to one another. If your scene partner looks like they are somewhat grumpy that you are talking to them, point that out, and explore it. If they are being really nice, how does that make your character feel? Say that. Think about this. Almost every improv scene you have ever started begins as a stranger scene. Unless someone specifically starts with, "Hey, mom, get in here.", you don't know your exact relationship. You have to rely on clues from your dialogue, inferring context from the way you behave toward them, and things like status dynamics to try to figure out your relationship to this other person. After twenty or thirty seconds, you might realize that this feels like a mother and child, so you call the person in the scene mom. You label it, but that label doesn't change everything you have built up to until that point. If it was a bratty kid/parent dynamic, or a overbearing parent/child dynamic, or a hip parent/uncool kid dynamic, those specifics dynamics to your relationship do more for you than knowing if it was your mom, or your dad, or your uncle. It's great that you labeled the relationship, and now both characters know for sure they are mom or dad, but what is going to provide the fuel for this scene is not that, it's how you behave and react to each other. You have lots of friends, but how many can you really open up with? How many do you just party with? How many are mostly facebook friends? They are all labeled as your “friend”, but the specific way in which you treat each other defines your relationship more than that one word.  The next time you find yourself in a scene playing strangers, don’t panic, or worry that you don’t have a relationship. You do! It’s the way you treat the other person, and the way they make you feel in a scene. Dig into that information, and you’ll see that a relationship isn’t solely defined by a label. 

For context, since I prefer old games to be windowed (since they're easier to stream etc.), my configurations aim to get the games working somewhat as intended in a 1024x768 window. You should only need minor adjustments to take this to fit whatever other perverse setting you desire.

CLIMATE CHANGE (Week One) - - - Winds howl westward Streaking speeds through cities Screaming slower than information But more insistently understood In the hollowed out chambers Gales gust ballistic Signals everywhere trembling Foundations are shaking Witness only expiring effects Insults blow past data packets Remote piloting through the æther Hang on dearly as the whole thing Pivots on a bluster We didn't see that one coming. Whisper near beside me Until there is no air between us Winds becoming too swift for bullets The killings will soon be at close quarters . Thousands of muddy footprints Claim an accelerated turn to the dead ends Of another arid fold Mottling the linoleum transit Synthetic concrete optics get Shredded by forensic scuff and grit Yield to the everyday shuffles overhead Feet and hooves beg every sort of design imaginable At once fragile and callous and preening Walking a million dusty miles Only to arrive at the Victorian checkerboard terrace Only to be pinned like a Nike butterfly Under glass and key Treading on a wing and a prayer Only footsteps away from Victory . Giant klieg light burning skyward Blind to the machinations down below Or over there Broadcasts appear on the horizon At the same time every year Sweeps week and spring cleaning join hand in hand To refresh all memory of what was No matter how many snowbanks Or polar icecaps Evaporate to the cloud Heliocentric deities perish successively One after the next Orbit after orbit Yet light continues to govern earthly pursuits It seems these days history is never historical enough To matter Suns warm over even the coldest hearts Until it gets too hot in the kitchen And butcher knives gesticulate wildly Through steam and through broth Temperatures flare While cool glass monitors the situation And the inventory With incidental regard Orders ready to be served this minute To the hungry rush that beckons Past the heat and the glare . Flurries of intensity scramble the morning grayscales One-tenth the volume of channel zero snowfall More or less Chaotic elements turn ambient Turn miserable Once the romance is bled from the programming And enthusiasms become dampened In the erstwhile trickle and melt Splashes of colour by contrast Unbox new modules for minding the urban renders Obscure underlying calculations and Layers of movement beneath Scrolls of numerical transactions Offer some of a child's earliest texts Blissfully unaware of what or whom is being counted With these tiny digits and curls Shards of imagination and potential Guaranteed by white paper writs To speed up the whole thing would Amount to a legal confetti By the everyday blizzard effect . Flashes of bright light Initiate a sequence of sky blue Barely perceptible gradient fill Invites flip to the other side of the windowscreen Gives art to the motor Feel cool velocities brace like a streak To the face Illusions of autonomy often engender the Gravest sorts of dependence Or addiction Though perhaps if one wasn't so autonomous in considering Might summon murmurations most hypnotic Dust particles floating in the windowed sunrays Of late afternoon Conjure swarms of bees for just the briefest span of attention Printing money takes root in all sorts of ways When faced with rectangular living Terraforms tesselate statistical promise For optimizing ecologies Optimism flips to the other side of the windowscreen Barely perceptible art invites Sequences of sky blue and bright light . Rimes of frost trace the horizon Of this chilled #666666 header Salted crystals edge our perpendicular looking-glass And the spirits contained therein Contagions demand a particular shift To their morning disappearances A familiar refrain tweets in the distance While algorithms fetch us a happy springtime From deep within the unix sunrise Arriving instantly from the farmlands Blessing the form fields a robust vernal equinox Under a flat #3b5998 sky 'VOX PUPIL POPULIPO!' -- we shout in reply to all senders The season finale and its ultimate harvest Often occupy the sense of imagination To the detriment of the now Forgetting the little cuts and severances along the way Clippings and cuttings are the clones of the living Every #00aced bird could tell you the same thing . The rosy salmon underbelly hovers Over crepuscular transmission protocols Slowly swimming the long upstream arc across planet telex Glowing hues of orange and blue compete To lend fire to the daily energetics A boeing fin tracks the jetstream currents Along another vector altogether Angular Pescatarian pareidolia everywhere to be found Is this fish love between you and me we're describing Even as the heat suddenly leaps by a dozen degrees? Volatile weathers bring the big winds blowing Hot and cool media nets Streaming with consistencies And doubly redundant echo effects Colour contrast and oversaturation Hue and cry Every time one inspires or expires A breathless tornado could be informing