The Most Fundamental Question In Improv ...

"Who am I?"

We’ve all felt it. You’ve been in a scene for a while, saying things, doing things. Maybe you’re already playing a game, maybe you’re still in discovery mode. And then your partner says something, looks you in the eyes awaiting your response, and…you’ve got nothing. You’ve frozen up. No idea what to say next. Or even worse, you can think of a thousand things to say and they all feel wrong. What’s going on?

My experience is that if you don’t know what to say, you don’t know who you are. It’s possible that you don’t know who you are in the story (and if so, that’s a problem!) but even more likely is you don’t know what you’re playing, energy-wise.

It’s one thing to know you are a manager, but are you…

• A concerned manager

• A sarcastic manager

• High status (are you Mr. Sinclair?)

• Low status (are you Jeff?)

• Young (are you managing someone who is a sophomore in high school while you’re a junior?)

• Old (have you been with the company for 30 years and are running on autopilot? have you been with the company for 30 years and this job is everything to you?!)

Factor in how your partner is responding and there is limitless possibility, i.e. the employee who is sucking up to the middle-aged manager on autopilot is a completely different scene from the employee who is sucking up to the middle-aged manager who is passionate about the job.

Whether you call it character, emotion, or point of view, you need to be listening to your partner though a filter. One way I work on that in class is by simply attaching adjectives to each character. There’s about 12 relationships that will constitute about 95% of all the scenes you will ever do and we all know what they are: romantic partners, roommates, co-workers, friends, siblings, parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, boss/employee, doctor/patient, coach/athlete, etc. Simply getting two behavioral adjectives (as opposed to descriptive…”rotund” is going to be less useful than “defensive”) and attaching them to these standard relationships will produce some surprising scenes that don’t resort to the preprogrammed cliches and stereotypes newer improvisers often rely on.

• Mischievous father/conservative son

• World-weary roommate/inspirational roommate

• Distracted coach/self-sabotaging athlete

Improv is hard when you have infinite options. My advice is to drastically narrow those options as soon as possible. An adjective is one way of doing that. But if you want to find filters that are more intuitive and less think-y, simply changing your face, your spine or your voice will give you that filter right away. I naturally slouch a bit, so putting my shoulders back and standing up straight (as my mother always told me do), deepens my voice a bit, makes me feel more confident, makes me feel more high-status. I didn’t play much sports, but this guy definitely did. I wouldn’t hit on someone at a bar, but this guy definitely would. I’m told the spine is connected to the brain, so making a spinal change allows you to literally think through the scene with someone else’s brain. Everything you say and do is going to feel like the right thing to say and do, because that’s what only that person would say and do.

There are schools of improv thought that hold it’s preferable to play close to yourself (“wear your character like a thin veil”-Del Close), which I respect even if I don’t totally agree. I’m Craig most of the time, so when I’m on stage, I want to be anyone else. But even when I’m playing a fifty-something straight white guy of my approximate build and manner, the most important question is how this person is not me. I’m a complicated human being, my moods and actions change according to the circumstances I’m in. But a comic character, even one in a fairly nuanced slow-play monoscene, is going to be way simpler than anyone in real life. Comic behavior is repetitive behavior, returning to the same moods, actions, and patterns despite the circumstances. A person is typically quiet and respectful at a funeral and loud and obnoxious at a bar. A comic character is loud and obnoxious at a funeral, and also at a bar, and well, everywhere.

An Exercise-Family Dinner

Family Dinner is something I often use in class to teach character and relationship. Set up 4 chairs in an arc, and tell the players they are in the middle of a family dinner. They can be related by blood, step-, in-law, significant other, foreign exchange student, clergy, next-door neighbor, etc., whatever “family” means to you. Ask each of them to make an energy choice (picking an adjective may help, or changing your face or spine, or simply feeling older or younger than you are) and check in with what the other people are doing. You’ll start to notice frictions and affinities (“this person feels like my grandmother/kid brother”, “that person is smiling at me/glaring at me”, “we feel like a couple”). Then, have the meal!

Starting in the middle allows you to begin with assumptions and to choose to know. Everyone knows each other well enough to offer gifts and add information at the same rate. Even if you’re bringing home your college boyfriend to meet your parents for the first time, your parents know all his biographical details, you’ve been making small talk for an hour before the scene has begun, and hell, your parents have probably been following him on Insta for the last few months. I recommend not being a character who is too young to know what’s going on, or too old to know what’s going on. I also recommend not spending the scene trying to negotiate a different family dynamic, just play the dynamic that is there. Do we solve our long-standing family issues when we go home for Thanksgiving for 2 days? I would submit we just settle into the same old patterns. Show me those patterns. I trust that because we’re doing comedy, these relationships are often going to be dysfunctional in some way. The characters don’t have be as aware of the dysfunction as the writers are.

There are easy common actions to play: eat some food, pour some drinks, pass some dishes, clear some plates, bring out the next dish, etc. But mundane actions through the lens of character/relationship can be compelling/hilarious.

There are easy topics of conversation: the food, town gossip, sports, pop culture, jobs, pets, etc. But everyday topics through the specificity of character/POV can be compelling/hilarious.

We’re used to doing 2-person scenes…easy enough, one 2-person relationship. But years in my 3-man troupe Dasariski taught me that a 3-person scene is three 2-person relationships happening simultaneously, and that they need to be held at equal weight. Now when we’re talking about a 4-person scene, that’s six 2-person relationships (trust me, I’ve done the math). I want to see how you relate slightly differently to each person who is up there while remaining consistent to your own character. (I used to do 5-person family dinners in class, maybe because I came from a 5-person nuclear family, but that’s…wait for it…ten 2-person scenes happening at once! Too much to throw at my students that early).

I will often freeze these scenes after the first minute or two, especially if it feels like the improvisors are on different pages about the relationships. I will ask them to lock in their answers, Final Jeopardy-style, and ask them to go down the line and tell me everyone’s character names and who they are to you, and the answers are often radically different! That’s a big problem if you think you’ve been playing to the other person for 2 minutes as your mom, and they think they’re your wife. That’s why there needs to be constant gifting, and reinforcement of those gifts, in this kind of scene. Repeat the names as often as you can. I’d rather have it clunky and clear than have everyone on divergent pages.

I let these go anywhere from 5-10 minutes in class, typically, but it’s also a great format for a monoscene set of any length.

Variations:

You’re high school friends having lunch together in the cafeteria. Because cliques often travel together in high school, it’s fine if they’re all jocks or RPG nerds or the yearbook staff. But I would suggest that there’s still a variety of statuses and hierarchies within a group with a common interest or connection. Play those.

You’re work colleagues having a meal together (break room? restaurant? hotel at a work conference? up to you). I recommend having a variety of statuses and work responsibilities.

The other night I class I tried “you all made a classic film 30 years ago and you’re having a late dinner after a reunion screening/Q & A at a festival”. We had the neurotic writer, the pretentious DP, the iconic star/director, and the star’s brother. Everyone had shared knowledge, different arcs, different energies, a variety of affinities and resentments. It worked great!