Improv Nonsense

Another pretentious theory post. I talked about this in the talk I gave this past Saturday at UCB, and by saying that I’m mentioning that I gave a talk at UCB on improv theory which was fun but is also ridiculous but below is some of what I talked about and hello! hello.

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The semantics of the game of the scene have become wonderfully clear in the last four or five years.

• If this is true, what else is true
• React to the first unusual thing
• Justify
• Peas in a pod
• Straight man/crazy man
• Framing

So clear that, tragically, they get overused! We talk game to death and ignore if we’re actually simply saying yes and building! We need our agreement and scenework vocabulary to be just as clear as our game-analyzing one is. 

Humans Like Clear Ideas

People overuse concepts that are neat and clear. For example: the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.

Most people are at least partly familiar with this: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. It’s a nice clear idea that feels right.

Unfortunately, most therpaists and psychologists say that this model is not accurate. It’s an interesting clear model of different emotional strategies that people use in the face of grief — but people don’t go through them in that order, not everyone goes through all of them, and there are others.

Still, when people talk about depression, someone will bring up the five stages. It’s got such great clarity that it’s easy to mentally apply to different situations.

A to C: Clear, But Overused

Some concepts in improv get more importance than they deserve because they are so clear. “A to C” is my favorite example of this. “A to C”  (or “third thought”) is a great simple concept for getting a unique idea from a commonplace suggestion, or for changing the subject during an opening.

But for a while, students would apply “A to C” everywhere they could — going from first beat to second beat, within otherwise simple conversations, with walk-ons into scenes. You ask them why they’re making moves that shake everything up so much and they say “I’m just A-to-C-ing.”

How could they resist? It’s such a clear concept. Except that it destroys a scene if you’re trying to do it every line.

Game Mantras

I read the student’s evaluations of classes at UCB-NY. In describing exercises they liked or didn’t like, many students refer to their ability/inability to see the “game”, to use “the unusual thing,” to “if this then what.”

But they don’t ever directly refer to “yes-anding” or “agreeing” or “understanding.”

Almost all game/comedy mantras, very few scenework mantras. (They DO mention “listening” and sometimes “justifying” — that’s not enough.)

New Agreement Mantras

Okay, so now we’re comfortable discussing game — the comedy of a scene and what powers it. But we’re paying so much attention to it that we’re playing like hostile, commenting, uncooperative jerks (my observation of many students at the intermediate level).

I don’t blame the game mantras. I blame the lack of agreement mantras. “Yes and” is genius but we’re numb to it.

We need to improve how we analyze basic agreement so that it is as clear and precise as how we discuss game. I propose Delaney’s restatement of the Kitchen Rules:

• Accept offers.
• Take the active choice.
• Justify.

Which I ramble about in a separate post.