Improv Nonsense

Watching the Improv Jam two weeks ago, sitting with Neil Casey while a scene started where someone did a tag out that transported characters from a fast food restaurant to a police interrogation room. Neil leaned over and said this to me:

“I’ve noticed that for students under 25 a lot of them walk on or tag out as the police coming to shut things down for being out of line. These kids either live in a world or they think they live in a world where if you step out of line the system comes crashing down on you like a ton of fucking bricks.”

After he said that, it started to stand out. Someone in an improv scene starts cheating on their company, security comes crashing in to ask them questions. Some tag-outs were just people being police. Other were smarmy investigators who came in with a sort of “good cop” attitude: “Hey, we’re just here to ask a few questions.”

Once you start thinking about this, a lot of improv gets really creepy.

“They might be right!” Neil said to me today when we were talking about this. “We live in a system where you’re allowed to fuck whoever you want and eat whatever you want but you cant’ really do anything that gets in the way of the moneyed or powerful,” he said. “In fact if you do try to run off to the woods they’ll send out helicopters to make sure you’re not smoking weed.”

Maybe it’s because those who grew up after 9/11 only know a subway where there’s cops waiting to check your bags?

Chris Gethard talks about the overly oppressive straight man: someone who, in an effort to make a game right away, jumps on something that’s not that unusual with too much force. 

Scene starts: “Look I found a gold nugget in my desk!” Answer: ”Well, what are you doing with it! Hide it! You’re spending too much time looking for gold! Get it away!”

What Gethard talks about has always been, but maybe that oppressive straight man is now more often a military agent of the government.

Playing devil’s advocate: I can remember a lot of interrogation scenes for as long as I’ve done improv. And police coming in with guns in a cliche so frequent that The Office made fun of it when they showed Michael Scott’s improv class.

Am I just more sensitive to such things now that Neil has made his observation?

OR IS THE WORLD TURNING INTO A TERRIBLE PLACE?