My 5 Unique Improv Failure Modes
Recently fellow improviser Steve Hartill wrote a good blog on the Bristol improv scene. Steve & I are part of the Bristol Longform Workshop’s “faculty”, a grandiose title we enjoy using liberally as we smoke from pipes in the study and discuss recent improv scenes such as “Fart Soldiers” with very serious facial expressions.
Steve has much more experience than me with improv (he’s very old) but my natural inclination to support ideas (read: copy/rip-off) has inspired me to also blog about longform improv. I honestly don’t have much to say that the UCB, Will Hines, Christian Capozzoli or Kevin Mullaney haven’t said first. I have however noticed that not many people like talking about what they’re currently “bad” at. So that’s what this blog is mostly gonna be; things I’m personally working on that I don’t think of as “generic” bad improv habits.
I suspect the structure of all these blogs will also be largely inspired (read: copied/ripped-off) by Buzzfeed in the vain hope that they will become “viruses”.
#1: It’s big…but is it unusual?
I really love playing scenes that involve awful, unimaginable assholes. Here are some things I remember recently initiating;
- A dad who killed his son’s cat.
- Mom who dislikes her child because he’s very ugly.
- Camp teen being bullied/beat up by the camp counsellors.
This is probably because in reality I am such a meek and kind-hearted soul that the very idea of being an asshole feels like it has comedy inherent to it. It also feels like these choices are so huge that it’s very hard for anyone to walk past them, therefore we’ve got a scene now…right?
Well…not entirely. None of these are actually “unusual” yet, the world is filled with awful people. Running the scene in a grounded and truthful way will feel more and more grim, even worse if you back away from the choice later it’ll feel aaaawwwkkkkwwwarrd.
The lesson learned; maybe “awful scenarios” isn’t the comedy goldmine I intuitively thought it would be! That’s not to say these scenes can’t work, in fact they usually do by exploiting the most straight forward and obvious improv comedy tools available;
- Commit: Trying to back away from the thing, once it’s said, doesn’t work. A child revealing at camp that he’s being bullied by adults isn’t funny, however if you wanna make it look EVEN MORE HORRIFYING watch that child try to change the subject like it didn’t happen!
- Absurd Heighten: This is what heightening is designed for; pushing a grounded truth into comedy, so use it! Killing a cat isn’t funny, but strangling a cat with your hands and forcing your child to kiss the cat goodbye feels like it’s far more in the “unusual” category.
- Cartoonish Justification: For whatever reason, having an awful reality as the consequence of stupid logic tends to feel more obviously unusual. A mum telling their child they’re ugly isn’t funny. However if the mother read a book once and honestly thought all ugly duckling children became beautiful swans then there’s a fun, unusual logic to explore now.
Then again there’s also the more obvious answer; stop initiating scenes that involve assholes! I’ve been working on this, but although big choices aren’t hard, sometimes I forget that big choices aren’t inherently unusual without appropriate heightening/justification/commitment. Here’s some non-asshole examples of “big choice with no unusual thing”
- Obsessive Hobbyist: A big choice like “someone who collects hundreds of toy trains” is a good start, but again; these people exist. Push it further (they’re now collecting real trains?) or justify it cartoonishly (they’ll grow to be big trains some day!)
- Super Happy Coworker: A big emotional choice like “INCREDIBLY happy to be back in work on a Monday” feels like something. But again, there’s are real world people like this. Heighten (“I might cry!”) or justify (“I’ve NEVER held down a job for longer than 3 days!”) quickly!
Quick self note: Is it a good move to start a blog, ostensibly introducing yourself to random people by admitting you enjoy playing awful people in improv scenes? Probably not.
#2: Don’t JUST be yourself
One of the reasons I specifically got into Chicago style Longform improv is that you can essentially play yourself + 10% in most scenes. I’m a comedy nerd from a non-theatrical background who absolutely hates seeing broad acting choices. Let me clarify a bit more; my idea of the worst comedic theatrical experience imaginable is “panto”.
But this section isn’t just me throwing shade on panto. What I mean to say is; being yourself in a scene (+some weird character philosophy) is far more believable and relatable than playing a specific trope or genre character. This is well understood in the US however it feels less regularly used in the UK improv I’ve seen.
However I did recently get a bunch of hard notes on acting that +10% more, particularly on emotional reactions. This was particularly tough, since I was genuinely playing my own honest emotional reaction internally. The problem was, I did not actually turn that reaction into a clear, articulate, physically identifiable reaction.
As Steve alluded to in his own post, you can’t imagine how annoying it is to be told “you’re not reacting like you would!” when you are actually accessing those emotions honestly.
In addition to labelling my emotions very clearly, I’ve been making bolder acting choices to translate those emotions on stage. I’m sure this is all obvious actor stuff but here’s some things I’m now actively thinking about when I’m reacting.
- Take a beat: Process the emotion very physically. Just because you quickly found your honest reaction, doesn’t necessarily mean you need to display it fast. Physically tense up or relax if the emotion is related to those things, regardless of how often you actually do that in real life. Letting emotions sink in with darting eye movement and slow facial expressions lets people know the reaction before having to label it.
- Blocking: Just changing the stage picture, bringing people closer or further away suddenly, clearly signals a big emotional reaction. I can’t count the number of times that an audience has reacted to seeing 2 people distinctly move away, together, from the 1 unusual person.
- Object work: We do objectwork for all kinds of fun, small reasons but the extra plus is that you can signal reactions by just using objects. Taking a big gulp of beer, dropping a cup, slamming closed a laptop etc… all let people know what you think.
The obvious, and more correct solution to this problem is to go and take like 1 acting class. But for now all the weird stories about Meisner acting classes becoming gross orgies are encouraging me to instead try “just be slightly more physical, even if it’s not entirely honest.”
#3: Historical Justification
Justification wasn’t really emphasised when I started out, and to be honest I’ve seen tons of great scenes where a funny idea gets explored multiple times without justification.
However without explicit justification the choices you make become very predictable/formulaic. Even worse, you might actually have some kind of internal justification but you’re hiding it, making the audience and your scene partner struggle to understand your 2nd beat initiation.
So when I started working on justification I honestly thought it was pretty easy, until I discovered that a lot of the ones I was using were just variations on “because that’s how we do things round here!”
Historical justification, or claiming that your unusual behaviour is because “That’s how your dad/boss/mayor used to do things, and I’m gonna do it the same way” is, I think, actually pretty weak.
I don’t actually use it that often anymore but I do see it being used “in the wild” and thought it’d be useful to highlight the disadvantages;
- Passing The Buck: It’s circular logic. It doesn’t actually say why someone started doing this unusual behaviour, which is actually the funny scene. There’s also now the temptation to jump back in time and see that, which is literally just a waste of time because you could have that reason in the present.
- “I Don’t Question Authority!”: In reality, the justification is not what got said. The justification is now that this person will follow things that their family/boss/authority figure taught them to do (kinda). But I rarely see this reasoning followed in further beats.
Another, completely different problem I’ve seen related to justification is tag-runs where people can see the game, and play it, but they do it in a way that completely disregards that beat’s justification. I’m not going to talk about that problem because I haven’t personally received this note…but I expect to any day now.
#4: Stop being the “Beat Konducta”
I’ve heard coaches talk about scenes having almost musical “rhythms” and in that regard I have 2 related issues in this department;
- Non-Improv Rhythms: I’ve done standup & sketch before improv, and I’ve tried to use similar ideas from these comedic fields in improv to almost zero success.
- 1 Man Band!: Trying to help my scene partner, but actually just not trusting them and trying to play their parts because of a lack of trust.
These are both deeply annoying habits that just honestly make me look like an awful improviser. But lets talk about them both to some degree
I’ve mostly conquered this “non-improv rhythm” thing but I remember seeing it fail so many times that it could not be for lack of trying. Here’s a couple of examples of what I mean;
- Vamping: In premise improv (going from an opening) I used to have this annoying habit of “vamping” on the unusual thing. I remember building bigger and bigger hints about the unusual thing for like 2 minutes once. In my mind, this is fine because we all know where I’m going. In everyone else’s mind…where’s John going?! and why won’t he just fucking say it!
- Last Word Surprise: I no longer do “vamping” anymore but I will still do this occasionally. Again, this usually comes from an opening and it’s basically saying a very straight forward line of dialogue (“Son, for your birthday I’ve bought you this guitar…”, except laying an unusual element right at the end (“…string.”). This isn’t inherently a terrible move, but it tests people’s listening, somewhat unfairly. Nobody is expecting a line of dialogue in the structure of a setup/punchline. Nobody would ever say it like that. So why say it like that? It almost never gets an audience response.
The problem of being a “1 man band” is a slightly more generic problem, whose solutions are straight forward.
- Trust your scene partner!: You don’t have to endow them with 8 specifics in the opening 30 seconds. Trust them to find their character labels!
I should slightly clarify; I don’t think my problem is “bulldozing” or ignoring my scene partner. But what I have caught myself doing is giving overly long/wordy opening initiations, gifting them in an extreme/verbose way and delivering non-natural dialogue to give them hints at game moves. This really stems from my own fears about helping my scene partner look good, but I’m fairly certain it can be grating to them and definitely reduces how realistic my own character sounds.
#5: Gamebot
UCB vs iO vs Annoyance vs Narrative vs your own unique theatre style/philosophy debates are boring and pointless. It’s like when people who love one musical genre try debate that another genre is bad. The reasons you don’t like one genre are exactly why other people like that genre and vice-versa.
But I wanna talk about being a gamebot. If you have 1 specific thing you think should mainly drive the scene (game, relationship, emotion, character, narrative, “thing”) just insert that in this paragraph as <thing>bot. If not, ignore this whole section (and lemme know how you do improv because I’m genuinely interested.)
Once you find the game of the scene your brain now has competing interests; how can I feed the game vs how can I react truthfully. My problem is that I want to feed that game hard and fast, to the degree that I’ll fall into these bad habits;
- “I also have this thing…”: When I’m actively thinking about game moves, very early on I’ll often realise that it would be fun to have a specific object or person in the room. If I can think of nothing else, I’ll often just endow myself with having that object/person even if it feels a bit…too convenient or repetitive.
- “Oh, remember, didn’t you…”: Similar to the above, endowing memories which are going to feed the game is another fairly contrived move I’ve done a lot. Even worse, this isn’t even in the present moment so I’m just reacting to us talking about things that happened ages ago.
The solution is really just returning to top of your intelligence dialogue after finding organic game moves, and assuming that future game moves will become obvious from truthful dialogue. This particular section isn’t the most unique-to-me thing in the world, however recently I saw someone getting the note to “rest the game” and watched a fairly senior improviser (who is NOT super analytical) almost not understand the concept. So maybe it is unique.
Anyway, this blog took much longer than I had anticipated, reads exclusively like the description of a guy who CANNOT do good improv, and is probably littered with grammatical errors.
Lemme know what weird specific longform problems you’re working on, so I can feel better about my own improv.
Also, come to Bristol and do improv with me!
