You Can’t Improvise Like Your Coach

Your coach/teacher is an amazing improvisor. Be an amazing improvisor just like them. Don’t improvise like them.

I recently had a truncated version of this conversation with a teammate. It followed a session where we spent a lot of time talk about what our coach would have done in a scene and in an entire harold. He told us what he would have done, and it would have been great scene work and a great harold, no doubt. Having said that, I don’t think I care what he would have done.

An improvisor is an individual. Your life experience informs your openings, your scene work, your object work, and just about everything you do on an improv stage. The reason I don’t care what my coach would have done is that I can NEVER do the scenes that he would do. My life experience is different than his completely and while his informs good scene work, mine life experience should inform my own good scene work.

A coach should note choices, acting decisions, object work, staging, and whole bunch more stuff. Saying that he would have done a military scene based on his time in ROTC is not a valuable note. I know nothing about ROTC, I don’t even know what it stands for. So telling me he would have done that makes me feel stupid, and if in the future I find myself in a similar situation, and I try to do an ROTC scene, there’s a good chance I’m gonna fall flat on my face because I seriously don’t know what ROTC stands for (I’ll Google it later). Saying that it would have been a better choice to rest the game because we hit the pattern too many times and it wasn’t funny anymore is helpful.

That’s not to say you couldn’t do a scene that your coach would have done. Maybe you have the background to do an hour long monoscene all about ROTC, that’s impressive. You can do anything, that’s the beauty of improv. But, what’s even more beautiful about improv is that no matter what everyone on your team is working to make your decision right.

In my early improv life I found myself wishing I could do scenes just like some of my favorite improvisors. I even tried to steer some scenes in the direction of things that I had seen work, and it always failed. Now I find myself admiring their acting, their tags, their object work. Now I try to make MY move with better acting, tagging, and object work.

I love my coaches and teachers, and they make great choices based on their life experience. Becoming a great improvisor is about using your life, and making great choices from that. If the suggestion Shoe Box wouldn’t prompt you to do a scene about loving The Barenaked Ladies (yes, I would do that) because you don’t know who they are, then more power to you, what choice would you have done? Great, that’s perfect. Now, ask your brilliant coach how to make that choice better.

Disagree? Think I’m a genius? Know what ROTC means? Leave me a comment, and we’ll figure it out.

Improv Song? Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

I recently ran across this Green Day hit and besides it being a completely awesome song, it started occurring to me that this song could be all about improv. Let's examine.

Verse 1

Another turing point a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go, so make the best of the test and don’t ask why. It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time.

Each line and action in a scene is a turning point, every single thing we do directs how the show will go. But we don’t fret about the importance of every decision we make the best of it. But we don’t ask questions, cause there’s no questions about what’s happening, just the answers and the reality that we create.

Verse 2

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time. Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial. For what its worth, it was worth all the while.

We remember improv, both what we see and what we do. We idolize and remember it remembering how special every moment was. Some things stick with you, good, and the things you beat yourself up for doing. But, ultimately, every failure and success was worth it for all the joy it brought you.

Chorus

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.

Improv is unpredictable, but ultimately it’s right. Audience, players, coaches, students, I hope you had the time of your life.

Even the title, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), that’s how I try to think of my shows. Their gone once it’s over and I’ll never get to enjoy them again, but I will always remember how fun it was.

Ultimate conclusion: Green Day loves improv.

Know any other songs that are definitely about improv? Jazz doesn’t count. Soot me a comment.

Be The Most Reliable One On The Team

Your team wants you to be the most reliable one on the team. And I’m not talking about just showing up for practice on time, which you absolutely should do, more on that later.

Anecdote time. 


I have a teammate who I’m in love with. I fell in love with her in a 301 class at UCB while learning the organic opening. An organic opening is hard, especially for new improvisors. Our organic opening was harder, we did an organic opening where we looped back to the original motion and sound two separate times (think pattern game and looping back to the suggestion). This is no easy task for amateur improvisors who tend to keep blowing out ideas from monkeys to skiing to laughing to saying hey in an accent. But, this teammate was always looking for a connection to the first motion in the organic opening. And I began to always look at her when things were going for too long and low and behold we’d find a way back to our idea, in large part do to her.

Being the one who is goal oriented, the one who it seems is going to carry the whole team on their back in a task is a lovable quality. I always felt safer knowing that she would help get our organic opening done. And, I know other people felt safe having that fall back. And that’s where good improv comes from, from the opposite of fear.

Now being able to carry the whole team on your back is impossible. But, look for what you bring to the team and do your damnedest to make sure you bring your quality every time.

I edit like a mother fucker and I’m always looking for connections in 3rd beats of Harolds. I don’t think my team is relying on me to do these things, and by no means should you rely on someone to get always something done. However, I know that improvisors appreciate that SOMEONE is actively thinking about these goals in improv. 

Be the one who works their ass off to get something done. Name people. Start the object work. Ground crazy behavior. Label where you are. You’re teams gonna feel safer and do better work because of they feel safe.

Do you have task that you’re always looking to accomplish in shows? Does this weaken the team and create bad habits? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Pumping the Breaks, Straight Manning Yourself

Sometimes you go too far in a scene. You heighten too quick and you make a huge game move and everyone on your team freezes because it was so crazy. Because everyone knows the scene just crossed a threshold where it’s gonna be hard to keep this going. This happened to me Friday.

I threw a chair across the stage last week at UCB's Let's Do This. It got a laugh, but it was crazy and pretty big for so early in the scene. I got caught up in the moment. So I did what anyone can do when they make this heightening too late mistake:


PUMP THE BREAKS. 


Instead of taking this huge game move and trying to heighten it for the rest of the scene, I straight manned myself. It wasn’t incredibly clever but, I just said, “Ok, guys, I went too far, I’m sorry.” I didn’t break the reality of it. In character I called myself out as I going to far. This effectively grounded the scene in reality and allowed everyone to keep moving forward without having to worry about having a character in the scene that's obviously crazy.

I think my teacher Joe Wengert first said to me that this could be done, and I fairly recently started putting it into practice. Slowing down and reassessing a scene allows you to not have to play at too high of a level for the rest of the scene. Let’s imagine that a hypothetical scene has ten game moves in it (basically, time, which will be on the x-axis). And each game move has varying levels intensity, from 1 being the least intense to 10 being the most intense possible game move (y-axis). Here’s how a scene would go if you decided to try and heighten a too early big move for a the rest of a scene:

At the third game move we basically threw a chair and we decided to heighten from there. At a certain point, we keep making level 10 moves, and we're just doing big crazy moves and they’re losing their funniness because it’s not growing. Now here’s an easier way to do this scene:

In this version of the same scene we threw a chair and apologized. We took the craziness and grounded that craziness in a reality. Then we worked our way back to a different big move. This way we slow down the game, and we can find a way to get back to a heightened move. And it’s gonna pay off better because the audience knows that the craziness is there, and they’re looking forward to another one coming back. Do this a couple times and an audience will loose their shit.

If you pull out a gun 5 lines into a scene, there's nothing to stop you from going, "Listen I'm sorry, I would NEVER threaten you with a gun, I just got frustrated." This move is a lot closer to reality than you deciding to heighten from there and pull out a grenade then a rocket launcher then a tank then a aircraft carrier then a nuclear bomb.


You can straight man yourself, you can organically find a way back to a game, and you can still have a great scene if it goes too big too early.

Ever go too big? What happened? Do you have a better way to handle the situation? Comment and we’ll talk about it.

Book: Improvising Better

Improvising Better: A Guide for the Working Improvisor 
by Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen. 


I read Will Hines' blog, which is great, and he singled out this book in a post so I gave it a shot.


Improvising Better is awesome. It identifies some common trouble spots that many improvisors go through, like being afraid to get angry, not naming people and things, and the all to common forgetting to act. Each trouble spot is coupled with a nice little walkthrough of how these things happen, why they're not desirable and a few exercises and solutions for each one. Here's a little excerpt that I enjoy.

Some tips to avoid misguided object work:

•First of all, stop talking about what you're doing. Just do it. Don't name it; it may be named for you, or you may have to adjust according to what the scene needs

•The simpler the better!

 •Latch onto someone else's object work. Start doing what he is doing! That's when the real fun begins.

•Start with a strong action, but make eye contact with your partners, and invite them emotionally into your improvising.

•If all else fails, drop the object work and go to the connection. 

This book is filled with some practical tips that when put into practice really do help. As a student and an improvisor, it's good, even if you don't have these problems, to be aware that they exist. As a coach and teacher, it's perfect because it's a quick crash course on how to tackle these all too common pitfalls.


For less than $9 and only about 70 pages, this is a hard one to pass up. Get Improvising Better: A Guide for the Working Improvisor today.


Any books that you love? Know a better one? Leave me some comments, we'll chat.