10th
I feel that saying “I want to do dramatic improv” is a useless thing to say because, well, what does it mean? What does that mean, do dramatic improv?
This is a good question because in last Friday’s post I didn’t really define what I think of as “dramatic improv”. I made an (unreasonable) assumption that most readers would be familiar with It’s Not You, It’s Me (INYIM, from here on in) but we’ve picked up a few new readers since we started the guest blog series and I’ve never really written up what the show was and what we were aiming for. So over the next few Fridays I want to discuss what I mean by dramatic improv, audience expectations and some details about our show INYIM.
What do I mean by dramatic improv?
Personally (currently?), this means an improvised play with a single narrative structure (eg: not a Harold), a set of recurring characters (one actor for each character / one character for each actor) and working within a genre (without the intent to parody or do comedy within the genre). It’s basically a play but there’s no script so I consider it improvised. It’s not meant to be primarily comedic so I consider it dramatic (if someone has a better word for it, please let me know).
Of course we can have dramatic moments within a comedy show. And, yes, as the above author says:
Drama means that you have heightened stakes with clear, personal, grounded repercussions. Which to me means that we should always be going in to our improv ready to play dramatically.
I totally agree. I LOVE those moments onstage but those moments occur within the context of shows that have the goal of comedy. Ultimately, the audience is there to see comedy and while comedy can indeed by well served by drama, people are there to laugh.
Tangent Alert! Drama and comedy often go hand in hand. Even a cursory study of Shakespeare will illustrate this principle in the hands of a master. Good comedies have dramatic moments to establish who the characters are and their relationships. Good dramas will have comedy to relieve or reset the tension before building it back up again.
In dramatic improv, we prefer to aim for the latter. Comedy is not forbidden but it’s not the goal and if we never see any laughs, then that’s ok (but, boy, that would be a heavy show). INYIM (with Kirsten Rasmussen and Dan Jeannotte as leads and myself as director) was always structured to be a tragedy. It was a tragedy that we tried to earn through building up and then tearing down. The three of us wanted to challenge ourselves and apply our improv skills to a dramatic story.
So when I say I want to do dramatic improv (or, my preferred term, unscripted theatre), I’m talking about doing a show that is dramatic in nature from start to finish. It’s a show where the audience knows they are coming to see a drama (I’ll talk more about the importance of audience expectations next week). I’m not talking about a scene within a comedy show that is dramatic or taking a dramatic approach to a comedy scene but a full embrace of improvised theatre where the whole point of the exercise is to move people to something other than laughter.
- vinny
(via improvisorsimprovisor)
