30th
Wednesdays With Kirsten: Rules of Reality
Good morning, Wednesday friends and neighbours.
Remember the movie Jurassic Park? (OH YEAH). Well ‘member how this movie asks us to believe as part of its premise, that dinosaurs have been recreated through their ancient DNA, and they are now living happily? On an island? (OH YEAH)
What fun, no? Imaginative fun with dinos, love stories, Jeff Goldbums… great adventure. And an altered reality that we believe we in and accept.
But what if as they were leaving the island in the helicopter, a spaceship of dinosaur-looking aliens lowered into view beside them, telling them to pull over.
Or what if when the kid gets electrocuted on the fence, he stood up filled with super-powers, able to read the dino’s minds and shoot dino lasers out his eyes. (or was it the girl kid, I admit, it’s been awhile)
I’m sure at this point, you would agree with me…. WE WOULD HATE THE MOVIE! We would feel cheated and stupid for having believed in the certain set of rules of reality that we accepted, when they all got broken and alien super-powered. That’s not the story I signed up for.
(waiting patiently for explanation of how this links to improv)
Okay, well… my point is be imaginative! You don’t have to be realistic in improv, you can tell any kind of story you like. Horror, western, fantasy, adventure, alien, dinosaur, love story, space love story. You can have a talking cat, or boot, or clock, or you can have a visitor from the future. As long as once you’ve set up the platform you commit to it, you commit to the new rules, limitations and truths of the reality you have set up.
I often say when I am teaching… figure out what kind of story you are telling and then commit to that hard! If you realize you’ve started the scene with…. on a stormy night, the moon choked between two clouds, we see a small wide eyed child wandering down a dark dirt road in to a small town’s cemetery. THEN YOU ARE TELLING A HORROR STORY, and do not give that up for anything. Play into the genre, play into that reality.
The word of caution is to not try to include everything into your reality… it doesn’t work… it’s PHYSICS really… he he. I don’t anything about physics, but what I am saying is that one scene, one story… cannot hold all the possibilities of your imagination, it will crumble underneath the weight of your fantastic ideas.
Ex) The small girl wandering towards the cemetery is actually a robot. She has the soul of Joan of Arc and is travelling towards the cemetery to kill a vampire that is after her mother, the town’s first female mayor. Along the road a deer befriends her and warns her that the sun is angry at the humans, and will bring such a dry heat this summer, her family is sure to die. Then Joan trips over a rock and farts accidentally, a small chuckle is heard from the boy trapped in the tree at the side of the road. At that moment, the two fall in love.
Although fun to write. This story is going nowhere FAST! There are no limitations, no circle of reality in which this tale exists. And therefore it will fly into the world of nothing and everything… and be just that. A story about everything, that is actually a story about nothing.
So this Wednesday, though somewhat complicated… the thought is…
USE YOUR IMAGINATION, set up fantastical elements or quirky details that inspire your story, and your story’s world. And then commit to the things you have set up, instead of piling on more and more and more. Be conscious of the limitations you are setting yourself up with and then play within them. Like the bush border around a playground. Yeah… Iike the bush border around a playground.
Happy Wednesday!
