the Montreal Improv blog

Roy Janik’s In Media Res Scene Starters

From Roy:

Here are my favorite suggestions for scenes starting in the middle or end of an activity. I was looking for stuff that seemed ripe for good relationship exploration… stuff that would allow the students to jump right in and skip past having to start doing something as the characters.

Here’s my list:

• Developing film after a photoshoot
• Right at the end of a prayer: “Amen!”
• Cleaning up broken glass after a fight
• Getting a positive on a pregnancy test
• Immediately after the reading of a will
• “You have right to remain silent…” (arresting someone)
• Moving the tray across the buffet at a Golden Corral
• A bestselling author on a deadline at her/his agent’s office
• At the end of a job interview: “Do you have any questions for us?”
• A couple cleaning up after all the guests from a big party have left

Guest Writer: John Ratliff (Austin)

John Ratliff teaches improv at ColdTowne Theatre. He is a graduate of ColdTowne Conservatory and has trained at iO Chicago and the Annoyance Theatre. When he’s not performing, teaching, coaching, or discussing improv, Ratliff can be found editing copy, officiating weddings, eating some kind of Mexican breakfast, or lying on the floor listening to records.

My friend Michael Jastroch and I were talking about how a lot of the dramatic improv we’d seen (and, in my case, performed) over the past couple of years was more like melodramatic improv. We both like serious theater, but some of what we’d seen felt contrived and stagey instead of open and authentic. Was this, we wondered, just a function of bad acting? Or was it proof that improv only works as comedy? 

Neither, I think. What I suspect we saw was a slightly different version of a perennial improv pitfall: selling out the scene. 

We’ve all heard the note “Stop trying to be funny.” The more we perform, the more we realize that a joke, however hilarious, is usually not worth destroying the reality of the scene. (Well, *most* of us come to realize that.) 

The same thing happens in dramatic improv … except that instead of going for the joke, we’re going for some kind of emotional payoff. 

We probably get cut a little more slack for this than we should be. We’ve all been so indoctrinated with the idea of not going for the easy joke that we start equating “not funny” with “authentic.” 

But what both situations have in common is that the improviser is doing something based solely on what kind of reaction she’s expecting to get from the audience instead of paying attention to what’s happening in the moment.   

Of course, only the improviser herself can say whether she was selling out the scene. The same move (e.g., tearing up a note without reading it) might spring from a spontaneous realization (“I’m just done with him”) or from a contrived attempt to manipulate the audience’s emotions (“I thought not reading the note made it sadder”).   

What Jastroch pointed out is that if you’ve decided to be dramatic, you’ll start ignoring obviously funny things about the scene in order to pump up the pathos, in exactly the same way that you start ignoring everything except the joke in a game-heavy scene. Either way, you’re no longer listening to what the scene has to tell you.  

Aren’t we always telling our students that real life can be hilarious if we just pay sufficient attention to the details? So doesn’t it stand to reason that a realistically played scene, no matter how serious, might have some comic elements in it? 

Last year I was cast in a show called Austin Secrets in which the scenes were based on secrets submitted by the audience. The director had explicitly told us he wanted a couple of serious scenes in each show. But what we found was that — with very few exceptions — even scenes played completely seriously started getting laughs sooner or later. Part of it was just the release of tension in uncomfortable situations, but part of it was the stubborn fact that comedy and tragedy are really just two ways of looking at the exact same material. I think we’ve gotten so used to deciding which one we’re doing and aiming for it that we forget about a third possbility: playing as truthfully as possible and letting the audience make up their own minds which it is. 

My mother, who is generally very supportive of my improv, didn’t really like Austin Secrets. In particular, she didn’t like the serious scenes, because “I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel.” 

Exactly. 

Previous guests: Jill Bernard, Andrea Del Campo, Etan Muskat, Rick Andrews, Kristen Schier, Andy Eninger, Jeroen Van Dyck, Remy Bertrand, Caspar Shjelbred, Sean Michaels, Kareem Badr, RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, Alex Wlasenko, From the old blog

Guest Writer: Kareem Badr (Austin)

Kareem Badr is an improviser and actor from Austin, TX. He is a founding member of Parallelogramophonograph, and one of the owners of The Hideout Theatre, where he performs, directs, and teaches improv.

I am in a touring improv troupe.

Wait, let me state that more accurately. I am in an improv troupe that tours occasionally. 

Wait, more accurate still: I am in an improv troupe that, on occasion, has been fortunate enough to have improvisers in other cities, some of whom we’ve never met, welcome us with open arms.

On the couple tours my troupe has done, the shows were only possible because the improv communities in the cities we visited were generous enough to give us stage time. Some of them made space for us in existing shows. Some of them arranged for shows and found venues just so we could play. Why? No other reason than the fact that we’re fellow improvisers. We’re in the same club. And so we’ve got the word ‘yes’ embedded in our bones.

If I’m going to be totally honest, the world-wide improv club can feel more like an Improv Cult sometimes. Get a group of improvisers together and it’s all we can talk about. Put one of us in a party full of non-improvisers, and we’ll probably try to convert someone to join our cult. “Oh man, you need to take an improv class!” We must be the happiest cult-members the world’s ever seen. It can feel a little weird at times, when I take a step back and try to imagine it from the eyes of someone who’s not in the cult. On the other hand, if our cult’s supportive and positive energy is the outlier, maybe everyone else is wrong. (Hmm, spoken like someone who’s been truly brain-washed. I digress…)

I am musing on this on the evening of the Austin improv scene’s annual Thanksgiving Potluck. It’s basically a giant love-fest, bringing together hundreds of improvisers in Austin, spanning the 5 or 6 dedicated improv theaters in town. People eat and drink and, with each passing year, marvel at how ridiculously huge and supportive the scene has gotten. And the most amazing tradition is what has been dubbed the “love notes”: everyone writes their name on a small manila envelope and hangs it on a clothes line. Throughout the evening, people write little notes—one or two lines—telling each other how awesome they are, and drop them in the envelopes. When you leave the event, you’ve got this thick stack of love notes, scrawled by fellow improvisers.

Now, I am not one for hippie, “peace and love, man” sentiments, but that’s pretty damn cool. And it should, could, and has extended into the greater improv community, beyond the Austin city limits. Really, the love notes are just a heightened version of the support that improvisers give each other, on and off-stage. It’s the same sentiment that had my troupe performing in random improv theaters on the west and east coasts of the US. It’s the same thing that makes you feel instantly more connected to someone when you find out they’re an improviser, too. You both speak the same language. You’re both in the special club. 

Granted, sometimes our International Cult of Improv has some disagreements. Oh, you know the ones: This type of improv is childish. That type of improv is too structured. This warm-up is infuriating and pointless. This kind of improv got roast beef. This kind of improv had none. But when it comes down to it, we’re all doing the same thing. Short-form, long-form, narrative, Harold, montage, fast-paced, slow-and-patient. We are all on stage, doing this adult version of make-believe, because of how amazing it feels to support and be supported unconditionally, by reflex. That, in my opinion, is the ideal zen-like improviser state that we all aspire to: supportive by default.

So, I feel pretty lucky to be a part of our little cult. And the more I do improv, the more I learn the importance of supporting others, the way I’ve been supported. It sounds pretty cliché and cheesy, even as I write it, but it’s absolutely true.

Now who wants some Kool-Aid?

Previous guests: RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, From the old blog