Recently, Foxy wrote:

Anyhoo. I think a show needs fulfil any promises it has made to an audience. By which I mean if you're selling a show as funny, you have to bring the funny. Imagine going to the "action movie of the decade" and finding out that it's a period drama about a happy goatherd and his affable father. It would be totally contrary to your expectations and you'd rightly feel cheated.

I really like what you say here, Foxy. I wholeheartedly agree: If you advertise yourself as something, you had best live to the expectations you set with your billing. Else, you're misrepresenting what you do. You potentially disappoint the audience. You take their money and run.

Now, granted, given that improv is not rehearsed (at least in the same predictable sense as theater), there is some room for failure, and audiences should probably realize that (well, they probably already do, many seeing improv as "sub-prime theater" or "unfunny theater"). But performers, if they're going to charge admission and charge audience time, need to get to a level of performance such that failure happens rarely. Now, what is meant by "failure" is partially determined here by how you advertise your show, and partially determined here by performing to general theatrical conventions or standards (speaking so the audience can hear, etc.). "Failure" isn't some vague concept.

As for the necessity for comedy in improv, I can't remember offhand what I wrote earlier on the subject, but of those people who think improv must make the audience laugh, those people throw the word "improv" around as a synonym--nay, abbreviation--for the term "improv comedy." That is,

Given some people,

"improv" = "improv comedy"

This is not a mathematical equation, else it would sound contradictory. ("Comedy" would probably equal zero!) It's just a definition. It's saying that when someone says "improv," he means "improv comedy." This is to say that for these people, "improv" must make and audience laugh because, Hey, that's improv! (What they mean is "Hey, that's improv comedy!")

The discussion is much like this for these people: Should insurgents terrorize? Of course they should, if you use the word "insurgent" as a synonym for "terrorist."

Remember that the word "improv" refers to styles of many different things, not just comedy. A jazz musician could say "Let's improvise" and probably no one takes that to mean, "Okay, sure, let's put down our instruments, get up, and crack each other up with scenes." You village has just been wiped away by a flood. "We're going to have to improvise" doesn't necessarily mean staging a show; it means building your home out of sticks and mud.

Improv Vs. Comedy 2: This time it's personal

Hello Ben. Hello blog readers. Hello monitoring software. It's been too long.

Does improv need to make an audience laugh?

Short answer, no.

If you're after a longer, more rambling reply (and I suspect you are), then I'd say that improv doesn't need to make the audience laugh any more than a play does. Or a book, tv show... whatever. Drama can be just as entertaining as the funny that improv usually busts out, insofar as a hardcore need for amusement goes, I think audiences like variety - who doesn't? A bleak script/show tends to benefit from the contrast of some form of comedy; it can serve to juxtapose whatever tragedy the piece is about. It doesn't need to be funny, but it doesn't need to not be.

There's a common view that because most (frequently all the shows a given person has seen) improv shows are comedic, all improv shows are comedic. It isn't true and it bugs me plenty, but we're dealing with a funny old art form. It's been around in a coherent form for at least 500 years (that might warrant a guest blogger to explain properly by the way. Watch this space...) and so few practitioners seem to want to do more than emulate Whose Line.

Wait.

I'm off topic.

Anyhoo. I think a show needs fulfil any promises it has made to an audience. By which I mean if you're selling a show as funny, you have to bring the funny. Imagine going to the "action movie of the decade" and finding out that it's a period drama about a happy goatherd and his affable father. It would be totally contrary to your expectations and you'd rightly feel cheated.

Improv can and ought to cater to a range of tastes. We've all (I hope) seen beautiful improvised moments of deep anguish, blazing anger or poignant emotional truth that have stood out in a show precisely because they weren't funny. They were real, beautiful moments of drama, joy, whatever. And here's the kicker folks, not being funny makes you funnier.

I've only phrased it like that to keep you interested, I'm a shill.

Improv, to my mind, is about stories not comedy. Comedy is great, it's phenomenal at killing stories, which means it's a brilliant finishing move. But if all you've got is gag after gag after gag, it's going to get samey. And, as we all know, samey leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to bland shows.

And don't nobody pay for bland. Except maybe the Amish. (I wonder if they'll email and complain? Are there cyber-Amish? "We only use Windows 3.1. Every subsequent O/S is evil. Eeeeeevil.")

The trick I refer to is this: imagine the joke you could crack after 20 seconds. Now don't do it, keep playing it straight. Try making it to 40 seconds, then a minute. Then bust out the funny! Whatever gag will have more impact, simply because it contrasts. It's a change from what has gone before. Moreover, it's probably the end of the scene which makes you seem funnier! Pow! Zap! Blam!

My point, far from it though I may be, is this:

Improv in a vacuum doesn't need to be funny.

Improv that wants people to pay money to come see - moreover, that wants those people to come back to see it again - doesn't need comedy. It just has an easier time acheiving his goals with funny than without.

I don't know anyone who's looking to see a really well improvised tragedy. And maybe that's because nobody's selling yet...

I guess my short answer is in the second paragraph.

And it's this: "[improv] doesn't need to be funny, but it doesn't need to not be."

But what do I know? I am, after all, just a humble tailor.

Group Mind

This past January, I gave a lecture-seminar for the New York Society for General Semantics. It was titled "Developing the Experience of Group Mind." Specifically, I spoke of the long-form improv experience of group mind, and how as an improv teacher I develop an improv group's group mind.

The journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics published it as an essay. Feel free to give it a read. You can find the essay here.

Major Inspirations

To my improv in specific, and to my performing career in general, I have a number of obvious inspirations. These inspirations, in the form of people, have quite obviously influenced the kind of work I appreciate, want to put onstage, in all hopes do put onstage. While I don't have a comprehensive list to spout out at a moment's notice, I have a few I can utter here.

These are not in any hierarchy; I've merely listed them as they come to mind.

1. Adam Goren, aka Atom and His Package

Adam is a musician, and his work as a musician inspired my music before it inspired my improv. It might even suffice to say that he does not directly influence my improv, but only in some far-flung way.

Atom and His Package was a one-man band of sorts. He would come to his shows just himself, his guitar, and a CD player with prerecorded backing music. It was kinda like karaoke with guitar in some weird way, but that wasn't what communicated during his concerts. In his concerts, he was an amazing performer, a nerdy-looking guy, heavyset, but ferocious, hilarious, understated, and even lovably insecure. He was a genius in idiot's clothing, maybe you'd say if you saw or heard about the setup.

He was inspiring because he taught me just how personal you could be in your songs. In his songs, he sings about specific people in his life, mentioning them by name, making songs up about stuff for which you have no reference. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, at least with respect for attracting listeners. But it wasn't. The people in his life became a sort of cast of characters for his songs. You almost felt as if you knew some of them--their habits, their ways, their attitudes, etc.

He also inspired me that, yes, you can go onstage with a CD player and sing. Granted, Atom had a guitar, but his band didn't need to be one or two other guys. It could just be him. He could make retarded songs that no one understood. You would grow to like them if you listened often enough. (I surely did.)

If you listen to the music of Atom and His Package, these phrases describe his early work: dorky and punk, whiny and badass, outrageously personal and obscurely specific. As his music evolved, his music just became badass. He'd have outrageous song titles ("If You Own The Washington Redskins, You're A Cock" and "The Palestinians Are NOT the Same Thing as the Rebel Alliance, Jackass," to name two), blazing fast lyrics, songs that made you just want to jump up and down, and music that just made you feel alive.

So, he inspired my music (listen to "posting songs" here to hear the influences), but he also inspired my improv. In this way: You can get deeply personal and specific. You can pull from obscure places in your life. It doesn't mean your work will suck. On the contrary, it can send it through the roof. Specifics, specifics. If your improv doesn't have them, it's general, and if it's general, it only does so much for the audience, and only so much for you.

P.S. Here's an Atom and His Package song live. It's called "I'm Downright Amazed At What I Can Destroy With Just A Hammer." It's specific, CD-backed, and badass.

2. Marjoe Gortner

Marjoe was a 4-year-old Pentecostal preacher. For footage from the beginning of his documentary, see YouTube. (Marjoe is still alive, though I speak of him here in the past tense. It would be amazing to meet him.)

I do improvised sermons. It is very safe to say that Marjoe singly influenced my approach to improvised sermons--not so much his preaching as a kid, but his preaching as an adult in his Oscar-winning documentary (1972). In the film, he shares insights into his style and approach. What impressed me most about the documentary, though, was what Marjoe did to audiences. We're talking Pentecostal churches, and he would work the audience up to such fits of ecstasy, to see it would drop your jaw. People shaking, people dancing, people writhing, people speaking in strange tongues, people crying, people on the floor, exhausted, as if they've been exorcised (not to mention exercised).

I watched this film for the first time in a religion class in college, and what he did to audiences is what I wanted to do to audiences as an actor. I used some of his approaches as warm-up exercises for actors in a play I directed in college. Today, Marjoe's body language is very much embedded in many of my curtain speeches. The object is to give the audience energy, excitement, an edge ... to move them, inspire them, open them up, get them to feel something. Mmmm.

3. Respecto Montalban

This (former?) Harold Team from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre may have been the first Harold Team I ever saw perform. If not, it was the one that impressed me time and again in those first months of watching long-form improv in the summer of 2000.

Respecto was an attractive team of outstanding performers. They never ceased giving you amazing visuals, extreme physicality, and insane implications from starting premises. They kept mixing things up, innovating when others didn't seem to innovate, and just overall usually put on a damn good show. I've never seen a team to this day that matches their chemistry and energy. And their work is probably the most inspirational for me when it comes do teaching and doing Harolds. I can't remember what's in this video, but here is some sense of their work here on YouTube.

---

That will suffice for now.

Paul, you?

Ephemera

IMPROV & COMEDY
1. There's been a couple of recent, somewhat polemic discussions on the Improv Resource Center about improv (specifically long-form improv) and its relation to comedy.

The question for you, Foxy, is "How do you see their relationship?" That is, does your improv need to make the audience laugh, or not?

That's an opening question. Perhaps we can have a blog discussion about this.

DIE-NASTY 2008
2. I found some photos from Die-Nasty 2008 online. I see our friend Cariad in them. At first I didn't think I found you in them, Foxy, but then I realized, YOU WERE MOUSTACHIOED!!

Some Non-Improv Books Influential on My Improv

It's been quite some time since I've added to Tractor Control because of being swamped with work. A morning clearing after a day of major advancement in my work means I have some time to add to my beloved Tractor Control!

And the topic I chose? A list. That's easy enough for now. I herein list non-improvisation books I've read that have influenced my thoughts on improv and my pursuits in it.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
by Robert B. Cialdini

The chapter of note for me is the principle of reciprocity, which I feel has a bearing on improv. If you give the other improviser what she wants, she's more inclined to give you what you want. You might say that this book is possibly an argument for the iO, take-care-of-your-partner approach as opposed to the Annoyance, take-care-of-yourself approach, suggesting that you're better able to get what you want by taking care of your partner than yourself.

The Strategy of Conflict
by Thomas Schelling

Schelling would go on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics. In this book, he enlightened me with a new vision of conflict. Schelling saw conflicts as bargaining situations. By that, he meant two opponents going after what they wanted, but the opponents were interdependent--I could get what I wanted depending on what you do. The idea blew my mind open with respect to improv and introduced me to game theory in a way that had application to improv. Schelling talks about games of coordination, a tool I use for teaching group-mindedness. I happen to have an article coming out this month in the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics going into detail about this!

Science & Sanity

by Alfred Korzybski

The first book on general semantics, this book has bearing on how I teach improv. General semantics and Korzybski's work oriented me toward a more fact-based orientation, a skill that allows me to resolve disagreements quickly, not to mention manage different performers opinions on subjects like how a scene went, how it should go, etc. General semantics has also heightened my awareness to the power and influence of works, which has set me on numerous quests to find just the right way of introducing an improv idea for maximum speed in learning. I credit general semantics for much of my ability at getting new improvisers to perform like "the pros" in short amounts of time.

A Technique for Producing Ideas
by James Webb Young

This short, powerful classic contains a surprising plug of a popular general semantics book at the very end! Young's book defines the word "idea" in a way that makes finding ideas at the spur of the moment easy. I use his definition in my classes. Young defines an idea as "a new combination of old elements." When it comes to doing long-form improv, finding an idea for a scene is as simple as taking two free-associations generated in the opening and putting them together to start a scene!

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be

by Paul Arden

This short, illustrated book is incredible in its insight and advice. Geared for the advertiser, it is more generally a treatise on creativity from which nearly any creative producter could benefit. It is a book I look to for different ways of thinking about living life and doing things. It helps me to dream and to ideate. This book is the perfect gift for anyone, especially the improviser in your life!

Many more books have influenced me. These are major ones that I choose to talk about now.

Now, on a separate note: Foxy, I want to hear about Die-Nasty! Please give a report!

Edit: Blogger didn't like my original formatting. Such a pain!

As Promised...

The link at the end of this sentence takes you to a place where you can buy fresh from the oven prints of Dyna Moe's* awesome Harold Poster.

Moe's artwork is as ever, superb. Check out her portfolio on her design website here and her flickr feed over here.

Delights a-plenty my friends... a-plenty. More so, let me assure you that her rates for design work are unreasonably reasonable. Just think, your show's flyer could be designed by a woman who owns a puppet cake.

*Also, her name is DYNA MOE. You need another reason to look at her site?

Ken Campbell Dies Aged 66

Veteran maverick of English theatre, Ken Campbell, died in his home aged 66 on Sunday 31st August, mere days after appearing to sell-out crowds in Showstopper, an improvised musical at the Edinburgh Festival.

I only had the pleasure of meeting Ken twice, both times at performances of his experimental improv company The School Of Night. He struck me as a fiercely intelligent man with uncompromising standards who was more than a little crazy to boot. Having not known him well, I see the effects of his passing in the faces of my friends who did, and in the respect of a great many talented and wonderful people. Ken was a fiend for improv, breaking boundaries and trying new concepts out with abandon and enthusiasm, seemingly driven to keep pushing the artform into pastures new.

The Guardian probably put it better here and here; they are, after all, paid for this sort of thing.

Campbell once explained "I'm not mad, I've just read different books." Which one hopes he's continuing to do, whilst confounding and delighting the establishment of a higher plane.

Ken Campbell, ladies and gentlemen.

Tumbleweed

Sorry, it's been a quiet month.

I have for the most part not been improvising and thus have had a harder time rattling on about ideas and trends than I might've had otherwise. But I'm back on stage tonight and next week, let me tell you about next week. I fly to Edmonton, Alberta next week to participate in the glory that is a 53 hour non stop improv show at the Die-Nasty/Rapid Fire Theatre. Oh yes. I intend to blog throughout, so you can watch as my mind falls apart like a poorly made sandcastle.

Also on a loosely thematic note, congratulations to the recently (re)married Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances White who tied a second knot at an awesome ceremony at the weekend. Tom and Deb taught me how to run, and how if one must fall, you can chose what you fall on. Their book The Improv Handbook is currently in the active bit of my reading list. I'll tell you more about it later.

Ben is back in the USA after his teaching time in London is over, which I only mention to assert that Tractor Control is now international.

My fingers hurt. I'll write more tomorrow. Unless my copy of Spore arrives.

The Big Link Rodeo

Stuff I saw that was cool. And loosely related to making stuff up.

Loosely.

• An article from the Guardian about how improvisation is finally catching on in Britain that either fills one with hope for the future or mild irritation at the masses of improvisation in Britain that is overlooked by the author. I went for hope, this from readwriteplay is a smarterer response.
• Found on boingboing about a week ago is this interesting article on how social science is starting to catch up with magicians in terms of understanding the processes of manipulating peoples attention.
• Awesome graphic design for improv shows and the like including a super-sweet poster of the Harold. If I can find out how to buy it, I'll throw a link up here.
• And finally, some friends of mine are performing in Showstopper! an improvised musical in Edinburgh. Now. Soon. Later.
  

That is all.

You may go.

Natural Laws of Improv, 2 in a series of more than 1

4. Guns kill people. They do not wound, miss or jam.

5. Taxidermy is an overwhelmingly popular vocation, despite most "professional" taxidermists being "mad".

5.1 The same is true of dentistry.

6. Despite the fact that most animals are able to talk, their owners are never previously aware of it.

7. Most patients, when presented with a clean bill of health, will either insist that they are ill or claim (and they're frequently correct) that the doctor is a fraud.

Also, in our continuing series of Facts About Del Close, I presesnt this nugget:

Del Close once mimed a hammer so convincingly that it is, to this day, on display in The Louvre.

Always & Game

That's an intersection in Improvtown.

I was talking today with an American improv friend of mine (Lisa) who is in London for the summer. We got to talking about improv, specifically the notion of game in the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre context.

I realized in how she was talking about it, whatever was considered the game of an improv scene was something that a character (allegedly) always did. The clue for finding game was listening for the word "always."

For example, say Foxy and I start a scene at a restaurant. I start sharing how I had a tough time getting to the restaurant be-, beco-, because of uh, "Man, I always trip over my words. Because of a nightmare tube ride."

That sentence, "I always trip over my words," is the clue about my game in the scene: I always trip over my words. So the rest of the scene (to an extent) can be "about" my tripping over my words in different ways.

That game may not be all that interesting to watch, so I might play several games in an improv scene rather than just one. And by saying "always" I don't mean literally always but figuratively always. I don't mean thus from start to finish of a scene tripping continuously, (without stop), over your words. I mean doing that periodically, often enough, potentially each turn you take an improv scene, or probably more satisfactorily, at strategic moments. You have to find those strategic moments, and that's part of the art. (It's not a science, as far as I can tell.)

Admittedly, I'm not THAT big of a fan of this kind of play as a total practice (at least I don't think I am), though there's a lot of fun in it, and it can make playing an improvised scene simple (you just make your initial move out to be something you "always" do, and then find ways to do it in the scene).

It is with doing something "always" that we say in improv "there's a pattern." I've tended to teach recurrence and transference as opposed to patterns. That is, make things recur within a characterization, or even transfer some recurring things of one characterization to another character. But I think the "always" approach is a better one. I may try to test it out the next time I teach the UCBT notion of game.

It's amazing how in talking to Lisa I've had some shocking, amazing insights into improv--and I've only seen her a handful of times!

How I see improv

Last night my improv program had an informal performance. Foxy alludes to it in the prior post.

After the show, I was talking to one of the performers, who is a software engineer, who has presumably never performed onstage before, and who has never done improv for an audience before. He told me, "I think I'm addicted to improv."

I ended up sharing with him how I saw improv. This was an old view of mine that I rediscovered in talking to him. It basically is this:

Improv is unscripted drama. Pretty much the only difference between improv and plays is that plays have a script and improv does not. That means, in improv, the actors don't know what to say, but in plays, the actors do know what to say.

What that means in an improv class is that you are learning the structure of plays so that you can act them out in the moment without the aid of a script. You learn about the crafting of scenes and the crafting of plays. When you improvise, you basically become a playwriting collective: You use the structure of plays and follow that structure as your group performs.

Audiences unfamiliar with improv tend to see improv as saying funny lines. They think that when performers are onstage, they say funny line after funny line after funny line, and they have some mysterious gift or raging talent for saying funny lines.

But as you tend to learn in improv classes, your "lines" are really just behavior--behavioral reactions in the moment as you follow the structure of plays. You are doing something else other than saying funny lines. You are following playwriting techniques, and the result of following them sometimes is audience laughter.

When you analyze the laugh lines in an improvisation, abstracting them from the context of an improvised scene, you usually find there is nothing particularly funny about them. Instead, it is something about the moment that makes the audience laugh. In truth, it is usually what the improviser did that makes the audience laugh, rather than what the improviser said. The word "toaster" is not by itself very funny, but said in a particular context, at a particular moment, given the prior information in the improvised piece, and given the understanding of what the improviser's character may be trying to do, saying it may provoke an uproar in laughter to burn into an audience member's memory for a lifetime.

When you take an improv class, you realize improv doesn't have anything to do with saying funny lines. It is more about the interaction between characters, their conflict, and the movement toward a decision in that conflict. Granted, talk is definitely an element of the improvised scene, but it's not the focus. If you focus on the speech in great improvised scenes, you will usually find that it doesn't explain why they were so great. Instead, if you focus on the choices of the improvisers and the context in which those choices occur, you will have a better understanding of what made great improvised scenes so great.

So you learn about choices in an improv class, not about saying funny lines.

Granted, the focus is obviously going to depend on the beliefs of the improv teacher. Indeed, there are improv teachers out there who do care about saying funny things, and they may even denigrate you for your failure to say funny things. (I'm definitely not one of those teachers!) In rough, the approach may be a little bit different if you're talking a short-form improv class or a long-form improv class. In a short-form class, you may learn techniques that will make the audience laugh. In a long-form class, you don't really do that. Instead, you learn techniques to perpetuate improvised scenes. Essentially, in a long-form class, you learn about the creation of unscripted drama, while in a short-form class, you learn about the creation of audience laughter.

As a side note, though: To date, I've never really taken a short-form improv class, only listening to what others have said about it and about classes, coupled with what I've seen of short-form improv.

... So that's how I see improv. I come from the long-form perspective, so that's probably why I emphasize the dramatic elements of it (i.e., its play(writing) elements) rather than its comedic elements (i.e., its laugh-inducing elements). There is no right or wrong way to see improv, unless perhaps you set a way as right or wrong or subscribe to a particular mindset that sets a right or wrong way to see improv.

Faith In Fun

I'm in a theatre right now, watching a Harold that Ben's workshop group has put together. And the short point I'm making is this.

Watching people enjoy improv is fun. Isn't it? The show I just watched* may not have been terribly polished, or finessed (which is not to say the guys weren't good, many of them were, I'm saying that they're new to improv) but they were really having fun. And that was engaging and allowed me to see past any foibles.

Have you ever watched improvisers who aren't having fun? It's horrible. I guess I'm affirming the power of investment and enjoyment when compared with the traditional lone requirement of "mad skillz".

Incidentally, Orange, the UK mobile phone service provider are a massive, massive waste of time and energy.

*Oooh... chronology.

For an improvisational artist, what is the value in having a form?

Generally speaking, the value of having a form for the improvisational artist is challenge.

When I layer on a form, I offer an obstacle which the improvisers must take on. If I tell you to enter an improvised scene and exclusively endow the other players, that becomes your form. It is a challenge for you to improvise with that obstacle.

The alternative to form is formlessness: Simply approaching improvisation as "anything goes." That may sound nice in theory, but in practice, it is opening the door to the permission of "serious shit going down" onstage. I think of anarchical-type behavior. I think of hitting people, pushing people's buttons, violating people's personal boundaries, etc.

You may say that that's ridiculous, that that wouldn't happen onstage, but when I ask "Why?," you answer with form. You reveal your form. "Because nobody wants to do anything illegal onstage." "Because we don't want to upset our audience." "Because I love my group and I wouldn't do anything to hurt them." Etc. These are expressions of the form you follow. You avoid illegal activity onstage, or you observe the tastes of the audience, or you support the well-being of your groupmates.

This is just like saying you endow the other players in your scenes, you yes-and all of their offers, and you do three scenes, a group scene, revisit the three scenes, another group scene, then weave everything together. These are parts of the form of popular styles of improvisation. So might be your private interests expressed above.

Ultimately, form is a choice. You choose to comply with and operate within a form. You challenge yourself. The reward is linguistic: You get to say you can operate within that form. You are able to do that form. You are (truly) a doer of that form.

But the better reward is often the fruit that comes from doing a form. Forms are like seeds: You can water one with your ideas, and it comes out in a specific plant, and water another one with your ideas, and a whole different plant emerges. Both might be improvisation, only they yield different species of improvisation.

The point I wanted to make originally in typing this post is a different one on form. It is: With respect to creativity, what is the value of having a form? For another time.

High Status

Is there any greater indicator of high status in a scene than a character in possession of a Hawk?

Is it not true that Del Close himself owned a great many Falcons*?

*no it is not.

What happens when you start calling something "an artform"

A couple posts below, Foxy talks about the suggestion and wonders why we take one in improvisation.

I feel the answer to that question depends a bit on how you see improvisation. If you see improvisation as an art, then there is little obligation to do anything, as the word "art" tends to imply doing something without rules, and "doing something without rules" is not even a rule.

But if you see improvisation as an artform, then you start getting into obligation. If some practice has a form to it, generally speaking, it has some criteria you have to meet in order for you to properly say you're doing the form. If you miss those criteria, you aren't really doing the form. It would be improper to say you are doing that form.

That's only a law of speech: "You can't say you do something if you don't meet the criteria." And human life generally operates this way: If you don't do this, that, or the other, you can't be called a doctor, or a lawyer, or store manager. Missing those criteria denies you the privilege of being called those things. Some sets of criteria are more accommodating than others, but hopefully you see my point.

If you see improvisation as an artform, the question becomes, "What exactly is the form?" That is, "What are the criteria we need to meet to say we're doing the form?"

It just so happens there's no absolute answer, it really depends on how you define a form. Now, if there is a form-creator, and he lays out the criteria for the form, you are lucky in that you have a relatively easy way to determine the form and what falls within it and what falls without it. (You can still have some controversy because words are sometimes subject to interpretation...) But if you don't have a form-creator, or if that form-creator is relatively lax in his form-ation, then you start to have different artworks masquerading as the artform. Some of these may generally match the artform as intended, while others may drift noticeably away from it.

For example, I'm from the U.S. where we do Harolds, and I'm currently in the U.K, where Harolds aren't commonly done. When I worked with a group Foxy's in, one of the members said they had done Harolds, but for her a Harold was something like three scenes. (I can't remember exactly what she said.) Now, for me, a Harold is a LOT more than that. That is, the form of the Harold has a lot more criteria than that, and this person, from my perspective and my understanding of the form, had NOT done a Harold (relative to the law of speech I outlined above).

With respect to the solicitation of a suggestion from the audience, you have to ask yourself if it's part of the artform. If you don't believe it's part of the artform, then it's understandable to say that you don't need to do it--the form does not obligate you to solicit a suggestion. However, if you believe it's part of the artform, then you NEED to take the suggestion. If you don't do it, you are, to that extent, NOT doing the artform.

I think of drama: You do what's written in the play. If you don't understand something included in the text, you have to find some sort of justification for it. Presumably it is there for a reason that the playwright understands, so you don't just cut it because you don't understand it. Instead, you ask, "Why is this here?"

And I apply the same logic to improvisation, esp. where the word "improvisation" means "improvised theater." Treating improvisation as theater, you subject it to many of the practices of stagecraftspeople, and one of those practices is to revere the text, which in the case of improvisation is the form. And so you understand that I'm not peculiar in my opinion, look to what Elaine May said many years ago at The St. Louis Compass, one of the first U.S. improvisational theaters: "The actor's business is to justify." The comment allegedly came as a response to an improvisational actor who didn't think her character would make a particular choice. It wasn't her business to resist; it was her business to justify. (Cf. Something Wonderful Right Away by Jeffrey Sweet, and look at the interview with Del Close.)

And so, you look at the suggestion, and you ask yourself, "Why is it included in the artform?" The answer(s) at which you arrive may differ from the answers at which others arrive. Some answers might be "right" in the sense the form-creator reasoned their inclusion in the way you answered. Other answers might be "wrong" in the sense the form-creator did not reason them in that way. But those "wrong" answers might purely be "artistic" answers, understandable interpretations of why the inclusion in the artform. That's gonna happen when the form-creator is lax.

If you don't want to be obligated when you do improvisation, don't think of it as or call it "an artform." Else, generally, I'm going to uphold you to certain criteria, certain standards. If you want to be free from obligations, merely think of it as or call it "an art." I will be more open-minded to your work.

Which leads me to a potential future post: For an improvisational artist, what is the value in having a form?

Natural Laws of Improv, 1 in a series of more than 1

Improv scenes seem to exist in a world with a series of observable natural laws. I present some for your perusal.

1. Saying a person's name immediately summons them.
2. Wallets do not contain money.
3. Everyone knows everyone else on a first name basis.
3.1 If they don't, they will within four lines of dialogue.

More to follow...

Welcome to the show.

Hello.

Here is a blog.

It seems only right that starting this, I talk a little about starting shows. Here's some context...

A question from a phone conversation I had last night is sitting with me at the minute, we're drinking tea as I write. The question is this:

"Do we need to ask for suggestions before improvising?"

My knee-jerk answer is no. We don't need to. But then why do we? Because we always have before? To demonstrate to the audience that we're improvising? Because the ask is a useful device to unify the group mind? Is it a good way of making you think differently? Should we not get suggestions at all? I'll get round to my thoughts on the above questions in due course, right now I feel like gen'ralisin'.

I hear people talk about the mercurial nature of inspiration like it's a timid kitten or, as in a recent article in the guardian, a skittish deer. Something that requires gentle coaxing and care that might vanish back into the dense, cognitive woodland if we tread on a twig (not the kitten obviously). People talk of being "bereft of inspiration", I commonly feel uncreative in my company's main office, whereas there are folks who are prolific, never seeming to run out of ideas, suffer writer's block or "dry up", regardless of environmental factors.

My point, relates to improv. In many improv formats, there is, hard wired into the firmament* of the structure is the ask. May I have a word please?", "An object bigger that this?", "Can I have a word please? Say, that reminds me of..."They're there! Right at the top of the Harold, most every Armando I've ever seen begins with one of these and they're even more prevalent in short form improvisation. The question asks "why?" and in an environment where there are traditionally no wrong choices, that's almost impossible to answer. For the sake of argument, let's look at a generic short-form scene for now and not bring Harolds and their kin into this.

It seems to me (and by inference all rational people**) that getting an suggestion from the audience is the norm in the eyes of the public and many improvisers. If you ask someone to describe an improv show to you, ten'll get you twenty that shouting stuff out will be included in the early stages. Hell, most improv shows I've seen get the audience to practice shouting stuff out (wait, I do this. Why the hell do I do this? Do I not trust the audience to be able to think on the fly? I have to warn them? Rehearse them?). Is the fact that we usually begin with a suggestion a good argument against the obvious alternative of starting without one? I'm not convinced it is. Is the fact that I usually take milk in my tea a reason to not try it black? (I have a longer diatribe here about different patterns in improvisation and this sentence is here to remind me to write it.)

A suggestion can inspire, in fact my feeling is that the best reason for getting a suggestion from the audience is to inspire a scene and to force me out of my usual patterns of thought. I have a few things that I keep coming back to in scenes, when I recognise them I try to eliminate them, at the moment the list includes birds of prey, high status buffoons and bad Russian accents. These things are almost always quietly waiting in my near obvious, ready to jump into a scene. Getting a suggestion however forces me to accept a new idea, alien to my preexisting obvious that can both surprise and challenge me and in turn, force me into more unfamiliar content or narrative territory. Look for a moment at the Harold, you take a word from the audience, place it like fuel into a machine for spouting related ideas and then use those related ideas as the raw materials for the subsequent show... neat. To surmise, I like suggestions as a means of inspiration. I really do.

"A suggestion can be a useful tool for getting the group on the same page for
the show."

I heard someone say this, or something like it, about two weeks ago and I can't remember who it was. I agree, sort of. I would hope that whatever group is performing should already be on the "same page", I worry that taking this as gospel might limit some people, create a negative sense around jumping and justifying, an idea that if what you're about to do or say isn't immediately relevant to the suggestion, the shows theme, then it's wrong. And any sentence that ends with the word wrong in bold type doesn't sit well with my understanding of improvisation.

The most common justification of the audience suggestion is this:

"If we don't ask the audience for a suggestion, they won't think we're
improvising."

And every single time I hear it, I die a little inside. My preference in this matter is the same as Keith Johnstone's (and sadly I've no book to hand to quote, but I think it's in Impro). As long as the audience are entertained, who cares if they think you're improvising or not? I'm serious. Plus, there's always some fucker who claims you're scripted anyway and you'll never convince him otherwise. The flip side, and this is not a side of this argument I've ever looked at before, does the audience have a justified expectation that you will reassure them that you are improvising? They've presumably paid for improv, how will they know you're providing them with some? There's no hard and fast method that will prove you're genuine, but asks and suggestions are about as convincing as you'll get. I still think it's a weak-ass rationale.

So there, there's some thoughts about suggestions. I was going to talk a little about not getting a suggestion, but I've been writing for an age and want to go make tea. I certainly think starting scenes from nothing is an equally valid method of working and something everybody should try at least in workshops. Personally I like both, sometimes I want a little inspiration from the room, sometimes I don't, sometimes I really want to start a scene with a certain emotion or action sometimes I will and other times I'll kill that idea and get a new one. Besides, who doesn't' like variety?

I guess I ought to make a conclusion eh? I figure, do what you feel is right, but every now and then try something else and check once in a while that you at least have a reason for doing whatever it is you're doing.

You might see this statement paraphrased a lot if I keep this blog up.

Right, that's quite enough for the first post. Maybe I should've started with something smaller. But hey, thanks for reading this far.

Foxcroft

* It's an electronic firmament... one assumes.
**Which is a term I use for people who agree with me.

[Edited to correct my lame-ass HTML formatting issues]