Reference: Pirate Robot Ninja: An Improv fable
The Showcase:
The format for this showcase is The Friendliest Deathmatch, a format that blends Squid Game, Survivor, Improv, and Fight Club.
In future shows, elimination will happen after every round. But for this showcase, we’ll make sure everyone gets a chance to play Funny and Feels.
Class 1 of 6: Initiations, Finding the Game
“The Game” as described by Upright Citizen’s Brigade, is anything that’s funny or weird or unusual in a scene.
When you play the game, you’re building on the weird unusual funny thing to create more of the scene. It can be a fact about the world, a characteristic of one of the characters, or even just a pattern of behaviour.
You need to Yes, And enough to create a reality for the scene. You need to find the game to find the funny. When you heighten the truth, you get jokes; when you ground the jokes, you find the truth.
A-to-C thinking means you always have a(another) way out. Instead of thinking apple -> banana, go one step further. Apple -> banana -> Copacabana, or apple -> Isaac Newton -> gravity or apple -> original sin -> God arguing with Eve.
Finally, there are two (more) ways to initiate a scene:
Class 2 of 6: Find the Game II, Heighten & Climax
What is ‘the game’? You’ll know it when you see it.
If you’re stuck, here are some tools you can use to escalate and get the scene going.
Whenever you can, you should always be looking for the exit.
Class 3 of 6: Entrances & Exits; Fast Games
Always remember – enter loud, be obvious, and signal clearly to your castmates and the audience.
If you need to “confirm the game”, you can say “You Wot?” and it’ll be clear.
You can enter a scene with a tag to confirm the game.
We play games so that we always have two options – play the gimmick or play the game.
A great example is Questions Only or Alphabets; rather than playing a boring, clinical scene where everybody hits their alphabets but nothing happens in the scene, have a game going on.
Class 4 of 6: Status & Feels
Status is hard to explain – I can’t tell you what it really is, I can only tell you what it feels like. Status feels like energy, confidence, attractiveness and EQ all rolled into one. Young people might call it “BDE”.
Here are some physical/visually observable traits of high and low status characters.
