Class Notes for the lovely people who are attending Introduction to Comedic Improvisation in 2022.
Week 1: What is Improv?
- You Already Know How to Improvise: If you just do, without thinking too much, you can do it. Learning Improv is about how to do it better, not learning from scratch.
1.1 Greetings
Go around the room, and say hello to everyone.
Now greet everyone like you’re at a hearty Italian family wedding.
Now greet everyone like you’re wearing black, it’s raining, and you’re at a melodramatic French funeral.
Now greet everyone like you’re outlaws in the Wild West wondering who’s the Sheriff
You know how to react; don’t think so much.
See also Word Association, where people think too much.
- Improv is about Seeing the World Differently Seeing patterns and finding connections is a big part of storytelling — and so of Improv.
See also: Sun, Moon & Stars, which has the idea that “everything affects everything else” - Pay Attention to Your Brain’s Patterns: Improv is about playing inside your head, so you should know how it works.
1.2 Sticky Chewy Chocolate (Dinner Party)
Three players are guests and guessers.
They leave the room; everyone else assigns them one of three identities.
When the guests return, they have to guess who they are:
- Sticky — People find them sticky; disgusting, repulsive, unpleasant
- Chewy — People grind their teeth, work their jaws, are angry and unhappy at them, as if chewing on gristle
- Chocolate — Everybody loves chocolate – people love them.
This game is about reading signals and sending signals. If you’re at the party, can you accurately convey emotions and attitudes about other people? If you’re a guest, can you read signals well?
Dinner Party Variation
These are fundamentally the same game, but with different nuances:
- Flavour – Have a dinner party with a King (respected but not loved) and Queen (beloved but not respected). What’s the difference between respect and love? What about Royal, Maid, Beggar?
- Levels — Each player gets a number between 1 & 10; 10 is most liked and 1 is very unliked. The challenge is to accurately convey a spectrum of emotion, not just love/hate.
Sometimes, you’ll get conflicting reactions and people who treat you weirdly. This is true in improv as it is in life. You have to make the best guess on incomplete data, and trust your hunch.
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Week 2: Listening is Important
- A Game of Ideas Improv is a game of ideas and information. If you listen carefully, you will have all the ideas you need.
- Everything is an Offer If you can observe it, it’s an Offer; if it’s an Offer, if you can Accept it, Ignore it, or even Misunderstand it. Everything your partner does is an invitation to an interesting scene.
- Listening is Important How many of you noticed me saying “Glistening is important”?
You may already know Word Association and I Am A Tree from session 1; that’s because we’re going faster than the 2021 syllabus.
2.1 Columbian Hypnosis
Play in pairs; one lead, one follow.
The lead puts out their open hand, palm facing out; the follow fixates their attention on the hand. A magic spell has been cast, and the lead now controls the follow’s body, using their hand like a voodoo doll.
As a Lead: Start slowly. Lead your follow around the room by stepping back. How closely do they follow? How do they feel?
Try:
- Playing with the angle, height, and rotation of your hand
- Clenching your fist and splaying your fingers. What happens?
- What about moving just one finger?
For Follows, ask yourself: what does each part of the hand mean? When the Lead wiggles their thumb, which part does that correspond to? Is the palm the body, or a mirror for your face, or a control panel?
The Lead isn’t using words, but they are telling you what they want. Their hand is an offer; and it’s up to you to interpret what that means. Your interpretation should be consistent, but more importantly you are always in control.
Take care of each other. You aren’t Master and Servant (or even Master and Commander), you are Partners. The Lead has power, but it means responsibility; the Follow must follow, but is free.
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Week 3: Let Yourself Be Changed
- Let Yourself Be Changed Improv is about back-and-forth. You should always be reacting, letting the other person change you with their offers, just as your offer will change them.
- Learn To Yield Go with the flow. Don’t be like the unbending oak, that snaps in the storm; be the willow, that sways and bounces back.
If you insist on your ideas all the time, you will win the game, but nobody will want to play with you. Back and forth, give and take, both leading and following — that’s improv. - Some Rules Can Be Bent, And Some Rules Can Be Broken We do improv not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.
You can choose the easy way, or the hard way, whichever satisfies you. The hard way is harder but more satisfying.
I encourage you to bend the rules if you can. It can be satisfying to see someone outsmart and cheat the system,
- Listening is Important Music is super powerful for creating and influencing emotions.
What else are you not listening to that could create these emotions?
This week we played Pole Dancing as well as the Looking At Things, Pointing At Them, And Saying Their Name trilogy.
3.1 All In One Voice
A three-player game with two characters.
One player is a talk show host/interviewer and introduces their name, the name of the show, and the expert.
The other two players play the same character, taking turns to speak one word at a time.
The host asks questions; the expert answers through both mouths, one word at a time. People struggle because they try to take too much control, or not enough control.
Something magical happens when people look into each other’s eyes, and work together. You can lean but you cannot steer. But you can both head to the same place.
Week 4: Ten Thousand Offers
We played Goalie and Creep Out Bus Stop.
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Week 5: Climaxing
- “Sex” Week People have sex. Nothing wrong with sex; nothing wrong with telling jokes about sex; nothing wrong with dirty jokes.
The only thing is not to limit yourself to one style of joke. Dirty jokes are easy (hurr hurr), but you don’t want to stuff yourself into one hole (hurr hurr) and only do one type of joke. Break through, and make jokes about everything.
The reason we have ‘sex week’ is to get it all out (hurr hurr). Most of these are just jokes; wordplay, puns, and unexpected surprise humour.
If you’re curious about comedy, I wrote a Joke-Writing Workshop for a corporate once — you might find it familiar. - Reps Reps Reps To tell one good joke, you need to tell 100 bad jokes. You just need to practice. You can also learn the shape of jokes by listening to other people tell jokes sometimes.
Telling jokes often will also make you more confident when you tell jokes, and teach you the rhythm and timing of good jokes, including ideas like reincorporation.
(Told you it’d be helpful during Sex Week.) - Entertain The Audience To Buy Time Every joke you tell — even if it is ‘not funny leh’ — makes the next joke slightly funnier, and slightly more likely to land strong.
Worry less about joke quality — just tell jokes, flood the audience in jokes, and they will break.
We played 181 Lightbulbs; Sex With Me, Sausages, and Morgan Schneiderlin.
5.1 Press Conference
This is a classical improv game as featured on Whose Line:
One player is holding a press conference, but they have to guess WHO they are and WHAT they’re announcing, based on the questions asked.
This is a game where you have to ask leading questions. For example, in the video clip, leading questions are:
- What does the partner think about this?
- You can’t hide in the cave for the rest of your life…
- Are you going to rub it in the face of your critics by going NANANANA NANANANA?
These are all offers that guide the naive player to the answer, in increasing obviousness. Don’t go for the climax first, do a bit of teasing and play, work your way up to it.
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Week 6: Characterwork / Always Be Escalating
- Always Be Escalating We want to see scenes come to a climax (hurr hurr); so, we must always be escalating.
Avoid moves that de-escalate and release tension, like asking questions, changing the subject, or talking instead of doing. Always be escalating — but be careful, tension is not pace. You can slow down the dialogue and stop the action to build a moment of poignant, pregnant silence — and still be escalating.
Finally, there’s no such thing as climaxing too early. You just find another, higher climax. - Characters come first Who pays any attention to the syntax of scenes is forgetting the goal of Improv. We want to watch people, not plot, and starting a scene with a character makes it instantly interesting.
Plus, it makes playing out the scenes very easy; just ask what would my character do? - Characters drive stories, stories drive scenes One way to create a character is to give them an emotion. A simpler way is to give them a Want, something clear that the audience understands.
A character pursuing a Want creates a story. Several characters with clashing Wants create a Scene.
Nobody cares if you only ask questions in Questions Only; we want to watch a balance of Game and Story.
To really understand Escalation & Characterwork, watch this clip. In 90 seconds, Ryan establishes a platform, sets up and delivers his Blind Lines, kisses Colin, and creates a character. Colin delivers an amazing pun and then escalates like crazy with just three lines. And that’s just the first 90 seconds.
Characters drive stories, stories drive scenes, always be escalating.
If you’re reading this, remind me to play Prescott’s Character Creation Circle, Sandwiches, and Vagina Museum.
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Week 9: What Next?
- Performance Level Best-Practices Here are some regular habits & exercises performed as part of the Latecomers and other Improv teams I am part of.
Ending: KUDOS
Anyone anywhere in the circle can, at any time, start a sentence with “Kudos to (person) for (action).” You can give kudos for anything — a joke you laughed at, a move they made that you liked, a moment you shared, appreciation for being a scene partner.
The most important rules are that kudos should be sincere, and focused on the recipient; don’t try to be snarky, don’t try to humble-brag and praise yourself, really try to be appreciative of the partner.
A: Kudos to B for making me laugh with that Rice joke
B: Kudos to C for being so funny in that scene with me
C: Hey, that’s a humble brag! Don’t do that
B: Kudos to C for always calling me out when I brag about myself
On Good Shows and Bad
Four years ago, at the height of my performing powers, I wrote Repeat after me: On Good Shows and Bad:
There will be good shows, there will be bad shows. Most importantly, if you don’t give up, there will be another show.
@darrendarren
The most important thing to remember is that there will always be another show — so listen lightly, remain humble; good shows are not that great, bad shows are not that terrible.
See you next time.