Improv with Me is Like… (Sex vs Improv)

There is a fun improv game called “Sex with Me” which explores the extended connections between the act of procreation with a subject the audience deems worthy of comparison. Who am I kidding? It’s a set of sex jokes, puns and innuendo. As I said, it’s great fun. 

“Sex with me is like a writing a blog post: You think about it a lot more than you spend actually doing it.”

Photo by Robin Straaijer

The game allows me a great introduction to a topic I have thought about since I first started improvising: the connections between sex and improv. (Actually, improv has many of the same similarities with any team sport, but sex is funnier than every sport except curling.)

“Sex with me is like an analogy: two things that seem different come together and are revealed to be more similar than at first thought.”

Apart from the obvious starting with “yes” and the fact they have a similarly addictive quality, there are many ways improv is like sex.

Take the whole shortform / longform argument. Some improvisers prefer the quick payoff of shortform, where it is concluded within a few minutes and there’s hopefully a great payoff at the end, lights out. But others prefer longform. This allows for a longer build-up and a much deeper connection with what’s going on. There is still a payoff, but it’s much more about getting there rather than the moment itself. With shortform, once it’s over, there is sometimes a short rest and then you’re off again, but with longform, once it’s done, that might be it for a week. (Note: performing schedules vary person to person.)

The most common configuration of performers is two people, but scenes of more than two also happen. It becomes trickier when there are more people. Giving focus becomes more important as is gauging when to enter and when to withdraw.

There are also plenty of tools and methods we can use to make our scenes better, if we want. Status – one player taking a more dominant or subservient role; the choices of being more physical or more emotional. Many people embrace playing a character other than yourself. And sometimes it is acceptable to use a gag.

Of course, it’s all about heightening. Start small and build. Build to a peak and end here or soon after.

Something we should consider is the audience. Because improv is something people watch too. So now, I guess the analogy has temporarily moved into comparing improv to porn. In general audiences prefer shortform improv. That’s not to say there is not an audience for longform, but it’s largely other performers.

Joking aside, I think the biggest way improv and sex are very similar are in attitudes to how we play. Sure, if you go into the scene intending that you yourself have fun, it can be a good scene. But when it really works best when you go in with the intention of pleasing your scene partner and they go into it with the intention of pleasing you. That’s when you can make truly amazing scenes.

“Sex with me is like an improv blog: it’s an oddly proud feeling when it’s out there for everyone to see.”

P.S. I realise that all this analogising, I am left with one further inescapable conclusion, that solo improv, something I love doing and like to think I’m pretty good at, is basically wanking.

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What similarities have I missed?

Personal Boundaries And The Stage

You are on stage in the middle of a scene. The other player is someone you have seen around but have not played with much before. The scene started fine, but somehow it seems to be going out of control and suddenly your scene partner is up very close and grabbing you. You feel uncomfortable but put it down to being inexperienced or that you missed something. After the show, rehearsal or workshop is over the incident sticks with you longer than you expect. Does this sound at all familiar to you?

An essential thing that is missing here is not experience; it is trust. A comparable interaction with an improviser you have played with a lot maybe does not bother you. The trust is there; you are looking out for each other.

In improv we spend a lot of time out of our comfort zone. So much so, that we can find it difficult to realise straight away when things go too far. It can be hard to differentiate between the discomfort of being on stage with no idea where the scene is going and the discomfort of doing things that are crossing personal boundaries for you.

For some things, the best illustrations come from workplace stock photos.

There is a difference. On a low level, it feels different. But it may get mixed in or confused by the higher part of your brain with everything else that is going on.

Things that cross personal boundaries are varied. They are things like physical closeness, bodily contact, especially if not gentle, and things that are more intimate. It can also be of being in a scene where the content is uncomfortable somehow. Mostly I’ll be talking about physical contact as this is where the greyest area is. I’m not even talking about when it is actually violent, dangerous or genuinely sexual as this is never okay.

We all have boundaries about these sort of things. They vary for different people; they vary by situation; they vary depending on who else is in the scene, who is in the audience, and what has happened that day. And it’s made harder because when you begin, most of improv is putting yourself out of your comfort zone.

But these boundaries exist and they should be respected. By yourself as well as others.

As I said, we tend to blame ourselves that we aren’t better improvisers or that we didn’t understand what was going on. And worse, scene partners can also often blame us if we don’t fully go along with where they thought the scene was heading.

A very clear example of what I’m talking about is being handled roughly in a scene, say grabbed forcefully. This will almost certainly cross a boundary in the other player if you don’t know each other so well and haven’t discussed this sort of thing.

Sometimes, players do realise their boundaries are being crossed on stage and their response is influenced by that. But even here, there is a tendency for the performer to criticise themselves for their response and even for the other player to do so too.

This scene has been recreated by actors.

Let’s take as a specific example, Augustine has gone to touch Bertha’s hair and Bertha, not feeling comfortable with this, has leant back to avoid the touch.

A frequent response to this is afterwards for Augustine to complain that Bertha blocked him. Which is not true. You can say that Bertha yes-anded their own sensibilities (boundaries), and, indeed, that of the audience, who would not want to see a player truly uncomfortable.

Now, was Bertha overriding Augustine’s offer with her own internal impulse? I say no. The impulse was a reaction to the offer.

Yes, in  a different situation, if Bertha trusted Augustine more, she would have possibly allowed him to touch her hair. But this is irrelevant. What matters is what happens in the scene between these players at this moment.

The problem here is not Bertha’s reaction to the offer, but Augustine’s response to Bertha’s reaction. If Augustine was paying full attention to Bertha, he should have realised Bertha’s response was due to boundaries being crossed. He could even have seen the signs before hemade the move and made a different offer that indicates the same emotion but less intrusively. Bertha’s response is an offer, and as it was so nicely put to me recently: “Your job as an improviser is to make your scene partner comfortable. If they feel uncomfortable or scared, you have failed.”

Augustine’s objection comes in part from only seeing his offer as he originally intended it. He is seeing his offer as “A touches B’s hair,” but this is presumptive. The offer is in fact, “A tries to touch B’s hair” and the response is “B avoids the their hair being touched.” In terms of wants of the character, there is no blocking. In fact it’s fine for two characters to want different things as long as they acknowledge the others want.

The real problem, of course, is the fact Augustine reached for the hair at all when Bertha wasn’t ready for it. It shows there isn’t a good connection between the scene partners and/or the offer to touch the hair really wasn’t the next step in a process of discovery by the two players in that a scene. In fact, in most cases this sort of thing happens because one actor is railroading the scene, pushing forward their own vision of what should happen whilst taking little input from the other player.

I’ve heard people explain that they went too far because they were “in the moment.” But “the moment” is not just whats going on in your head, it’s what is happening all around you, between you and your partner. Being so into something you are doing that you don’t notice your partner is NOT improvising.

Improv is about taking care of each other. It’s about paying attention. Inattentiveness is not an excuse. We have to be attentive: it is the CORE of what we do. If you are not paying attention how can you accept?

Being aware; Read signals; Always be respectful.

And this doesn’t just happen between actors who don’t know each other, it can happen between people in the same team, people who have played a lot together. As we said, it’s not about inexperience, it’s about not paying attention

If you do accidentally go too far, which can of course happen, you should be aware of it and adjust. Use the response from the other player in an accepting way, and most of all apologise after the scene. You might step over a line very occasionally, but have the awareness to realise it and the humility to apologise for it. The big problem is not that it happens at all, it’s when it happens frequently.

If you find yourself in the situation of being uncomfortable due to boundaries being crossed, don’t be afraid to let your scene partner know. Any good, attentive improviser should pick up on this and use your response as an offer and certainly they should not push further.

You are not being a bad improviser for not accepting something you feel highly uncomfortable with (i.e. something beyond any normal feeling of being out of your comfort zone in improv). As I have explained, this is usually not actually blocking.

What can you do if your signals are not seen?

• You can make them more obvious.
• Make an offer that deflects where the scene is going. 
• You can even call out the actor’s behaviour attributing it to the character.
• And if still, it continues, you can always leave the stage. No show is worth being made to feel unsafe for. Your integrity as a player is more important than the scene.

(These are easier said than done, I know, but it’s good to be aware of options.)

Players on the side can also help.

• Edit the scene and start a new one or tag one of the players out.
• Intervene as another character or voiceover.
• Bring it up after the show/rehearsal.

The audience will probably have sensed your unease and will not want it to carry on as it is. In fact, in cases like these, often only one person wants the scene to go the way it is going, and that’s the player forcing the offers.

This sort of thing affects us all, whether you are a victim or not. In fact, I’m sure more people have had this happen than you think. Maybe all of us. Not too long ago, I was groped on stage by an actor I did not trust who did it because he knew I would accept it and because he thought it was funny. (The audience did laugh, but mostly at the how weird and inappropriate it was.)

Discussing this sort of thing within you group, saying what people do and don’t feel comfortable with is the best way to raise awareness and prevent things going too far.

Everyone, especially more advanced players, should be more attentive to this sort of thing (and not just on stage). We should edit uncomfortable scenes, call-out inappropriate behaviour, remind everyone that this is a medium that only works when we work together. As always we should remember the words of the great guru, Gerald Springer, “Take care of yourself and each other.”

Two Shades of Funny

There are two sorts of funny in improv: Constructive and destructive.

Constructive comedy comes directly from the situations, characters. It comes from within the scene. It emerges from making natural connections with the information we have. It is discovered in following the story and the progression of the characters. Constructive laughs sweep the audience along with the story, make them connect with the characters more and make them understand a little more.

Destructive comedy comes from outside the scene. It comes from the ego of the actor and a desire to be the funny one. It comes from ideas and references that are being forced where they are not wanted. Destructive laughs, make the actors stop and following the story and characters. It makes the whole edifice constructed in the brain of the audience member to start to crumble, and in some cases become destroyed completely. It makes us care less about the characters.

Stand-up can embrace both forms much better than improv, because it is about the laughter. Comedic plays or films almost never have the destructive type unless they are absurdist or “screwball.”

Improv, as ever, falls somewhere between these two mediums. In fact one possible definition for short form and long form could be to which end of the standup-theatre line people are trying for. And of course, short form can take destructive comedy. Whatever you are doing it’ll be over in a couple of minutes, nobody is emotionally invested, so why not gag the hell out of what you (or someone else) started.

But if you are trying to do something longer, and want to bring the audience along with you, you don’t want to be destroying what you’ve set up. Because if you are fine with destroying it, why should the audience care anything about it? They won’t. You don’t care, they don’t care.

Birdsong at the Comedy Theatre, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

And believe me, you are not reducing the comedy by not going for the destructive humour, not at all. Comic plays and movies are still funny. Not destroying the scene means you allow yourself the chance to find the constructive comedy. You allow characters to develop that allows you to find deeper comedy traits than simply a catchphrase or silly walk. It allows comic situations develop that are funny because they came about organically rather than just being contrived and forced on a scene. They allow us to find comedy in moments that are not inherently comic and still remain true to the predominant emotions in the scene.

In fact, I deliberately emphasised the destructive term because it really is that. It shuts of so many doors for things that would take a show from being merely funny to being amazing.

Improv vs Comedy

Like a lot of people, I got into improvised comedy because I enjoyed being funny. And like a lot of people over time I came to the realisation that comedy is not at the heart of improv, but the genre it is generally played in. In fact, comedy can often be at odds with improvisation.

A lot of comedy comes from breaking things. There is much comedy in destruction. Many a punchline reveals that things are not what they seemed. That's all very fantastic when it’s the end of a joke, but in a scene it can be hard to recover from. The rug has been pulled out from under the scene and you effectively have to start again. Jokes like these are called "gags" in improv – jokes that halt or destroy the action. They don't always seem so bad in shorter scenes, but they can be lethal if you are trying to get an audience to care about what's going on enough to make it last longer than 5 minutes. It is especially damaging when the gag reveals the situation to be sexual, gross, racist, sexist or other things like this. The laws of improv means you need to go down that path once it has been stated, which might have a very negative impact on the engagement of the actors and audience.

Other destructive forms are outright nos. Saying "no" is funny. Any form of spanner in the works can be very funny. Here's a classic example which nearly always results in a one-dimensional scene:

"You are a highly respected doctor with so much experience."
"It's my first day."

I've seen several groups who somehow manage to block so much for humorous effect, every offer seems to be inverted in the manner of the one above. If that's fine with the rest of the group, it can make for a show with lots of laughs. But I argue that these sort of laughs coming from the laughter response to surprise only work on a very shallow level, become predictable quickly and make it very difficult for the group to create something with any depth.

Laughs that come from connecting two seemingly unconnected things, from the characters themselves or from a great reincorporation are much deeper and much more satisfying.

Concentrating on the funny often leaves the relationships and story untended. People going simply for laughs will much quicker go into areas of sex, bodily functions or having a go at whatever racial group is out of vogue at that time.

Actors who concentrate on the funny are often the least supportive of their fellow players who tend to be the ones running around justifying the crazy stuff the one trying to be funny is saying. The problem, of course, is that the player going for the funny is (often) getting laughs, especially from people new to improv, so this is behaviour easily reinforced.

I don’t want to sound like I'm against funny. I'm not. I describe myself as a comedian and love nothing better than getting a room to laugh. But over the years I have, in improv, been trying to shy away from the selfish, destructive laughs and trusting that if we all work on making the scene awesome, there will be moments of humour that arise. In fact with the right group and experience, they'll arrive almost as much as if you block every offer that comes along and they'll be a hell of a lot more satisfying to everyone.

Are you with me?
(It's okay, you can say a big "NO!!!!!" here, that's actually a good out.)

Thought of the Day: Improv is easy

Improv is the easiest thing in the world. You just have to fight your ego and overcome thousands of years of social conditioning to let it happen.

Ego is impro antimatter

On Bitching