Online Improv: Zoomed Out

Very few people would have predicted that we would all be doing our shows online so soon into the future. But that’s what has been happening. And as many of us discovered or are discovering, it’s not the same as doing it on stage. Whilst a lot of the core skills are transferrable, there are some things that are very different.

One huge difference is the lack of an audience and the direct feedback of an audience responding and thus shaping what we are doing. The shows lose a lot of that “live factor” which is a big part of the appeal of an improv show for an audience and is the reason that even the best improvised TV shows have none of the excitement of seeing it live.

Probably the biggest hindrance for performers is not being in the same place as our fellow players. We can’t truly look them in the eyes and get that deep connection. There is a lag in the conversation so our reactions don’t feel in the moment as much as in several moments ago. We can’t often be as big physically as we once were as we’re either performing within a narrow rectangle or we’re sitting down. This leads to a lot of ‘talking heads’ scenes where two actors just stand (or sit) there and talk with little movement or emotion.

Part of what makes it difficult is that we are trying to apply our skills to a new medium. We all learnt the core skills of paying attention and reacting constructively, and at the same time we learnt how to express them on stage, in a theatre setting. We call ourselves improvisers, but we could more accurately call ourselves “stage improvisers,” the same way you talk about “stage actors” and “screen actors.” The main reason we don’t is that screen improvising didn’t happen all that often, and when it did, it was usually done by stage improvisers and the setting was usually stage-like. Or it was done by screen actors and it was only part of a thing that was mostly scripted.

But now screen improvising is happening all the time and we realise they are different beasts.

As an actor, the transfer from stage to screen is often a difficult one. If you are used to performing on stage, you are used to projecting so the whole room can enjoy you. Bellowing like that into a mic will not win you many friends. You are also used to injecting your emotions into your whole body, often exaggeratedly so. In acting on camera, less is more.

The style of improvisation that many of us learnt (cheeky, exaggerated, stage comedy a la music hall/vaudeville) doesn’t really work. We have to take our inspiration from TV acting. It can still be exaggerated and comic, but within different parameters. Acting for screen is smaller, but still there is energy and intensity, it’s just very often internalised.

Sets are another limiting factor. In improv, because the action can be set literally anywhere, a group will either perform in front of a neutral curtain with some plain chairs for everything else or have a million pieces of furniture all lying back stage and a set of stage-hands ready to deploy. At home, the default choice would be to find a blank wall or hand a neutral curtain. As any visible furniture kind of gives a location. If you have the time and your device is portable, you can quickly create a location in another part of your house to best represent the next scene, but again, this is can be a distraction or possible delay although can be impressive if pulled off well.

Now there are virtual backgrounds, but not everyone can use them and quite often they are more of a distraction than something that genuinely sets the location. So be careful. Practice using them with your group but see how you (all) feel about the results. Unless everyone has devices that can handle it well (and not all can) and you know how to set them up quickly, they might just get in the way and take you away from being in a few moments ago.

The place where there is a real win is props. On stage, miming objects makes so much sense. In improv, most of the time we don’t use them, because you either have a large enough collection of them that you can find something usable or you have nothing and mime everything. (The middle ground is where you have a limited set of props because you know the setting / genre beforehand.)

Miming, however does really work on screen. Fortunately, we are mostly performing at home now, so we have within a short sprint, practically a full set of everyday household objects. (Maybe the history of improv ask-fors hqas been leading us to this moment. “Can I have a house-hold object and a room in a house?”) If you know there are things you are likely to want in a scene, it just takes a little thought to have them available within arm’s reach.

One other area, we have to adjust is in our director’s heads. As improvisers, we have different heads: we are actors, co-writers and co-directors all at the same time. But there are big differences between directing for stage and for screen. So instead of thinking about where we are on the stage, we can think about how far we are from the camera and where we stand in the frame. We even have extra choices we don’t often have on stage, such as extreme close-up. We can even play with angles in a way the stage doesn’t lend itself to.

All these are things an audience understands and to a degree expect having been watching TV for much of their lives. We also, really, should be thinking about what’s on screen: i.e. the shot the audience is seeing. A dialogue on TV will usually cut between the two speakers, but the convention for an improv show is that the two people keep their video on. The main problem being that as it usually has to be controlled by the actor and switching your own video on and off is clunky, but some conferencing software allows a host to control what is seen and I’ve seen some shows using live-TV software. Both of these mean that actually means the role of a director (or live editor) makes sense. Very much the way it makes sense to have a lighting improviser in many venues.

A director can swap between views and “pin” specific videos to simulate cuts between actors, they can share pictures or video to set up locations, they can share music for emotional or dramatic moments, especially when there is no dialogue.

Actually, music can be a place online shows struggle. With the lag and the fact speaking often cuts out other sounds in Zoom, for example, it’s impossible to improvise songs, except when the music comes from the same place as the singer. Indeed, speaking over music can be problematic on things zoom unless the speaker is the one sharing the music, which makes it yet another thing that most actors never have to think about.

I’ve very much taken the stance that our inspiration on how to produce content should come from TV. This is my opinion. 

Perhaps we should look at the other online phenomena such as podcasts and vlogs and make things that are less visual and more like stuff to have in the background whilst cooking. This is presumably why many improv groups have gone the way of live discussions about improv as part or all of their online output.

Or we maybe we should look at youtubers and go for lots of short content with running themes, with the emphasis perhaps on editing.

Or we could take our cues from TikTok and simply lip sync to sound clips from Whose Line Is It Anyway.

When I started writing this it was very early in the whole lockdown thing, other things kept usurping it. It seems less good timing with many places going out of lockdown. But with a potential second wave may be it’s pertinent still. Plus, I don’t think the concept of online shows will completely go away just because virus does.

END CREDITS

Performing for a Foreign Audience

You are very excited because you have been invited to play at the Fargleskarg International Comedy Festival. You're all rehearsed, you know your format or set, you have your tickets. Could there be anything else you need to think about? Actually there is... It's worth taking time to think about how well you will be understood.

This blog has come from more than 10 years of performing and teaching in many countries. It will be performance-focused and will mostly be about improv, but much of it also applies to stand-up, theatre and other types of performance. At least with most of these others, you have a chance beforehand to review the text and see if there are things which potentially could trip you up.

It is intended for any performer or group intending to perform for a foreign audience in their own language or a second common language.
Whether you are performing in your own language to people who may or may not have a good understanding of it; or a second language, which you and the audience could be at different levels at, there are a number of issues that may arise. Even performing somewhere with the same official language as your own can be open to problems. Let's have a look at what a few of these things can be.

1. Speak Clearly

This may sound obvious, but a native-speaking audience will almost certainly be able to follow you, no matter how fast you speak, what accent you use, or how lazily you pronounce words. Not so an audience for whom it is a second language. If you speak quite fast, you might find you need to slow down a notch or two. If you tend to mumble or slur words, you might also need to pronounce them clearer. And some accents are harder than others to understand. I've done scenes in certain strong British accents and been told later many people didn't understand a word. If you have a strong accent, it's worth checking how well people get it in the country you are performing in. You might have to soften it. You might not want to hear that, but if you speak a (second) language you are not fluent in, you know how difficult it is when someone doesn't speak clearly and with the pronunciation you learnt it in.

Another side of this is grammar. Grammatically it is highly possible, as many of you will appreciate, to do highly complex things with the structure of what we will call, as most people do, a sentence. Even to a native speaker, that was a complex sentence, spoken to someone who doesn't speak English so well, it might be received by a blank expression. Better to keep it simple.

In improv it usually is better to keep sentences simple anyway. Add a small bit of information at a time and together build something that will become complicated enough. British improvisers, especially, often pride themselves on their verbally dexterous loquacity, and although this plays well to a home audience, it can lose audiences abroad. Be prepared to adapt.

2. Vocabulary

This is an extension of the above, but big enough a topic to get it's own section. Even if you are going to another country that speaks your language, there can be a differences in the words used every day. A lot of the time, this situation won't be a problem. Brits, for example, know a lot of American words and slang thanks to movies, and also Americans hear more Britishisms than they used to. But it is something to especially be aware of if your audience is not fluent in your language. They will most likely not know slang words, old-fashioned or rarer words, or the more complicated word for something where a simpler word exists.

Some of this can be obvious. If you are feeling your audience, you can often sense when something you have said is not clear to them. And it's always possible to fix it if you realise you have used a slang or complex term by saying the standard or simpler word, and/or by describing what you mean.

“Let us go to the refectory. I mean the canteen. You know, where we can get food.”

Maybe that was a little too much, but it is usually better to over-explain than to not be understood.
Of course, it's fine if an audience doesn't get a couple of words during a show and you don't have to second guess yourself with every single thing you say, but if they don't get words key to understanding the plot or relationships, that's a different matter.

Professor Stanley Unwin, eminent scholar and linguist 

(see cultural references)

Common expressions, sayings and euphemisms very often don't translate well and are not understood except by very good speakers of a language. I studied Dutch for a few years, and I can sometimes understand all the words in a sentence but have no idea what it means because they are using one of the many, many Dutch expressions where the literal meaning has nothing to do with what they are really saying.

“And now the monkey comes out of the sleeve.”

What monkey? Whose sleeve? Why was there a monkey there, anyway? (It means “and now the truth is revealed.”)

It's worth remembering that testyourvocab.com found that whilst most adult native speakers know about 20,000–35,000 words in English, non-native speakers have an average of 4,500 words. So you should be avoiding most of the fancy words you know.

Now of course, a lot of genres come with their own vocabulary. If you are doing a Shakespeare show, for example, there is an expectation of a few obscure words thrown in. And I say, verily, do so, but if your audience is not native, you can get away with doing it a lot less than you would for a show at Ye Olde English Society.

3. Cultural References

Everyday, you say things, do things, eat things that are culturally specific. There are facts you know without knowing you know. Facts that other cultures don't know or maybe even disagree with. You are usually so immersed in your culture that sometimes it is hard to imagine that people don't share the exact same experiences and set of knowledge as you all over the world. But people don't share them. Not every culture eats Wheatabix / hagelslag / Skorpor / Pfunchlacks for breakfast.

It's often a shock when you go somewhere and nobody understands your joke about Ant McPartlin / Gordon / Gunde Svan / Paavo Väyrynen / David Levy / Lazlo Philosovic. Even though it would almost certainly get a laugh back home. Every country has its classic comedy go-to celebrities. B-listers whose names you mention and that will nearly always get a laugh. These are rarely celebrities that are known at all outside of your own country.

This even goes for bands, films, etc. Some bands and movies are internationally known, but a lot aren't. Just because Frambleplank are huge in your country, doesn't mean they made it anywhere else. In fact, I learnt a long time ago, just because I think a band are awesome and one of the greatest bands ever, doesn't mean anyone else has heard of them. Even people on my street.

If you are going to make references to people, things or events, they have to be well known internationally. This can be hard to judge if you haven't spent a lot of time out of the country in the company of locals.

Madonna, Brad Pitt, the current US president (whoever that is at the time of publication) are all suitably international that most people in most audiences will know who they are. Others you don't really know until you try, and it can vary country to country.
Even local references can be problematic. You might want to throw in that you know who the queen of Denmark is and that will work fine if the audience is made up of Danes, who will nearly all know who their queen is, but if the audience is international (visiting improvisers or local expats (who are only there for a short while and often don't get too involved in the local culture)), it might fly over their head.

Lazlo Philosovic, probably.

Overall it is best to avoid a lot of cultural references (and not just at international festivals). They are a particular type of spice you can add to a scene, but they are almost never necessary. Scenes ultimately should be about the characters and the relationships in the scene. References anyway, whilst funny, often take the scene and the actor out of the here and now and into the head world. They are often anachronistic (meaning out of place), which again can be funny, but it is something else which breaks the reality of the scene and improv seldom needs more of them.

4. Do more than just words

So far we've mostly looked at things to avoid or be careful of, but what are things we can focus more on. Most of the complications as we have seen have been about words. Improv tends to be a very verbal medium.

One approach for festivals is to do away with language. Or at least learn to not rely on it. French and Italian groups are great at doing this. Partly because English is often not so well spoken in those countries but also because they have a very strong physical theatre tradition. They tend to perform very physical shows where emotions, characters, relationships, etc., are not explained but shown. (Which is, after all, what your improv teachers kept going on about anyway.)

Play clear, true emotions, physicalise your characters, heighten your relationships, find and play games that are not word based.
A good story is always about the characters and relationships. As the great Hollywood story guru Robert McKee says, “All stories are 'character-driven'” [Story, Methuen, 1999]. You should always be focussing on characters and relationships. References, jokes and word-play are sprinkles on the top, which are not necessary. If your scenes are all just confection on the top, your audience is going to get diabetes pretty quick.

Teatribu.

A clear character and well-defined relationship can also be something that is shown and not told. Sure, the specifics of a relationship might be hard to convey, but you can tell if two characters love each other, hate each other or whether one is jealous of another who doesn't even notice them. Likewise, we can usually see if a character is confident, shy, adventurous, thoughtful, romantic, fearful, etc, by just looking at them and seeing them interact with the world and others.
A great story can be told without words, and yet as improvisers we cling to words like they are everything.
In fact if you concentrate on the physical, the emotions, the character, the relationships, make it clear what's going on, you don't need words at all. I have seen groups struggling to express themselves in a second language who when allowing themselves to slip back into their own language or no language have suddenly freed themselves to really play.

The Italian team Teatribu often perform in Italian. They use simple Italian and use their great mime skills to make sure we can follow, and everything else is super clear. And the fact it is in Italian makes it all the more beautiful. It's funny that I know almost no Italian, but watching their shows I feel I am fluent. That should be your goal, to make sure the audience completely understands you no matter how well they speak the language you are using.

Conclusion

To summarise, the main points are these...

1. Speak clearly
2. Use simpler language
3. Avoid slang and expressions
4. Avoid references that are not universal
5. Focus on character, relationship, emotions and physicality.

The bottom line is, be aware of what you are saying and doing and be aware as much as possible of your audience. And this is not just good for festivals, this is good for all shows.
Do that and you'll keep the horse from eating the spanners.

IMPRO Amsterdam 2017: Day 4: Quinta-feira

Backstage at festivals the atmosphere is nearly always of excitement. Sometimes towards the end, it’s exhaustion mixed with excitement, but mostly it’s excitement. Every year at IMPRO Amsterdam, the back-stage snacks get more elaborate than the year before. By 2024 there will be meals served by a butler.*

(* - probably not.)

The first show off the night was Cage of Fools which is a hosted show of short games with intermediate chats with the players. It somehow reminded me of the short-lived British TV improv show Fast and Loose.

In between games the host, Rod Ben Zeev, asked them questions about relationships. It was a nice chance to get to know something about the festival cast, or half the cast, although it was the bit that was more hit and miss than the games. By now, the cast is working well together and the show had some great moments. Something different than what normally happens at the festival these days.

After the break, we were treated to Impro Fado, a format by Portuguese group Os Improváveis. Fado is a style of music and the word fado means “fate.” As well as 3 actors they had 2 musicians and a singer. After every scene, the musicians and singer performed a song about what had happened. The show and songs were mostly in English but with some Portuguese. We didn’t mind that. In fact, although the actors weren’t held back too much by their English, they were physical and emotional enough that we could have followed with a lot more Portuguese. The singer sung much better when singing in her mother tongue. I think partly because the Fado style is very much tied to the Portuguese language. She had a phenomenal voice, and we could have happily listened to her sing the Lisbon telephone guide.

The scenes were highly dramatic and the story was closer to tragedy than comedy, but that suits the style of the music. There was some levity, but I always feel refreshed watching a show that is not trying to be funny. And the end of the main character going back to the abusive relationship she ran away from rather than stay with the kindly man who gave her freedom was fitting the genre and, unfortunately, life.

Of the late night show, I saw Ohana performing Sidekicks. Ohana seems to be a sort of improv band camp and the cast or this show were a collection of improvisers from various currently European countries. Their format, Sidekicks, follows two minor characters whilst around them or behind the scenes a bigger story is played out which the just bumble through. It’s very much based on the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which follows two minor characters whilst the story of Hamlet goes on around them in the background. The 2 central characters are a basically a comedy double-act comprised of two dumbards who talk about comedic inconsequentials whilst they almost get involved with (but never quite do) the action.

It’s an ambitious plan. The show was a lot of fun and they achieved what they set out to in a broad sense. There were some funny moments and the central duo had some nice games. This is a group that has un together but does not perform a lot together. I love the concept, I do feel it would have been much stronger if the backdrop had not been comic but epic or tragic. But instead it was very often played for laughs which took away from the power of the comedy of the central duo.

I’m looking forward to more high-concept format applications next year. Personally I want to see a show based on the movie Momento that plays scenes in reverse order.

IMPRO Amsterdam 2017: Day 3: Miércoles In The Lion's Den (part 2)

Continues from Part 1.

Two Colombian clowns and a Canadian DJ are in a theatre. One Clown turns to the other and says absolutely nothing. Now that’s comedy!

Picnic Impro are Felipe Ortiz, Daniel Orrantia and DJ Mama Cutsworth. Their show, Speechless, uses the amazing physical skills of the two Colombians to create a very different show to other improv shows. They are both great clowns, physical actors, mimes and even have some acrobatic skills. They show that there really is no need for words. Acting, situation and music can provide the emotions and the stories that emerge. And sure, there is a limit to the complexity a story can have when there are no words, but given the choice between a great simple story with compelling characters or a highly complex story in which we get lost and eventually stop caring about the characters, if we did in the first place, most people would go for the first option.

That’s not to say the stories are simple. They are straightforward and there is an honesty of emotions, but a lot of stuff happens. They take their time to portray it and make it as clear as possible. It all helps make it very compelling.

This show had the strongest start to any of them. They had a strong opening using spotlights and their eye for physical comedy they made us laugh and impressed us just by appearing in spotlights.

DJ “MC” provided the soundtrack. She has a director role sometimes, cuing music that will bring certain scenes back and perhaps steering the emotions, and at other times she has the perfect track or sound effects to heighten what is going on.

Felipe’s portrayal of a child was so spot on, we needed no information. We could see the rough age and the relationship with the parent. From this start we got to see a cycle of life story, saw the parent get old in front of our eyes and in a finish that moistened eyes all over the theatre, the Death came and led the parent into the light. It was an amazing moment and I must commend Emil Struijker Boudier, technical improviser extraordinaire, who was on fire this show. He was doing all sorts of subtle light things, that most people probably wouldn’t notice, such as slight light changes when doors and windows are opened or closed. But in the end he was ready with a set of lights at the side of the stage to be the literal light to be walked into, so that the whole show ended with perfection of sound, lighting and movement.

It really makes you wonder why do we need talking at all? And certainly don’t need nearly as much talking as goes on in most improv scenes.

IMPRO Amsterdam 2017: Day 2: Twosday

As a reaction to the heated activity around the Compagnietheater Amsterdam always gets very cold in the week of the festival. It often snows. It hasn’t so far, but the canals are freezing and extremities get a bit numb if you let them. The Swedes on the other hand, are enjoying the very mild temperatures.

Today’s open stage had lights, music and members of the main-stage cast. It’s certainly building.The crowd also seems to be growing.

The first main-stage show was Mortal Coil a format devised and directed by directed by Patti Stiles. It’s an interwoven-stories type of format and Patti gives subtle direction in that she doesn’t use a lot of words but she gets a lot of information in there. She sets up a clear start and then usually leaves the actors to find their path. She brings the strands together with ease.

The stand-out story was the relationship between a queen and her servant (played by Marta Borges from Portugal and Felipe Ortiz from Columbia). It was a bitter-sweet tale of two people who love each other but could never admit it because of their differing roles. They played perfectly the pathos underscored with some great physical comedic games. It’s exactly the sort of thing Chaplin was aiming for.

The main show of the evening was Big Bang Improv from Boston in the US. The name is well chosen. They start strong and keep expanding. They start by getting something that “brings you joy” which is a simple and powerful way to begin and already puts the audience in a good mood.

Movement is a big part of the show and they managed to use much of the theatre and also the audience. They swap easily between scenes using a variety of techniques, but it is always clear that a new scene has been started. Even when there is little movement to show a new scene, there are clear physical, vocal and emotional cues. They are great at following paths, heightening, using whatever happens and creating great “what if?” situations.

The most notable moment for me was the expression “broken sperm” being expanded by logical steps so we can see the full world of spermatozoa including this one broken sperm making it through to graduating university (presumably graduating cum laude).

A great show which found a great end incorporating much of what had happened before.

The Greek group Bus Kai (which is probably not pronounced how you think) performed their show Myth to Myth as one of the late-night shows, They are a duo who take their inspiration from the mythological stories they read as children, bringing their childhood books for the audience to pick a phrase out of to inspire them.

They then took the structure of these myths and brought our two heroes on a journey of both literal traveling and self-discovery. They had a good use of the structure and archetypes of these myths. They struggled a little to find the end but we were still very much with them when they did. A fun turning of myths into a cute modern story.

Finally, I’m reposting this famous photo from the battle of Impro Jima...