Impro Thought of the Day: 7 out of 10 scenes will contain a Mr Johnstone.

This is a homage to Viola Spolin's cat, Mr Johnstone.

Impro Thought of the Day: Try to remember everything that’s said, the audience will.

Why this scene?

"Are we seeing something significant to the people in that scene? Or is it just some people doing a bunch of stuff?"

If we're watching a movie, say a bio-pic, we will see 40-50 scenes (according to screen¬writing guru, Robert McKee and others) about, in this case, the life of someone. Now for this person to be worthy of their own bio-pic, they must have been to scores of places, come in contact with hundreds of people, and done thousands of different activities. Yet we only see 40-50 scenes.

Every single one of those scenes has been put in that movie for a reason. Each scene will show us one (or more) of the following: a very typical situation in the hero's life at that point in time; a key event in that persons life; a moment where they changed; an incident that formed their character or lead to change; a scene that highlights their relationships and status in the world; a scene that shows a different side to them. In other words, each scene has a purpose.

There is a reason we are shown each of these scenes.

One thing that might help improvisers who find themselves in scenes that aren't compelling or going anywhere is to ask themselves, "why is the audience being shown this scene?"

Are we seeing something significant to the people in that scene? Or is it just some people doing a bunch of stuff? At the end of the scene, the audience should be able to say, "ah yes, we were shown that scene because..."

Even when we see a scene of an ultra-typical day of a character, we learn some fundamental details about the characters' psychological make-up. And, nearly always, even these scenes will involve some change. In fact, by many definitions, a scene is not a scene unless someone or something is changed by it. Someone or something must be affected.

The change doesn't have to be huge; it can be quite small. For example if one character insists on the cups in the kitchen being stored on the right, and at the end of the scene, he agrees they can be put on the left, that's change enough (and is actually indicative of an internal change or compromise in that character).

This means that what happens in a scene should affect characters and/or relationships; they shouldn't just be isolated things that happen and witnessed by some people. A scene should not be about "the day a panda was delivered to the office," but "the day a panda was delivered to the office and changed the way the employees worked as a team" or "the day a panda was delivered to the office and made the secretary respect her boss" or "the day a panda was delivered to the office and everyone realised saving the planet was more important than selling photocopiers."

That way, the audience has a reason to be shown that scene and it's far more likely to be compelling and enjoyable.

Physics and Metaphysics of Guns

All the earlier talk of guns made me think about how badly guns are mimed and used in general in improv.

I guess the first question to address is do you hold your hand as two fingers or mime holding the gun? Given that in nearly every other case, we mime holding the object rather than our hand being the object, I much favour the miming. Plus miming holding the gun gives the impression that we are actors trying to create a believable world for the audience; whereas two fingers makes us look like kids playing a game.

Secondly, guns are heavy. Pistols are solid metal designed to withstand mini explosions within them. They are much heavier than cowboys and action heroes make them look. Most do not fit in your back pocket. And when you shoot them, they give a good old kick. Oh, and unless you have a silencer, they are loud.

Bullets travel somewhere around or faster than the speed of sound. So, by the time you hear the "Bang!" that bullet's been and gone, passed through your major organs and probably already embedded in the wall. So in reality, you would have to start jumping out of the way before the gun is fired, unless you have superpowers. Now, in improv (as in film) we can sometimes forgive the screwing with physics and see you jump after the bang. This is forgivable because films are often cut that way. But it's still better to start jumping before (perhaps in slow motion) and have this be the offer to tell the shooter to fire and miss. Otherwise, a shot fired by a competent shooter at close range will almost certainly hit home.

Pulling a gun is a big moment in most stories. Suddenly the life-and-death struggle is real. One twitch of a finger and someone is dead. Introduce a gun into most situations and the emotion of the room will change to fear or panic. If the story is a domestic drama then this is a big, big moment.

Even in gangster movies where guns are pulled all the time, they still instil fear, especially amongst passers-by. Even James Bond finds it hard to remain suave when a gun is pointed at him by someone who intends to kill him. It's great acting to have your otherwise nonchalant character falter when a gun is pointed at him. It heightens the jeopardy of the situation.

Even for the person pulling the gun, it is often a big moment. First-time armed robbers will often be as scared as their victims: the heavy guns shake in their sweaty hands. In your family drama, when the son pulls a gun on his father, boy, does this put both of them outside their comfort zone.

Obviously if you live and breathe guns, holding and firing them can become second nature. only then does it become no different to any other object you might carry with you. You may even get nonchalant when it comes to killing people. Soldiers can get like this; and gangsters, especially in movies. (See Pulp Fiction and Goodfellers.) But even these characters, when faced with a gun pointed between to their eyes, are usually not so cocky.

It's the reaction on stage, for the most part, that tells the audience how to react to a situation. If everyone on stage is blasé about guns being waved about, why should the audience care? If the threat of death won't move our characters, what on Earth will?

Can I have a Relationship, Please

Scenes should always, at their heart, be about the relationship between the characters on stage. No matter what the ask-for from the audience. If you get "carpet" from the audience, the scene is not about a carpet. A carpet should feature (often heavily), but really the scene should be about a relationship.

Say for example, there are three films in the cinema and all you know about them is the following:

1. One is about a box
2. The other is about a doctor
3. The third is about a mother and daughter.

If that's all you know, which film do you go and see? Most people would choose the third one as it promises to be about something inherently interesting: a relationship. Even films that seem to be about an object never are: they are about people and, more importantly, relationships. The Piano was not really about a piano; Schindler's List was not concerned with the list itself; and in Rear Window we learn nothing whatsoever about the window in question. Nothing!

Someone asked me recently, "should we not, then, only ask the audience for a relationship, and not an object, location, etc?" "No," is the answer to that for the following reasons:

1. We want to keep it interesting for the audience and not ask them the same question each time.


2. The thing we get from the audience is really only a springboard to a scene to highlight the fact we are improvising. If we start improvising without a suggestion, we would still be expected to create characters and relationships as this is fundamental to what we do. Whatever suggestions we do get, should help us find who we are to each other.


3. We will almost rarely ever get the relationships we actually play from the audience. The audience will only give us "mother and daughter." In a scene we will play "possessive mother and daughter who wants to leave home," "talented daughter and jealous mother," "selfish daughter and adoring mother," "successful daughter and mother obsessed with cakes," "mother and daughter both coming to terms with the loss of the father." We will never just be a mother and a daughter.

Impro Thought of the Day: 21/4/2010

Impro is like life. It looks like a lot of rules when you start; but as you get deeper, you see at its core are just a couple of very simple premises.

Magic Moments: What is a Moment?

People talk about being in the moment, but it's not always clear what actually the (or a) moment is. "Moment" often gets translated in people's minds as the point in time after the last thing said or done. People "in the moment" (defined like this) will whole-heartedly agree and heighten the last thing said but in the process often manage to drop or block much that had gone before. This is not being in the moment.

A moment is a point in time up to which everything set up prior to that moment has lead. It's not a reaction to a single thing but reaction to a culmination of events that in improv terms starts at the beginning of the scene or even the start of the show.

If moments are just about the last thing said the result would be a series of actions and reactions that have no consistency. The scene would effectively be a series of free associations with nothing to tie them together. To an audience it would have a very random feel.

A moment is a point in time up to which everything set up prior to that moment has lead.

Like improv, life is also a sequence of moments. Moments in life are similar, although much more complicated. Having just read the above definition, you are thinking "wow, I hadn't thought of it like that," or "I knew that," or "that makes no sense, whatsoever," or "that reminds me, I must call Julie" or some other response. What you're thinking is defined not just by the line you read, but by the whole of the text before it. And more than that, also by everything you have ever read, been told or otherwise learnt or thought about the subject of improv; anything else you have read written by me or any interaction you've had with me; your own experiences performing and practicing improv; anything learnt, discussed or thought about on the topic of causality and similar philosophical topics. All of this feeds into that moment. And that's not including everything else that has happened to you that was playing on your mind (consciously and subconsciously) at that point – relationship worries, work issues, deep-seated fears, recent good news. Actually, it's far easier to describe the input as "everything that has gone before" than to actually detail what is "selected" to affect that moment. Especially as it is probably impossible to know all of the subconscious drivers we have going on in our heads.

This makes a moment sound like a bulky, complicated thing, but, as we know in life, most moments pass without much thought and we respond in a way that is natural not only to our character in its current mood, but to our previous interactions with that person or situation; and with the knowledge and experience we have accumulated over the years. Most of this is subconscious and our response natural. In improv, the moments should also be natural. We've paid attention and absorbed what has happened so far, who we are, what our relationships are, and we just respond in keeping with this without thinking.

Even those moments in life when we act highly out of character or are paralysed into inactivity by a situation would be explainable if you knew what is going on in our heads at the time. People act out of character because they are, for example, inordinately worried, feeling guilty, depressed or ridiculously happy. Even these moments are based on things before the last thing done or said.

In improv, we only have what's been set up about your character since it first appeared or was mentioned, and we ourselves are creating our characters subconscious desires and failings, so our responses will always be explainable by the actors (if prompted or made to analyse), no matter how instinctively we are playing. So as long as we are paying attention, allowing ourselves to absorb what is going on, we can be in that unique moment so created and react to all of it, not simply the last thing said.