The scene starts – GO!
About now you may be thinking: When do I wake up from this nightmare? You may feel like the angst-ridden second-round participants in the What’s In a Name activity, except that now all the other participants are watching you and expecting you to be hilariously funny so they can get their money’s worth.
Then – seeing escape to be impossible – you futilely grope for words to string together from the infinite choices available to you. You may think: What do I say? How can I fill this blank slate?
I think this reaction lies at the root of many people’s resistance to the idea of improv. The very thought of having to fill the airspace with impromptu dialog forged from the best of all possible words provokes anxiety at best, panic at worst. Performance improvisers who can deftly create on-the-spot scenes are often seen as naturally gifted, with spontaneity imprinted in their DNA - somehow able to stare into the void and magically conjure fully formed scenes out of thin air.
But as I’ve mentioned before, performance improvisers don’t generally paint on an utterly blank slate. Instead, they use many constructs – what I would call heuristics – to loosely frame their scenes and provide in-the-moment guidance for their actions.
Yes And is itself one of these loose frameworks – i.e., “always agree with your stage partner.” This simple guideline restricts the improviser (“Don’t say no”) and yet paradoxically frees him by removing the paralyzing effects of unlimited choice. Whatever he says, he knows he needs to affirm and build on what his partner has just said. Other loose frameworks include chiches, catchphrases, and accents.
Another framework is called Finding the Game. “The Game” is simply an interesting insight or interaction that emerges from the scene in the first few seconds, one that could be stated in a few words. Here is an example of Finding the Game, derived from my own workshopping experience.
In this scene, a male player and a female player were kids playing in their adjoining backyards. The female jumped up on the fence between the two of them and began walking tightrope-like along the top, leading her partner to observe, “Wow, you’ve got great balance!” Immediately they both intuitively recognized the Game they would play: Boy watches girl’s balancing ability as they go through life. (Since this was a long-form exercise, they knew they’d be coming back with later scenes that traced their lives together.)
Rather than just fumble around with disjointed kid-like dialogue, the two players were able to focus on this Game as a loose framework within which to spontaneously develop a whole series of scenes – as teenagers, boy admires girl’s balancing of academics, sports, and social clubs; after they get married, boy marvels at girl’s Supermom overachievements as wife, mother, and corporate CEO; after 20 years, the girl starts to crumble under the weight of her life’s balancing act …
“The Game” thus provided focus and direction for the scene and effectively guided the players’ in-the-moment decisions about what to say and do next. In this way, “The Game” represented a useful boundary that freed them to do their best, most creative work.
So back to our Viking - i.e., you – and his beautiful daughter’s boyfriend. What is The Game that you could identify to help you with your onstage decisions? Maybe: Viking tries to determine boyfriend’s marauding skills to see if he’s a suitable match. Or: Boyfriend wants to marry the daughter and relocate to a warmer climate. Any of these choices can provide the loose framework within which you and your partners can creatively improvise.
But then you might say: So what? How does this inside knowledge help me? How can I apply “Finding the Game” to my Daily Improvising life?
I’ll answer this next time by circling back to a concept I covered in one of my first articles – a concept that the Daily Improviser can use to provide useful boundaries to guide his and others’ day-to-day choices.
For now, however, I think I hear Brunnhilde singing!
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