Improv: Process And Product
I was recently invited to give a talk about the creative process of improvisation to software consultancy firm Pivotal Labs. In the true spirit of improv, I wrote a speech, so I figured I’d put it here for you guys to pick apart. Some things to note:
1) This was designed as a brief overview of the creative process in improv for non-improvisers. As such, some of you real improv nerds may find that it doesn’t get particularly deep or detailed. That’s intentional!
2) The fruit salad scene which I keep referring to may easily be the least funny example scene I have ever come up with. I am aware of this. Hopefully, it still does its duty of demonstrating some of the basic processes at work during an improv scene.
3) There’s a portion where I had the audience do a quick “Yes, and...” exercise. Use your imagination to fill in a room full of programmers doing improv in order to get the full experience.
And now, in its full glory, is the talk entitled Improv: Process and Product. Enjoy!
Hello, Pivotal. My name is Alex Berg. I’m an instructor at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Training Center, and the former Artistic Director of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater Los Angeles, which is a fancy way of saying that at one point, I was the lunatic in charge of the asylum. Today I’m going to talk about long form improvisation, also known as “wacky make ‘em ups for grown ups.”
Long form improvisation is the act of generating a series of comedic sketches from a single word suggested by an audience member. What will be funny about those sketches is completely unknown ahead of time, what members of the performing team will speak and when is completely unknown ahead of time, and whether or not the audience will approve of any of it is also completely unknown ahead of time.
It’s like one of those anxiety induced nightmares you’d have when you were a kid, where all of a sudden you’re standing in front of your social studies class in your underwear being asked to explain what a Visigoth is. Only, for some reason, people choose to do it. Luckily, those people also choose to wear more than just their underwear, at least most of the time. The Venn diagram overlap between improvisers and underwear models is, I assure you, vanishingly small.
And yet, in the face of all this nightmarish uncertainty, a great many improv troupes are able not only to spontaneously create comedic sketches that work, but are able to do so reliably, show after show, week after week, year after year. The question then, is how? What is the process by which improvisers are able to reliably create a quality product? How do you apply structure to spontaneity?
Let’s start at the beginning, with the suggestion. The suggestion is our input, our first concrete piece of piece of information from which we’ll derive the rest of the scene. Suggestions can take a variety of formats: They can be single words, stories, an audience member’s Facebook page, songs- literally anything, including a very literal kitchen sink an audience member brought to a show I was in a few years ago. Since a single word is the most commonly used suggestion, we’ll start by examining that.
For sake of example, we’ll use the word “Pineapple.” The reason why we’re using pineapple is that this is, without a doubt, the most common suggestion, followed closely by watermelon. Nobody really knows why, but it’s my theory that pineapple and watermelon are both words that are silly enough that an audience member feels comfortable shouting them out loud to a troupe of performers, but not so silly that said audience member will feel judged for trying too hard to be funny.
Not all audience members feel this way, as many are very comfortable yelling out “proctologist” or “gynecologist,” at the top of a show as a bit of insurance that they’ll at least get one good chuckle out of the evening’s performance. Others are more interested in trying to stump the performers, as evidenced by the shows I’ve done based off of “Robespierre” and “Alaprazolam.” Luckily, since I’m both a history and benzodiazepine buff, neither suggestion ruffled my feathers too much.
But those are the extreme ends of the suggestion bell curve- pineapple is the center. So, upon hearing “pineapple,” our hypothetical improviser has their starting point for the evening. After shouting “pineapple” out, the audience’s job is over and it’s time for the performers to transform “pineapple” into a scene.
The scene begins with the initiation, which is just the first line of the scene. Getting from a single word to this first line involves a process called going from A to C, meaning that we start at the suggestion and take one or two small steps away from it in order to get to our initiation. For instance, if our suggestion was pineapple, we could initiate the scene by saying:
“I just won tickets to Hawaii!” or “This fruit salad is too tart,” or “I don’t understand Spongebob Squarepants.”
In each case, the link between the suggestion and the initiation is easy for an audience member to make: Hawaii is known for it’s pineapples, pineapples are a common ingredient in fruit salad, and Spongebob Squarepants famously lives in a pineapple under the sea. In each case, an audience member has enough information to make the link between the suggestion and the initiation on their own. Inviting them to make such a link on their own transforms them from a passive observer of the scene into a much more active participant, and increases their level of engagement with the show.
The audience member is now inclined to pay closer attention than they would if the performers had simply initiated the scene by saying “Oh look, a pineapple!” To use the suggestion so directly, while certainly not forbidden, tells the audience that their close attention is not necessary, and encourages them to sit back and relax, since everything will be spoonfed to them. However, when the audience feels that the performers trust them enough to make these little jumps, they feel a sense of responsibility to the show and listen more closely, which allows the performers to take more creative risks and do more interesting work.
There’s a great example of this in popular culture- the second season of Arrested Development. Arrested Development was a famously self-referential show, one that rewarded viewers for paying close attention to every little detail by making even small, seemingly unimportant details feel important later on by referencing them in a new context. The show created a shared vocabulary with it’s viewers, which it could later use to construct inside jokes with those who knew the show well. In the second season, this shared vocabulary frequently included references to events which hadn’t yet happened, meaning that the intended audience for those jokes are viewers who are watching an episode for the second time. Knowing that these sorts of jokes exist compels viewers to watch much more closely than they would otherwise, for fear of missing out.
Compare that long-term strategy to a show like Two and a Half Men. Two and a Half Men belongs to a large group of network sitcoms which adhere pretty strictly to a rhythm of joke-telling that tries to get in a joke every three lines. The vast majority of these jokes are self-contained, so that if an audience member isn’t paying attention, or is tuning in to the episode halfway through, or has never seen the show before, they’ll still be able to get the most recent joke. The jokes are much more accessible, but the trade off from this is that the audience is much less engaged. You get the exact same level of joke telling out of Two and a Half Men whether you watch it for five minutes or five years, because the show doesn’t try to engage you on a level that goes any deeper than the last five seconds of dialogue.
That having been said, Two and a Half Men was a WILDLY more successful show than Arrested Development, except among the population of comedy nerds my age who care to spend far, far too long scrutinizing such things.
But the average improv audience member is much more likely to be a comedy nerd than a Nielsen family, and so A to C is the process we use to engage them.
So, we’ve gotten our suggestion- pineapple- and we’ve used A to C to get to the first line of the scene: “This fruit salad is too tart.” At this point, our hypothetical improv show has been going on for maybe six seconds? We’ve got some more work to do.
The next thing we need to do is establish a base reality. We need to know more about the world of the too tart fruit salad so that we can find out what’s funny about it. Specifically, we need to know who thinks this fruit salad is too tart, who are they speaking to, and why is this a relevant piece of information? This information is not currently present in the scene so we’ll need to add it in without destroying anything which has come before. This process is called “Yes, and,” and it’s about as well known of a concept as long form improv can ever hope to generate.
Yes and, simply put, means that an improviser accepts the reality defined by whatever their scene partner has already said, and they add on to it. The value of yes and can be easily demonstrated. So, everybody, turn to the person next to you, we’re gonna do a quick little exercise here. In just a second you guys are going to be planning a picnic- where to go, what food to bring, what games to play- all that stuff. Don’t worry about trying to make it a funny picnic or anything like that- that’s not the point of this exercise. Just be honest about what your ideal picnic looks like.
For the first round of this exercise, though, I want you guys to say “No” at the start of each of your sentences. So, if your partner says “We should bring sandwiches,” you say “No, we should bring pizza.” Ok, give it a shot!
Pretty difficult, right? I doubt many of those picnics are going to be much fun. Let’s try it again, and now I want you to start each of your replies with “Yes, but…” So, if somebody says “We should bring sandwiches,” you reply with “Yes, but sandwiches aren’t as good as pizza.” Ok, go for it.
Still some pretty crappy picnics, right? Ok, let’s do it one more time, but now I want you guys to start each reply with “Yes, and…” So, if somebody says “We should bring sandwiches,” you say “Yes! And we can also bring pizza.” Ok, go!
Those picnics are much better, right? It’s much easier to collaborate when your partner is open and accepting of your offers instead of outright batting them down. In an improv scene, this is important because we’re trying to create a reality as we go along, and if one performer denies any part of that reality, they risk shattering the illusion that these characters actually live and exist in this space. Luckily, the words “Yes, and…” don’t need to actually be spoken, so long as the spirit of the words is followed.
So, our suggestion was “pineapple,” our first line was “This fruit salad is too tart,” and we’ll flesh out our base reality by yes anding that line:
“This fruit salad is too tart.”
“Jerry, you haven’t said a single positive thing since you got to this potluck.”
Now we know our base reality. We know that Jerry’s the negative guy at the potluck, and our hypothetical improv scene has been going on for maybe 15 seconds at this point. So, we’re making progress!
Now that we have a base reality, we can start poking and prodding at it in order to find out what’s funny about the scene. What we’re looking for is the first unusual thing in the scene- that’s our first clue as to what we need to follow in order to give the scene structure.
And it’s worth taking a moment here to point out that unusual is a relative term. If I had shown up today and started speaking out of twin mouths where my nipples ought to be, I’d bet most of you would find that unusual. And, if you don’t, go see a doctor- there’s something the matter with you.
However, if EVERYBODY had tiny twin mouths where their nipples ought to be, then there’s nothing unusual about me speaking out of my twin nipple mouths at all. In that case, if you find such a thing unusual- go see a doctor, there’s something the matter with you.
One fairly universal metric we can use to judge how unusual something is, however, is whether or not it elicits any kind of an emotional response. For our purposes, at the start of the scene, the emotional response doesn’t need to be huge. It just needs to be there. Something to say that the current situation wasn’t expected. It breaks a character’s expectations of what should be happening. Luckily, we’ve got a couple of emotional responses already in our first two lines that we can choose from.
On the one hand, we have Jerry’s negativity in response to the fruit salad/potluck at large. It’s not a huge emotional response, but it certainly speaks to a set of wants and desires on Jerry’s part that have gone unfulfilled that we can explore. Jerry is a guy who values a fruit salad that’s not too tart, and who values an idealized potluck that isn’t this one.
On the other hand, Jerry’s unnamed companion- we’ll call him Phil for the time being- Phil is having an emotional reaction to Jerry’s negativity. Again, this speaks to a set of wants and desires on Phil’s part.
But which of these characters is behaving unusually is a matter of perspective. At this point in the scene- two lines and roughly 15 seconds in- the performers have a choice to make. Is it the case that this potluck is, in reality, very sub par and Jerry’s negativity is justified, making Phil’s irritation the unusual thing, or is it the case that this is actually a great potluck, meaning that Jerry’s negativity is unusual and Phil’s irritation is justified?
In truth, the scene can go in either direction- or a new piece of information can be introduced which completely changes the context of everything and the scene could go in THAT direction instead. Really, it doesn’t matter WHAT choice the performers make- what matters is that they make A choice, and that once they make it, they stick to it and don’t worry about the other scenes that might have been.
So, let’s look at our hypothetical scene again and make a clear choice. Our suggestion was “pineapple,” our first line was “This fruit salad is too tart,” our response was “Jerry, you haven’t said a single positive thing since you got to this potluck,” and we’ll make the choice that Jerry’s in the right, and this is a terrible potluck clear by having Jerry reply “Well it’s a terrible potluck! We’re all being held here against our will.”
And now, perhaps 20 seconds into the scene, we’ve managed to establish a base reality and our first unusual thing- we’ve got everything we need for the rest of the scene.
If this is true, then what else is true?
Now that we know what’s unusual here- the guests of this potluck are being held against their will, we can start building the scene around this core unusual idea.
The way we do that is by asking “If this is true, then what else is true?” What other information can we derive about the scene knowing the set of initial starting conditions?
If this is true is an exceptionally powerful technique, in that it’s an iterative rule. Based on initial starting conditions, we can now transform the scene in ways that adhere to a deeper pattern of structure without being directly predictable. Each of those changes then creates a new set of starting conditions, which can then be transformed in the same way, increasing the complexity of the scene through a series of simple feedback loops.
Specifically, we want to explore the category of emotional stimuli that caused our first emotional response, in hopes of eliciting a more heightened emotional response. If it is true that Jerry’s emotional response to being held hostage at a potluck manifests itself as a negative response to individual aspects of the potluck, then by exploring the potluck in more detail, we can expect to get more and more negativity out of Jerry. The French toast is too soggy, the music’s intrusive, and the mimosas don’t have NEARLY enough champagne in them.
Likewise, if it is true that Phil’s emotional response to the potluck is trying to see something positive in it, then we can reasonably expect Phil to counter each of Jerry’s complaints with an attempted bit of praise or positivity towards some other aspect of the potluck Jerry hasn’t considered yet. We can likewise expect that for every positive thing Phil points out, such as the abundance of scrambled eggs or the quality of the bacon, Jerry will have something pissy to say about it.
At this point, we have everything we need in order to execute a full scene. We’ve taken our suggestion of pineapple, and used it to construct a base reality, from which we’ve plucked a set of emotional responses to an unusual stimulus, and we can now use that scaffolding to build the rest of the scene. Jerry will say something negative, Phil will counteract by trying to point out something positive, which will give Jerry another opportunity to say something even more negative, which will give Phil another opportunity to say something even more positive, and so on and so on and so on.
We’ve managed to transform a single word into a world that our characters react emotionally to, and by exploring that world in greater detail we will elicit more heightened emotional responses.
And all of this has been done in less than thirty seconds of stage time.
There’s much, much more I could get into- the ways in which performers choose when to end a scene, the ways in which future scenes are derived from what’s come before, and the ways in which those scenes play off of each other are all each governed by a specific set of processes and rules.
However- detailing these rules in this way, though useful as an academic exercise, fails to capture what it IS to improvise. Good improvisers aren’t thinking in terms of rules when they’re on stage doing a scene. Good improvisers have done all of their thinking in rehearsals, and analyzed the structures of scenes after shows they’ve done previously and during shows they’ve watched in order to hone their reflexes. When they’re on stage, all they’re doing is reacting. Focusing on whatever feels right in the moment instead of what feels right on paper. The end result may be a little chaotic and a little sloppy, but if that wasn’t an acceptable outcome, there’d be a script.
And so, in closing, I’d like to leave you with this:
No matter what field you work in, or what process you use to arrive at your finished product, remember that rules and procedure are meant to serve as a scaffold upon which your creativity can grow, not as a cage meant to contain it. Knowing the underlying processes by which your creativity will be most productively expressed is important, but subjugating your gut instinct about what works in the moment to a set of pre-determined rules about what should work in most moments is counter productive. Inspiration isn’t something that can be forced, and it isn’t something that should be constrained. Use process to hone your instincts, then trust those instincts to help you get the job done and create a quality product.
And if you see Jerry- just leave him alone, he’s clearly in a bad mood. Thank you.
