Improv Journal: Fighting in Scenes
I've been thinking about fighting in scenes this week. Coaching (and reading about and watching improv) has trained my brain to not only acknowledge that fighting happens in scenes, but to now attempt to diagnose the cause.
More often than not, I've found fighting to be the result of one or both of the improvisers not establishing enough of who their character is (what they want, what they believe) to avoid fighting as a way to propel the scene forward. Fighting does propel a scene forward in that it creates the need to speak and many improvisers think that speaking is how we progress in scenes. There is such a thing as good fighting and I was listening to Will Hines and Louis Kornfeld chew this over on a recent Magnet podcast episode.
Here's my take on fighting.
Fighting is good if it is done in the vein of arguing or debating. 'Debating' is probably more in line with what I mean to say, even if this is merely an exercise of semantics. I think of debating as a battle of philosophies, points of view, logic, and reason that necessarily involves a sharing of one's personal beliefs, values and evidence. When a character argues with another to further their point of view, we learn more about them and more material or food is created to feed the machine of their relationship to to another character or to the game of the scene. Telling us more about your character creates an opportunity to play. You become more of a 3D person to engage with.
Fighting is bad - and the distinction is somewhat hard to make in black and white - when the goal is to win or to prove the other person is wrong. One could argue that what I just said about good fighting is the same goal as bad fighting. However, when we (bad) fight in scenes, we are being defensive. We are not allowing ourselves to be emotionally affected as a character by what’s going on, so we are angrily pushing back as the improviser. We are commenting on the scene through our own voice rather than reacting as a character. Reacting to something in scenes is how we move a scene forward that is just treading water. It signifies to your scene partner(s) that ‘Hey! We can make something of this thing that I just reacted to!’. It helps to identify a possible button that can be pushed to get you to behave in a certain way and if your scene partner takes advantage of that opportunity, it allows you to heighten and explore that behavior.
I think fighting stems from fear and panic. If we haven’t found something playable, we think fighting will get us there. Or it’s just easy to fall into an argument because we’re all familiar with how that works and how that should look. As an improviser, I think I have developed an internal system that starts buzzing when I start to panic in a scene. Either I feel really uncomfortable with what I’m doing or self-doubt creeps in because I don’t sense that the audience is with me or that I look stupid. In the past, I can feel that turning into motivation to argue. Anything to get away from compromising my self and my reputation. Now, I try to recognize that feeling and push through it. I try to push through the discomfort, even if I can feel the sweat forming and my face reddening (tell tale signs that I’m feeling very self-conscious). I try to remember that my onstage persona is different from me offstage.
Fighting is easy. Not fighting is hard. Good fighting is a skill.
