Vossprov

An "inside baseball" look at long-form improvisation, the Harold, the UCB, iO, and Del Close. Posts by Erik Voss, writer and improviser in LA.

[vossprov]

Active Selflessness and the Improv Cube of Strength

I’ve always been fascinated by this question: What makes a great improv team? The fact that we move in packs, and there are no defined hierarchies or position assignments within these packs, is the key thing that distinguishes improv from other forms of comedy. And the fun-killing scientist inside me believes that if we can unlock the secrets of group dynamics, we can take improv as an art form to a whole new level.

So let’s revisit that question. In the past, I’ve suggested that shared comedic perspective, common on-stage experience, and team size are key variables. But lately I’ve begun to see improvisers in a few new dimensions that I think, when combined, give us a new interesting way to think about our roles within our teams, and how the right mix of those roles correlates to more successful teams.

In other words, I’ve created a new way to creepily judge other improvisers, and I want to share this weapon with the world.

So when we ask “what type of improviser are you on your team,” one common answer is that they lean one of two ways:

Active & Passive

Improv teams contain “active” and “passive” team members, which are two qualities that fall on either sides of the same continuum. 

ACTIVE players are the ones who tend to initiate scenes, edit, aggressively support other scenes with tag-outs and walk-ons, drive the opening, etc. 

PASSIVE players are the ones who tend to respond to initiations, go easy with tag-outs and walk-ons, hang back and go with the flow of the show, listen hard and give themselves time to process things before making a move.

Now of course, a player’s activeness or passiveness is largely relative to the team he or she is on, and even which team members show up to the show that night. For example, I consider myself very active on my indie team, but very passive on one of my house teams. And on my iO Harold team, Colleen threatens to make me do pushups if I get too chatty, so I tend to play passive. (Kidding, Colleen’s threats are never that tame.) 

The point is, how “hands on” each player is in the show is an expression of that team’s dynamic.

Selfless & Self-Serving

Same deal here. We’re all a mix of these two qualities, but we tend to lean toward one end of the spectrum. Improvisers are on all kinds of spectrums. Some of us more than others.

SELFLESS players do the grunt work. They label, justify, clarify the game, wave back on other players and set them up to call back their great character, to connect threads late in the show. They pass and set up shots for the Jordans of the team.

SELF-SERVING players see themselves as the Jordans. They want the ball. They tend to set themselves up to play to their strengths, to carry the burden of the unusual element of the scene, to be the focus of attention.

Let’s be clear. Self-serving players are NOT necessarily “selfish.” We often need improvisers to be more self-serving. If you initiate a premise that requires Mr. T as a real estate agent, YOU should play Mr. T. We shouldn’t feel guilty over taking the ball and driving the scene, so long as we’re still responding to our scene partner. 

Playing selflessly requires more patience. Selfless moves are far too undervalued, especially here in Los Angeles, and especially during improv auditions, which we’re smack in the middle of at the moment. 

But we need selflessness. A team solely composed of self-serving players can be very good, but it’s probably not going to be great. Players would be too focused on their own role in the show and not enough on each other’s roles, and the brilliant overarching connections tend to get missed.

I know it’s weird to use specific examples, but I consider players like Craig Cackowski and Zach Woods to be truly selfless players. They tend to be the ones in the show who make a simple move that sends us off to the races. I could give examples, but I feel like you’ve seen it.

I’ll admit that I’ve also seen Craig and Zach play huge, bonkers characters and cash in on big laughs. They can be self-serving too. That’s OK. And again, this is relative to whatever team you’re playing with. 

Now, when we lay these two continuums on top of each other, we get some interesting categories of team members:

Imagine these two axes exist on a plane or grid, and we can plot ourselves and team members in different quadrants. Where would you land? Closer to the middle, closer to the edge of the graph at any places? Do you think that placement is consistent show to show, or does it change depending on your team, and depending on the night? I know, this is super nerdy, but shut up! You became a nerd the moment you clicked on this post.

Let’s start in the upper-left and talk about how the two traits relate to each other:

PASSIVE/SELFLESS players tend to be more hands-off for the show, but when the show requires their service, they deliver. The team is out of ideas for that third beat of a tag-run? No fear, here comes the passive/selfless player to save the momentum and edit or tag back to the source scene. Everyone’s been hitting funny lines so hard that there’s no escape from this group scene? The passive/selfless player has an exit plan. Too many of these players, however, and no one ever steps out to initiate a scene.

Directly beneath is the PASSIVE/SELF-SERVING corner. These players can be both the most beloved and the most maddening to work with. They’re on board for anything and their character work is great, but they tend to only participate in the show when there’s an opportunity for them to shine. They’re the ringers who saunter on late into a scene, say one line as the sexy bailiff, and bring the house down. You need passive/self-serving players for peas-in-a-pod scenes and straight-up great acting, but too many of them can be problematic, for obvious reasons.

Sliding right, we get the ACTIVE/SELF-SERVING players. These are the most visible members of the team. They steer the show with initiations, edits, and supportive moves. They tend to give themselves plenty to do in a show, because they trust themselves with that burden more than the others. This is the most crowded corner of the quadrant, from my estimation. For most improvisers, it’s the most fun way to play: Initiate your own hilarious premise in the first beat, play the hell out of a fun character, then make sure that character comes back into the show at all the right moments. You’re the star! Starpower doesn’t necessarily lead to great improv teams.

Finally, the ACTIVE/SELFLESS players. They’re out there steering the show as much as the players we just talked about, but they leave no trace. Active/selfless players straight-man by making game-moves, sharing the burden alongside the unusual character. They label and justify like it’s second nature. All their moves seem to benefit others. While other players may get the spotlight, these people are the ones the improv nerds argue are truly the best on the team. And unlike the other categories, you can never have too many of them on a team.

The F-Axis

I’m gonna get gross now and add another axis to this, bringing us into the third dimension. I call it the F-Axis, and I define it as: “whomever the audience considers to be the strongest comedic voice(s) on the team.” 

In less sophisticated terms... who’s the funniest.

I fucking hate this axis. It’s the worst. For one thing, it’s not even real. Whereas the other two axes are adjustable variables that depend on how we see ourselves within a team, the F-Axis is an imaginary constant that comes from the audience’s perception of a show on any given night. We have no control over it.

Still, it plays a large role in the success of a team. Because, whichever of those four categories that the audience rewards the most, whomever they identify as the overall “voice” of the team, influences the direction and the priorities of the team.

Are the “funniest” players (from that dumb, untrustworthy audience’s point of view) the Passive-Selfless ones? If so, the other three types of players are going to appear stage-hoggy and selfish by comparison. “There’s one funny person trying to hold that mess together... he/she should be with a better group.”

What about the Passive-Self-Serving ones? In that case, the players trying to give the show structure, direction and meaning will always be working against a crowd that prefers to reward players for subverting those aims. “When’s that guy/girl gonna come back out? That character was so funny.”

Often, the Active-Self-Serving group gets the love -- they are the most visible. There’s nothing wrong with that. These teams are well liked, but they’re exactly the sum of their parts. “Everyone on that team is so good, and I always like their shows, but...”

That leaves us with the Active-Selfless players again. Something special happens when the players who stand out, whether it’s all of them or just some of them, also happen to be the ones who play both actively and selflessly. People go apeshit for these teams. The Heydays and the Dummys, the JVs and the Smokeses, the Lou Malnati’s Brown Line Blueses. (I don’t know the names of current beloved Chicago teams... TJ & Dave? People still love them, right?)

And we’ve arrived, finally, at my point: 

Improv teams that prioritize active selflessness are the most successful on stage and the most cherished by audiences.

The aim of every improv show should be an ensemble collaborating with each other, leaning on each other, building off each other’s moves to create comedy that none of them could come up with on their own. Of course we want to see great comedic actors kill it with characters, serve up perfect one-liners, even fuck around with each other a little as they jockey for the helm. 

But what makes improv different from other forms of comedy is that we need each other. We don’t improvise in spite of the seven other people on our team, we improvise FOR those seven other people.

If you imagine those three axes in three-dimensional space, forming a “cube” with eight sections, the best teams occupy the section marked in blue, seen in this very crude sketch on my dry erase board. (Big thanks to Matt Cavedon, Darius de la Cruz, and Nate Ballard for insisting I depict this as a big dumb cube.)

BEHOLD, THE IMPROV CUBE OF STRENGTH:

So what do we gain from this monstrosity? Anything? Another reductive metric for pigeonholing artists? A misleading visual that people will take out of context without reading any of the explanation?

Remember, those active/passive and selfless/self-serving lines are variables. There’s certainly a core to your comfort level in your style of play, BUT how active or selfless you are can change, with discipline and reps. 

If you feel yourself playing passively, you can force yourself to initiate and edit scenes. Alternatively, you can restrain yourself and pocket your tag-out idea for a later beat. You can transform your self-serving walk-on as the sexy bailiff into a more purely functional move that gets the scene out of a goddamn courtroom, because those are always the worst and extremely difficult to edit for some reason. 

We don’t have to be locked into our roles on a team. We can push ourselves out of our habits and aim for something different. And I believe that if we aim to participate more and play more generously, our teams will find the greatness our art form is capable of.

So what do we think, is Drew Coolidge in the Passive/Selfless/Funny cube or the Active/Self-Serving/Unfunny cube? He goes back and forth for me.

[vossprov]

Performance Serves the Premise

Currently, iO West is in the midst of a series of “performer showcases,” in which over a hundred of our performers each get five minutes to show off a series of character bits and impressions, with the hope of making it to a final showcase for important industry gatekeepers. 

It’s fascinating to see people from collaborative efforts like improv and sketch teams now take the stage solo with unfiltered samples of their senses of humor, like a stand-up comic would. Some use the five minutes to cram in a dozen rapidfire bits; others will do three or so characters with more meat to them. Most choose to set up their bits beforehand (”This next one is...”), but some dive right into the character and establish the setup within the context. 

The most successful routines accomplish something that all great live comedy does, whether it’s improv, sketch, stand-up, or any other format: the performance serves the premise. You might have thought about this in terms of “concept and execution” or “setup and punchline.” They all mean the same thing -- a comedic idea in its conceptual form, and how we see it actively play out. What I like about my version is that it suggests both elements are necessary for success, but they only work if one follows the other.

Some of the less well-received performer showcases were focused on performance without much emphasis on premise. An amazing impression of a celebrity’s voice and mannerisms (performance) without a funny context to place them in (premise). A character with specific physical gestures, strong emotional commitment, or a bizarre way of speaking (performance), with no context of who they are or what they’re doing, and how that information relates to their behavior (premise). 

In improv, this happens when players make big physical or emotional choices without ever agreeing on a game between the characters, just taking big swings past each other without really accepting offers. In sketch, it can be a pop culture parody that doesn’t settle on which specific aspect of the source material it’s mocking. For example, most of SNL’s debate sketches just try to re-create highlights without building the jokes around one point of view. In stand-up, it’s when performers get carried away and mistake the crowd’s affection for their personas for actual laughs for jokes well-told. Dane Cook circa 2005 is an easy example, but any time a comedian milks his or her “thing” without it being part of a joke, they’re letting performance dictate premise.

But let’s not sell performance short, either. Performance is what connects your funny idea to your audience and produces a physiological response from them. Some other less well-received showcases had great premises, but not enough performance chops to sell them. The performer would set up a celebrity in a hilarious situation, and then he or she couldn’t quite pull off the impersonation. Or the character sounded funny in the pitch, but the performer didn’t play it actively, or didn’t come up with good jokes for it, or didn’t commit emotionally to it. 

In improv, this happens when performers initiate a scene with a clear premise, but they spend too much time arguing or defending the absurdity without making moves to play the game, to give us more examples of “what’s wrong.” In sketch, you see it with these “clever” setups where characters harp on a cliche without any heightening, emotional stakes, or visual spectacle. I call these “tweet pitches” -- they're funny in 140 characters but they don’t necessarily need to be dramatized on stage. In stand-up, you can see premise without performance at any open-mic, the guy nervously mumbling into a mic some kinda funny idea he wrote on a notepad. Some comics have turned that into performance, like Kyle Mooney and Joe Pera, (and before them, Andy Kaufman and Mitch Hedberg). But you can’t just stand up there and recite great jokes. (Unless you’re Dimitri Martin, but at least he’s handsome and plays the guitar sometimes.)

Not only must premise and performance both exist in harmony, the performance must serve the premise. The premise must come first, and the performance must support it, but not overtake it. This is why most recurring sketches on SNL lose their momentum over time -- the actors lose interest or excitement in the initial premise that made the bit great, and they try to reinvigorate it by over-performing it. Take “The Californians.” It began as a soap opera that mocked southern Californian culture: the vanity, the obsession with driving routes, the valley accent. But with each return, the cast members got stuck on trying to make each other laugh by talking weirdly, while the sketch just hit the same old beats, ending with everyone posing in front of the mirror. Performance overtook premise. If premise were being honored, we would see new analogous examples of Fred, Bill, and Kristen’s characters from that first instance -- maybe on a roadtrip up the PCH, or hiking in Runyon Canyon. But it’s way easier for SNL to just put them in the same set and costumes, in the same beats, because most of their TV audience isn’t as discerning as we are. 

Chris Farley was one of the most exciting performers on SNL’s history. His best work on the show was in his early seasons, as a dynamo within well-structured scripts. In the first “Motivational Speaker Matt Foley,” “Schmitts Gay,” and “Hidden Camera Coffee Commercial,” Farley unleashed his signature wild energy, but only insofar as it served the premises of “unstable motivational speaker,” “party bros in a pro-gay beer commercial,” and “overreacting violently to a harmless hidden camera prank.” In his later seasons, Farley became a star that so eclipsed sketches that writers just began to write “Farley enters” in stage directions. Compare his restraint in those above sketches to his recklessness in “Polar Bear Cage” (his final season). In “Polar Bear,” the actors are trying to be hipper than the sketch. They don’t look like sketch comedians trying to serve the premise, but rather, cool Rat Pack guys who want the premise to serve them. It might not have been a great premise, but it might have had a chance if the actors played with real emotional commitment rather than choosing to play their emotionally detached selves. 

In improv, it can be tempting to fall into this trap. Either wanting a simple premise to serve us while we play ironically detached, or by playing over-the-top characters that don’t serve the premise at all. But at the core of everything we do on stage should be a unifying premise, a game, a through-line for how the characters interact with each other, which our performance should drive forward with commitment and specificity.

I’ll leave you with my all-time favorite SNL cast member, Phil Hartman, a guy who fine tuned each of his performances to serve the premise, without ever trying to outshine it. His SNL audition is one of the best examples of performance-serving-premise in a character showcase that I can find. The guy was an expert impersonator -- Jack Benny, John Wayne, and Jack Nicholson were no problem for him. But his choice to frame these impressions within a premise (a humorless German standup) made the bit really hit. Notice how “Gunther” can’t do the impressions as perfect as we know Hartman can (which Hartman demonstrates by doing an unfiltered Nicholson moments later). That’s truly performance serving premise.

“Look out of his way, here he is coming.” So great.

[vossprov]

Comedy needs us to geek out over it

Moneyball and Trouble with the Curve were two movies that came out within a year of each other, both about the world of baseball recruiting. Each drew the opposite conclusion. Moneyball argues that old-school scouts are inferior to data-driven decision making, and that ignored stats like base hits and RBIs should determine a player’s value. Trouble with the Curve, by comparison, suggests that athletes can’t be reduced down to a number, and that too much data-crunching destroys the magic of the game.

Comedians tend to be of the Trouble with the Curve variety. We’re a little too protective of our craft, like magicians paranoid that the secret behind their illusions will leak. Whenever an academic (or a very academic blogger) writes a think-piece about comedy, that E.B. White quote tends to come back up: “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

Or, as my improv buddy Shawn puts it: “Benign violation theory”? Fuck that! Farts are just FUNNY, man!

E.B. White’s comparison is clever, but it’s not universally true. If pastimes as subjective as baseball or hip hop can be broken down to their numeric components without ruining the joy that we find in them, we can do the same for comedy. For many people, dissecting the crap out of a comedy premise helps us appreciate it beyond that first time we see it on stage or screen. Thinking about humor quantitatively allows us to transform a fleeting concept into something with real weight and dimension, and it illuminates the mysteries that the old-school mysticism leaves obscure.

For example, an editor and film-analyzer named Tony Zhou has created some magnificent breakdowns online that definitively answer questions like, “Why are the trailers for the Ghostbusters reboot so bad?” and “Why are the films of Edgar Wright so much visually funnier than other mainstream comedies?” Zhou’s arguments are totally academic and frog-killing, but they contribute meaningful dialogue to the debate over what makes something funny, and they leave us feeling even greater respect for the art of comedy.

Good comedy analysis keeps us honest. Did it really hurt comedy when people started counting the number of women, racial minorities, and LGBT comedians at theaters? No, it made us responsible for diversifying our voices and reaching out to wider audiences. Does it hurt a comedy screenwriter to count jokes per page? No, and if they aren’t at least aware of it, they’re probably not going to get a lot of work. Would it hurt an improviser if his coach gave him a number of how many scenes he initiated as a sexist character in the past month? His ego maybe, but he’d probably start making stronger choices.

If they will help laypeople take our craft seriously, numbers are our friends. So keep killing those frogs, folks.

OK, I just wrote this as a defense of my running tally of the fart jokes Shawn makes on stage. (Avg. 14 per show.) His favorite movie is Trouble with the Curve, which, for the record, is a far worse movie than Moneyball.

[vossprov]

Why is sketch comedy booming in LA?

I want to talk about the renaissance of sketch comedy that has taken place here in Los Angeles in recent years. Specifically this sudden expansion of SKETCH COMMUNITIES.

Compared to improv, sketch comedy has historically been a burdensome exercise. It's something for people who can afford to put in the time to showcase themselves with theatricality and spectacle. For some, it's a matter of pooling resources to produce a video that they hope will go viral online; for others, it's assembling a group of collaborators to put up a one-off show that they'll beg their friends to come see. In bigger markets, you can train at places like the Second City or the Groundlings, whose graduates perform sketch showcases, with the lucky few joining those theaters' exclusive resident ensembles. But however you slice it, sketch is a lot of work.

The concept of the sketch community has changed all of that. Created by the UCB with their Maude teams, a sketch community is a network of house sketch teams at a theater, the way most theaters have a roster of house Harold teams or improv teams. Each sketch team is composed of 8-12 writers and performers who put up monthly shows that last about a half hour. The community helps sustain each team, providing an audience base for each other and a network of resources (props, costumes, video production, etc.). In addition to UCB, this model has spread to iO West, the Pack Theater, the Nerdist, and the Westside Comedy Theater. 

As someone who has been deeply involved with the sketch community at iO West since 2012, I can tell you it's a beautiful thing. There's true passion and enthusiasm and creativity on these teams, and it’s getting us real industry attention -- TV writing jobs, SNL auditions, write-ups in Splitsider, etc. The community at iO (and I'm sure sketch people at UCB and the Pack feel this way too) feels like what I imagine old Harold teams were like, before the market became flooded and regulated with oversight: raw, DIY, and healthily competitive.

I should also point out that a similar development appears to be happening in New York, with UCB-NY's Maude teams inspiring sketch communities at the Magnet and the PIT. But I have no idea how successful those programs have been.

One major market that does NOT have these kinds of sketch communities, from what I can tell, is Chicago. The self-proclaimed mecca of sketch comedy! The icy comedy purgatory you must spend years honing your craft in before moving to LA or NYC -- according to people who did exactly that! 

Certainly, there's plenty of great sketch comedy being performed in Chicago, at the Second City, the iO Theater, the Annoyance Theater, and other places. But their show formats are different. They either have an ensemble of elites (Second City), or they leave it to self-formed groups to pitch and put up their own variety shows in random slots on the calendar. It's as if it hadn't occurred to those theaters to structure sketch teams like their improv teams. Or maybe they don't think sketch needs to be so organized at a lower level. Or maybe the hypertension from their unhealthy diets makes it hard to do quick changes between sketches. 

I love applying "Guns, Germs, and Steel" logic to the comedy world, so I'm gonna take a stab at why this is the case. The simple answer is that Chicago doesn't have a UCB theater, whereas New York and Los Angeles do, and this model of sketch communities is something that UCB spearheaded with Maude teams. But I think there's a deeper reason that cuts to the core of the comedy in these markets.

Cameron Esposito is a Chicago comic who moved to LA, and she wrote an excellent article defending her new home from its "sell-out" reputation: "Work is at its center. People move here not because they have a dream, but because they have a dream they plan to achieve." This is the best description I've found for what it's like doing comedy in LA. LA celebrates "producers," whereas Chicago celebrates "artists." 

This isn't to say that all the work I see coming from Chicago comedians is esoteric or unmarketable, or that the work from LA comedians has no artistic value. Your one-man show inspired by that Cubs fan you saw on the Brown Line on the way to Lou Malnattis is totally marketable, and my webseries about roommates in an apartment is going to redefine comedy as we know it.

But this distinction does point to the mindset required to be successful in LA. You can drift and work on projects that exist for their own sakes, but eventually, you're going to have to make a product that you can sell. It costs too damn much to live here otherwise. 

Sketch communities are a direct answer to that demand. They equip aspiring talent in LA with the useful tools that improv teams can't provide: a writing packet of solid sketches, a cache of proven characters and bits, a monthly showcase of your work, and most importantly, a network of hard-working talent that's making active strides toward their career goals. Sketch communities’ rapid expansion across five LA comedy theaters is evidence that this city is filled with people willing to put in the time to produce their content, hard-workers with dreams they plan to achieve.

So there you go. One non-toxic way the entertainment industry has influenced the comedy scenes of LA and New York: it's made our sketch comedy a lot better.

[vossprov]

I’m back!

Hello! I've returned after a nearly two-year hiatus to continue sharing some thoughts about comedy. Since I've been gone, I've gotten a bit more involved with UCB and the Groundlings, and I'm still doing a lot of stuff with iO West, including a ton of sketch. So I plan to widen the scope of this blog to include sketch too. I hope that's OK!

[vossprov]

Freedom of Failure

At some point during our improv careers, failure on stage is no longer an option.

Of course, with every show we do, our skill set widens and our expertise grows, as long as we're properly reflecting on our choices and growing from them.

But it doesn't feel that way, does it? Those bad sets start to really hang over our heads. We become cynical. We get in ruts. The fun fades and we feel less funny than we did when we first started.

What changes is the circumstances under which we do improv. Once, we were just trying to top the low expectations of a dozen other students and a friendly instructor. Or trying to crack up our friends in our practice groups. Or, if you're an old-timer, playing for a handful of people on a Harold team you were thrown onto before Harold teams were really a thing in your city.

Now? We're taking advanced classes with teachers who have weight in deciding who gets on house teams, kicking ourselves for making passive choices or failing to accept offers. Or we're trapped in the indie night circuit, feeling like the bottom 10 percent in a sea of people who can't seem to get noticed. Or if we're lucky, we're on a house team and dabbling in coaching, with students analyzing our moves to learn by example, and strangers wondering what the hell we're doing on stage when everyone else has been doing it for 10+ years.

Every show counts. Every scene counts. We're getting older, our career prospects are slipping, and failure is not an option.

I've been using "we" here, because if any of this applies to you, know you're not alone. I've been on a house team at iO West for three years and now, more than ever, do I feel the pressure to prove myself, to get a laugh on every line like everyone else on my team seems to be able to do. At the start of this year, my team was given a weekly slot under the assumption that we were to be a showcase of our theater's best and brightest, and every time I make a rookie mistake -- completely miss a callback someone is making, or outright deny an offer, or fuck up asking for a suggestion (all of which happen more often than I'd like to admit) -- I feel like the kid who snuck into the frat party just waiting to be found out.

And I'm using "we" because if it is just me here... well, shit, I really hope I'm not alone.

I'm visiting my hometown this week, and my old improv crew invited me to play with them. I was nervous, because Jacksonville has grown into a fairly sophisticated improv community in recent years, with its own amazing house teams, and I worried this rut I feel like I'm in -- whether it's just in my head or not -- would make me look like some overrated big-city schmuck. And while I still may have looked like an overrated big-city schmuck, it seemed to go pretty well. It's impossible to tell if it was as good as the shows my house team in LA typically does, with incomparable home fields and what not, but I know I felt way more relaxed and free to just... play. The prospect of a scene totally bombing didn't bother me as much.

It should be noted that my scenes totally bombing in Jacksonville happened about as often (rarely, I hope?) as it does in LA. The difference was, in Jacksonville, I wasn't afraid of it happening.

That's one advantage improvisers outside of the big three have over us. After they do a show, they don't have to think about whether they're properly on track in their comedy careers. Whether after a show like that, they'll ever get on a Harold team, or make it to the Second City mainstage, or get a showcase in front of Lorne Michaels, or be funny enough to write for TV, or be as respected as the other great performers in town. Whether they were ever good enough to move to the big city. None of that shit matters. Improvisers outside the big three (at least, the ones I've worked with) only seem to be concerned with having a good show and getting better. 

Of course, this attitude is easy enough to find throughout the big three, despite it being so difficult for me to grasp as of late. And I know smaller communities have their share of distractions and aren't the idyllic little improv utopias I'm making them out to be.

My only takeaway is this: Failure in an improv scene is every bit as likely within the safety bubble of a 101 class or a small-pond environment as it is in an audition in front of your community elders or a showcase for a dozen stonefaced showbiz gatekeepers. So the only option is to embrace the chance of failure, accept that it will happen from time to time, and dive in anyway. Even TJ does a bad scene sometimes.

Well, maybe not TJ. But other really good improvisers do.

And as I try to bring that courage in the face of failure back into my scenework in LA, this will probably be my last post for a while. Writing about improv is always helpful for me, but no one needs to hear another physician in spite of himself prematurely diagnosing trends within the community when he can barely diagnose his own shortcomings. But hopefully this post will find you at some point in the future, when I'll again have something to say, along with the earned authority to say it.

[vossprov]

While we're at it, let's stop the misogyny in our improv too

My fellow male improvisers and I like to consider ourselves a progressive bunch. Our theaters -- many of them female-run -- have produced Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Melissa McCarthy and Broad City. We view the women on our teams as equals, giving us a post-feminism free reign to make light of rape, sexual assault, spousal abuse... Hey, we're just going with the flow of the show, after all. And that's OK, because improvisers are smart. We're above the misogynistic muck of the stand-up world, where female comics face discrimination on all fronts -- drunk hecklers, sexist bookers, male comics. #YesAllWomen doesn't apply to us.

As a joke, I almost hit "publish" right there, but this discussion is more deserving than that. Admittedly, I've been debating with myself over whether I should even be writing this. On one hand, the #YesAllWomen posts have created such an important conversation, and we should LISTEN to it rather than get more "male experts" to weigh in. On the other hand, part of the problem is that these have been trivialized as "women's issues" for too long, making it too easy for men to ignore a problem that their attitudes and behavior is the cause of. So I'm going to talk about it -- and not just because I think male improvisers should feel guilty or let political/social pressures dictate our comedy, or because I'm still hoping to get laid from an improv blog. (It could happen! No, it won't.)

Yes, it's true that the improv world is a far more progressive one than stand-up or "the industry." Here, women don't have to wait for someone else to give them an opportunity -- they're in control. It's a community of the people, a support network of classes and indie nights and house teams, allowing once-marginalized individuals to thrive. Go see a show at any major theater and you'll see that women seem to be doing quite well.

But we'd be fools to think that the improv community is somehow immune to the misogyny that infects every other aspect of society. We see our fair share, both on and off stage. The evidence may not be overwhelmingly vicious enough to trigger Jezebel headlines and Bechdel Tests, but it's there, and it's not hard to find. Men outnumber women 2 to 1 (by the most generous estimates), and those stats are only the surface of an oftentimes hostile environment:

An environment in which women are valued as potential sexual partners and then flatly ignored when they reveal their relationship statuses, or in some cases, ostracized after their relationships with more established male improvisers end.

An environment in which audiences won't laugh as hard at women playing male characters as men playing female characters, and how bold, aggressive female players are seen as "wrecking balls" rather than their "wild card" male counterparts.

An environment in which women are accused of having an "easier" prospect getting on house teams because of gender quotas.

An environment in which a female improviser is regularly, intentionally exploited for a quick laugh -- ignored, talked over, ordered to make a sandwich, labeled a prostitute or stripper or ditz -- forcing her to make an awkward meta move to "take back" the show.

An environment that celebrates all-male teams gleefully depicting women getting beaten and raped, all in the name of serving the game of the scene or honoring the audience's suggestion.

Worst of all, this kind of behavior results in no consequences for the men who perpetrate it. In fact, audiences often reward them for it.

Of course, sexism is a tricky thing to police in the improv world. The instructors I've had at iO and UCB have done a fairly good job calling out blatantly offensive or mean-spirited moves. But how does an instructor encourage a student to be confident and just make a choice -- any choice -- and trust that his scene partner will support him, just to turn around and say that some choices are off-limits? Should we tell our teams to avoid group games that begin with "Hookers, get in here..." because some team members might be uncomfortable playing those roles? Indeed, I can think of at least a few situations where a prostitute group game, or even a depicted act of sexual violence, would be totally justified on stage, and I hesitate to suggest we self-censor ourselves in the name of political correctedness. Furthermore, the misogyny that's happening off-stage is reflective of a much broader societal problem, and there's only so much we as improvisers can do on-stage to remedy that... which is why I'm glad to see these #YesAllWomen posts, which have been far more influential than any improv blog will be.

But here are two simple things that we, as improvisers, CAN do help bring an end to the hostility our female scene partners are experiencing on stage. They require very little effort and, I predict, will lead to better improv as a whole.

1. Avoid the "mean game."

This is a note I heard from Will Hines recently, that improvisers will often choose to play characters who are overly critical or cruel and gang up on a lower-status character. It's a low-hanging fruit that gets a quick pop out of the audience, with an easy-to-follow blueprint of how the game should heighten. More often than not, however, the mean game manifests itself as a group scene in which a low-status performer is bullied by the rest of the team, trapped in a situation where he/she can either try to outwit his/her teammates and "win," or play into their mockery and "lose." In either case, the game creates an uncomfortable level of mean-spiritedness that risks turning off the audience and leaves the victim out there to fry, with no one left on the backline to edit.

And when that victim is played by the team's one female, it can be a little hard to watch.

The mean game comes from a place of desperation, when other game moves have been bypassed or ignored, and players feel the pressure to make something, anything, happen. We can avoid it by being better listeners and placing our scene partners in situations where they feel free to actively play their characters -- not passively defend their characters -- and by making choices of group games that will be fun for the entire group to play together -- and not necessitate that one person be "it."

2. Allow the conversation.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to uprooting the misogyny from our improv is that no one feels comfortable talking about it. Usually, a show that contains a lot of misogynistic moves will be a bad show, and a coach will be able to point out a dozen of things wrong with it -- lack of agreement, unclear gameplay, no group support -- before sexism even enters the discussion. And if the show happens to go well, coaches will be reluctant to dampen the mood by saying something like, "That scene was hilarious, but did you have to dick-slap her?" And that's IF there's any post-show discussion at all.

Furthermore, I have heard of several instances when women have been shamed for bringing up sexism after shows, accused of deprioritizing the comedic success of the show in favor of a feminist agenda. (I've been asked by some of them not to be mentioned in this blog... just to give you a sense of how concerned some women are that even having their discomfort with being sexually exploited known will damage their reputation with some dudes in the community.)

Even if we don't want to change the way we play, we have to at least allow the conversation. We have to recognize what moves we made and learn from them. If I play abusive husbands two shows in a row, even by accident, I need someone to point that out to my face, and I shouldn't make whoever pointed it out feel guilty for doing so.

Whether or not you agree if actual examples of misogyny in the improv community are as widespread or serious as the title of this post suggests, we nonetheless have to hold the perpetrators responsible when it does happen, and stop treating the issue like a hurdle only women have to deal with.

Here's an excerpt from an interview Charna Halpern did with Splitsider two years ago, when she was asked what she would say to women in comedy who are discouraged:

The women who are discouraged see themselves as victims and they have to stop that. They say “Men steamroll me.” You just have to make good choices and not allow yourself to be steamrolled. Tina [Fey] and Amy [Poehler] were never steamrolled. They were never victims. You just have to make choices. I see women like Stephnie Weir. Someone when she was performing here said to her — a man said to her — “Honey, I brought some people home for dinner.” And she said “Well that’s fine, but I did ask you in front of people to please call me Madame President.”

So, you see, you can make choices for yourself. You don’t have to be the woman who makes dinner. She would also be willing to lose. She would. I remember another scene that her husband did with her before they were husband and wife and he said to her — he played a thirteen year old boy — he said “I took my bond money from my Bar Mitzvah and cashed it in so I could buy myself a prostitute” and he handed her the money and she said “You’re thirteen?” and he said “Yes” and she said “So am I!” It was the most heartbreaking, beautiful scene I ever saw in my life.

She was never a victim and that’s what I tell women. I don’t teach women how to improvise. I don’t teach men how to improvise. I teach players how to improvise. You have to make strong choices for yourself. There isn’t a way for women to play and men to play. You have to be equal and you have to make each other look good and you have to make strong choices for yourself. I’ve seen men get steamrolled just as I’ve seen women get steamrolled. You have to be out there, you have to be bold, you have to trust and be trusted. Stop being a victim. Just refuse.

I think encouraging women to make more empowering choices is a great first step, but it doesn't speak to the broader improv culture in which men are rewarded for steamrolling women. Stephanie Weir is a brilliant role model for female improvisers, and the two examples Charna mentioned are the best examples of a woman taking back the show that I've ever heard. But maybe women shouldn't have to take back the show. This is a collaborative art form, not a battle of the sexes. I would hate that the best advice we can give a female improviser is to be prepared to cleverly recontextualize the scene whenever a man labels her with a role that offends her as a woman.

How about this? Maybe in addition to telling women, "Don't let yourselves become a victim," we should tell men, "Hey, stop victimizing women. Right there, when you intentionally cut her off right as she was saying something in the group game, and you got a laugh for doing it, that was an asshole move. Stop doing that shit."

[vossprov]

Rules

The early days of my improv training often felt like a celebration of lawlessness. There are no mistakes in improv, they told us. Don't worry about making the right choice -- just make any choice and build upon it using the concept of yes-and (which Truth in Comedy calls "the only rule"). The goal of this approach is to get novice students out of their heads and to build up their confidence in the midst of improv's inherent chaos. It all has a zen-like, therapeutic ring to it: "The world out there is dangerous and filled with rules, but in here, anything can happen. You can fail and we'll still support you. This is a safe place."

It's a very empowering feeling for a young improviser. Indeed, the best improvisers calmly embrace the chaos, accepting seemingly random pieces of information as offers and alchemizing tiny interactions into rich patterns of behavior. The only rules great improv teams seem to be bound to are the ones they themselves have created within the show.

I'd bet if you were to ask any professional improv teacher (at the major schools, at least) what their favorite improv maxim is, none of them would tell you, "There are no mistakes in improv." Because at some point, they've all started a class saying that, just to have to backpedal from it within a few weeks when a student turns to his female scene partner and says, "So are you gonna suck my dick, or what?" As helpful as that embrace-the-anarchy mindset can be for beginners, it's also responsible for that crazy asshole your friends ask you about after your graduation show.

Improv classes have a tendency to attract a few misfit toys who unintentionally exploit the class's "safe place" environment as some kind of group therapy where they can vent their personal insecurities. They defend notes teachers give them with excuses like, "Well, that's how I would react," and "That wasn't really true for me." And it's because at some point, someone told them that there are no mistakes in improv, which gave them a voice in a way that may be beneficial to them in a therapeutic sense but potentially detrimental to everyone else in the class.

Yes, we do have rules in improvisation, and yes, we should call them rules and point out when they aren't followed. Del preached what he referred to as the "kitchen rules," which came to me recently by way of Will Hines (which came to him by way of Michael Delaney):

1) A good improviser habitually accepts the offers made to him. 2) A good improviser habitually makes active choices rather than passive ones. 3) A good improviser justifies.

When a player chooses to be bored or emotionally uninterested in a scene, we shouldn't treat that as a precious choice that needs to be honored. The player violated a rule, and we should restart the scene so they can make a more active choice. Or, if we're in a show, we need to edit. Similarly, if a player blatantly ignores an offer from his scene partner, that's not a beautiful little mistake we need to weave into the fabric of the show. That's like saying when a player physically assaults his scene partner, we must embrace it and turn it into a running game throughout the show. Good lord. It's thoughts like those that make me fearful of the day the writers at Jezebel start talking about improv the way they do stand-up.

Here's a rule that I heard recently from Will Hines (who definitely didn't present it to our class as a firm "rule," but it probably wouldn't hurt to treat it like one): Avoid the "mean" game. Yes, we can play sexist pigs and cruel bullies in ways that will be logically on-game and be clear that we're making a comment on those types of people, rather than suggest that we ourselves are those people and that kind of behavior is OK. But maybe we don't always have to make that choice. Maybe we just make that choice because it's easy or obvious. Regardless, we need to acknowledge it when we do play the mean game, so that if it ends up being a choice we make several shows in a row, we can talk about it.

I understand rules can be daunting for entry-level improvisers. But we aren't entry-level improvisers forever. Parameters are essential if we're ever going to make real progress. We need rules... for no other reason than to avoid becoming that crazy asshole other classmates' friends ask them about after graduation shows.

[vossprov]

Discovery, Exploration, Connection

When we ask ourselves what separates a merely "good" improviser from a truly "great" one, the favorite answer is CONSISTENCY. Any crazy old guy in a student jam can stumble upon a brilliant scene -- but only the great improvisers can strike gold nearly every time they're on stage. We always have the power; we just learn to control it with time. A novice improviser would be like a young Erik Lensherr, who could bend the Auschwitz gate only because the Nazis were taking away his parents, while a great improviser would be the old, Ian McKellen Magneto, who sucked the iron out of that guard's blood, turned it into a surfboard, and flew away on it.

Meanwhile, when we extend that question to improv teams, the answer isn't simply consistently great shows. Novice teams do not possess the capacity for great shows. Yes, there is the occasional cagematch team that does 20 minutes of great scenes -- but almost never a great show. A good show, definitely, but the disposable kind of good that stays with you for the night and is forgotten the next morning. Not the wholly satisfying greatness that you remember for years.

(If you get a few minutes -- which I assume you do if you're reading this lame blog -- check out this New York Times review of TJ & Dave. Perhaps the most consistently great improv team in the country.)

A team's shared, intrinsic awareness of the moves necessary for a great show is what distinguishes the Dasariskis, Stepfathers, and TJ & Daves of the world from the Harold teams of the week and cagematch darlings. Not simply great scene, sweep, great scene, sweep, great scene... but great scenes that are part of a bigger picture, a show with connection and texture and multiple moving parts. Hilarious, self-contained works of art. To create those, a team must uniformly understand the rhythm of a show and the phases a satisfying improvised experience must go through. And that's not something you can stumble into in a jam. It's a skill that takes several years to refine.

Here's where I add my bit, my attempt to fill in a tiny part of the big map. Great improv teams -- regardless of their format or home theater -- routinely tap into an undercurrent of show rhythm that flows through our movement, specifically the notion that every great show displays three distinct phases:

DISCOVERY, wherein the team organically agrees on what kind of universe their show is occupying

EXPLORATION, wherein the team actively explores and plays within that universe, and

CONNECTION, wherein the team aggressively connects various elements within that universe.

Naturally, these phases correspond to the three beats of a Harold, but I prefer to leave structure out of it. Everyone has a different definition of what proper structure is. But more importantly, I, and most other regularly performing improvisers, I expect, do our best work when we're not thinking about structure, but simply following our guts on what a show needs at any particular moment. And usually, it's one of three things: 1) the show needs us to discover some of the "rules" of this world we're creating, 2) the show needs us to apply those rules and show multiple examples of their consequences, or 3) the show needs us to demonstrate how those rules fit into a larger scheme.

That's it. Even an over-thinking obsessive like me can admit that when I'm actually on stage, I can't handle any more cognitive processes than Where are we in the show right now, and what needs to happen to make this a GREAT show? Also, What the hell was Drew's character's name in the first scene? Anyone remember? I'm gonna go with Randy.

[vossprov]

Game Revisited

A while ago I worked on a post for Splitsider that sought to reconcile the differences in game philosophy between UCB and iO. As someone who had been trained at both theaters, I never agreed with the characterization that "UCB is all about game; iO is about the relationship."

After gathering the thoughts on game by top improv thinkers (Besser, Jagodowski, and several other interviews by Matt Visconage), my conclusion was that the difference between the theaters was less about philosophy than it is about semantics -- that is, when UCB people talk about "game," and iO people talk about "relationship," they're essentially talking about the same thing: the specific pattern of behavior between the characters that defines the scene. Rather than going further and risking misrepresenting the views of improvisers I greatly admired, I simply suggested that more dialogue between the communities, as well as the publication of UCB's (then) long-awaited improv manual, would help close the semantic gap.

Well, that book has been on the shelves for months, and it seems like no one I know is reading it. My colleagues in LA's iO community -- my home base -- marvel at the booming popularity and marketing savvy of that theater over on Franklin without taking the time to examine what it is about UCB's approach to improvisation that makes it so successful.

After reading The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (whew!), I realized that there actually are fundamental philosophical differences between the theaters, despite our DNAs being a 90% match. Specifically, there are two underlying assumptions that are accepted uniformly in the UCB community, but only partially in the iO community. Comparing UCB's streamlined views to iO's diverse, anything-goes mindset gives us greater insight into what separates the two camps.

1. Improv should be funny.

Let's be clear here: most, if not all, performers in the iO community consider what we do to be "comedy." Indeed, while the early pages of Truth in Comedy note improv's non-comedic potential, the book firmly states its position:

As the purists will be quick to point out, improvisation is not necessarily funny ... Since this volume is geared toward truth in comedy, however, we will politely tip our hats in acknowledgement of the more serious uses of improvisation, and saunter off in the direction of chuckles, chortles and guffaws (TiC 14-15).

At iO, the intention is that the comedy is a byproduct of honest reactions and grounded relationships, as opposed to jokes or actively chasing the comedy of the scene:

The truth is funny. Honest discovery, observation, and reaction is better than contrived invention (TiC 15).

While the UCB approach shares iO's wariness of jokes (at least, in the stand-up sense) and warns students against "ironic detachment" (UCB 49), its assumption that improv = comedy is far more fundamental, like the first of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:

The concept of the Game of the scene is the linchpin of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre's teaching and performance of Long Form improvisation. The Game of the scene, in the simplest terms possible, is the single specific idea that makes a scene funny (UCB 7).

UCB doesn't beat around the bush: we do comedy, goddamnit. Let's celebrate it. The intention at UCB is to discover that comedy together, clearly label it, and then build it in a specific pattern to make the scene funnier:

You and your partner will work together to discover "the funny" of your scene. Once it is found, you will heighten and explore "the funny" for the rest of the scene (UCB 64).

Of course, in practice, the divide is less obvious. Performers at iO are every bit as likely to "follow the funny" of a scene, even if they don't call it "playing the game." And it's not as if UCB performers impatiently charge past in-the-moment discoveries in order to remain slaves to a scene's logical framework. But I would be willing to bet that anyone who regularly watches shows at both theaters could detect a slight stylistic variation when it comes to how quickly the comedy of a scene is defined, how narrowly it is tailored, and how aggressively it is pursued.

Furthermore, I have discovered within the iO community a small but noticeable wing of individuals who are firmly opposed to the notion that we are "comedians." For example, my iO Level One teacher, Dave Razowsky, stressed to us on the first day: "You are not improvisers. You are improv actors." For Razowsky, and for many of us, this is an art form that should command the level of respect shown to theatre.

To be clear, Dave Razowsky is a hilarious performer and a true guru whom even the men of Convoy have named as a favorite teacher. But to give another example of this distinction: A year ago I participated in a show with Razowsky at iO called The Horror, which is a dramatic improv format pioneered by Del Close in which performers re-enact a tragic news event. I'm sure there are a few people at UCB who would respect a show like that, maybe even give it a slot at the DCM, but I highly doubt The Horror would ever get a run at that theater over on Franklin.

2. An improv scene should be focused on ONE idea.

One thing I noticed while writing that Splitsider article was the way some people from the iO community used the term "game" in relation to the scene. For many of them, a game could be any number ancillary patterns that emerge, which may or may not be necessary for a scene's success:

TJ JAGODOWSKI: Not every scene needs a game. It's absolutely possible for there to be a fantastic scene that has no semblance of a game.

...

SUSAN MESSING: Finding the game annoys the fuck out of me. That sounds like there was a game there and we were too stupid to find it. The games of the scene are anything you do more than once that become characteristics or facts. You have a game for you that no one can take away – could be a character or physical trait.

...

GREG HESS: Learn game so that you can have this other tool. Use it as a tool, rather than just a rule.

Note that Messing says "games." As in, there can be more than one. According to the UCB philosophy, when more than one element in a scene is absurd, it is what the book calls "Crazy Town":

In a Crazy Town scene, there are so many absurd elements in play that it becomes difficult to distinguish the unusual from the ordinary. If you cannot focus on one funny pattern in a scene, your scene can feel scattered and unsatisfying. Like painting blue paint on a blue canvas, your Game will not stand out against the background of a crazy world (UCB 89).

For the UCB, the game is not a tool, it is the rule. Without a game, there is no scene.

MATT BESSER: The game is the scene. When I hear people say, “The game’s just part of the scene,” or “You may or may not have a game,” to me, that is ridiculous. That’s absurd.

The UCB book goes into further detail. "Game is the engine of the scene" (UCB 112). The chapter on playing game offers lengthy explanations on heightening (asking "If this is true, then what else is true?"), exploring (asking "If this is true, then why is it true?"), and playing at the top of your intelligence (asking "If this is true, then what is my reaction?"). It makes clear that those are the only three ways to play game (UCB 131), suggesting that any other moves are extraneous and irrelevant to the scene.

Improv at iO would never be this rigid, mostly because we still hold Yes And to be sacred. Truth in Comedy is particularly militant:

"Yes, &..." is the most important rule in improvisation. ... Agreement is the one rule that cannot be broken: the players must be in agreement to forward the action of the scene (TiC 46-47).

Meanwhile, the UCB approach effectively does away with Yes And after the game has been established. They see the famous two-word maxim as useful only to build the base reality until a game emerges:

Once the first unusual thing has been discovered, the improvisers will shift away from Yes And and move onto asking the question "If this unusual thing is true, then what else is true?" Once we have used this question to create a pattern from the first unusual thing, we have found our Game. (UCB 72)

The brief section of Truth in Comedy that focuses on game is fairly consistent with the UCB book; both define games as "scenic structures" (TiC 59) and reference classic Monty Python sketches as examples. But the former's explanation is a little inconsistent in the context of the rest of the book, notably when it quotes George Segal as another example of a game: "Even if you're five minutes into a scene, it's not too late to put on a foreign accent!" (TiC 59). Nothing against George Segal, but randomly acquiring a foreign accent five minutes into a scene is bad improv. It's also not a game.

This particular disagreement about game outlines the second major stylistic difference between iO and UCB. By defining game as a mere tool, as one of many options at your disposal to build a great scene, iO improv tends to be looser and less dependent on the logic of the scene. It runs the risk of scenes with multiple absurd elements -- what the UCB would call "crazy town." Meanwhile, by defining the game as a scene's sole engine, the ONE source of comedy that should be played at all times, UCB improv tends to be tighter and highly dependent on the logic of the scene. And it runs the risk of scenes flat-lining when that logic falls apart.

This has been long and tedious. Sorry about that. I just don't think it does us any good to diminish the distinction as "UCB is all about game; iO is about the relationship." Nor does it do us any good to judge each other negatively. Two amazing, important theaters that are both doing amazing, important work.

[vossprov]

Bill Arnett: The Experience Graph

I came across this post written by iO Chicago's Bill Arnett seven years ago, and I'd like to repost it here. Bill is a fellow alum of my college team, and his guidance was immensely helpful to a student in Florida trying to scrounge together any shards of improv wisdom beyond mimicking Whose Line.

This chart in particular inspired me to start thinking about improv more analytically. It's a good reminder to relax and accept the fact that with every scene and show we do, we're growing... whether or not we notice the change.

After teaching for a number of years I’ve noticed a number of trends. One is that you get better at improv very slowly. It takes years to get really good. Even the A+ students in my classes, who are the constant object of praise from their class mates, have holes in their game. The second trend is that while students get better slowly, they tend to loose bad habits pretty quickly. By simply listening and playing the context you can do solid, serviceable work. Hilarious? Maybe not.

The blue line represents the best work a player can do. It rises gradually with the more experience you gain. The red line represents the weakest work a player performs. While it raises slowly, it raises more quickly than the best work line. Are these straight lines actually curves in reality? Do they ever dip or regress? Probably and probably.

Point A is a young improvisor. Their best scenes are great and their worst are real clunkers. Point B is a more experienced improvisor. While their top end has gone up it isn’t as dramatic as the increase in their bottom end. They are becoming more consistent. As a teacher and director I can more easily predict the level of work from my more experienced students and players. Their stinkiest scene isn’t too much worse than their best scene. Another way to say it, their worst scene is still pretty good.

To put this all in a time frame, Point C is years from the beginning. Five? Six? This graph is a career, not a few classes. And this leads us to Point D. Point D is where the worst work you do is better than the best work you did when you started. Is it real or purely a product of this graph? I asked about ten of my respected peers if they thought that their worst scene now is better than their best scene in level 1 and I got a 50/50 split in the their answers.

The “No” argument stated that even though they were inexperienced they would sometimes luck their way into a great scene. The beginners mind allowed them to do free and imaginative work. The “Yes” argument stated that by simply being involved in improv you become a better actor. And sharp acting skills, what you lacked in level 1, make everything better.

What conclusions can we draw from this graph? For young improvisors: relax. You may not feel like your scenes are getting better but your poor work is slipping away. That plateau you’re on that frustrates you after class is actually a slope. And while the climb may feel like inches a day, the ground is rising to meet you by several feet a day.

That’s it. A criminal oversimplification of something that is born from our souls. I’ve ascribed numbers to art, the most sacred and challenging, the most human, of all of our endeavors. I’m just playing my part in the history of western civilization, I guess. This graph also predicts that eventually the worst scene line will meet and pass the best scene line. Wow. Your worst scene is better than your best. Think about that for a while.

[30rockasaurus]

The first two lines of 30 Rock.

[yayroger]

Ohhhhhhhh

[vossprov]

Not improv related per se, but pretty brilliant. The first two lines of the 30 Rock pilot.

[vossprov]

Cleaning House

In one of my early Harold team rehearsals, our coach had us do a "truth circle" exercise. At one point, the coach agreed to take the hot seat, and someone asked : "Do you think any iO teams should get broken up right now?"

The answer: "I think we should break up ALL of the teams and re-assemble everyone onto different teams."

The coach's reasoning wasn't that all the teams or performers were "bad" (in fact, the coach was on a very good team, and was one of the most supportive people at the theater), but that the Harold team community at iO West had grown complacent and lost focus. Any time I grew frustrated with my team, or with the current state of affairs at the theater, this "nuclear option" became a sort of grim fantasy. What if we just hit the reset button? Let the asteroid hit and start anew?

That seemed unrealistic. Change with the mainstage Harold teams has been a slow process. Typically only one team gets broken up every year, and usually it's a team that has gassed out. (Many would argue DHT's end in 2010 was an exception.) Meanwhile, the rest of the teams have awesome lineups and solid track records.

The past few years have seen several hilarious and inspiring shows, and some teams have shone brighter than ever. But audiences have dwindled on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I can't speak for other teams, but I can say that my team has stayed afloat mostly by plugging holes with new performers. We've had highs and lows, and few hot streaks. The community as a whole is brimming with amazing talent, but seems to have stagnated a bit.

Then, the asteroid hit. Word came down this week that ALL of the mainstage Harold teams (excluding King Ten, which by now has earned its tenured status) will be broken up at the end of the month. For those who haven't yet heard, here's a rundown of the changes to come:

All mainstage Harold teams (except King Ten) will end their runs at the end of November. The teams are free to submit to host other slots in the schedule and continue to play together, but will no longer be official iO West Harold teams. For anyone counting, that's 11 teams (USS Rock N Roll, Local 132, Bandit, Spirit Cat, Waterloo, The Cartel, Tatanka, Triggerfinger, Cloudkicker, Harbinger, and Cats for Rent), and 87 performers.

In early December these performers will have the opportunity to re-audition. Four new mainstage Harold teams will be formed and will perform weekly on Wednesday nights.

The current DCT Harold teams will move from their weekly Friday night slots in the Del Close Theater to Tuesday nights on the mainstage, where they will rotate biweekly. 

Of course, I do feel a little bummed that I didn't get more time with three performers recently added to The Cartel, who finally made it onto a mainstage team. I also feel bad that teams like USS and Local didn't get to end their long, successful runs on their own terms, and that surging teams like Bandit and Triggerfinger got caught in the crossfire. And yes, I'm not particularly looking forward to the awkwardness of 87 super talented people* vying for 30-40 spots.

(*Or however many performers end up re-auditioning. Some people may be taking a break, and some teams have said they plan to continue to stay together as independent groups.)

But I didn't write this post to gripe. On the contrary -- I'm excited. Very excited. The theater has made an unprecedented move to streamline the house team system and take a stand on which performers will represent iO -- a status that should be elite and exclusive, especially at a theater where stage time is a readily available resource. Admittedly I don't know anything about how to manage a theater, but this seems like a healthy step towards restoring the prestige of Harold night and lighting a fire under teams' asses.

And I say all this accepting the strong possibility that I will not make it onto one of those 4 teams. I know it's useless to play the numbers game with any improv audition and you can only focus on  being the best version of yourself you can be. But when I see the names of people who are now free agents, I see far more than 4 teams' worth of performers who are more experienced and more confident on stage than I am. And that's largely why I'm excited. I've been dying to be on teams with all these people since I started taking classes at iO -- to burden them with my insecurities and make them whisper to each other on the sideline, "Why is Voss humping a chair right now?" -- and here's my chance. But more importantly, the reputation of the theater and the Harold community I've been a part of for the past three years is about to take a big step forward. Wherever I end up, the rising tide will lift all ships. 

So I'm choosing to be optimistic here, because that's the healthiest way forward, and because I'm an insufferable kiss-ass. It has been such an exciting opportunity to learn and grow as a performer while representing iO on a mainstage Harold team. I'd love it for everyone to come out and watch these teams in these last two weeks, to support them as they bring their runs to a close. It's a raw, emotional time for a lot of people, so we're likely to see a lot of honest work, and to witness an interesting turning point in this community.

See you at iO, guys.

[vossprov]

Micro vs. Macro

I think I've identified why, after a year and a half, I still feel a little weird on my Harold team: The dominant players on the team approach scene work in a fundamentally different way than I do. I want to use new terms for the time being, because "playing game" versus "not playing game," or "robot" versus "pirate," carry all kinds of connotations I'd like to avoid.

So, we'll use the terms micro and macro.

A MICRO approach to a scene means you respond move by move, living only in the moment and yes-anding specifically to the previous line, regardless of the wider context of the scene. The priority with this approach is heightening the game.

A MACRO approach to a scene means the context of the scene is the scene. You yes-and only to moves that help clarify that context and you respond with examples that prove the assumptions we're making about that context. The priority with this approach is clarifying the game.

Both approaches have their benefits and weaknesses. A micro approach forces you to listen and remain emotionally connected to your scene partner, but runs the risk of negating earlier moves, sometimes resulting in sloppy and confusing scenes. A macro approach aims for simple, clear scenes, but runs the risk of players not listening or responding to off-game moves, sometimes resulting in uncomfortable standstills.

Another way of looking at it is micro = subjective, where your character's POV is all that matters, and macro = objective, where the scene's POV is all that matters. A micro approach places you firmly in the head of the character you're playing: "What did my scene partner just say? What did he say literally, and what was his intent as an improviser? How does that make me feel right now?" A macro approach places you out in the audience, watching over the scene as if it was a puppet show: "What specifically is happening right now? How would I describe this scene in one sentence? How can we make it even clearer?"

MICRO: Little Boy: Grandpa, your bedtime stories from your years in 'nam are too intense! Old Man: You just think that because you're weak! That pussy father of yours raised you soft. Little Boy: Dad lets me change my own diapers now. Old Man: I shit my pants too when Charlie cornered us. The kid next to me blew his own brains out. 

MACRO: Little Boy: Grandpa, your bedtime stories from your years in 'nam are too intense! Old Man: Aw, this is the best part, kiddo! (sweetly) Then as I looked down at my buddy, his guts were spilled out all over the place. Little Boy: Could you be careful with that bayonet? It's poking my teddy bear. Old Man: (ignoring him and jabbing the teddy bear) It wasn't until after I stabbed the hooker in Saigon that I realized she was carrying my baby.

In the micro example, we want each next line to be a direct response to the one that came before. In the macro one, we just want to see the Old Man creep out his grandson, even if it means ignoring certain lines so that can happen.

I tend to take more of a macro approach. I like to identify the context immediately, and then make the nature of the interaction between the characters as clear as possible with as many "examples" as I can come up with, over and over again, all while casually ignoring little irrelevant pieces of information that might come up. When they're impossible to ignore, I freeze, or internally edit to a new scene.

Meanwhile I have several extremely dominant players on my Harold team who prefer the micro approach. They play strong-willed characters who refuse to lose an argument at all costs and get big laughs with one-liners. They make a huge deal of my characters' word choice. If something shiny emerges halfway through a scene, they'll pile on it and discard any moves made up until that point. Sometimes I want to Zack Morris "time-out" a scene, drag them out into the audience with me, and ask them "OK, this is what this scene is about, right? Can we just fucking do that for two minutes?"

I would imagine they have frustrations with the way I play too. "Why isn't he listening to me right now? Why is he sticking to this crappy scene and not supporting new, better moves that come along? Why does he tense up and bail on scenes?"

I don't want to make a case for one approach over the other, but what I do know is that they are not compatible with each other. If you want a good scene, either both players must be approaching it from a micro direction, or both from a macro direction. The good scenes I've had on my Harold team are where my scene partner stepped outside of their character and played the overarching premise with me, or when I stopped caring about the premise and instead tried to match them line by line.

But in those latter situations, I feel anxious, like the audience thinks I'm a amateur, or a "filler player" on the team. I try to play their style, but then I just prove that I'm not as good at it as they are. I reveal how poor of a listener I am, and instead of the awesome, Sorkin-scripted slam-dunk responses they fire at me, I mumble incoherent nonsense like, "I do not green eggs and ham." So I get scared and feel like a weak improviser, even when my Harold team has a great show overall.

The answer here is I just need to get better at listening and responding line by line. A great improviser can do both, even if they prefer one approach. But for right now I just want to everyone on my team to play exactly like I do. Is that too much to ask?

[vossprov]

Building the Team

Bill Arnett wrote a great post about "the two shows" that every improviser is doing. Here's an excerpt:

The audience is actually seeing two shows.  One show is called “Harold” or “Montage” or “Armando” the other show is called “A bunch of people up on a stage making things up.”  One show is the one we want the audience to see the other is the one they can’t help but see. ... To believe that you can play in one show and merely dismiss the other is ignorant.  We don’t have to actively play both but we must account for both.  You may not like the way [Bill's celebrated iO Harold team] People of Earth did it, but we recognized the two distinct games and played each.

To summarize his point: There are two aspects of every show you perform that require equal attention -- the improv itself, and the idea that there's an audience watching you make up bits. Read Bill's whole post... it's more useful than my post will probably end up being.

I want to add a third element that often goes overlooked and under-appreciated -- the process of building the team. Maybe this applies more to the iO West community than to iO Chicago or to UCBLA/UCBNY, but I find that teams often can't even focus on either of Bill's two shows because they're bogged down by team logistics:

The team can't find a rehearsal time/space that works for everyone.

At least two team members are absent from every show (and it's not always the same two).

The team can't agree on what kind of opening they want to do, or whether or not they want to even do an opening.

The team's coach doesn't watch their shows, so the team never gets notes.

The team plays for an empty house (not even the other team sticks around to watch) and it's impossible to gauge success.

The team doesn't like or respect their coach.

Team members don't get along, because some went through classes together and some are from Chicago and leave right after the show, or some never show up but are highly opinionated, or some are militantly artsy and put down broader players.

I have been amazed how many of my Harold team struggles have had nothing to do with actual improv. And how little improv I've actually done with a full team. People will miss rehearsals and shows -- all with valid excuses -- and two months down the line you'll realize you haven't had a single rehearsal or show with full attendance. It is impossible to develop team identity without a consistent cast. It's a bare minimum requirement. You gotta be there.

And to think about all the team drama that results! Those long, hushed chats outside the theater, the questioning of commitment, the emails to coaches and disastrous "reply all" mistakes. So much time wasted on bullshit because everyone on a team has a different idea of what it means to be on a Harold team.

My current Harold team coach, Andy St. Clair, was on People of Earth with Bill in Chicago. He tells us that when the team was formed, their coach, Peter Gwinn, asked them for a year. A year without any other improv commitments outside the team, a year to put the team first, to really grow. They removed the bullshit team logistics from the equation and could instead focus solely on "the two shows."

What if we tried that? Really put our Harold teams first. Went to every rehearsal and show, and received notes afterward. Watched other groups as a team. Skipped rehearsals for other groups so we can get drinks and talk shop with our Harold team. Cast teams of like-minded philosophies to give them a leg up on forming group mind, not doom them to argument by casting based on diversity of style/experience. Remove every possible obstacle to the team doing great shows together.

I remember Bill wrote in a post (that was lost when the iO server went down) that he was asked by a performer how long before his good team became a great team. His short answer: However long it takes for that one half-committed guy on your team to quit. His long answer was less harsh, but his short answer applies to just about every team I've ever been on.

[vossprov]

Prioritize

Here is a simple rule I am endlessly surprised more people in the community don't live by:

If you have been cast on a team that people have to audition for (i.e., a house improv or sketch team at iO, UCB, Second City, or any of the major theaters), it should go without saying that your commitment to that team takes priority over all other improv/sketch commitments in your life.

If you've been lucky enough to land a spot on a house team, it probably means you're established enough to have several commitments. Good for you. But this means your other commitments are now secondary.

You're also on a really popular indie team that booked a last minute show when your house sketch team rehearses? Sit out the show. You have rehearsal.

Your newly formed Harold team can only meet at a time when your awesome Level 7 practice group normally rehearses? Ask the practice group to find a new rehearsal time. If they can't, or you aren't willing to ask, you step back from the practice group.

You want to sign up for an improv class that will force you to sit out of a few weeks of your Harold team's shows? Sign up for a different class. Your team has shows.

Obviously there are exceptions. Out of town festivals. Special events. Basically, events from which more aspiring participants were rejected than from the auditions that landed you on your team.

Also, those are exceptions... not the rule.

Most people also make exceptions for paid gigs. If it's about your income/career/livelihood/survival, obviously that makes sense. Getting paid to coach or teach improv as a side gig is something else. It's not fair to routinely blow off 8 other people on your Harold team so you can pick up $50 and boost your street cred in the community.

Choosing priorities between theaters (for example, your commitment to an iO Harold team versus a UCB Maude team versus a Second City house improv team) is a more subjective issue to me. I won't fault anyone for picking one auditioned house team over another at a different theater based on what theater they consider to be a more valuable use of their time. That said, if it's a newly formed upstart theater that gives you a weekly slot that interferes with your Harold team's rehearsal time... come on.

The reason for this rule isn't because you owe it to your teammates or your coach on your house team to prioritize them, or because you owe it to yourself to get the most out of your house team experience, or because there's some kind of intangible honor associated with being selected to be on a team. It's simple: you owe it to the people who weren't cast. The people who also took classes, and auditioned in the same room you did but had an off-day, and who still take classes and form teams and do shows and hang out at the theater, and who watch your house team's shows, and who are still every bit a part of this community as you are. You absolutely owe it to them to always put your house team first. If you don't, those people have every right to not hire you when their pilot gets picked up.

Basically, if you don't feel like you have to put your house team first, get out of the way and give the opportunity to someone who will.

[vossprov]

Motion versus Action

After a conversation with friends I did some research into the difference between being in motion versus taking action. The idea that, in pursuit of our goals, we'll often settle on taking the first step instead of actually following through and risking failure or criticism. Apparently our brains release the same chemical to reward us when we email a resume (symbolic progress) as it does when we schedule a job interview (practical progress). The mere sensation of progress stops us before we take the real plunge.

I've begun coaching a bit for the past couple months, and though I'm not much of a line-by-line scene analysis guru ("This line, right here, is where you got off track," etc.), I do find myself returning to the choruses of "make it active" and "we need to see you MAKE MOVES." By just standing there and responding honestly to each of our scene partner's lines, it feels like we're improvising correctly, but really, we're just in motion. It doesn't mean we're playing the game of the scene or actively building a pattern of interaction between the characters.

Motion:

A: Mom, I got sick and threw up on my sweater. B: Your grandmother gave you that sweater before she passed. You should be ashamed of yourself. A: I couldn't help it, there's a flu going around. B: That's no excuse to disrespect your poor dead grandmother. You shouldn't be so careless with your vomit. A: But... I'm sick!

This seems OK, right? There's a clear straight/absurd relationship, and we're responding line by line. However, we've reached a stalemate, probably because we're playing too defensively. We're going through the motions of the scene without making any real moves. We can break past the stalemate by translating the argument into an active game both people can play together.

Action:

A: Mom, I got sick and threw up on my sweater. B: Your grandmother gave you that sweater before she passed. I guess we'll have to throw it in the garbage now. Take it off. A: (Crying, taking off sweater) I'm sorry, mom... B: (Stuffing sweater down garbage disposal) Don't apologize to me, apologize to your poor dead grandmother, whose memory you soiled in vomit. Now sit down and eat some lasagna. Grandma's recipe. A: Ugh, I'm gonna be sick...

Perhaps not the best example, but you get the idea. It's the same relationship, but the interaction is actively unfolding before our eyes, rather than passively negotiated. If we see the kid continue to puke throughout the scene, followed by his mother scolding him for disrespecting his grandmother (without compassion for his current condition), we now have hard, tangible evidence of this abusive relationship, rather than the circumstantial guesswork we gathered from their conversation. Also, it's more fun!

You could say the mantra "show, don't tell" applies here, but it's more than that. We aren't simply talking about emoting via space-work instead of exposition, or making our scenes about the present instead of the past. We could be cleaning the dishes angrily in reaction to our douchey husband who just stumbled in late, but we're gonna get way more mileage out of helping that douchey husband find additional present examples of his douchey-ness: "Honey, you could have taken the lamp shade off your head before you walked in." It's just a line, but it makes the scene immediately active.

Now to get back to action by finishing my damn TV pilot script.