Dramatic Improv

[arthursimone]

comedy & tragedy
good theatre has elements of both...good drama has elements of both.


but


if your intent (intent!) is tragedy, pure tragedy, not just healthy, true drama, you're fighting an uphill battle that's a hard sell to performers and audiences alike. Every so often I think about forming a group & reading everything ever written by Grotowski and giving it an earnest go, but it's almost as though I'd need a sabbatical from improv as we know it. daunting.

[TexasImprovMassacre]

Isn't intentionally trying to eliminate comedy from a scene just as arbitrary as forcing it where it doesn't occur naturally? You could do it, but it's not any more realistic than a scene that's nothing but dick jokes.

come home!

[kbadr]

It's silly to market what we do as comedy and then complain that we feel constrained because people just want to see us be funny.

Who's complaining? There are just some people who'd like to also do improv that isn't strictly funny.

[Jules]

It doesn't even have to be heavy-duty emotional, either. It could just as easily be genre-heavy... Noir, Western, dystopian, etc... I'm really interested in doing anything compelling that's not necessarily a comedy first, and foremost.

I am too and I've seen the beginnings of it here. I especially like doing scene work that is just grounded and simple. There are moments in life which are both comic and tragic even at the same time and I think audiences respond to it because....they've been there too. They've seen struggle and death and divorce and kids spitting up and cars breaking down etc. People like to see their lives reflected back. Well I do anyway. I'd like to find ways to participate in this dramatic exploration in the upcoming year.

[Jastroch]

I'm in this to do comedy, personally, and I want to make people laugh hard and often.

I think words like grounded, honest, slow and patient often get misinterpreted. I've seen and been in very grounded realistic shows and scenes that were played completely straight that huge laughs thrughout.

I'm not accusing anyone (yet ), but there's a danger in equating silence from the audience with the emotional depth of your scenework.

Yeah, we want to go for those good, smart laughs that come from honest relationship and characters, but just because the audience only laughed once or twice during your show doesn't mean you were doing smart improv. It may mean you were just boring the shit out of them.

[Roy Janik]

Okay, all that being said...

if you were trying to do a more theatrical, dramatic, improv show, how would you go about it? what techniques, formats, structures, etc... ?

[vine311]

Okay, all that being said...

if you were trying to do a more theatrical, dramatic, improv show, how would you go about it? what techniques, formats, structures, etc... ?

Some of these may be painfully obvious, but it's a starting point...

Techniques

1. Higher production values - lighting and music to fit the mood of a given scene.

2. Don't go to crazy town - play everything as if it existed in this actual reality...not stage reality.

3. React honestly - don't exaggerate your emotional response to a comical place.

4. Only play people - no talking bears, chairs or pears

Formats

"A day in the life" - interview audience member about their life. Improvise it as "straight" as possible.

Improvised movie - ala 3forAll (just don't choose a comedy)


Tear these down or add to them as you see fit.

[deroosisonfire]

Okay, all that being said...

if you were trying to do a more theatrical, dramatic, improv show, how would you go about it? what techniques, formats, structures, etc... ?

I would think about story structure and emotional reactions. The same basic beats of a story can occur in a drama or a comedy, and the difference is in the characters and what it means to them. If I were starting to explore this I would:

- map out the beats to a comedy (maybe even a longform show I'd done)
- look at the critical emotional moments, and try to imagine a reaction that would have lead the characters down a more dramatic path

Another exercise might be to choose a suggestion of what would probably be a sad story - divorce, cancer, etc. - and then improvise it infuse with some light, appropriate, non-wacky humor about the situation.

[kaci_beeler]

Study good dramatic works (plays, films, maybe some TV). There is no need to do so much digging and guessing when good examples already exist.

[sara farr]

Watch a "Get Up" show. Shana & Shannon put a lot of thought into making their shows dramatic.

Watch a "Frank Mills" show. Dave, Rachel, Bob & Erika take every offer to heart, filter it through their own perspective, and it makes for grounded, appealing characters.

[HerrHerr]

Drill "Ten Seconds Before Speaking" in rehearsals.

Not that we're doing cinema, but look for how many looks there are in movies before lines are delivered.

Perhaps less verbal improv. Using expressions, emotional noises, space work.

[Jeff]

Okay, all that being said...

if you were trying to do a more theatrical, dramatic, improv show, how would you go about it? what techniques, formats, structures, etc... ?

Frankly, I'm passionate these days about my interest in putting together an improv troupe that will make dramatic improvised theatre. (For the record, I agree with everyone here about the fact that much laughter can result from a "dramatic" story).

One thing I'm gonna do in this prospective troupe is brush up on some of the Ralph Meisner acting exercises that I've learned from books and acting classes. Then we'll do those exercises together like we're preparing for any good theatre, improvised or not.

I think Meisner techniques are great. Some of the exercises are very similar to improv games.

[Lants]

it might help to check out a couple films by Joe Swanberg.. LOL and Hannah Takes the Stairs.

His method was to shoot entirely improvised scenes with the actors during the day, edit those scenes at night then show those edited scenes to the actors and everyone would discuss the direction things were headed etc... then shoot more improvised scenes.

Obviously there are comedy elements to the movies, but they would fall under "drama".

[Wesley]

Isn't intentionally trying to eliminate comedy from a scene just as arbitrary as forcing it where it doesn't occur naturally?
Indeed.
But I, for one, don't mean "forcibly eliminate all comedy" when I say drama. I think good drama has dashes and doses of comedy. But what I do mean is that the comedy is realistic. As I've said, in drama you don't heighten the surgery scene by handing the doctor a chainsaw when he can't find his scalpel. But in 85% of the improv I've seen, that's precisely what happens.
Yes comedy occurs, but it is the comedy of everyday life, of realistic situations and expectations, of the totally expected.


I'm not accusing anyone (yet), but there's a danger in equating silence from the audience with the emotional depth of your scenework. ... It may mean you were just boring the shit out of them.
Of course there is danger in that.
But, as one who has cited this very thing (only getting a minute's worth of laughs in a 22 minute CageMatch show) as something that has really encrouaged me in my dramatic pursuits of late, I didn't mean that the mere absence of laughs automatically equalled drama.
But there were several things about it that just felt different and liberating.
One, that we could feel the audience engaging on a different level. They also occasionally awwwed and booed and had other emotional responses that were just as real, but not laughter.
Two, the lack of laughter did not cause us to panic in any way. A lot of times when people go out there solely to make them laugh and the audience doesn't, the players over-compensate. But when we went out to tell a story, there was no panic when laughter didn't come because that's not the guage being used to read the audience.
Third, it wasn't the lack of laughter that convinced me of the emotional depth of the show so much as the 15 minute conversations with audience members afterwards telling us how moving the show was and how they were fascinated by it. And the people who two weeks later still recognized us and told us how much they engaged in the show emotionally. Or the half of the non-laughing audience votes the set received.
Those were my gauges of if the emotional depth was real or perceived.

[Milquetoast]

Hmmmm. Lots of ideas in here.

Like with comedic improv, there's going to be a set of rules that supports dramatic longform, if that's what the interest is. There will still be a game, that brings out the conflict with the characters, and it will have to be found one way or another.

I too think of the Frank Mills. Lots of quiet in their scenes. Lots of compelling characters.

As a film director, I am taking everything I learn with the intention of using it in my work. Some of the greatest moments in film history are improvised. So I'll be doing dramatic improv in one form for a long, long time.