Great topic and some great & interesting thoughts!
A couple of things ...
I think I read a couple things about HARSH on these boards a long time ago and how their shows hadn't been up to snuff (as they had been seen).
Personally, I've both workshopped with Harsh and seen a few of their shows and have seen them do some great stuff. Their shows, in particular, have had scenes that were haunting and harrowing. So, those specifics instances could've just been rough shows ... or not - who knows?
Anyway, this might be a subtle difference (and I hope just not parsing semantics) but Harsh shoots for improvised tragedy - in contrast to improv comedy and different from merely being dramatic or serious.
In talking with Ari, how things came about was just in the course of noticing how horrible acts and instances (rape, abortion, ... the rape of aborted fetuses, etc.) get tossed around flippantly for the sake of humor. If we're doing truth in comedy (and finding comedy in truth), than we should be able to explore and discover in the aftermath of these horrible things - that these horrible things have consequences beyond their immediate impact.
Instead of just being satisfied with chuckling at Wile E. Coyote being crushed under an anvil and popping up a few seconds later in the next roadrunner-chasing vignette, that fact is treated as true. We treat Mr. Coyote as a real character who is a scientific and technical genius rendered into a sad, obsession-addled madman who is killed quite literally by his own devices. We meet his wife who suffered silently as all the love she poured into him was somehow just not enough. We get to see his children weather early adulthood determined not to fall into the same spiral as their father, but still hobbled by his absence.*
The above might be a ridiculous example, but I think it illustrates that, instead of just being merely serious or dramatic, improvised tragedy, in parallel to comedy, takes something that would normally be ridiculous or absurd and treats is as a kind of heightened reality. So, I can see folks not quite taking to it or finding it overwrought or overplayed because it could come off like that.
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As far as dramatic improv, I think everyone who basically mentioned that dramatic / playing grounded / serious, etc. isn't dichotomically divorced from comedy and that, in fact, there are touches of both in either and that they can even feed each other was right on.
I had the opportunity to play with Bri of
Mail Order Bride when Michelle was too sick to do
Dangerville. Outside of some Bingo Jams, the rare
Phoenix Neutrino scene, and random workshops, we hadn't really performed with each other. We performed as Jim Dunlop and did a single, real-time scene on the suggestion of "curfew." As an older, aging father wary of his daughter's impending womanhood and a daughter starting to hop into the torrid world of boys, partying, and sex, we had a pretty sweet show that, though funny, had real moments of people being affected by each other.
(Although really quickly: Yes, Jastroch, some folks confuse playing slow & patient with being an absolute lump on stage. There definitely is a difference ...)
Anyway, with improv that allows for more dramatic / thoughtful / serious moments of emotional depth, whether for the sake of drama or comedy, I think the way to go about it is to focus on characters & relationship (relationship not just in terms of "father - daughter," "brother - sister," or "deli dude - customer," but relationship in terms of literally relating to each other, affecting and being affected by each other). To be fair, though, that's my perspective on improvised scenework regardless. (Even though, I obviously brake for silliness, too.)
With character and relationship at the forefront, plot, for my own personal purposes, only matters in how it affects the characters and their relationships.
My favorite example of that is "Lost in Translation."
To describe it to someone who has never seen it, only in terms of plot (old dude is in Japan meets a young girl there, they hangout, and then they go their separate ways), is to bore them.
In terms of what's going on with the characters and their relationship, though, there's a lot of complex, layered stuff going on that is ultimately engaging and is what we connect to.
(As a sidenote, from my experiences, people who saw the film in a theater loved it while people who caught it on video either thought it was just okay or hated it - that's in general.
Bill Binder says that that's because the immensity of Tokyo is showcased on the big screen in such a way that it really conveys the sense of alienation that the characters feel - yet another point of connection for the audience. On home screen or on a laptop, that feeling doesn't quite pop up.)
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As far as practical exercises to achieve dramatic improv, I think one could probably find news articles and online stories about serious or tragic situations and improvise those situations while focusing on playing those characters honest and truthfully.
Also, it might be neat to have a person step out to give a monologue about a personal experience (based on a suggestion or not) and to create scenes based on that (not as much in an Armando way, just taking elements). That it is a fellow teammate's personal experience hopefully will help a little in the area of keeping those scenes honest and real. What also helps is to relate the monologue back to your own experieces and playing that, instead of merely reenacting what was mentioned in the monologue.
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As far as formats or structures, other than something that facilitates following specific characters once they've been established, focusing on thematic elements might be a good way to go about it.
When I was thinking about Harsh's shows, I thought about how while characters might come back here and there, they don't set up a cast of characters that they follow. They don't only do a montage of these tragic scenes as much as thematic throughlines and connections start to pop up.
Also, someone mentioned how to make dramatic improv shows resonant in the same way as Blade Runner or Fight Club. I think having a form that allows / facilitates things thematically would be a way to get folks to connect to it (beyond just the requisite undertaking good work).
We might not have been the young wife of a superstar photographer and we might never be a washed up actor doing commercial work in Japan, but we've all experienced alienation, unexpected connection with someone we can't or won't get romantically involved with, and finding ourselves at a crossroads.
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*(Maybe we also flashback and see Wile E. Coyote run into the wolf (from the shorts where the wolf & the sheep dog clock in) that looks almost exactly like him at the store!)
