okay, what kind of narrative?

[PyroDan]

Maybe we can't strictly define narrative vs character, etc.....

There are shows that are just montage (new scenes with no real connection say other than a suggestion), then there are shows that are montage with connective tissue (returning characters and subplots, but no overlying story arch kinda "loose Harolds" if you will), and then there are shows specifically driven by some sort of structure or structural elements that enable or create story/plot just by happening (the Hero's Journey kinda stuff.)

There is also a great deal of what an audience will infer, rather than what all a troupe will imply. Meaning that as rational, thinking humans, most of us will create narrative without conscious effort, because that is how we communicate most of our lives.

I look at something like an Armando as typically steering away (purposefully) from a narrative, despite having monologues from one person's life experience, probably because it is often taught, or performed in a way to explore all aspects of the monologues rather than just re-stage it.

Humans have an insatiable need to categorize everything (possibly due to the desire to communicate clearly) but not all art can be stashed into some neat little title or movement.

It makes me think of that line describing short vs longform. In short form playing the game is the scene, in long form you play the scene to find the game. However long form can be a game just as easy.

[kbadr]

Also, everyone has made excellent points but only Kevin has actually proposed an answer to my question.

*cough*

Internal Conflict-Driven vs External Conflict-Driven?

Hey, I never said it was pretty...

[ratliff]

Kareem, my apologies. Now let's see whose terms go viral first ...

Also, I have been honestly reviewing TJ & Dave shows in my head and I think one problem with using them as an example is that in some of their shows things are cause-and-effect (again, "Trust Us") and some aren't. So I guess the example I should have been using is Bassprov, except that doesn't really feel like discovery in the moment, since they're always playing the same two characters.

I think one of the mistakes Hess & I have made in The Glamping Trip is being so bent on avoiding narrative that we would actually prevent it from happening, which is no more authentic or responsive to the moment than actually following it would have been.

But the choice is always there, between following cause and effect and just panning around the Greek restaurant, in a way that it could never be in Improvised Dickens, to use one example.

Also, I will take this opportunity to admit that I don't like promising that something is going to happen in an improv show because I'm lazy and fearful and I don't like the pressure.

(While the Honeypot was warming up last night, some customers passed us and said "Are y'all the comedians? Are you going to be funny? PLEASE tell us you're going to be funny." I gave them a big enthusiastic yes but my heart was sinking.)

[PyroDan]

(While the Honeypot was warming up last night, some customers passed us and said "Are y'all the comedians? Are you going to be funny? PLEASE tell us you're going to be funny." I gave them a big enthusiastic yes but my heart was sinking.)

Yikes. I hate that. I'm always fearful of being something akin to Louis C K while they were hoping for Larry the Cable Guy.

[ratliff]

Dan: closer than you know. I left out the part where they announced, "We're from East Texas!"

[bradisntclever]

I have been honestly reviewing TJ & Dave shows in my head and I think one problem with using them as an example is that in some of their shows things are cause-and-effect (again, "Trust Us") and some aren't.

I agree. The last time they came to New York, I saw them twice. I'd say one of those shows had some causal scenes, but the other was a series of scenes loosely centered around whether or not it was "Trash Day" and/or a working holiday.

[Jon Bolden]

One of the aspects we've talked a lot about in Manhattan Stories was how Woody Allen movies often end. They rarely are over when you think they're going to be and they often have open ended or abrupt hard outs (a blackout essentially). I think it really depends on what kind of narrative you're focusing on. If you're looking to tell a tight story where everything gets tied up at the end, then that's a clearly a different goal then just agreeing that you're going to follow characters around and see what happens with no concern for protagonist. Anton Chekhov's plays are mostly ensemble where we follow several story lines. Naturally some story lines are going to appear more often or seem "more important".

I don't really know why it has to have a label. I love seeing montage / open-ended shows that follow a story for a few minutes as well as shows where nothing is ever connected.

So... what kind of show do you want to do,friends?

Is this completely unrelated? Am I am threaddummy?

[Roy Janik]

My current theory is that improvisers in general resist exploring character, though I'm not at all sure why. I say they resist it because almost inevitably they'd rather find the game of the scene (if they trained at ColdTowne or the New Movement) or make plot happen (if they trained at the Hideout or MerlinWorks). (Still figuring out what the default Institution move is; possibly name-dropping Ricki Lake.)

But one theory is that they just don't think it's interesting enough, and this is the great irony to me, since good characters can actually SAVE a game or plot that might be thin soup otherwise.

I agree with the idea of good characters being essential to story-telling. I think a lot of good narratives are a rather intense exploration of character. That's the point. We fuck up the main character's world, and test their mettle. In the process we learn who they were, who they are, and who they might become.

It might not be an exploration of who ALL the characters in the show are, though. So maybe that's something.

[shando]

I approve of this conversation. That's all I have time for at this second. I still feel groups like TJ and Dave and Dasariski (see Craig Cackowski's recent interview about the difference between Dasariski and his new short form TV gig) wind up more on the narrative side of the fence than, say, a The Knuckleball Now show. But I agree that those groups shows do indeed feel different from say a Get Up or Pgraph show. The difference is I think merely one of focus. TJ and Dave and Dasariski shows are more like "Let's take these people and explore them as characters. Oh, that happens through a period of time. Hmm, guess it kind of looks like a story in the end." Whereas a 'narrative' troupe's approach is maybe more like "Let's take these moving pieces and see if we can make them into a story. Hmm, we need characters to actually do that." With TJ and Dave you can pull the lights whenever, but what happened happened, and since often those things happen in linear time, they still feel like stories. If you pull the lights at the 'wrong' time in a Get Up show, it might not feel like a satisfying story as plot pieces have been baked in earlier, but we've done plenty of shows that since we're playing in the moment, they don't line up on any kind of hero's journey flowchart and the endings have been ambiguous and open and the lights could have been pulled anywhere. Different flavors, but in my mind both narratives.

OK, I do have more time for this. To me, here's what makes a narrative--is an organizing principle for what we see in the show "time has effects and consequences?" That's it. Even if nothing changes for the characters in a plot sense, even if time is static, if time has any kind of meaning, to me it ends up being a narrative. Time certainly is at play in TJ and Dave shows, and I think that's why so many of us narrative guys are willing to embrace TJ and Dave and Dasariski as kindred spirits. And I'm not just talking about linear time, I'm just talking about time as something that has weight.

I think there are plenty of shows where those effects of time aren't part of the structural things at play--Beer Shark Mice, The Knuckleball Now, and any show with a format that places focus outside of time--The Harold, Austin Secrets, an Armando, etc. Those kinds of shows find meaning and delight through other mechanisms, pattern maybe being foremost.

That said, I think I'm most Jonstonian in thinking that, well, even if time isn't the entire show's organizing principle, we still work in a temporal medium, and any given scene happens in time and is in the end a micro-story anyway, so why not understand how story works.

I realize not everyone agrees with this, just explicating how I think about narrative as a guy who has fallen on that side of the improv fence and why I keep opening the gate to people who would just as soon stay on the other side.

I will leave aside questions of genre shows, where having the story resolve within certain parameters is vital, as my thoughts on genre shows are a work in progress and probably best handled in a different post.

[shando]

Also, I in no way addressed Ratliff's original question, just rambled about my thoughts. Sigh.

I'm with Roy, I'd call it an improv show.

[ratliff]

I empathize with the sentiment behind "Let's just call it an improv show" and "Why does it need a label?"

But the fact that you're willing to tag the way I (sometimes) play as "narrative" but not define it any further is where the problem came from in the first place. I play on one end of that spectrum and not the other, so I don't think it's unreasonable of me to want a way to distinguish the two ends for clarity's sake.

One analogy is the range of styles at ColdTowne. There's a whole spectrum there too, from realistic, emotionally grounded scenework to heavily game-oriented play, and we all have opinions about which we prefer, but if you'll notice, I just used phrases that represent both ends of that spectrum. I can say that Stool Pigeon is a show with game-oriented, premise-based scenes and people will know what I mean. Even if I thought that was the wrong way to play scenes and that they should all develop organically without recourse to game (PLEASE NOTE: I DO NOT THINK THAT), it wouldn't compromise my opinion to use the description. In fact, it would make my opinion easier to express.

You guys who refuse to name a style of improv because it's not the ideal version of that style are like abstinence-only advocates who think that teenage sex is caused by talking about it. It's going to exist whether you name it or not.

(JUST KIDDING. Jeez.)

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

character based narrative versus plot based narrative? depth based narrative versus breadth based narrative? loose narrative? dissociative narrative? if we can understand "game oriented premise based scenes" (and only we would cuz no one else would have an idea what the hell we were talking about ), i think just about any of those qualifiers are clear enough insofar as jargon goes...

[ratliff]

Yeah, Jordan, I don't mean for general consumption. I mean just enough that two improvisers can convey the spot on the spectrum with relative efficiency.

[shando]

I'd say though that I did define what I think makes for a narrative. The fact that people who play in a given way (Glamping Trip say) don't see what they do as fitting in to narrative, or at least only one far end of narrative spectrum, doesn't really matter to me. Or rather I don't see the value in slicing the spectrum up that finely, cause I don't really think that way. And at any rate, I feel like this conversation is happening at a civil enough level, why do we need the labels? Once art is made, it's out there. You can't control and define how it's received.

To judo your analogy, I'm not talking about sex because I'm fine with LOTS OF SEX HAPPENING AND I DON'T CARE IF YOU GET PREGNANT. I just want grandbabies.

But ok, I'll play along. What about loose narratives vs. defined narratives. Agentless narratives vs. intended narratives. Plotless narratives (if you see my post above, this isn't an oxymoron) vs. plotted narratives. Or what Kevin said.

[Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell]

let's just call it a Kevin from now on.