Austin Improv

I've seen just as many scenes fail that have taken care of CROW as I have seen scenes that succeeded when completely ignoring it.

I think the extent to which you ground the scene with CROW is dependent on what kind of tone your show has and what you're looking to get out of your improv.

I think often people don't get out the who what when and where's of the scene because they're afraid of making those decisions.

I think the most important part of CROW is the 'C&R,' and, indeed, it's the engine that drives every scene. Too often, people take care of the OW without realizing that it's only there to serve and inform the CR. Then the scene becomes about the OW, and becomes a laundry list about the physical environment. Two people talking about Nike's, without any thoughts, opinions or feelings about those Nikes.

Every scene is it's own beast, and every beast requires a different diet. Some beasts love to eat CROW. Others. love to eat TWDIAV (Two White Dudes In a Void). Which pet do you own?

wow what a wonderful wealth of wisdom!

thanks guys.

this brings me to another question...or poll, if you will

what do you think is generally the most important: C,R,O,W,or E?

i have definitely heard a lot about the importance of R, and how everything else will come organically out of a well-defined R. as an audience member, i feel like the most beautiful scenes are about the relationship on stage.

that's the way i generally lean, but maybe it changes from scene to scene, show to show.

R, definitely.

But I've noticed that a lot of beginning improvisers define R with labels, like doctor-patient or mother-daughter, and in my opinion that's not what it means at all. It means how the characters feel about each other.

If you establish that two characters are coworkers, it tells you essentially nothing about their actual relationship, and if you don't have anything beyond that you're almost inevitably going to start talking about work.

Whereas establishing that one character is hopelessly in love with another who's completely oblivious is enough to carry a scene without establishing anything else (though most scenes would probably benefit from some additional details).

Defining how the characters feel about each other at the beginning of the scene is good and necessary for a game-heavy format like Stool Pigeon or a narrative in which each scene must serve a larger framework. But some of the best scenes you'll ever see are improvisers discovering the relationship throughout the course of the entire scene. (TJ and Dave are the epitome of this.)

As mentioned earlier, the key is that the improvisers have to trust each other and be okay with taking their time, and that's not possible or appropriate in some formats. But when it's allowed to happen, it's my favorite part of improv.

I was with Cody at that TJ & Dave show he refers to, and I'm almost positive that the reason it started that way is that TJ actually had something in his eye. In other words, even when you start with "nothing," you're starting with a lot more than you think you are.

E!

Huzzah.

Ratlipps says R, but his whole post is about E. In my mind E and R are pretty similar. For me, I suppose the difference is that the relationship is defined as how they know each other. For example, mother daughter, cheerleader lost in past who has befriended a dinosaur, and so on.

Often, the word relationship is used in improv in a pretty general terms to also encompass emotion. In my definition I do like to separate the two.

Committing to an emotion is a crazy strong move in that t informs how you are saying what you say. I believe that how you say what you say is more important that what you are actually saying. The audience reads it easily from your performance in multiple ways. They react to it on an emotional level. I think its strange for some people to expect the audience to feel something that they themselves aren't invested enough to feel. The audience is relating themselves to what they see going on in front of them. If you want them to experience joy to a 10, find a way to take it there in the scene.

Emotion is easy to heighten. Don't just be kind of upset that your daughter's male friend from next door is hitting on her shamelessly at the dinner table...take it up to a ten. See what choices it causes you to make to attempt to do that...how it makes you react. I find that I do things without really having to think. You make it easy for you scene partner when you make a strong emotional choice. You honor their gifts by giving them the emotional weight that they deserve. That's good support, and it also helps to ground the scene.

Playing emotion, for me, is what gives improv its magic. Emotion helps improv transcend being merely an exchange of clever witticisms.


I'd like to add that character is super fun. Generally its adjective noun; jealous girlfriend, optimistic younger brother, ignorant racist. Still, adding the emotional layer to the character decision makes it more realistic. When the horny teenager is acting the way they are because they really do love their scene partner, it adds layers to the scene. Its sick, and sad, and wonderful. More than just funny that he's just sooooo horny....that could be part of the reason why they character is usually adjective noun. It is working towards informing emotion.


Also, what bill said.

I didn't learn E. Probably because then it would spell COWER.

So yeah, E.

Ratliff, that TJ and Dave show was so sweet.

Cody, we got to see a rough cut of a TJ & Dave doc that incorporated one of their New York shows in its entirety and it was awesome. The first part of the movie is just them walking around New York making wry observations about what they see, and a lot of it winds up in the show, though mostly peripherally.

It's also occurred to me that the show we saw shared a major theme with the Carl and the Passions show earlier in the evening, namely the idea of a younger, less dominant brother competing with an older brother for the affections of the older brother's girlfriend. I think a lesser improviser (e.g., me) would have steered the second show away from that idea, thinking, "I've already done that tonight" instead of just accepting it and knowing that you could play the same theme an infinite number of times and have it be different each time.

Madi, I'm sorry to hijack your thread, but Cody and I are gay for each other and have been cruelly separated by fate, so we can only communicate via discussions about "improv."

no apology required, i'm glad that my thread can act as the necessary vehicle of communication between you and your lover.

I really like this thread, mostly for the non-hijacky stuff.

What Ratliff said, if, like I do, you basically think that E(c1) + E(c2) = R. I actually also believe that C = E.

This is why I feel that training people to run through a CROWE checklist at the top of the scene creates a lot of gobbeldy gook that makes people start focusing on obligation rather than emotionality.

I see the value in forcing people make strong decisions about the context of the scene off the top, but in my experience with students and as a performer, the more rules you put in someones brain, the more they look at and perform improv as a set of requirements that, once fulfilled, equals a killer scene. And then when they take care of those requirements--whowhatwhere (check), don't ask questions (check), say yes to everything (check), don't do a transaction (check)--and their scenes still aren't working, they wonder, "why?"

So they think to themselves, "I must have missed something on the check list of obligation." And go right back to the clip board.

Scenes operate with nouns (Doctor, Lawyer, Office), Verbs (run, jump, swim) and Adverbs/Adjectives (agressive, happy, sad, but only those three).

Take care of the modifiers first, make sure you're filtering everything else, all the nouns and verbs, through them, listen with both ears, make strong decisions and everything will be alright. Trust me.

Also, there's still time to nominate me for the AIC Award for Improv Teacher Who Lifted the Most Text Straight From Mick Napier.

But really, there are no nouns in an improv scene except for chairs, floor, and walls. An "object" doesn't exist in a scene until an improviser interacts with it in some way.

Therefore, in improv, all nouns are actually verbs. By extension, all adjectives are verbs, too.

All you really have onstage is what you're doing and how you do it, i.e., verbs and adverbs.

You can't have a verb without an adverb onstage. The verb is the generic (or, if you like, the Platonic) instance of the action; the adverb is the specific, concrete example.

What you can have, unfortunately, is a verb whose adverb is weak, fickle, or unknown to the improviser. One of the main arguments for picking a strong emotion and playing it hard is that if you don't, you're still going to be conveying something . . . you just may have no idea what it is. (Though usually it's confusion, passivity, apathy, or terror, none of which are particularly easy to play scenes off of.)

It ain't what you eat, it's the way how you chew it.

Four out of five times, when I'm watching a scene that sucks, I'm thinking "Who are you people to each other?"

When I get stuck there, I make eye contact and try to discover how my character feels about the other.

Rattlipps,

I'm jealous that you saw that documentary.

Jastroch,

CONTEXT! That's fun.
Two White Dudes In A Void!!!

Austin,

I miss you.