Austin Improv

Asaf wrote:I trust the improv, I trust myself.

That's good. Unfortunately, in improv at least, I don't trust myself yet. Workin' on it.

Icky- distasteful.

Justin Davis wrote:I don't think a player has to show the audience how the suggestion is used. The improvisers who I've talked to or read about who think that way are the same ones who talk about how much they don't like suggestions. Saying the audience has to be shown that a suggestion is used implies that the audience wouldn't be able to figure that out by itself. This doesn't give nearly enough credit to an audience. Every one of us is an audience member at one time.

I don't think the player has to show the audience either - but a lot of players feel like they do (maybe out of fear? maybe because they think they have to? maybe because they are firing blanks on stage and it's their go-to?) And my personal taste with improv is to let the audience figure it out because they want to be in on the action. I know the audience is smart, I know deep down most of them want to be doing this as well - my method is just to not put too much thought into them while I'm on stage.

in the 4 day workshop with keith, he did say he doesn't watch improv anymore. and one reason was that everyone looks so afraid.

and he didn't think suggestions were compulsory.

so reading the article, and him saying to not accept all offers, i totally believe that he said it. but you know, this dude has done improv for a long time, i'm sure some of our beliefs will change in 50 years.

suggestions can matter to the person who gave the suggestion... like Roy's story about the Harry Potter show where the girl really wanted 3 million to be used and was so happy when he added it to his number...

I sat next to a dude in a show who gave this weird-ass suggestion that was taken but not used right away, and 10 minutes into the show he commented "where's my ___" and when they did bring out exactly that later he said "there it is" and was totally content

that's just one guy's expectation/experience of course, but it's there

some of the other stuff in this thread makes me sad

arclight wrote:Suggestions are gimmicks.

I'm a bit late in returning to the party here; I've been away for a while. Suggestions ARE gimmicks. But so is improv, if you think about it.

I don't blast them. I don't particularly like them for myself. I certainly don't look down my nose at taking a suggestion.

Back to the group mind debate: I think of group mind less in a mystical sense and more in an old married couple who can finish each other's sentences sense... which does not make it any less special in my open-yun.

4. I also don't believe in Trust or Group Mind. I think people put faith in Group Mind like they do in God and it gets easily misguided.

Very interesting take from everyone here. At first I didn't jive with Asaf's viewpoint on this but after thinking about it I see that I do TRUST IMPROV. I've done lots of corporate training with Improv exercises and I got to the point where totally trusted they audience would take to it. Every once and awhile they didn't but I think that was more about me not feeling confident in the exercise. They can sense that!
I do think we develop trust and understand other player's strengths and can play to that, but I also think we get repetive with it and miss the opportunity to explore new possibilities that can cause us to grow as improvisors.

I did an improv scene with comedian Mike Lukas (Second City and national touring Headliner Comic). We had just finished a show at Cap City and he invited me up on stage since I had opened for him and he knew I did improv. I thought he was kind of arrogant and so I was uncertain of what kind of scene I was going to do with him. He wanted to do just a straight scene, and I remember him telling me "Just trust the process and respond honestly" ... It worked out great! eVen thought I had reservations about doing a scene with him I totally trusted improv would work, and that made all the difference.

I don't think most people put trust in group mind like they do in "God", at least not in my troupes. It's not a blind trust thing, everyone has to be in the game.

An improviser, if they are listening and responding honestly and all that other good stuff, can do great group work, but it really takes a deeper knowledge and understanding of your fellow players to pull off truly good ensemble.

That kind of ensemble takes time. It can't really be achieved with just a strong warm up (though that may be a good start to pulling the players together to work as a group more than individuals).

I didn't really experience a strong group mind in improv until I started working heavily with Parallelogramophonograph. You begin to really know your fellow players, you can pick up on the more subtle things they may convey or just know when to support or end a scene, instantly. You may be well aware of beats in an improv show, but with that you must also be aware of how your fellow players play around those beats.

It's an amazing thing, strong ensemble work. If you only trust in yourself I don't think you can really get there.

Here's the complete interview with Johnstone. It's pretty long, but sheds some more light on what he's saying. It starts out just as provocative as you might think, but as the interviewer persists, Johnstone starts to get more thoughtful:

http://www.comedycouch.com/interviews/kjohnstone.htm

For instance,

Johnstone wrote:when we brought in this thing called Micetro, which is usually much nicer than TheatreSports, two years went by and we suddenly realized we had never asked for a single suggestion. But at the same time we realized that no member of the audience had ever mentioned that to us. So you would think they need suggestions but it's not true. So now we might ask for the odd suggestion occasionally.

I thought KJ's comments about not necessarily accepting all offers were interesting in light of what I've been thinking about and struggling with lately. There are some offers I've had difficulty accepting because I think it's in character for the person I'm playing. A fast-food restaurant employee would probably deny the existence of vermin, for example. But it would have been a lot funnier if I had said, "Yes, it's Rat Bonus Toppings Day. Did you get the feet? Cool, those are extra crispy!" There I think I should have gone against "reality," and accepted the offer.

But sometimes, when I've already made a really strong offer, and then someone comes on and makes another offer that denies part of my offer or renders it useless, then it's really hard to accept that offer and what happens subsequent to that, because you feel as if that person is at cross purposes and isn't supporting you or wanting to move the scene forward. Thoughts?

ArsenicJulep wrote:I thought KJ's comments about not necessarily accepting all offers were interesting in light of what I've been thinking about and struggling with lately. There are some offers I've had difficulty accepting because I think it's in character for the person I'm playing. A fast-food restaurant employee would probably deny the existence of vermin, for example. But it would have been a lot funnier if I had said, "Yes, it's Rat Bonus Toppings Day. Did you get the feet? Cool, those are extra crispy!" There I think I should have gone against "reality," and accepted the offer.

Well, ideally, the scene wouldn't actually be *about* the presence of rats anyway. Maybe you could accept the other players offer that there are vermin and turn it around to make it about you and the customer/inspector.

But sometimes, when I've already made a really strong offer, and then someone comes on and makes another offer that denies part of my offer or renders it useless, then it's really hard to accept that offer and what happens subsequent to that, because you feel as if that person is at cross purposes and isn't supporting you or wanting to move the scene forward. Thoughts?

Particularly when you're just starting out, you need to be accepting all offers (as an improviser), even if that means saying no as the character. Otherwise, the audience will just watch 2 improvisers essentially arguing on stage about the reality of the scene.

There are plenty of scene start exercises/techniques that involve starting with 2 simultaneous, seemingly disparate, physical actions. The players then have to figure out how they make sense together in the reality of the scene.

And sometimes an offer can seem perfectly obvious to you, but the other player interprets it differently. Which is fine. How you react to their interpretation will further inform both players on stage, and the scene will move forward.

give them a note after the scene is over unless there is a director to give them the note. if they can't take notes, find someone who will that makes improv fun and supportive.

Particularly when you're just starting out, you need to be accepting all offers (as an improviser), even if that means saying no as the character. Otherwise, the audience will just watch 2 improvisers essentially arguing on stage about the reality of the scene.

Well, let's say you're not denying the reality of the overall scene that's been established--"this ain't no disco"--but just, in character, saying "Rats? What rats? We don't have rats in our restaurant." What do you mean by "saying 'no' as the character but accepting the offer as the improviser"? I'm not ignoring the person's contribution there, just reacting as a McDonald's manager might do.

ArsenicJulep wrote:Well, let's say you're not denying the reality of the overall scene that's been established--"this ain't no disco"--but just, in character, saying "Rats? What rats? We don't have rats in our restaurant." What do you mean by "saying 'no' as the character but accepting the offer as the improviser"? I'm not ignoring the person's contribution there, just reacting as a McDonald's manager might do.

Right. That's what I mean. Provided that you do something to indicate that your character did indeed see them, but is flat-out lying. Make it obvious to your scene partner and the audience that your character did see them (which is accepting the offer), but your character is trying to pretend that they're not there (which would be the "...and" part of "Yes...and") If you don't make it clear that you are lying, rather than blocking, it could stymie your scene partner, which will just lead to an awkward bump in the scene. This is very important at the top of a scene, because it's hard to claw your way back up from that awkward energy.

All situations are unique and get somewhat simplified in discussion, of course. The best way I was taught to decide whether your reaction is blocking, or not strong, is to ask yourself why you're making a particular choice. If you're doing it out of fear--fear of not knowing there the scene will lead, or fear of not being in control--then the choice was probably not the best thing you could do for your scene partner.

A great way to accept an offer is to be changed, however slightly, by it. So in the above example, leaving some space or half a beat after someone says "I saw a rat" would give your character the opportunity to have a look of concern, or a slight wide-eyed look. The tiniest thing like will let everyone know that you saw and acknowledged the rat. Reacting, I think, is the difference between a block and accepting an offer with "no". We're miming all this stuff on stage, so the audience needs to know that this thing we created actually exists on stage for the characters. Following a rat with your eyes as it scurries across the floor, and then looking up and saying "What rat?" will get a chuckle (at least) out of the audience, and establish your character as some sort of liar or perfectionist in denial.

Of course, it's easy for the above exchange to derail the scene and turn it into an argument over the existence or non-existence of the rat, which would ideally be secondary to the relationship between the characters on stage. That's the other reason that "say yes" is taught early on. It helps keep less experienced improvisers away from trivial scenes.

I've talked to much. I can babble about this shit forever.

My recent teacher Bill Arnett puts it this way: You can do anything you want in improv, as long as you understand that anything you do has consequences. (I like this because I believe it's true of everything else as well.)

To use the Benatar/toaster example, I think it's pointless to have an abstract discussion of whether that's a block or a denial or whatever, because it depends entirely on the context and who's involved.

In practical terms, if the people you play with don't like it when you completely deny the physical reality of their offers and you enjoy doing that in every scene, you probably need to talk about it and/or find a new troupe. But that problem is just different people wanting different things; if you were all on the same page with it, then who's to say you shouldn't do it?

The Benater/toaster exchange sets up a lot of high hurdles for the improvisers in that scene: They don't agree on physical reality, which might otherwise be used for grounding. Because of that, they will now have to struggle toward an understanding of who and where they are even while arguing about Benatar vs. toaster, which will be tedious in the extreme but difficult to drop without explanation. My improv training tells me that the most important thing to do in a scene is develop the relationship between the characters, but if I'm in this scene I'm going to be wasting a lot of time and energy trying to nail down things that could have been established after three lines if we had just agreed on them.

There may be improvisers in the world who could do a brilliant scene that started with the Benatoaster. I'm not one of them. So to me the question isn't "Is this okay to do?" but rather "Why would I want to make my job harder?" Improv is plenty hard all by itself, thank you very much, and unlike Keith Johnstone I'm not bored with it, so I don't need to throw any extra tacks in the road to keep it interesting.

Now, about group mind. (You thought I was done? You should live so long.)

It's not surprising to me that a lot of people on this thread talk about the nonrational aspects of group mind exactly the same way that people who don't believe in God talk about religion. Which is to say, they're eager to reduce what some people experience as group mind (or the divine) to an explanation that fits within (their) current scientific knowledge. (They also seem to conflate it with passivity and blind faith, which are the most common brushes with which to tar religion.)

I have experienced group mind, both in playing music and more recently during this improv intensive, and I have my own fairly woo-woo interpretation of it, which is that it's a connection to something larger than the sum of its parts. I don't feel the need to convince anyone else of this. There are many paths to the summit, etc.

However. It's a scientifically valid fact that belief affects empirical experience -- e.g., the placebo effect -- so it seems reasonable to suggest that people who are heavily invested in the nonexistence of the divine, the nonrational, and the irreproducible are less likely to experience them and less likely to notice or honor them if they do experience them. That's not meant as a dig; it just seems like common sense to me. (Hence comments along the lines of "It's not really mystical; it just feels like it.")

So while I have no problem with an experienced improviser saying, "I've never experienced group mind in a way that transcends rational understanding," I have a serious problem with adding ". . . and therefore there's no such thing."

I'm pretty sure that nobody on this thread has said this outright. I also know for a fact that many of my favorite improvisers have little or no tolerance for discussions of the spiritual aspects of improv. I think we all grab hold of it by different handles, and none of them are wrong. And I don't expect people to throw out an entire belief system that has served them well their entire lives just because they have an experience that doesn't fit neatly within it. But it seems terribly unscientific and irrational to eliminate an entire explanation from consideration just because it doesn't come with a Teacher's Edition with all the equations already solved.

I've spent a lot of time with Keith over the years. Not everybody gets Keith and Keith is not for everybody.

For me, I have gotten quite a bit out of studying with Keith. He really understands short from narrative based improv on a very deep level. He can diagnosis and fix a scene faster than you can blink.

Here is what I have heard Keith say about getting suggestions:

1) At the Loose Moose (Keith and Dennis CaHills theatre company in Calgary) they ask for a suggestion once or twice per half in a show as a courtesy to the audience.

2) Don't ask for suggestions to prove to the audience the show is improvised. Getting suggestions does not make them believe it is improvised - then Keith tells several stories about people coming up and asking how much money they can make as shills yelling out suggestions. And by the way, the audience does not really care if it is improvised, if they like the show. Improvisers care if it is improvised.

3) Most of the suggestions yelled out by the audience are meant to destroy the work. That's why the yell out proctologist - they don't really want to see a scene about a proctologist. They are trying to be funny by yelling out suggestions. It's like a gag in a scene - it kills it from going forward.

4) The audience is not the expert at setting up a good scene. The improvisers are.

5) If you are going to take suggestions then why not take ones that inspire you? If you watch they others players faces you can see them light up when they hear a suggestion that inspires them. Why take one that doesn't?

Personally, I'm big on the only taking suggestions that inspire you and your teammates. I never take something just because it is the first thing I heard. I tell the audience that were looking for suggestions that inspire us.
I watch my teammates as I'm getting the suggestions to see the moment their face lights up