**This might not be of general interest, but I wanted to put some thoughts down.**
Troy and I are doing our final performance of our latest two-man format,
Elementary, Dear Holmes, this Thursday.
Holmes is our third format as
Danger Warning Improv. The first show,
Two to Beam Up, was just us doing a classic Hideout format
Start Trekkin' with two people, switching characters constantly, playing with silly wigs and costumes and controlling the music from Troy's laptop on stage - and we had silly string for phasers. For the second run we did
Secret Agent Men, improvised James Bond, continuing to switch characters constantly and adding the tool of cinematic scene painting and character description ("We see a smoking volcano in the distance, and at the very edge of the rim a lone figure climbing slowly. Zoom in on the climber's right hand which is three times larger than a normal hand and grafted to his wrist with Frankenstein-like suchers." Etc.) - and we had snap bangs to throw on the ground whenever there was gunplay.
So in tackling Sherlock Holmes, we wanted to find an interesting new technique or way of approaching the improv, and playing with a naive (or blind) game came to mind immediately. Anyone who does improv long enough encounters this style of game at some point. It's a staple of ComedySportz and short form in general. We don't do it much at the Hideout because it doesn't fit into Maestro that well, and because it's not essential to the improv philosophy that we gravitate toward. But we'll play Chain Murder in classes or Character Substitution in a show every once in a while, or Blind Date, or the one with the cop interrogating a driver, etc. Basically what I'm saying is that while we're generally familiar with naive or blind games, we're by no means experts at them - so the idea of trying to build a show around an extended naive game while trying to operate in the world of Sherlock Holmes at the same time seemed challenging and exciting. Thanks for all the advice above!
When we do these shows, we rehearse once or twice a week for about six weeks before the run, and a huge part of each rehearsal was dedicated to a few problems:
1) What should the naive information be? First we decided that Holmes had to be the guesser, so he leaves the room and Watson takes the suggestions. We settled on the How of the crime, the Why of the crime and an object (a clue) that can be discovered early in the show. But just like in the classic ComedySportz game Three Things, each of these things needed to be complicated enough that getting it just right is challenging. So the How of a theft can't just be "snuck in through the Dumb Waiter" but "snuck in through a secret dumb waiter that no one knows about and seduced the guard into distraction."
2) How should we break up the naive information over the show? The object (an actual thing that we borrow from an audience member) has to come early enough in the show that the audience doesn't get anxious or forget about the naive game. And then we figured out after the first show that we need to break the How and the Why up into two distinct sections or things get confusing and messy fast. So we play the How over a few scenes until Holmes is ready to reveal it and then move onto the Why as the show climaxes and wraps up.
3) What kinds of hints and pacing makes for a satisfying naive game? There's this fascinating tension in a good naive game. The first hints should be instantly recognizable by the audience, but almost useless for the guesser. Subsequent hints should be progressively more revealing and build on previous hints in a way that once the guesser has a few hints nailed down, it all falls into place. And the guesser (Holmes) has to be immediate and decisive in acting on every hint given by Watson; he can't hesitate or make half-statements. Whatever the hint, Holmes takes a wild leap and then does damage control after the fact if it's clearly off base. ("And that, Watson, is exactly what the killer would have wanted us to think!")
4) Does the audience knowing the solution ruin the essence of a Sherlock Holmes story? Not if the game of watching Holmes try to solve the crime is satisfying enough. There are two shows happening in this format, one is the naive game between the two improvisers and the other is the telling of a story in the style of Sherlock Holmes adventures. And we leave one piece of information unknown to the audience, and that is the identity of the criminal, which is only revealed at the climax of the show.
We're not doing all these things perfectly yet (it's surprisingly hard to be constantly inventing characters, plotting and dazzling bits of deductive reasoning in a Victorian mode and play a naive game at the same time) but it's been a fascinating process.
And we have a fog machine.
