Dramatic Improv

[arthursimone]

"Tragic."
That's all I've gotta say.



No, wait, I've got more to say:

I saw a "tragic improv" group at DSI that gave me the most miserable experience as an audience member that I've ever had. It offended my aesthetic sensibilities, it offended my sense of justice and karma, it offended my sense of everything of what improv should be.

On the most superficial level, dramatic improv is destined for failure. The sheer contrived make-'em-up nature of the form is so fundamentally self-deprecating that any attempt to make it something else turns it into a theatrical farce.

This is not to say that there can never be real emotion brought to the stage; on the contrary, when actors bring honesty and integrity to their characters they show a deep respect for the audience's ability to connect and laugh in joyful catharsis. It's wonderful when we get a chance to laugh at misery and pain, bring it on.

But this production in particular struck me as woefully disconnected to the point of being pretentious and aloof for its own sake. I know good self-appointed drama when I see it, and there's nothing spontaneous about it. Classical tragedy is based on myths, on archetypes, on narrative and communal characters that have an immediate place in our conscious and unconscious. How then can a band of people the audience doesn't even know expect to moan and whine in their little made-up non-linear storyworld and elicit an audience response other than sheer apathy?

Save the purposeful emotional exercises for rehearsal or the creation of a scripted dramatic piece... don't package it inside of a silly debbie gibson dance montage and expect it to be "funny" or "tragic," especially at a thoroughly comedic festival where you don't even bother to explain what you're about. It's lazy, it's irresponsible, it's an abuse of audience trust.

...
I reassert:
improv = contrived and funny
emotionally-charged improv = new levels of funny
rehearsed, structured drama = ceremony
improvised "drama" = waste of time

Theatre should service communal joy or catharsis (when successful, we get both), never should it just be an excuse for indulgent people who-wish-they-had-issues try to validate themselves as "artists" on stage.

[Jules]

And.........scene!

I agree. I found the troupe indulgent and unpleasant.
I enjoy watching dramatic moments within improv quite a bit. I have enjoyed watching playback theater but again, with playback its roots are in more of a therapeutic form and so the idea isn't necessarily for entertainment, but for a kind of community resolution, healing, etc. Though I have also seen some playback which is dense, saccharine and embarassing.

Nuff.

[kbadr]

I heard about the improvised drama troupe and it sounded to me like the main problem was that they were doing an improvised dramatic montage, which just flat-out won't work. An audience needs time to care enough about characters to take a dramatic piece seriously.

I refuse to believe that an improvised dramatic narrative longform wouldn't work, though. It would be very hard to do, but it's something I'd seriously like to try one day. It will involve re-training myself to not equate audience laughter/noise with interest. That seems like the biggest hurdle to me.

[Roy Janik]

I think the only way you could hope to succeed with dramatic improv is to bite the bullet and do a longform narrative. How can you expect an audience to care about characters when you haven't gotten to know them at all?

I'll bring it up before Wes does. MASH is a perfect example of what I think you could accomplish in improv. Tell a story, keep it light and comedic for the most part, but craft the characters real enough that you turn at a moment's notice into something more meaningful and real.

[kbadr]

....but craft the characters real enough that you turn at a moment's notice into something more meaningful and real.

I think that's the thing that dramatic improv would absolutely *need*. You'd have to all be very well-grounded and locked into your characters. In comedic improv you can sometimes get away with taking it less seriously and just serving your scene partner as an improviser. Of course, the results are always better when you've got a well-defined character who has depth.

[beardedlamb]

i think dramatic improv could be good if it was done correctly. i know this may not be your only experience with it, but you can't write it off because one group infuriated you. it sounds like i would have been pissed off by this show, too from your description.
the difference might lie in the narrative structure of the show. a dramatic montage would be harder to pull off than a dramatic play. if you think about it, it should be possible to improvise a dramatic play performing it just as if you had rehearsed it for a month. what if you didn't tell the audience it was improvised? would this remove the contrivetion?
it can be done. whj did a weekend of shows where we built a loft apartment set at the blue theatre and took a suggestion friday night. we did a comedy. then for saturday, we did a dramatic play with the same suggestion. it was decent enough. the dramatic show had problems but i wouldn't say they were the same ones you mentioned for "tragedy." in the end i think we pulled it off. that's the only experience i have ever had with dramatic improv save a couple rehearsal tries.

[Jules]

It is possible that long form dramatic narrative could exist and be performed well. Its possible you could start with scripted and veer off script, or create an improvised performance art. But I think it has to respect the audience and be committed to the form of storytelling and character.

What Arthur and I (and CT and GGG) saw was not that. It was indeed set to Debbie Gibson's "Shake your love" and involved really abrupt cartoonish images of violence, suicide, rape, abandonment and panic. Not funny and not moving. It was cynical and snarky and annoying.

[York99]

I saw said group before and thought it was laughable. I gave them another chance and they failed again in my eyes. Dramatic improv sucks because it's really easy and really lazy. Try it.

As for it not working because it was montage, I disagree. Also in Toronto, a group did one long scene about a husband and wife coping with her cancer diagnosis. There was time for character development, etc. I found it emotionally manipulative. I wish I had bigger eyes because I did not have sufficient room to roll them appropriately.

Perhaps it's because these groups shot for the stars: dealing with cancer, death, abandonment of children. Mayber on a more moderate topic it would have worked better. I'd give dramatic improv another chance. I have faith that it can be done... I just haven't seen it yet.... oh, except for in comedies. Dramatic moments are often done very well in the context of comedy. I guess that's why they have both masks.

[kaci_beeler]

Another important component of dramatic improv is good acting. While acting well is important in most improvisational theatre forms, I think you can get away with flaky, 2-D, surface acting in comedy improv more than you can in dramatic.
If the acting is poor the dramatic improv will seem melodramatic, cliche, and stereotypical.

[Aden]

I would really enjoy participating in or watching improv that was characterized neither as "dramatic" nor "comedic;" simply "real." However, let me qualify that statement by saying that I would want real in a fascinating and rich way, not just
"Hey, you want some crackers?"
"Nah, I'm allergic to wheat."

[Asaf]

I have done and seen dramatic improv that has worked because it wasn't reaching for those big moments. It just played real and downplayed quirks that would take us in a more lighthearted direction.

I know the group you saw. I actively avoided that group. They are just not good at what they do. And somehow they end up at festivals. I think there is a schism in the direction particularly (hard to say since the director is a good friend of mine) in that last time I saw the troupe perform there was a clear difference in what some members of the troupe thought was supposed to happen.

Don't knock the whole genre based on them though. It is like those people who see one bad improv group and say "Well, Improv clearly is not for me." That troupe you saw just sucks. Nuff said.

[kbadr]

I saw said group before and thought it was laughable. I gave them another chance and they failed again in my eyes. Dramatic improv sucks because it's really easy and really lazy. Try it.

As for it not working because it was montage, I disagree. Also in Toronto, a group did one long scene about a husband and wife coping with her cancer diagnosis. There was time for character development, etc. I found it emotionally manipulative. I wish I had bigger eyes because I did not have sufficient room to roll them appropriately.

Perhaps it's because these groups shot for the stars: dealing with cancer, death, abandonment of children. Mayber on a more moderate topic it would have worked better. I'd give dramatic improv another chance. I have faith that it can be done... I just haven't seen it yet.... oh, except for in comedies. Dramatic moments are often done very well in the context of comedy. I guess that's why they have both masks.

I think perhaps the pitfalls of dramatic improv that you're mentioning are actually negative aspects of any half-assed, desperately-trying-to-be-important theatre, scripted or otherwise.

I would really enjoy participating in or watching improv that was characterized neither as "dramatic" nor "comedic;" simply "real."

I think I'm using "dramatic improv" as a contrast to "comedic improv" in the same way that some schools divide theatre into Comedy or Tragedy.

[Jules]

I saw Bassprov perform (my first time) and that was, to me anyway, kind of a perfect blend of comic and non-comic moments. The actors seemed real, honest, committed to where ever the story went. It was smart, genuine, at times silly, at times political.
That's where I can imagine dramatic improv coming from.

[DollarBill]

Well, the best comedies have dramatic moments. The best dramas have comedic moments. I'd say doing a "dramatic" long form narrative is really hard, but totally doable (in the same way any narrative long form is hard). I mean a great improvised narrative is gonna have a lot of the same elements wheather it's comedy or drama: good acting, well rounded characters, truthfulness, good stagepicture and spacework, etc. I'd say the only difference is that the drama has a little less funny dialogue and less jokey games. I think the characters are the most important part. Once the characters are really groovy, you can explore the parts of them that are sad or serious or interesting, or the parts that are funny and happy and rediculous. And often those parts overlap. OH! I guess that's the theme of this post! Comedy and Drama overlap!

P.S. Good Will Hunting is a drama that reminds me of a "chicago style" improvised play. Almost all the scenes are just really intense two person character exploration.

[shando]

Don't knock the whole genre based on them though. It is like those people who see one bad improv group and say "Well, Improv clearly is not for me." That troupe you saw just sucks. Nuff said.

I don't know what troupe we're talking about, but Asaf nailed what I was going to say without the inside scoop. I've seen plenty of shitty comedy improv and doesn't mean I think the whole endeavor is tainted.