My mom loves cat mystery books. I should say that she loves mystery stories that involve cats as opposed to cat stories that involve a mystery. That is an important distinction. Her favorite are the “The Cat Who…” series of cat mysteries by Lillian Jackson Braun. Titles include “The Cat Who Smelled Smoke.”, “The Cat Who Saw Red.” and “The Cat Played Brahms.” Undoubtedly all double entendres.

I’ve never read one myself but I’ve talked to my mother about them. They are about a part-time detective that happens to own a cat and not about a cat detective solving a murder in Cat Town (Shucks!). I’m not exactly sure what happens or how the cats are involved but I imagine they include a murder in some small town in the north east, a la Murder She Wrote. The detective has gathered all the clues on his kitchen table but can’t quite put it together when suddenly the cat plops down on his pile of work, looking for attention. The cat’s tail swishes across a photograph giving the evil yet strong alibied Mr. Thurston a mustache. “Get off of there, kitty. Huh?!? That’s it!”

Thirty “The Cat Who…” stories have been written, not including a companion, several short story collections and a cookbook but it isn’t the only cat mystery series out there. You could also read the “Sneaky Pie Brown” series of cat mystery books, complete with italicized cat conversations. I don’t think Mom likes these stories. Again, she prefers mysteries that tangentially involve cats. Cat’s that perhaps have uncanny abilities but aren’t humanized.

I feel like I’m outing Mom as a silly person with simple tastes but she has an extensive and respectable mystery pedigree. Doyle, Christie and the like. To her cat mysteries are simply a distraction from her generally serious and meaningful life. Regardless of how rewarding and fulfilling a job might be we all just want to cut loose and read a cat mystery.

(Here’s the improv part)

In improv the same thing applies. You may be doing a scene about a guy and a girl debating about which a movie to rent at the video store but all I want to see is the poor guy be madly in love with the girl and have her not notice. I want to see the scene cut loose and follow a distraction.

If a scene begins with “Gentlemen, I’ve called you here to talk about a new sports drink that our company will be producing.” all of the laughs will be come from the behavior of the participants and not the value or benefits of the sports drink. We may learn in the scene that the sports drink makes you fly, and while that sounds funny, the humor will come from the skeptical business man interacting with the enthusiastic pitch man who really believes it can make you fly.

You’ve heard undoubtedly that you’re supposed to avoid arguing in scenes but I’m sure you’ve also seen hilarious argument scenes. Boring arguments are logical lists of pros and cons. Funny arguments are distractions from the main point. They are illogical and frustrating.

Your homework. Watch Deep Schwa and 3033. I guarantee no scene will go where the initiator is planning on it going. They’re both great at following the distraction.

I was imagining what it would be like to be abducted by aliens. They took me to their planet and put me in an intergalactic zoo. I imagined that my cage would be nice and comfortable. It would be plexiglass instead of metal bars because the atmosphere on their planet is probably poisonous. Being so far away I would get t.v. reception form the 50’s which would be kinda cool but kinda boring, too. It would be like Slaughterhouse 5, minus the pornstar for companionship.

There would be weird aliens in the cages next to me. There wouldn’t be a lot of trust between us but we’re stuck with each other. We’d have a love/hate relationship. Aliens of the non-zoo worthy variety would walk around and look at me and my cage mates. I’d like to think that I would be a popular attraction like the ape house or the lions in our zoos but I’d probably be thought of more like the caribou or the sloth, not particularly interesting but now you can say you’ve seen one.

I went to Sea World when I was a kid and saw the aquatic, semi-terrestrial mammal show. A walrus, a sea lion and a couple of sea otters. The show had a whodunit mystery theme. The walrus wore a Sherlock Holmes hat. I should say some one put a Sherlock Holmes hat on his head and trained him not to toss it off. Kinda funny. The otters stole the show as the good-hearted burglars. A trainer wearing a wet suit was on stage directing the show and narrating the action via head-set microphone. “Who do you think did it, Detective Whiskers? Can you point to them? Go ahead, point. Yeah, good job!” Do you think the alien zoo keepers would put me in that kind of a show? It would be based on some piece of their culture that would completely confuse me. I bet I’d learn what hoops to jump through pretty quick, I’m an actor and improviser after all.

But it probably wouldn’t say that on the plaque next to my cage. When I was captured they would ask me what I did on my planet, what function I served. I would say that I was an improviser and teacher. They would inform me that they’ve been observing me and recording my actions via long range telescope. They would put on my cage what they had observed me spending most of my time doing. My plaque would read “Human Male. Television watcher and sleeper.”

Nuts!

I got depressed when I realized I spend most of my time not doing what I claim to be. Improvisers sure are lazy. Or perhaps lazy people are drawn to improv. So often big plans get progressively down-graded to virtually nothing. Plans for a weekly sketch show that’s new every week change into a sketch show with a few new portions each week. After more meetings and rehearsals that becomes an improv show with a video to open each act. And oh boy, what a funny video it will be! Two weeks before the show opens it has become an all improv show with a cool, call-back heavy form. This is abandoned two days before the opening. The show becomes an improv montage with really cool house music.

***Send comments and questions to improvquestions@billarnett.com

***Send complaints to complaints@billarnett.com

Calc I (one) was the first of three calculus classes at UF that every engineering, science, or pre-med student had to take. It was a weed-out class. It was designed to be as unwelcoming, uninteresting and uninspiring as possible so that only those that truly loved the work would dare continue on to Calc II. All the wanna-be doctors and physicists and engineers would change their majors to business and history and English.

Lectures were in a 600 seat auditorium. Homework would be just three problems a week. They were difficult problems designed to annoy and frustrate. The only warmth in the Calc I process was a weekly study section of twenty or so students led by a math department TA. The study sessions gave the students a chance to ask questions and go over material in a smaller, more congenial setting.

My TA was named Roy Willis. Roy loved Delta-Epsilon arguments, a piece of mathematical minutia that prove the validity of calculus, a fact that 99% of us were willing to take our professors word on. They go like this, and Roy would make a game of it, for any value of Epsilon that you feel is super close to but not touching a certain line, someone else could produce a Delta that is even closer. “You give me an Epsilon,” Roy would say, “and I’ll just cough up a Delta.” And he really emphasized the coughing part. I think this was to show how simply and easily he could produce those Delta values, as if to say it’s so easy you can just spit out the right answers without any thought. What a goof.

If I were to describe Roy as an improv character it would be “overly casual math teacher” or “strangely enthusiastic TA”. Funny stuff. Both of those characters could really make some hay. But what if the class was just as interested in math as he was? Rather than sitting there slack jawed like myslef, what if they took notes and nodded with mild amusement at his coughing metaphors. Suddenly our “jokey math TA” is now jsut a normal TA teaching a class that accepts with little hesitation his quirks and exintricities. Not really a funny scene.

And what if the students died laughing at his corny jokes? They sincerely enjoyed them. “Coughing! He said coughing! Ha Ha!” Suddenly our teacher becomes pleasant and quaint and the class turns into a bunch of morons that love hack math jokes.

You may think your character is weird or out there or crazy but it’s your scene partner that controls how crazy you actually are. To make a Delta-Epsilon argument, For any given “crazy” initiation, I can think of a response that makes me crazy and you perfectly sane. For any Epsilon (Roy Willis) I can cough up a Delta (student reaction to Roy Willis) that will define how crazy or whacky Roy Willis actually is.

(Calc II and III were actually small, intimate classes taught by TAs. I also had a math department TA for Dif EQ, the class after the three calculus classes. Math TAs are, with out a doubt, our nations greatest untapped resource of awkward and weird.)

A new book about Del Close is out “The Funniest One in the Room”. I read an excerpt in the local indie newspaper, The Reader. They had a link to a video of Del’s living wake, a party he threw for himself while in the hospital. Kinda cool. And morbid. A bit of a who’s who, a lot of famous people. I wasn’t there.

All of the legends of Del focus on his daring exploits and his razor-sharp wit. Embarrassing and offending those whom he felt deserved to be. Or the legends mention his improv wisdom. I use a lot of it in my teaching. “If the whole is to be art, the pieces must not be.” That’s a favorite. Stories of Del’s weaknesses are limited to his drug use and occasional abrasiveness but even these are seemingly explained away as the musings of genius. A fearless explorer, leaving no stone of life unturned. (High-fives all around)

I never knew him as a person. My professional knowledge of him was limited to a workshop and a few hello’s and excuse me’s. My impression of him was set by his legend. And as legend usually go, I never heard stories of him being afraid or crying or having genuine, real emotion, ironically the very thing he preached in his teachings. When faced with difficult or tense moments, the legends had him snapping off a witty remark or a disconnected reference to some long-past historical event. All things I would give my students a stern note for doing.

I watched that video of his living wake last week. He was being funny and as jolly as he could be. I was struck by how frail he was. He spoke quite openly and calmly about his death, just like you’d expect. Mortality is but the first act in the play of our soul. But in one small moment, barely thirty seconds and at times cut with witty remarks, he spoke fearfully of his death. He struggles to find his words “We don’t have to blow it all tonight, we might get lucky and push on another few.” He was saying that to himself, mostly. A truly honest and heart felt moment of humanity. He felt the sadness that, despite all of our bravado and charm, despite any belief in an after life, death will take us away from the friends we have on Earth.

The most recent thing I stole from Del was a note he gave to one of his students many decades ago. I found it rummaging through a collection of old notes I found on the internet. The note is that you should always be talking to your scene partner and never to the audience. When people break the moment and go for a joke they are talking to the audience. That’s it. Every line you speak is meant for your scene partners ears alone. In Harold openings, games and non-verbal organic physical explorations ever action is in response to and soley intended for your partner. That is the only person you will ever talk too.

(I told a buddy of mine in the traditional theater world about this discovery. He said “duh”.)

I got frustrated with the improv team I coach, Chopper. They were having problems seeing and addressing absurdity in their scenes. I asked them if they remembered the old “Makin’ copies” Rob Schneider scene from SNL. It’s a great example of how absurdity can be dealt with, namely with reality. I asked two of them to perform the “Richmeister” scene as best as they could. They thought I was joking and couldn’t pull it off. As I tried to think of another SNL chestnut to use as an example I was struck with an idea. The idea is that every SNL sketch is essentially the same.

With the help of an online message board, I compiled a list of scenes from SNL that are general agreed to be funny. I then tried to draw a line through them showing how they are the same (see chart at bottom). This is not meant to be an indictment of SNL, there’s already enough of that going on, most of it misplaced. In fact, the scenes that tank are also the same scene as the good ones. No, as a scientisty-kinda person I picked SNL because their catalog provides a wonderful sample set that many of us are familiar with. Who knew, but we’ve all been collecting 30 years worth of data without having to go live in Antarctica.

So what one scene has been performed over and over again and how does it relate to improv? The frustration scene. Miles Stroth and Peter Gwinn talked about and taught this quasi-universal scene tool. UCB, in fact, plays tight frustration games almost exclusively and it’s most of their curriculum. Their scenes really are the same scene over and over again. The term game scenes is sometimes used to describe them, along with finding the game. They have a simple formula but I could spend another three blogs talking about them, and I’m not an expert.

A frustration game needs two characters, a frustrater and a frustratee. An absurdity and a reality. Their clash is entertaining, but it must be played well and that’s were the magic is. As I’ve said before, the greatest premise can be easily ruined by a crew of chumps. And there is no intrinsic difference between Church Lady and Mango. It’s all execution. The frustrater must be savvy and not push too hard too soon. The straight man must be real. They must continually answer this question “how would a typical person act in this situation if this were really happening?”. They may yell and scream but not right away, that would be absurd.

I think of frustration games as having these three componenets: “The Context”, “The Hammer” and “The Anvil”. The context is the reason why people are where they are. It’s a coffee shop or a t.v. talk show. Each context has it’s own rules like it’s not polite to yell at a coffee shop or it’s okay to be a little nervous on a t.v. talk show. The hammer is the absurdity and it smacks the straight man. Someone is talking loudly at the coffee shop, disturbing a businessman. Someone not talking at all on a t.v. talk show, causing the host to become nervous. The absurdity is intrinsically related to the context. Talking loudly on a t.v. talk show or not talking at a coffee shop aren’t absurd at all. Those two things are fairly easy to get and can be discovered through improv readily.

The last component, the anvil, is where you make your money. The anvil is the reason why the frustrated person doesn’t just leave or punch the frustrater. It’s the element that compels them to stay despite wanting to leave. And that is funny. For someone talking loudly at the coffee shop perhaps the anvil is that they have to finish some report before they go to work in 20 minutes. For the host of the t.v. show with the suddenly silent guest the anvil is the fact that the show is live. They can only cut to commercial so many times.

Here’s how I would break down the “Making Copies” sketch. The context is an office copier room and all of the rules that go along with it. The hammer, is Rob Schneider who keeps talking, specifically giving stupid nick-names to the people that come in to make copies. The anvil is the fact that they have to be there. They have to endure it. Perhaps it’s the only copy room on that floor. They try politely asking Rich to be quiet, they try placating him but eventually they snap and just leave. That scene without an anvil? People would come in, get called a stupid nickname and immediately leave. “Oh yeah, this guy is annoying, I’ll just use the machine across the hall.”

These scenes, the coffee shop and t.v talk show, could easily have been improvised. How they’re played is where the magic lives. And it’s this push-pull between the players that you could spend years perfecting. Here is that chart of SNL sketches. Not everything fit my formula like I thought it would but it’s not bad. I’m including it for sake of completeness. Again, these are all very funny sketches. I’m not trying to take away form them, I’m trying to get my team to pay attention to their scenes. These very funny scenes are in their grasp.

How do people feel about leadership seminars? Or cooking classes? Or art school? Or improv classes for that matter. Can these things be learned in a classroom other than the classroom of life? Can you read every book ever about mountain climbing and then go tackle the Matterhorn?

My 11th grade history teacher, Mr Bass, posed that last question to us and his answer was yes. He went on to say that you can learn more about mountain climbing from reading about it then you could from actually climbing mountains. It seemed an obvious contradiction, not unlike Mr. Bass himself, an over-weight vegetarian.

I see what he was getting at though and while I don’t fully agree it is in his spirit that I make the following post. Consider this a crass oversimplification of something that is quasi-spiritual; sit with me as I try to cram art into a box. Give it a read and if Mr. Bass is right, you’re going to be a wonderfully hilarious improvisor.

The expression 2nd beat is used to describe an improv scene that is inspired by a previous scene. Perhaps it features the same characters or maybe it just lives in the world of the previous scene. Think of the movie Star Wars. A first beat scene might be Luke having breakfast with his aunt and uncle, complaining about his boring life on the farm. A second beat scene would be Luke meeting and embarking on his journey with Ben Kenobi. Imagine if a first time viewer turned off the movie after seeing the breakfast scene. They might be very interested about how Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru will handle they’re disrespectful nephew. They played a big role in that scene so the movie is about them, right? ***Spoiler Alert!*** Nope. They die a miserable death without uttering another line.

That’s the magic. What thread do we follow? Luke or Uncle Owen? The star of a first beat may never be seen again. And won’t that decision go on to inform third beats? To help get my students around what’s possible I have two performers do a scene and then draw a line across the stage and label points along it. (see below) For our purposes let’s say the scene is about a boy having breakfast with his aunt and uncle. He doesn’t want to stay on the farm, he wants to go to the academy. The class then performs as many different 2nd beats as they can and I place them along the line depending on the content. One extreme representing a scene that follows story line and the other extreme being a scene that follows a random detail.

Point A: One end point. It represents the narrative. The most literal interpretation of the previous scene. Perhaps it picks up exactly where the other scene left off. The boy and his family still eating breakfast.

Point B: This would maybe have the same boy but he’s talking with his friends about his cranky aunt and uncle. Same world, a few of the same characters and a few different characters.

Point C: A girl complains to her parents about being forbidden to get her ears pierced. Fewer specifics remain but the scene arc remains. A youth having a discussion with there parents about freedom.

Point D: The middle point is the thematic connection. It contains very little specifics from the first scene but borrows from it’s theme. Perhaps it’s a scene about a husband talking to his wife about how he’s unhappy with his marriage.

Point E: A paramedic is reluctant to give treatment to a car accident victim. This scene mirrors the aunt and uncles unwillingness to let the boy go to school. A character’s behavior is brought to the front by changing the context.

Point F: This scene is a crazy frat party. The boy isn’t there, the only detail carried over is a yearning for college life. If the boy was in the scene it would be more like point B.

Point G: The other end point. It represents the tangential connection. The most incidental, nearly-external, crumb of the first scene is used to inspire the next. As we move from A to G the specifics have one by one fallen away. In our example the boy off-handedly mentioned going into town which inspires a scene about an evil bank executive yelling at, i.e. “going to town on”, a co-worker. That is the only slim connection to the first beat. Why would you ever do this? Maybe the first beat scene was terrible, you don’t want to bring it back but you don’t want to dismiss it.

You have an infinite number of options as to what the second beat should be. I provide this only as a way to organize your thoughts and see more opportunity. No judgment. “A” type second beats are no better than “G” types. No point is any funnier or righter than any other. So which do you choose? I don’t know, what do you think is funnier? It’s your show. How do you want it to look?

***As always send questions to improvquestions@billarnett.com, thank you.***

(As a side note I’m writing this on a Mac and the fact that the [END] key takes me to the bottom of the page and not the end of my current line of text is driving me crazy. Give me a PC or Format C me.)

I’ve talked with out-of-towners before about the Chicago improv scene and I don’t think it sets in just how massive it is. I did some research (counting) and I came up with this number. It’s the number of improv and sketch shows produced in Chicago in one week. 121. On an given Friday night there are 15 different shows running at the same time at 6 different venues, many are double or triple bills. With the possible exception of L.A. or N.Y.C. I wouldn’t bet that any city can boast what C. can.

The value of this phenomenon is not these 121 shows are all better than Orlando’s 8 or San Francisco’s 10 or Toronto’s 12. On the contrary the lion share of the shows here are not going to change many lives. In fact the average level of play is often higher in the small markets. But the economy of scale gives Chicago it’s edge. If Portland can produce A+ work 50% of the time and Chicago is working at 20%, that’s still 6 killer shows a week compared with 24. If Portland produces 10% of it’s shows at an all-star level and Chicago manges 5%, that’s 1 amazing show a week vs. 6. (Imagine how good the best show of that 6 must be?)

Before the deluge of angry emails hit me (complaints@billarnett.com) let me say that it is the fact that so many shows exist here, regardless of quality, that allows the work to explore new ground and grow in strange and unexpected ways. It’s the worlds largest improv laboratory.

What advancements have come out of this lab? I’ve taught workshops on both coasts, Canada and a couple of points in between (improvworkshops@billarnett.com) and while I’ve seen truly excellent and different work I find myself covering similar material in my workshops. We’ve stumbled across some cool truths, some innovations. What’s the Velcro and Tang of Chicago? I have a few ideas and would love to hear from people with their own ideas (improvideas@billarnett.com).

Novel forms don’t guarantee good work: Imagine a longform piece where the first scene is actually a dream but the audience doesn’t know it until the 3rd scene. The 2nd scene is the event of the dreamers life, complete with characters from the dream, that inspired the dream. Sounds cool, huh? It’s yours. Take it. I don’t want it. Why? A) Good luck getting it to work. B) The novelty of improv isn’t in the pre-set form but in the form that is discovered.

The negative yes: A dorky acting girl approaches boy at a locker and says, geekily, “Hey Jerry. I saw your game on Friday. You’re awesome. You wanna go to the dance with me tonight?” A brutal yes/and ideology would make Jerry say “yes”, and perhaps he’s dorky too. However it is just as correct to yes/and the over-arching situation, a dork asking out a jock, and say “no”. (Just because it’s equally correct doesn’t mean it’s any better)

The only rule is context: A funny idea has no intrinsic value. It depends on the characters involved. If they are poorly defined and poorly played then no funny premise can save them.

Any differences you guys have noticed?

It’s hard to believe but I wrote my first post in April of ‘06. Way to go, Bill. I’ll include the link to the first post but here is the gist: Of the many ways to start an improv scene (talking, adopting a physical activity, listening in silence) no single one is better or worse than any other.

I got a question the other day, I’ll paraphrase: One actor starts the scene by bowling and yells “strike!” while the other actor is pushing around a lawn mower… I’m sick of having to say things like it’s awesome that you installed this bowling alley in your yard.

(Maybe I’m speaking out of turn or going against traditional theory but why would you ever begin a scene completely oblivious to your partner? (I can actually think of a few instances but that’s for later.))

So maybe one guy is pretending to bowl rather help his buddy with the yard work. Or maybe one guy celebrates bowling a strike by pretending to cut the grass. I don’t know and ultimately it doesn’t matter. Define it however you like. In the end “the what” is a dummy variable that should be defined but holds little power of your success or failure. Here are some thoughts on “the what”:

-There is no magic in “the what”. I guess to fix that scene maybe you should both be mowing the yard. Or maybe both be bowling. Maybe it would be funnier if the ball return doesn’t work. Better yet the pins don’t fall over when they’re struck. (I’m sure there’s a funnier idea out there but I’m not Noah or TJ. They’d be able to think of a funnier idea.) All of these scene ideas have just as much a chance to succeed as any other. I’ll find the terrible players to ruin any awesome idea you have.

Scenes aren’t about “the what”. They are about the people. The only what that matters is what’s going on between the characters.

-Don’t define yourself by what your doing. A character is not simply a guy bowling or a guy mowing. A character is needy or talky or lazy or sexually forward or bossy. They may be bowling or mowing but that in no way defines them.

-The audience is most forgiving of the beginnings of scenes. A lot of people say that the beginning of the scene is the most important part and that if it starts poorly it will have a small chance of success. Wow. That’s really heavy. Rather than launch an attack at that theory I’ll say this. While beginnings of scenes are important the audience is more forgiving of a scene that starts slowly and ends well than a scene that starts great and ends poorly. Take advantage of their generosity. Relax up top.

-Ultimately, no one cares about “the what”. You’d be surprised to know how little “the what” can be and still have a good scene. I’ve seen successful scenes with no discernible what. Two old guys on the porch talking will do nicely. A student asking a teacher about a grade is almost too much. Two cubicle mates talking about their jobs is all you need. Treat your scene tops like a first date. Something simple will do nicely, like dinner and a movie. If treat the date too seriously -candy, flowers and champaign- you’re going to blow it and feel like crap after words. Might these two cubicle mates decide they need to sneak into the bosses office? Sure. Why not? But that’s second or third date kinda stuff. It can be discovered as a product of the characters and not as some arbitrary attempt at humor.

I have many students that cling to what there doing like it’s their only source of oxygen. Like it’s some immutable edict from the Gods. It must be performed and not dropped until the scene is over. Don’t give it so much power. If mopping at the beginning of a scene helps you decide that you’re a sexually forward hotel maid, great. Please mop. But be prepared to drop the mop and play the maid. The magic is in the sexually forward maid and not in the mop.

In college I took a field trip to a Lucent microchip manufacturing plant. In the biz it’s called a “fab”. Short for fabrication I guess, you gotta know the lingo. We got to see the clean rooms with all the people in the white suits and we saw all of the super high tech machines that build the machines. We spent most of our time, though, looking at microscopes. Not looking through microscopes but at microscopes. Our tour guide didn’t work in the fab but in the lab. How boring.

Our guide also spent a lot of time telling us how difficult the job was. “If you want to work here I hope you like long hours.” and “Coming right out of school you’ll get the worst jobs. Plan on working weekends.” As the tour went along it became hyperbole. “I’ve put in 80 hour weeks, it’s not uncommon.” I think he was trying to weed out the unfocused individuals. Paint a really grim picture so that only the most driven and talented among us would dare send in our resumes. It sure worked on me.

I get asked about what it’s like to be an improvisor here in the city. So, as your tour guide, let me paint a truthful picture about the life of a working improvisor. Firstly I say working improvisor because you will be working a straight job downtown. I temped for years. I’ve got great friends, very talented friends, that still have steady non-improv jobs. Many actually have very rewarding and fulfilling employment. Plan on it. A good yet austere 2 bedroom apartment goes for about $1,000 a month.

So get a job. It’s not just for the money. Live like an adult so you can play like one. Get some life experience. To quote Chuck D, you rap about what you know. If all you know about is college life and the contents of every book even tangentially related to improv that’s all you will rap about.

Plan on taking all of the classes at iO and/or Second City and/or The Annoyance. No one skips level one. Before you feel insulted let me just say that yes, you are funny. You are very funny. And your college group rocks very hard. You may even be funnier than me! But who knows it? The answer is no one. That’s kinda simple. The real answer isn’t that simple.

The way we do things here is in no way better than any other improv scene in the world. But it is it’s own. An illustrative example? Sure. Over Christmas I was playing a board game with old friends. I rolled the dice and one of them fell off the table. When I went to roll them both again I got yelled at. In Orlando, Florida you only re-roll the die that fell off the table. In Chicago, Illinois you re-roll them both. You know the rules of improv in your community. You may not know the rules here. They are just as stupid and trivial as re-rolling dice but if you don’t play by the rules you won’t be allowed to play the game. The best way to learn the rules is to show up on day one of level one ready to learn.

I think I actually painted a rosey picture. Any Vets out there want to comment?

And now let’s look at the microscopes!

**** I cut this next part out of the original but I didn’t want the research I had to do to be in vain.

I know of maybe 20 people that support themselves only through performing improv and sketch comedy. There’s another 100 people or so, that support themselves in the world of improv. Teaching, coaching, writing, commercial acting and/or doing corporate training. And all of the theaters have office staff. To put those numbers in perspective there are approximately 400 students in the program at iO and another 250 players on teams. There are probably another 500 students at Second City and another 100 performers on various stages, touring companies and cruise ships. That means nine of ten improvisors have jobs in The Loop.

—At iO the teachers do a students evaluation sheet that gets passed on to future teachers to track the students progress. For one of my students I saw the note from a former teacher “Refuses to believe that humor derives from character. Too premise heavy.” Here is my wager:

Take a solidly funny scripted scene, your baby, and give it to your weakest players. Then take a poor scene and give it to your strongest players. If premise is so important, if a good premise is all that is needed then your gem scene will be safe in such clumsy hands. Deal?

Whoa boy! I could assemble a real ghastly crew of terrible improvisers to destroy the funniest of all scenes. Give me a chance, I’d love to put a squad of sub-rejects together. And make it a really funny scene, too. Make it your favorite scene ever.

As a premise-driven improvisor I’ve had to learn the hard way that a funny idea presented poorly becomes a poor idea. I’d take a Phil Hartman over an Adam Sandler any day of the week.

—In an earlier post I mentioned an odd occasional phenomenon where a “real” or “grounded” scene turns into a cancer scene. Not a scene that is so bad it’s like cancer but a scene that is literally about someone dying of cancer. I think this may be because when people are asked to keep it real or to play grounded they interpret that as meaning don’t be funny. I guess I need to more clearly define what reality is. (That was fun to say.)

A real scene is simply one where the characters act as if they were typical people experiencing the situation they are in. To quote Sanford Meisner acting is “living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.” If someone pulls a gun, get scarred. If someone tells a stupid joke, call them foolish. If you buy a paper from a news stand and the guy behind the counter tries to talk to you, nod politely and leave, you’re late for work. Anything you do in life is fair game on stage. Cry, beg, laugh, sleep, be angry, be insulted, get bored, roll your eyes, did I mention cry?, be an idiot, be called an idiot, say something stupid after being called an idiot, punch, kiss, belch, or leave. Please go to leave if you feel compelled to leave. If the moment compels your partner to try and make you stay then they will. If not they will be on stage by themselves and we can see them cry or cheer or gasp… whatever they would do by the reality of your departure. It will still be a scene and it has every chance in the world of being the best scene ever.

Think of all of the witty banter and fun you and your friends have when you’re hanging around at the bar after a show. It’s light and fun and in the moment. You pick on the fat kid. You encourage your single buddy to talk to that girl that keeps looking over. You get pissed at your buddy for being a slob and spilling his drink. Those moments are truly being real and grounded and in the moment. That is the theater of reality. When you go on stage realize that your at the bar, drinking with your friends, but you’re not yourself. You are that under-sexed forty-something. One of your buddies is the young, shirtless pool boy. And another is your workaholic husband. Go!

—A note about breaking on stage. I get asked about it from time to time. Some people say that breaking is the all-time number-one most disrespectful thing you could ever do. To break is to tell your partner they are stupid. It says that you are not invested in the moment but instead standing outside being too cool to truly commit to your character. It’s pretty harsh, I don’t feel that way. But you never know who does so knock it off.

—Someone also asked me about “what next” moments. These happen typically in longer, character driven scenes. The old men have met on the porch, talked about their ungrateful kids and started whittling. So what happens next? I don’t know. What would one of those guys probably do? Talk about the good old days. Why not. Go do that. Anything you pick is correct, just pick something. It doesn’t even have to be creative, just get that ball rolling again.

Same thing with second beats. No choice for a second beat is better or worse than any other. Play it well and it will shine.

Thanks for your input, keep it coming!

improvquestions@billarnett.com