Stop the Impro Bus - It's Going the Wrong Way

 

I really enjoy my improv sessions and hanging out with my improv chums.

 

The last session was great, not because we were doing great work, but because I learnt a lot about the craft and myself from taking part in it.

( Cut for Tidyness )

 
 

One of the things I am learning is that I need to be better at explaining things. This will be made easier if I had a better idea what I am doing. It is easier to explain an improv Handle if you are very familiar with the rules and know what the Handle needs in the way of Askfors, set-ups, and key concepts.

 

At the moment we have lots of new people. They are terrific. Very talented, enthusiastic and good to hang out with. However, they are new, they don’t know all the Handles, or the Concepts or the Rules. (Not that I do, but I have a year and a bit and three shows under my belt). I find myself in much more of a leadership role than I was expecting. More on this anon I’m sure.

 

 

Last Wednesday’s session was a Tin of Destiny session, followed by an outing to the pub. Tin of Destiny sessions are playshops where we pick games at random from a Tin. The idea is that we play whatever comes out of the Tin. We don’t need a facilitator and because we don’t know what is coming out of the Tin we can’t plan and so we have to improvise.

 

 

Sometimes they work very well, sometimes less so. A lot depends on who is there, how they are feeling and working and which combination of handles come out. If you get lots of hard technical exercises and a group with lots of new people you get superficial results. If lots of parlour games come out, you have fun but it’s not satisfying.

 

Half way through last Wednesday’s session The Tall One (who I utterly respect as an improviser and think is a top bloke and is one of the reasons I wanted to join this group) shouted stop. The Tin had thrown up lots of parlour games and some physical stuff and we were struggling with bits of Blocking and Wimping. “Not Enough Narrative Stuff” he cried. “Let’s do something with a beginning a middle and an end” He was right. Although the next few scenes weren’t classics (and we were still struggling with blocking) it was great to see some stories coming out.

 

The Tall One’s outburst and the fact that we’d had some issues with blocking meant that when we got to the pub afterwards, late in the evening we were ready and able to have a really good conversation about what we are trying to do as a group and, on a technical point of view, blocking.

 

 

So my learnings from last Wednesday Session are

-explain things better by

• -being clear in my own head what I want to explain
• -not assuming that other people have got it when they nod, err on the side of repetition and being overly simplistic.
• -asking for help, even if I don’t think I need it

- stop the Tin of Destiny sessions if they aren’t working – know when to get off the bus when it’s going the wrong way.
- we do our best work when we focus on narrative and character and let the fun and the funny stuff flow from the scenes we create.
-the more Askfors the better, the skills comes from working with the constraints, not from having none. Improv is like weaving a basket not holding a bag or building a box.

In the Kingdom of Improv, the One-Eyed Man is King

We started our conversation in the pub with a discussion about Blocking. 

 

Blocking is where an Offer is made by one player and not accepted by the other. An Offer is some addition to the scene. It could Endow a character with a personality trait, a problem or a physical object. It could create a piece of narrative history or define some part of the physical environment.

 ( An example of an Offer is... )

An example of an Offer is

 

Player 1 “I like your new football”.

 

A block would look like this

 

Player 2 “It’s not a football, it’s a kitten”.

 

The problem with blocking is that it takes the scene nowhere. It also destroys the spontaneity of the other Players and kills trust. It’s why one of the Rules is “Always Say Yes; Always Accept the Offer).

 

Offers can be more subtle than my camera example. Blocks can be too. What if Player 2 had replied, “Thank you, it’s going flat though, so I’m going to put it away.” They’ve accepted that they are holding a football, but it’s not going to take any further part in the narrative.

 

Blocking is a bit different from Wimping. Wimping is where you accept the Offer but talk about it, instead of doing something with it. For example

 

Player 1 “I like your new football”

 

Player 2 “Thanks, my uncle bought it for me”.

 

Player 1 “Your uncle, Steve.

 

Player 2 “Yes, Steve, he bought me this nice new football”

 

The story is going sideways. This is not a bad thing but at some point someone is going to have say

 

Anyone “Shall we have a kick around?” At last we get to some action.

 

So, we were talking about Blocking and there are three examples to mention. The Wise Woman of Improv talked me through each example. She knows her stuff and I think speaks with the zeal of a convert.

 

The first was a partial acceptance. The Offer was that there was a window. The partial acceptance, “That’s not a window, that’s a skylight.” It sounds like an Acceptance. Player 2 has Accepted that there is a physical object where Player 1 was pointing and acknowledged that Player 1is suggesting that that is a window. What this lead to was a few minutes of bickering. 

Player 2 “Call that a window, I don’t”

Player 1 “You can see the sea”

Player 2 “No you can’t! That’s the sky, same colour, different thing”

 

Bickering leads to talking heads. There was some witty word play and with strong characters it might have been excruciatingly funny but we hadn’t got strong characters yet, just a few minutes of watching two people bicker about the window. This is a good example of Talking Heads (characters talking about things rather than doing them) Gossip if you will.

 

The second example was an Offer that closed off narrative. The offer was that Player 1 (and thereafter every other player) kept being struck in the face by acid. One of the Rules is that you don’t play children, drunkards, animals, idiots or madmen. This is a Rule because those characters don’t have narrative drive. Things happen to them, they don’t happen to things. They are also not bound by narrative constrictors. A madman can do anything, so your fellow players have no idea what you might do. So too a stage full of blind men. You can’t have a story because none of the blind men can control their environment. One sighted man with three blindmen, that’s a story, four blindmen just ended up with some low quality slap stick.

 

The third block was egregious. So egregious that I winced. I should have challenged it, but we’re not quite ready for challenging yet. It was Negation, by this I mean the removal of an Offer that has been made and Accepted earlier. Back to the football example, just before the kick around starts a third Player enters and hoofs the ball into next Tuesday. No ball, no kick around. Now a good scene might develop between the three players but it is founded on the selfishness of Player 3 destroying what Player 1 and Player 2 had created.

 

 

Here’s what happened. In the Handle each Player has to enter the stage, either creating an entrance, or using one that someone else has created. They carry with them into the space an object, they then interact with an object that is already in the space. Then they leave through an exit that they create or by using one already created by an earlier Player.

 

We are awaiting the entry of Player 4. Player 1 has planted some plants (I took them for beanstalks), Player 2 had created a tap and a watering can (left lying about), Player 3 has indicated that the plants have grown chest high. Enter Player 4. Player 4 carefully and deliberately cuts down all of the beanstalks. We are now left with pretty much a bare stage. Every idea everyone else had about what to do with the beanstalks has been killed off. The complete Negation of everything we had been working on.

 

So I learnt a lot about how blocking works, or doesn’t work. Having had the Wise Woman pick apart what had been going on I understood how a partial Acceptance of an Offer can lead to wimping or to bickering and therefore Talking Heads.

 

Also I learnt, Improv is not easy. It looks like it’s just some guys on stage messing about. It’s harder than that. It’s different to acting. There is some cross over in skills but they are not the same. Being a good actor is not enough. Good Improv requires working well with whomever and whatever turns up. Blocking kills not only what has turned up but also any inclination to create and make an Offer. I don’t want to be on a stage with someone who might destroy what we’ve been working on and leave me exposed, alone.

 

Also, The Tall One and the Wise Woman said some nice things about me, which was nice. I was pleased.

Bristol, I Sal;ute You

I don’t like Bristol. I would go as far as to say that other than Swindon it is the urban place I hate most in the UK.

 

It is badly designed.  Getting anywhere is really difficult. The road to the airport is single carriageway.

 

It is populated with rude and incompetent taxi and bus drivers. Here’s a hint Bristolian taxi drivers, if you have picked me up from Bristol International Airport there is a good chance I am not from Bristol and won’t know how to get where I am paying you to take me. Part of the deal is that I pay you so I can sit in the back of the cab and not worry. As for the bus drivers, I buy two single tickets from town to Cribbs Causeway, not a crazy or unusual occurrence I bet. It costs £4.95. “Sorry mate, I can’t take a five pound note.” What?!? What!!! You’ve just charged me five pounds. What do you want me to do? Carry round half a hundredweight of change so you don’t have to trouble yourself with new fangled concepts like paper money issued by a central bank. What would you do if I were a single mother buying tickets for myself and my three children? Do you want me to pay you in gold? Or barter? A chicken should see my and Bluebird to Cribbs Causeway.

 

All the good architecture appears to have been pulled down or blown up and replaced by concrete. Any philosophy of anything called Brutalism should stop before they start. 

 

The airport, the effing airport is a joke. Carrying a bottle, one bottle, of aftershave I was made to put it in a plastic bag and put it back through the X-ray machine. It’s been X-rayed. The plastic bag will, if anything, make it slightly harder to see inside off. I have one thing. Now you have made me stop the whole queue to put that one thing inside another thing. The coffee is cold. You can’t get a train to town. Despite being as far from Bristol Temple Meads as it is from Bath you can’t get a bus there.

 

It’s scruffy. Litter lines the streets like drunkards watching the Pope. Everyone looks like a rapist or a drug dealer or a mugger. I’m willing to bet that the average IQ is about 20 points lower than the rest of England.

 

Bristol lacks beauty, grace, utility or soul.

 

Frankly, the place could do with a good scrub down and some disinfectant. I hate going there and I wish I didn’t have to.