Notes on Improv Comedy
- "yes, and" allows scene partners to agree, open up new discoveries, and push the scene forward
Classic Pairs: pairs we commonly see together make it easy for both players to agree and know what is going on- teacher and student
- parent and child
- boyfriend and girlfriend
- specific is better than general
- the person who initiates the scene should also say the first line of dialogue
- the person who initiates an action (which the other player will mirror) gets to "label" it
- create a character with physicality
- ex: walk with your chest puffed out to show how you are proud
status: use status/power of a character to heighten or subvert expectations- uncertain supervisor and confident employee
- give your partner a gift -- tell them who they are, where they are, what's special about them, etc
🔥 Find people you like and make them laugh on stage.
- clearly establish
Base Realityas soon as possible (ideally within the first 3 lines of dialogue)- establish the situation the scene takes place in, lay the groundwork for the scene so the scene partners agree and the audience is interested
- who are to each other? the characters should have some previous relationship. what you say should impact the other person because you know each other
- where are we? give characters a context
- what are we doing? explore the relationship, environment, or game
game: find the first weird thing in the scene and double down on it- choose to know
- stop asking questions
- make a decision
- commit to the emotional truth and react honestly
- play to the top of your intelligence
- don't play a dumb character, you will lose the audience
- make things true
- when your partner offers a gift, embrace it and make it true
- rest the game
- things don't need to be high energy or volume all the time
- allow the scene to return to the base reality
- get specific
- act out the object
What I Love About Improv
Improv helps me overcome 2 of my major roadblocks in my creative process: ideation and execution. My ego ran away once I was on stage, so now I can make what I want.
ideation: Improv helped me come up with ideas on the fly and unlock old memories about my life.execution: In improv, you must respond to your scene partner swiftly. You don't have the time to analyze the wit or quality of every possible response. You pick one and commit to it. Improv helped more me forward to the doing part of the creative process.
Pick the first idea and commit to it. Overtime, you come up with better ideas and develop the skills to work with bad ones too.