The Argon Kitten

Notes from Matt Besser’s NYC Workshop

nicclee:

Matt Besser was in town this weekend and made a stop at the UCB Theater to do an improv lecture/workshop. As someone who has studied at a few different improv schools, it was very interesting (and at times, conflicting) to hear Besser’s philosophy/approach to improv. I took a bunch of notes, some of which I’ll share here. Regardless of what school you study at or what philosophy you subscribe to, it’s interesting to hear about the UCB style of improv from one of the UCB 4. Enjoy!

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- What’s your mindset in a scene? The mindset of long form improvisers should be about listening to others and sharing the same thought bubble as your scene partner. It should not be a selfish mindset, which is common in short form or stand-up, because it means the group is not working to build something together.

- At UCB, a great improvised scene is equivalent in quality to an A+ sketch. It should not be viewed as improvised plays with silly stories, narrative and plot that wouldn’t even hit well as sketches. UCB is not about improvising something that would work as a play.

- There are two kinds of long form: Organic and Premise-Based. Organic improv uses no opening and is based on a single word suggestion. There’s no first person; you mutually discover the unusual thing. Premise-based improv uses an opening to draw ideas and premises based on a suggestion from the audience. Someone steps out first and we believe that they have something on their minds. We have to look for what that is, not laying on our own thing, until we see what’s unusual.

- Base reality = using Yes-And from the suggestion to set up the who/what/where; it is strong ground that we need to build so we can separate what’s real from what’s unusual in the world we build

- Once the unusual thing appears, we don’t need to Yes-And anymore and we start to ask and answer “if this unusual thing is true, what else is true?” —> This is what sets UCB apart from other schools, which often Yes-And through the entire scene AKA “Yes-And-itis” - it allows for multiple unusual things to be introduced, which confuses what the game is; it happens when players are not playing to the top of their intelligence (a result of fear of silence, being lost in the scene and not getting laughs)

- The unusual thing is not a game in and of itself. A game is about what we do with the unusual thing and answers the “what else is true about this unusual thing” question.

- Playing to the top of your intelligence = if you recognize that something is unusual, your character knows it is unusual; being realistic; committing to a character as best you can; the intelligence of how people behave towards each other —> it’s not enough to think that this means your character is as smart as you are or knows what you know: ex. you can’t say that an 8-year-old kid is as smart as you are, which would be unusual

- The unusual thing = premise. A game doesn’t happen until the other person speaks.

- Initiations: it’s important for our scene partner to know where we’re coming from in the opening and what we found funny so we can share the same thought bubble and create a common ground

- Use everything your partner says in the initiation as a clue to where they’re coming from and what they thought was funny from the opening. Find what you think your partner found funny by being real and not trying to be funny. Let your partner spell out what they thought was funny if it’s not immediately obvious so you don’t step on what was initially funny and muddle it with a different idea. Give your partner a chance to express what they thought was funny before slapping on what you thought was funny from the opening.

- Think of an opening as your memory: we remember unusual things. Stories and memories are the unusual things in our lives. Flag the unusual things you pick up from the opening. Laughs from the audience are good clues about what should be flagged as funny, but other subtle things can be used. Understand what makes us laugh from the opening and the humor behind the thing that makes us laugh. Don’t get attached to the words themselves or the funny details.

- Openings:

• Chaff - words similar to the suggestion that don’t bring us to any ideas or premises; every opening has chaff
• Half idea - we can’t put a premise into words, but we can direct our partner to what we think is funny; we agree there’s potential for something funny but we don’t know how to package it
• Idea - we can package what’s funny into a who/what/where initiation

- The funny things from the opening should become games. Premise can go on different paths to become the game - it usually takes the 2nd person in a scene to dictate how we play the game. One person does not necessarily bring the entire game to the scene, since we don’t know what direction it will take until we get a response (whether it will be a straight man, peas in a pod, etc.).

- Improv should truly explore the suggestion, or else what’s the point of asking for one? Improv should be easy. Don’t complicate scenes. Be simple. Explore why the thing was funny and pull those funny things into scenes.

- Heightening and Explore:

• Heighten = find what’s funny and make it funnier; heightening without exploring is dangerous because we can lose the reality and blow out the unusual thing too quickly to silliness
• Exploring = figuring out why this is happening; answering why it is happening; exploration makes your heightening smart so you don’t get crazy without explaining why
• Why = logic, rationale, justification for why this is happening; ability to defend your unusual behavior; gives you more ammo/fuel for the comedy machine to play your game; the logic should not be absurd or silly to answer your behavior; the funny will come the smarter, more logical you can be in your justification; your goal is to fool a real person into believing you

- The earlier we are in a scene, the more logical we need our Whys to be in order to establish the base reality. It allows us to move to absurdity by the end of the scene.

- Raising the stakes - a term initially taught in Chicago when doing a second beat, which seems to take your game to an archetypical scenario; it implies 3rd beats are better than 2nd beats, which are better than 1st beats; the idea of raising the stakes is subjective

- Instead of “raising the stakes,” think about what is another great place to play the game or what’s another scenario with potential to play the game with new details.

- Focus on exploring one unusual thing per scene. If you feel lost in a scene, react realistically.

- If your partner ignores the unusual thing you initiate with, they often are not playing to the top of their intelligence and are trying to be funny with their own unusual thing. If that happens, drop your idea and go with your partner’s because it’s the last thing said and the last thing the audience hears. Ideally, your partner is listening and playing to the top of their intelligence, reacting realistically to your unusual thing.
Ex: Initiation: I saw you weeping during Schindler’s List. Did you cry because you thought it was a documentary and the actors in it actually died?
Response: Did the Holocaust not really happen? (this is not playing to the top of their intelligence)
Response: What? I was crying because it’s a good movie about this atrocious event in our history and the actors did a wonderful job. (this is a response more in line with listening and playing to the top of our intelligence)

Thanks! Sharing because these are great notes- and probably more concise than what I had written down myself.

“The most important thing an improviser can be is boring”

improvisorsimprovisor:

nicolemarietherese:

- Gethard

I don’t want to quote him out of context, so let me provide some background.

Read More

Very important. PLease read.

Coach-less Improv Rehearsals….

improvdanceparty:

Or as I like to call them.. Charades!

I have been told by a few of my students that they’ve been doing practice sessions without a coach. They say it’s hard to find a coach, get the coach they want, or can’t afford one. 

All well and good, but don’t think for a minute that you are improving your improvisational chops, what you are doing in having fun, socializing.[Something a lot of us aren’t good at] You can do the same thing with a rousing game of Pictionary.

What can start out as something that is great for team unity, can be the death knell of a group once one player gives another player a note. Groups tend to have different personalities on the team. Your Alpha type initiators, your Beta type supporters, and Gypsies. Alpha are the ones that tend to say “We don’t need a Coach, we can do this on our own”, they have strong opinions about what good improv should be. They are also the ones that can start giving notes, molding the team into what they want it to be. The Beta goes along, not wanting to rock the boat until someone you trust says you are not doing Improv right. Once trust is lost, that team is lost. While this is happening, the Gypsy is stealing wallets.

Trust is the foundation.

If someone is caught giving notes to their fellow performers on a Harold team, they should be removed before that whole team falls apart.

We all do it, we all want our teammates to play exactly like us to make ourselves comfortable on stage. We all sneak little notes to each other passive aggressively. “I’m sorry, did you want me to be your dad in that scene?” Apologizing to each other after a show is a way to note each other. I do it all the time, but I then apologize to myself.

Trust is being able to do anything on stage and knowing the rest of your team has your back. It allows you to take risks. It allows you to fail so that you get better. If you feel someone on your team is judging your moves, you start to second guess, then you’re out of the game.

If you are an Alpha and you feel you want to give notes, you should be the one pushing for a coach, if not your bad habits will become harder to fix and no one will want to play with you.

If you feel you’re more of a Beta, more supportive. Realize you are the most important person on the team, you are the one that will provide the trust.

If you are a Gypsy, you are a thief and you should give the wallets back.

Getting a Coach

1. Everyone wants to coach, there is no shortage. What you should do is go to shows with your group. Pick the team and players that, as a group, you feel is the style you want to play. Ask if they could coach you.

2. Don’t get hung up on getting THE coach, some of the younger coaches are eager will work harder.

3. Don’t get hung up on ONE coach. I am a big supporter of getting several Coaches over a month or two to find the right fit. Also, after 6 months you should always change Coaches even if things are fine, it prevents complacency. 

4. The group decides the Coach, not one player.

5. If you had a real tough Coach, make your next one a little more laid back. And Visa Versa.

6. Treat your coached sessions with importance, show up on time, ask questions, learn. It is your job to make them productive.

7. Since coming to LA, I have found the majority of practices are at peoples houses. That’s just the way it is. I have been to too many sessions in peoples houses that were too small, have distractions, and become hang out sessions. If at all possible, rehearse in a rehearsal space. You perform on a stage, why wouldn’t you practice on one.

Notes to Coaches

1. Don’t Coach for the money, Coach because you fucking want to. I see too many Coaches turn this into a way to make a living, then forget why they are doing this. But make sure you get paid.

2. Notes should not last longer then the scenes. Make them quick and to the point, then get them up again.

3. Give examples of scenes that were similar, don’t just textbook your notes. Make your notes human.

4. Sometimes a group just wants to play, let them play.

5. Don’t Coach to keep your job. Sometimes you want them to like you and bring you back as a coach so you tell them what they want to hear.

6. Don’t be the tough Coach just to be the tough Coach. You can find something wrong in every scene if want. But that can beat a team down. Know when to note and when not to.

7. Keep your ego in check. Your good, you can Coach, leave it at that.

8. If you are a “Coach” that means you get them up, stretch them out, have them run laps, get them ready for the big game.

There is a difference between a Coach and a Director. A Coach works you out to get ready for a show. A Director is a facilitator of the artistic vision of the group. A director helps in developing form, and is responsible for the shows look and feel. They should also come to your shows.

Never hire a Gypsy!

Two-Minute Bravery

twominutebravery:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about improv in the past 13 years that I’ve been learning, coaching and teaching it, it’s that it really doesn’t matter if you’re the boss, the nerd, the robot, the lame sparrow, the piece of dog crap on someone’s shoe, or the sound of wind from offstage; in two minutes, you won’t be.

I admit, I don’t particularly get a thrill out of my scene partner telling me to get down on my hands and knees and lick his boots. But if I’m on stage, and my character’s a peasant begging for mercy in front of the king, I’ll do it. I’ll eat nails onstage. I’ll play a paraplegic. I’ll die in a scene.

This leads to the question, “Yes, but if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?”

The correct answer, of course, is “Absolutely, I would, if this ‘bridge’ is an improv bridge and the ‘frigid water and jagged rocks below’ is the carpet in front of our two-foot-tall stage.”

Because I’m not really licking that guy’s boots. Or eating nails. Or, you know, dying.

It’s all empty space. My favorite quote right now is this:

“Of all the obstacles that receive attention…the one that is most often forgotten is also the most common: empty space.” — Duncan Germain (TK17)

That’s a parkour guru in his awesome documentary Pilgrimage. In other words, a traceur can practice vaulting over a wall 200 times, but then completely forget that they still need to be good at efficiently running across the 50 feet of gravel leading up to that wall.

The same can absolutely be said about improv: the greatest obstacle is not how deftly you handle that perfect punchline or how accurate your Jamaican and Canadian accents are; the hardest thing to do is get out on a blank stage and turn that empty space into a secret lair or beach or courtroom or spaceship. Or turn your own personal empty space into a janitor or skydiver or breastfeeder …or whatever else you don’t want to be in real life.

But that’s what you have to remember about improv. Yes, there’s Truth In Comedy, but it’s not real life. If you quit your job in a scene, tomorrow you don’t have to wake up and apply for unemployment. If you jump off a bridge, you’re not going home with a broken leg. And if you die onstage, in two minutes, your teammate’s going to extend her hand and help you up.

I capital-B Believe that every improviser can summon the superhuman courage necessary to be the most committed Kinko’s assistant manager ever for the 2 minutes this Kinko’s scene is going to last.

That’s Two-Minute Bravery.

First Impressions

montrealimprov:

Hosting.

It’s not easy. It’s a skill and an art and I’m still figuring it out.

But I have figured out two things so far about what to do when you first come onstage.

• Walk out with confidence and energy.

No hands in pockets. No slumped shoulders. No casual stroll to your mark or the mic or wherever you’re going to stand. Let’s work with the idea that you’re excited to be on that stage. Act like it! Let the crowd know it! If our first image of the show is a sullen/beatdown/don’t-care galump to center stage, I’m already inclined to mirror you and galump my face onto my smartphone.

• Smile

No need to be over-enthusiastic. No one likes forced or phony. Just be yourself. Be your best self. Be your happy self. Smile. The audience is there to smile and laugh and have a good time. Gent or lady, if you’re genuinely smiling, the crowd will smile along with you and it will mess up their minds because they won’t even know they’re doing it. INCEPTION.

These seem kind of obvious, no? It’s great if you think that but I keep having to give these two notes. Smile and bring a little verve to the stage. If you’ve done any clown work, you know how important an entrance can be. Think of yourself as the cover of a book: you’re maybe not what people came for but you will definitely set the tone.

- vinny