Author Archives: ischempp

Improv is Agile Theatre

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I’ve been improvising for about 17 years now. The last 3 or so have also seen me take on a position as a software developer. In this position, I’ve been working with a team that has been utilizing an Agile method of software development. For the past few days, I’ve been rolling the idea around in my head that the reason that Agile development clicks so well with me is that it is actually quite similar to improvisational theatre.

I think the analogy works particularly well when you compare improvisational theatre to traditional scripted theatre (much as you would compare Agile development to traditional Waterfall development), so let’s do that. In all these cases, I’m letting the actors play the role of the developers, while the audience and/or the production crew play the role of the business folks.

First off, let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with Waterfall development, just like there’s nothing wrong with scripted theatre. Agile and improv are simply a different way at looking at how the goal should be accomplished. Improv does not make every theatre experience better, just as there are projects wherein Waterfall development is absolutely the correct choice. Also, whenever I talk about improv here, know that I am really referring to some platonic ideal of improv. In practice, some of these things fall by the wayside or are forgotten entirely, usually to the detriment of the show. That being said, remember that I am heavily biased towards improv, so keep that in mind as we look at the differences. Continue reading →

Breaking the rules

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I had a nice improv moment with my son the other day and thought I should share.

I had gotten an email earlier in the day from my wife about him making up a new song. Apropos of nothing, he had just started singing

I don’t know a bear, but
You sure know a bear, but
I don’t know a bear who eats popcorn

My wife offered a second verse, in which the bear ate some other food. The kiddo loved it and requested more and more verses.

Later in the day, they came to pick me up at work and I got the full version of the song (including the ridiculously catchy tune) from my wife. We drove along a ways and I realized the song was firmly planted in my brain with no hopes of coming out except for actually singing it. So we took turns singing verses where the bear ate all of the kid’s favorite foods.

Break the RulesFinally, I sang a verse that had the bear eat an airplane. At the mention of this ridiculousness, my son had some sort of a-ha moment and he immediately asked what else the bear ate. We made up a few more verses where the bear ate trains and boats and all sorts of things. Then, he started singing verses, something he hadn’t done since the original verse when he had made up the song. The rest of the car ride home was packed full of him singing verses about the bear eating street lights, houses, other bears, the moon; you name it and that bear ate it at least once.

It was the realization that the game could be more than just played that made him want to play the game again. I think that is probably a great lesson to keep in mind as we continue to improvise.

In short-form, we have these games that we play: rules we impose on our scenes to make them more interesting, to up the stakes for the audience watching us, to occupy our thinky brains so our dumb brains can play. There’s a lot of merit in finding out how to break the rules of these games to surprise both the audience and ourselves. Breaking the rules of the game can give us a new game, one that  we are even more excited to play.

The same thing happens in both short and long form with the idea of the game of the scene. Once you find the game of the scene you are excited to play that game to see where it takes you. Some scenes are in fact nothing but the game. But once you have played the game of the scene and you are getting those diminishing returns, you can just break the rules of that game and start all over again, assuming you found a variation of the game  that interests you.

So the next time you find yourself playing a game you aren’t excited by, I challenge you to find a way to break the rules of that game and mutate it into something that you can’t help but love.

 

Carnival of Improv Blogging: Why Improv?

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carnival posterHello and welcome to the second Carnival of Improv Blogging here at Around the Block Improv!

This week’s topic will be: Why Improv?

Why do you do improv rather than other art forms? What is it about improvising that really does it for you? Why should other people be doing improv? Anything that could conceivably be an answer to that incredibly simple yet inclusive question is desired.

If you want to be included, just go ahead and write away wherever you can, post it somewhere that everyone can see, and leave a link to that post here in the comments below by next Sunday, September 23. Then, on the 24th, I’ll write up a summary of everyone’s posts, complete with links.

Happy writing!

The Tao of Improv: Favor and Disgrace

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Favor and disgrace are alarming
Honor and distresses visit the self.

Why are favors and disgraces alarming?
Seeking favor is degrading,
alarming when it’s gotten,
alarming when it’s lost.

Tao Te Ching, 13 Breath

Over the course of the last year, I feel like my personal approach to improv has changed drastically. I am moving towards being much more selfish in my improv. I can point to two things that I think are the root causes: the 2012 Seattle Festival of Improvisation, and having a second child.

The having a second child cause is super obvious: I have less time to give to improvisation, so I have to be selfish with that time. I can’t do all the improv that I might want to do, because there is not enough time for that. So I have found myself having to be very picky indeed with what shows/jams/classes I can participate in. An upside to this is that it has forced me to start thinking more about what improv is really important to me, and I think I am coming away with a clearer picture of who I am as an improviser. Downside of course is less improv.

rubber stamp of Loki

Picture from DeviantArt user AliceInAutumn

The 2012 SFIT was slightly more complicated. I took some delightful workshops that year, and one of the things I really took home with me was the idea of improvising selfishly: to do the things that you want to be doing/that make you happy on stage. It really comes down to improvising from a place of inspiration rather than one of obligation. Improv, for the most part, is a team game, and so obligation will probably be present in some form, but it makes sense to me that inspiration will lead you to your best work. And if the things you want to be doing are disruptive to the show/group you are in? Guess what? You are in the wrong show/group. Get out. They probably aren’t paying you enough to do improv you don’t want to be doing.

So what does all this have to do with the Tao? Well, I’m going with the notion that “seeking favor” in this case refers to improvising with the intent of making an audience react. This can be anything from that line you thought of that you really want to work in to get a laugh all the way to trying to make Elicia cry. Seeking favor is degrading, as you are (I would bet) not doing the improv you want to do, but rather doing the improv you think the audience wants to see. You degrade your own work in order to keep banging on that Skinnerian treat bar, expecting another delicious yet fleeting pellet of audience reaction.

Let’s say you do get the reaction you were looking for: then what happens? You (the actor) have accomplished your objective (to get the reaction), so there are three big options for you:

  1. Search for a new objective. This will take a little bit of time, and it will probably be noticeable by the audience.
  2. Leave. Could be awkward, especially if you character has no motivation to do so.
  3. Call the scene. Only really an option in short form.

In any case, the favor of the audience was alarming to the scene.

Let’s say you didn’t get the reaction you were looking for. Then you will probably be up in your analytic brain trying to figure out why it didn’t work. Again, alarming to the scene.

Rather, if you improvise selfishly, with no regard to seeking the audience’s favor, then you are better prepared to be in the moment of the scene and be ready to jump on any inspiration that scene brings. I would definitely argue that the audience will enjoy that scene more than the one that happens to end on a big laugh line, and certainly more than the one that should have ended on that laugh line, continued anyway, and fizzled for lack of actor connection.

So I would encourage more people to improvise selfishly. If nothing else, I think it will make you think about yourself as an improviser and what you like about improv. And that’s a great first step to creating the improv show you want to be doing.

Carnival Roundup: Getting to Know You

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Here’s the results of our first ever Carnival of Improv Blogging, where we asked to get to know you a little better:

carnival posterStarting off with the pieces that our editors wrote, Elicia Wickstead tells us about that critical moment when it became clear to her that she was a theatre nerd and had found a home among improvisers; Joel Dale talks about how being late to an improv audition may have been the first big step in his improv journey; Dave Clapper writes about how his love of group-generated art brought him back to the improv folds not long ago after a long hiatus; Next, we get a quick trip through the improv life and times of Phill Arensberg, coming to a head at the thoughts he has been having most recently about improv; I’m next on the list, with a brief history of Ian, focusing on the improv-y bits; and rounding out our merry band is Andrew McMasters, who tells us a little about his love affair with the audience and how he stays so darn upbeat all the time.

Of course, the carnival is not all about the editors, and this time we got two submissions from the readers as well! First off we have Holden, who gives us a short piece on the somewhat therapeutic role improv has played in his life. Secondly, we have Douglas Willot, who tells us about young him, whose brain was altered by improv and started turning him into the well-oiled improvisational man/machine he is today.

There, that about does it for our inaugural carnival. I’m very happy to see all the responses we have gotten so far. So I command you: go, read, comment if you are inspired to, lurk if you are not. We’ll see if we can’t get another carnival up and off the ground next week. I’m optimistic.

Getting to Know You: Ian Schempp

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Hi! My name is Ian Schempp and I am an improviser.

I started improvising in 1997 in high school. As a full-fledged drama nerd, I was part of an after-school drama club. This was back in the days when Comedy Central only had about 4 shows and one of them was the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? A few like-minded friends and I decided to create and after-after-school-drama-club-improv-club where we emulated the things we saw on that show. In retrospect, it was probably some of the most toe-curlingly awful improv humans could have done. In the moment, however, we were improvisational geniuses, cracking each other up and loving every second of it.

Sisters of Sal group photo

Sisters of Sal, 2006 – photo by David Wahl

Soon after, I headed off to college to pursue a degree in mathematics. Luckily for me, the local improv group performed at our orientation and happened to mention that they were having auditions. On a whim, I tried out and made it in. In all likelihood, this will be one of the most important moments in my life, as I’m sure it changed pretty much everything from here on out. I fell absolutely in love with improv and spent as much time as possible doing it, much to the chagrin of my GPA. My sophomore year, the new director of the group (we had a new one each year) decided the gloves were going to come off. We pushed ourselves much harder than apparently the group ever had: going to shows at The Groundlings and even hiring improvisers from The Groundlings and iO West to come do workshops for us. My senior year, I ended up not only directing the group, but doing an independent study course that involved teaching a class in improv and writing a rudimentary textbook on the subject.

After college, I moved here to Seattle, naively thinking I would pursue higher education in mathematics. That lasted for almost exactly one year. After getting out of the grad school game, a friend from college took me to a Monday night improv free-for-all, co-quasi-lead by our own Joel Dale. I met a lot of great improvisers there, and ended up joining a group called Sisters of Sal. We did montage-y long form stuff, mostly at Seattle’s now-defunct Cage Match. About this time I also auditioned for and got in to Jet City Improv, which has been my improv home ever since. Sisters of Sal whittled itself down into a duo (doing some of my favorite work) and eventually stopped, but JCI continues strong. That’s where I teach, where I rehearse, and where I do 90% of my improv now.

Unspeakable Horrors poster illustration

Poster art for Unspeakable Horrors by Sean Patella-Buckley

While at Jet City, I’ve had the opportunity to create and direct several great shows: Shades of Gray, This Improvised Life, Unspeakable Horrors, Explorer’s Club, and most notably (at least for me) Funbucket. I’ve also had the opportunity to teach many classes and a couple workshops through the theater. I’ve studied a lot under a lot of great improvisers, but a lot of who I am as an improviser is due in large part to three great teachers: Jill Bernard, Joe Bill, and Asaf Ronen. Go buy their books. I hear Joe will have one eventually.

And now, here I am: writing about improv, the non-human love of my life, for this blog. I really do hope we get a chance to argue and agree loudly about things in the surprisingly-for-the-internet civil and intelligent comments section here. Thank you for reading and hopefully for writing as well.

The Tao of Improv: Useful in its Emptiness

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(NOTE: Originally posted at Seattle Comedy Nerd)

Thirty spokes converge at the hub,
but emptiness completes the wheel

Clay is shaped to make a pot
and what’s useful is its emptiness.

Carve fine doors and windows,
but the room is useful in its emptiness.

What is
is beneficial, while what is not
also proves useful.

Tao Te Ching, 11 Breath

For the purposes of this post, the emptiness referred to in the above passage is referring to audience interpretation. I think that the power and intelligence of the audience can be a contentious subject from one school of thought to another. This of course is not limited to improv, but really can be extended to any art (or entertainment) form.

The question is: how much do you leave up to the audience and how much do you spell out for them?

Traditionally, beginning improvisers are very much taught to spell it out. Literally. C-R-O-W: Character, Relationship, Objective, Where. We even have exercises wherein we attempt to fit all four into a three-line scene. Now, in reality, this is for the student improviser much more than for the audience; walk before you run and all that. Actually saying out loud that your scene partner is your grandmother helps put her into a state of mind to support that offer directly.

After you get the hang of falling into the role that is needed for the scene, then we start venturing into the realm of “show, don’t tell” which actually forces the improviser to *gasp* act. Soon, you fall into the habit of “show emotion, tell reality,” where you do not say “Hello Grandmother, I am angry at you,” but rather just say “Hello Grandmother” in an angry tone. More and more communication becomes nonverbal. Soon you realize that these physical relationships (mother/daughter, roommates, etc) are fine, but what is truly important is the emotional relationship (hating your mother, lusting after your roommate, etc).

A quick aside to talk about my personal preferences. I love not being told everything, regardless of medium. Books, films, video games, I’d rather be thrown into a world and be forced to fill in the blanks of what I don’t know. A Clockwork Orange is one of my favorite examples. In the book, you are thrown into a story full of meaningless jargon, and you are forced to make sense of it as the story goes. There is no handy glossary to flip to when you first encounter the protagonist’s droogs, nor is there any explanation as to the prevalence of milk bars. You come to have your own definitions and backstories for each of these things, and I love that. Of course, it has to be executed well. Undoubtedly, Anthony Burgess had a concrete definition for each bit of jargon and each unexplained item, he just chose not to include those things in the novel itself. My personal preferences will be coloring pretty much the rest of the post, so I thought it would be good to get them out there.

So we have seen the communication techniques of the beginning improviser move from concrete towards abstraction, and now I’d like to talk about the audience suggestion. Specifically, how I like to see the same movement towards abstraction when dealing with the suggestion. Double-specifically in short form improv.

I am most definitely of the opinion that suggestions need not be taken literally and in fact that most scenes are improved when they are not. Now, what do I mean by “taken literally?” For the most part, I mean when you get the suggestion “hamster” and you begin your scene either as a hamster or holding a cage with a hamster in it. Instead, I love to see improvisers take the suggestion as a metaphor (perhaps playing a character who is desperately running away from something, but getting nowhere), or maybe take a single (hopefully logical) step away from the suggestion and see where that leads them.

There are definitely conflicting viewpoints on this, and I have argued the points with some of my dearest friends and most respected colleagues. Their argument usually being along the lines of “the audience said hamster and they want to see that hamster, as it provides them with co-ownership of the scene, which is really a selling point of improv in general.” I get that, and I totally agree with them. Again, we are talking my personal preference, and I think it leads into the discussion of “who is the show for? Is it for the audience or the improvisers?” My wonderfully hedging answer to that being “both.”

I think that audiences appreciate being challenged to find the connections that the improvisers have made, and that a deeper appreciation for the scene can be had using the suggestion-as-metaphor angle. If you do this, expect there to be at least one audience member per show ready to yell out “where was the hamster?” I don’t really have a good answer for this, but I tend to go with the “never apologize” route. You made the choices you made, and those choices were correct, so there is no need to apologize for them.

Letting the audience interpret your choices can lead to scenes that I think are far more rewarding, both for the improviser (getting the freedom to play as you want, rather than feeling tied down to the audience) and for the audience member (filling in the blanks with your own ideas, and the feeling that you get when you get to the same place as an improviser at the same time). You carve fine doors and windows using your words at the top of a scene, but the room inside allows you space to fill with emotion. The emptiness you leave between the suggestion you receive and the inspiration that moves you to act completes the wheel.

The Tao of Improv: Better to Stop Pouring

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(NOTE: Originally posted at Seattle Comedy Nerd)

Overfilled, the cupped hands drip.
Better to stop pouring.

One over-sharpens the well-forged blade,
and it won’t last long.

With gold and jade in the hall,
the house isn’t safer.

Wealth and pride
are the authors of error.

When the work is completed,
it’s time to retire.

That is the Tao of Heaven

Tao Te Ching; 9 Heaven

To me, this passage relates to improv in that it is all about knowing when NOT to do things.

Let us start at the beginning. In the beginning, as an improviser, most likely we find getting on stage to be terrifying. Either we have no acting background and so stage fright begins to seep into our minds, or we do have an acting background and not having the safety of lines/blocking/character is almost mind-boggling. Either way, entering (or worse, starting) a scene is something that we must be forced to do. Soon after, however, we realize that we can improvise on stage without actually dying. We look forward to spending time playing with our fellow improvisers and spending time on stage with them. This is when the lessons I see in this passage can begin to be taught because most likely, our hypothetical beginning improviser is eagerly starting scenes and finding reasons to be in each and every scene, hungry for more experience.

So now we must break it to them that more improvisers is not always better, and knowing when to stay out of a scene is at least as important as knowing when to enter one. Our beginning improviser probably already knows this. Some basic pattern recognition and analysis will reveal that the scenes that involve ALL the improvisers often line up with those scenes that, in retrospect, could charitably be called clusterfucks. No need to overfill the stage with potential main characters, better to identify the protagonist of our scene early and let the scene flow around her.

Parallel to the idea of overfilling the stage with actors is overfilling the scene with offers. In reality, they are the same problem: information glut. With too many actors, there are offers coming from each, so some will almost inevitably be dropped. But even with only two (or heck, one) actor on stage, it is important to know when to stop pouring information into the scene, lest it overflow, spilling those offers onto the desert sands, never to be seen again. Better to stop pouring and start drinking, following the offers you have and seeing where they lead you.

Jill Bernard (whose name, if you do not already know, you will quickly become familiar with by reading anything I write) made a wonderful drawing about precisely this. I do not have a photo of it at the moment, but I will post it later if I take one/find one. The gist is this: why spend your precious scene time searching for what the scene is about when you can just MAKE the scene about the first offer you get? There is no “best offer” that will make your scene amazing, your scene will be amazing by taking the first offer and making it the best, by which I mean make it affect your character and his relationships. After all, that’s what all the great offers do, isn’t it? So why not make the offer you got a great one?

I also wanted to touch on the second to last stanza, knowing when to retire. This stanza is all about endings, a very important part of improv that gets little attention. Endings are hard, especially in an art form whose very foundation is built on the idea of “Yes, and,” reminding us that there is always a next line, always a next move.

I’ve noticed as a teacher that many improvisers I teach are incredibly reluctant to leave the stage, even when that is the strongest move they could make. In fact, I’d say most of those students have their minds a little blown when they admit they had completed their objective and I ask them why they didn’t leave. When the work is done, it is time to retire, and if you have no objective, then it is time to leave the stage. Your fellow improvisers will fill the now-empty stage; that’s their job.

In the short form world, we tend to focus our endings on laugh lines. Regardless of where we are in the story arc of the scene, if you get a big laugh (or any other big emotional response, really), there is a very real possibility that the scene is about to be called. Speaking from personal experience, in short form we tend to more often run into the opposite problem: cutting scenes before they are “over.” I think this comes from how most short form shows are structured: a preference for many scenes with a focus on high-energy performance. Again from personal experience, I would say that while many scenes do get big laughs, the ones that get applause are the ones wherein everything is tied up neatly when the scene is called. So now the question becomes which is more important: striving for the completed story, or cutting early and leaving the audience wanting more. I’d say the former leads to more volatility in the overall quality of the show, while the latter is the safer, more traditional choice. I’d also say the former is my preference. Also, as a bonus, striving for the completed story will force you to realize when you are overfilling the scene with information, thus sharpening your storytelling.

When we move into the world of long form, endings become more ambiguous, but I think the goal remains the same: neatly wrapped packages of scenes with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. It’s just that now the packages need not necessarily be the entire arc of a story, but rather a single beat in that story.

I am rapidly losing my focus and this post is getting much longer than I thought it would. Perhaps another post on this topic will happen, but right now I need to stop typing and hit the Publish button. I’ll say that this got very Tao/Zen very fast, speaking to the importance of that which does not happen. I’m happy about that.

The Tao of Improv: an introduction

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(NOTE: Originally posted at Seattle Comedy Nerd)

I recently read the ridiculously wonderful and still-just-as-relevant-as-it-was-in-2000 article A Dao of Web Design on A List Apart. It is the thoughts of a designer living at a time when the expectation for a website was to be “pixel-perfect” on each browser, a feat that was difficult to accomplish to say the least. He uses passages from the Tao Te Ching to highlight why he thinks this approach must be set aside.

Long story short, in reading the article, I realized that many of the passages could equally pertain to improv. Not a new idea, as he points out that everything from Winnie the Pooh to Physics has gotten the Tao treatment, but that was the 90’s, 20+ years ago, so now it will be delightfully retro chic to apply it to my particular set of interests.

So I picked up a copy of the Tao Te Ching and have started reading it with one eye always on improv and how these passages can contain lessons on our favorite performance art form. Already I have made some copious notes, so I wanted to start a semi-regular series on the passages and the thoughts I had on them. Hopefully opening them up for further discussion.

Note that I am in no way a Taoist or real student of the Tao. These posts will be mostly based on a very brief reading of one translation of the Tao Te Ching, with little time given for true introspection and analysis. Mostly just gut reactions to the work and the things that pop to mind when I read them. Perhaps later there will be time to truly study it and make deeper connections, but that isn’t the point right now. The point is to write, and the Tao Te Ching will act as one of my inspiration engines.