We want active emotions in our scenes, so we need active details to react to. If the doll your character is afraid of is actually on stage with you, then rather than just talking about how you're afraid of dolls, you can actually act afraid because that doll is actively making you afraid in-the-moment. If you endow […]
The key to sustainable, dynamic two person scenes that are most conducive to improv as improv does best is setting up patterns of emotional behavior. While in the Facebook age, the world defines their friends by who, what, where and when, we know we know a person when we can say, “That’s how he is.” […]
In pursuing improv as improv does best, we seek to establish patterns of emotional behavior, leveraging them in developing sustainable scenes and subsequent beats. To aid in that pursuit, focus on following a character's "How."
To be most effective our patterns must heighten, either in a concentrated progression or through pure repetition. In building a progression, we focus on the relationship of Offer, Set and Cement moves to define how we heighten as a group. The Offer is anything, an initiation. From the Offer's single point in space on a blank […]
A pattern is established. It pops. What if it then gets put away out of play for a while? Tension, that's what. The ability to Cap a pattern takes restraint and can help increase the impact of the pattern once it returns to play. A teenage boy confronts his mother with his sinful proclivities. Mom […]
If beauty is defined by symmetries and proportional asymmetries – and it is – then we can craft beautiful trajectories in our scenes through pattern mechanics, employing triggers and caps to link heightening personal and scenic games. A scene that ends where it began - with a reformed character returnng to an old habit. A […]
We play with the three core elements of improvisation - The Details, Emotional Reactions and Patterns - in balance. We don't over-rely on being clever, which works as long as we are clever and fails us the moment we aren't. We don't over-play our emotional range with erratic characters that, at best, the audience just can't follow and, at […]
We enter a scene only to serve what is already in play. We enter to heighten a Personal Game. We enter to heighten a Scenic Game. We may help our fellow players by focusing them on one aspect of the scene when they're juggling too much, but in that effort we are focusing on what […]
Subsequent beats leverage an aspect of an originating scene in setting up a new scene. But… As our goal in any scene is establishing and heightening patterns of emotional behavior, initiations of subsequent beats that clearly focus attention on emotional reaction get us to our meat faster and leverage the power of pacing and pattern […]
I like formats. Playing within The Harold's dictated structure of Opening, 1A, 1B, 1C, Group Game, 2A, 2B, 2C, Group Game and 3A/B/C an improviser can spend less time on the wings worrying about what to initiate and more time focused on how to initiate. I like rules. Rules free us to play Pavlovianly and […]