Listen Up!

Hey everybody! This week we're going to talk about one of the most fundamental skills of improv, and also one of the most neglected: listening!

Listening sounds like a skill you'd work on in kindergarten, but I actually see collegiate improvisers screw up on listening more than anything else. There are a lot of things that you need to listen to in an improv piece, so let me break it down for you.

Names!

When somebody says a character's name, that's their name for the rest of the scene. (And the rest of the show in a long form piece.) It's really important that you remember the names of other characters and your own character. Otherwise you might accidentally give a character a second name, or you might want to start a scene with that character but not know how to call them on.

Callbacks!

If another character mentions a trait about themselves, or if they start some kind of pattern, you had better remember it. Otherwise you're missing out on the funniest parts of the show! Calling things back from earlier is one of an improviser's most powerful tools! DeBono often ends games of freeze with a callback to an earlier scene. (It's more than just a long form thing!)

Music!

This one is especially true for us at DeBono. It's super important to listen when you're making music! The people outside of the scene need to know what's going on in the song and they need to remember the chorus. Whoever is singing has to listen to our incredibly talented accompanist for musical cues. Making a song takes a lot of listening.

Scene work!


Probably the most important, and also the most basic. If you're in a scene with someone, listen to them! Internalize every word that they say! When you really let everything they say sink in and take the time to think about it before responding, you get much better cooperation. Listening to each other opens you up for all sorts of patterns and games within the scene, and just makes for a much more natural scene. I've done exercises recently that emphasize listening to your scene partner more, and they've been super helpful to me. (Shoutout to my fantastic Titanic Players coaches, Marybeth and Ben.)


So in conclusion, practice listening to and internalizing everything said during improv! It's such a basic skill, but it makes all the difference in the world.

It's like I always say: you learn more when listening than when talking.



I don't always say that.

-Nick.

The Greatest Gift Of All!

You knew I would be back, it was just a matter of when!

Today I'm going to be talking a little bit about a very fundamental aspect of improv: gift giving. Simply put, gift giving is when you give your scene partner or yourself a gift; usually an aspect of their (or your) character.

Check out this terrible stock photo I found!

Let's start with giving gifts to yourself.

Really gift giving to yourself is just an aspect of developing your character. For example, I recently did a musical in which I played the antagonist. In the first scene, my character mentioned that he had built a hyper-grabbing fishing pole to steal the secret recipe.

Once I gave myself that gift (in this case, that my character invented things) I continued using it the whole show. Somebody's going to tell on us? No problem, I've invented silencing putty. We need to take something from someone? That's fine, I'll just use my freeze ray to stall them. Once you have that gift, your character suddenly becomes way more interesting.

Now a more subtle example. We once did a musical that involved stealing cattle. Jordan came on and promptly introduced himself as One-Eyed Jim, The Cattle Appraiser. In this case, a cattle appraiser was a good way to advance the plot, but Jordan also gave himself the gift of being one-eyed, just to make the character more interesting. One-Eyed Jim was certainly more interesting than some boring old two-eyed cattle appraiser.

Now that we've covered giving gifts to yourself, it's time to talk about giving gifts to your partner.

In one of my favorite musicals that DeBono has done, (the suggestion was "Casino") the protagonists made it pretty clear that the bad guy was going to be the owner of the casino. So in the antagonist scene, I started the scene by calling on casino owner Master Deathclaw. Once Simeon knew that he was Master Deathclaw, that opened up all sorts of fun games that he could play with his character. (That's why we call it a gift!)

And again, a more subtle example: we once started a musical with a conversation about how the terrible Coat Beast was lurking in Burlington Coat Factory. We talked about how scared we were, and how our fearless manager would see us through it. After all our tales of his bravery and heroism, Michael Gaschler entered as the man himself.

Because we had already given his character several traits to work off of, he already had a very solid character built and knew pretty much what he had to do. We gave him the greatest gift of all: the gift of character.

One final note on gift giving: it's usually best to give someone positive traits. It is, after all, supposed to be a gift. Obviously there are cases where it's better to give someone negative traits, but mostly you want to give them stuff they can work with.

After all, the best improviser is one who makes their partner look good.

-Nick.

Hosting to the Mosting

You can look at a troupe and see them for what they are and judge them for their improv they put up on stage. There's countless rules to remember while you're improving- don't put your hands in your pockets, invent don't use your real life, yes-and, and so on and so forth. But there's a hidden art that lies within each show that improv troupes do. SOMEONE'S GOTTA BE THE HOST!!!!!

Hosting a show is scary if you're doing it for the 1st time. It also can be boring if you're doing it for the 1,000th time. So how do you make your hosting experience enjoyable for both you and audience? Well maybe you should take a look at 

JORDAN'S GUIDELINES TO HOSTING AN IMPROV SHOW

And to preface this, I will just say that these are good ideas and basic techniques... once you find a hosting style that suits you best, you can choose to ignore or poop on these guidelines. Also, even though I'm writing these, I don't always find myself adhering to them either. Cause i mess up a lot.

1. Loosen Up Beforehand- Nothing looks more awkward or weird to an audience than someone who is really stiff up there. There is a certain advantage (I've found) to literally shaking yourself and jumping around before going out to host. Even though you may look like a goon jumping around up there, it exudes energy, which is what you want to get the audience to feel for the team. Which brings me to the second rule...

2. ENERGY- You're the frontman for the troupe that you're on. When you're talking, no one else is looking at anyone else. So MAKE THEM want to pay attention to you! Run on stage yelling, clapping, and moving around.  Cause chances are that unless you have the perfect audience, they're gonna need a little kickstart before the show starts. You need to act like this team is the best group in the WORLD and that the audience is the best audience ever conceived. So put on a smile, and give them a metaphorical Red Bull to the face.

3. Speak Loudly/Clearly- This is most especially important in short form shows, because you're talking more than in a longform piece, but if you don't talk loud enough, or articulate enough, the audience won't know what's going on. That puts a big damper on their enjoyment of the game/ piece, when they're trying to understand what's going on. I was always told in my theater experience in high school, to speak loud enough for an old lady in the back of the room to hear you. So do that. Make sure Nana Ingrid hears you.

4. Don't Rant- There is a time and a place for monologues, and I'd say that hosting isn't one of them. Chances are the audience isn't there to hear you blab about the next game, or one time that you and your friend Roger ate a whole box of Hot Pockets, but they're there for the TEAM. To see some IMPROV!! So concisely explain the game, clearly act for a suggestion and don't dilly dally. They want the funny.

5. Be Confident Be Yourself- Believe me. It's an improv show. Nobody will walk out if your hosting isn't stellar. They will not boo you off stage. The best way I've found to host is to just run out and be a louder version of myself. The audience can feel that you are being genuine, and they appreciate that. If you believe that you are going to do a good job, you probably will.

So there you have it. 5 simple guidelines! I'm sure there are more, but right now I can't think of many good ones, and I have a test that I'm procrastinating for. I mean preparing for. 

So thanks everybody! You've been a great audience tonight! Drive safe and we'll see you next week! Goodnight! 

~Jordan

p.s. this picture is random. But awesome/adorable.

Conflict!

Time for more improv tips!

Last time I talked about how to handle climaxes in long form improv. Today I'm going to talk about something a little more basic, but completely instrumental to musical improv... conflict! Specifically the overarching conflict that fuels a musical piece.

This one is sort of specific to musical improv. Musicals hinge on a conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Making that conflict one that draws in the audience and gets them excited is what makes a musical fun! However, for all you people who don't do musical improv (and let me tell you, you're missing out) the principals here can be applied in other ways, too.

The first thing I want to mention about conflict is this... make it personal! It's way more interesting to see a musical where the protagonist and antagonist know each other and have a history. When your protagonist and antagonist have a person relationship, it opens up so many opportunities in the musical.

The other big point I want to make about the conflict is the reason I wrote this post... go crazy with it!! It's amazing how improvisers tend to forget that we're doing improv. The conflict doesn't have to be obvious! We've done several musicals with the suggestion 'Airport,' and that suggestion can be taken many different ways.

When you hear 'airport,' you can take a security guard trying to keep the airport safe, or you could have a renegade passenger who wants to highjack the plane and fly around the world. Which sounds more fun to you?

This game can be played with any location. If we get the suggestion 'bar,' we could do a show about two competing bar owners, or about a 15 year old kid drinking at the bars and fighting tooth and nail with his band of rebels to avoid getting kicked out.

I guess the point I'm getting at is that the audience wants to see a non-intuitive conflict. Break out of the day-to-day stuff!

One more thing on this... oftentimes the protagonist gets put in the spot of playing the straight man because the audience needs to be able to empathize with them. So use the antagonist to introduce unexpectedness.

For example, one of my personal favorite DeBono musicals involved a protagonist who was cheating at the casino to win money. Rather than just have a casino manager who wanted to prevent cheating, we had a sociopathic control-freak casino overlord named Master Deathclaw. He had a claw for a hand. It was pretty hilarious. His 'I Want' song was called 'Only I Can Win.'

So have fun out there, and remember that even when you're in a conflict with another character, you need to be agreeing with your fellow improvisers. Improv is a team sport!

-Nick.

Ready...? Action!!

Continuing my series of posts about improv fundamentals, today I'm going to talk a little about some principals of intermediate-level long form improv!

Something that good improvisers tend to do instinctively is avoid situations that will turn into a giant mess on stage. It's a good instinct to have, because nobody wants to see a scene where everybody is talking at once, and the audience wouldn't have any idea what's going on. However, this good instinct can lead to some problems when a long form improv show hits its climax. Which leads me to our next point...

Don't be afraid of action!

I know that actions scenes can get out of hand very easily, but when you're doing musical or long form improv, action scenes become absolutely necessary. Nobody wants to see a climax where the good and evil ninja talk out their differences. (Actually, that does sound kind of funny.) Some of our best climax scenes have involved a bobsledding race or a quick ride on a rocket ship chasing a tornado into outer space.

Most of our worst climaxes have had a very distinctive pattern: the scene is obviously building up to a fight of some kind, but the characters keep finding ways to avoid it. But the audience wants to see something happen! Nobody wants to watch you stall because you're afraid of what's going to happen.

The other day I did a long form source scene which involved a conversation between rival knights who went to knight school together. The cool part of the scene was that even though it was centered on the relationship, there was a sword fight going on for the better part of their talk. (Shout out to Kate Dorhout, my lovely and talented partner in said scene.)

An awesome climax with action is the difference between a good piece and a legendary piece. So go crazy!

-Nick.