This is a breakdown of the rehearsals that are planned for winter 2020.

This document lays out

Anyway the rehearsals are planned so that you’ll be exposed to new ideas and approaches to
improv no matter what and if you can’t stand it I’ve left short form rehearsals very unstructured
on purpose. Worst case, vote me out of this position next quarter, but I think this will be fun and
an exciting, new kind of rehearsal that we haven’t tried before.

A complete version of the notes on “The Complete Improviser” can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eg2cs1qLuj319EmG7X55c7bhb8fAV-mpwrsjME-
PciY/edit?usp=sharing
^^^If you have time I recommend going through that summary, it’ll put all the information in its
original order/context and goes into a little more depth than the readings below.

Let’s get started.

The Assumptions
1. A truthful, reasonable, and clearly played scene will hold the audience’s attention.
2. The audience would rather a scene or show start slow and end strong than start strong
and end slow
3. The more deeply the audience understands a scene, the more likely they are to be
emotionally affected by it.
4. The audience will enjoy a funny idea, premise, or concept when it is revealed, but their
enjoyment of the rest of the scene depends on how well it is played
5. The audience doesn’t know the rules of improv or your form and will not judge you by
those rules.
Day 1: A generic Form and Assumption one
● Readings
○ The Five assumptions
■ We could write rules all day based on what we as improvisers do on
stage, but these goals are trying to dictate a performance for an
audience.
■ These assumptions are based not on how we as improvisers will be
improvising, but on how an audience who doesn’t know improv will react
to our show.
■ The assumptions
● A truthful, reasonable, and clearly played scene will hold the
audience’s attention.
● The audience would rather a scene or show start slow and end
strong than start strong and end slow
● The more deeply the audience understands a scene, the more
likely they are to be emotionally affected by it.
● The audience will enjoy a funny idea, premise, or concept when it
is revealed, but their enjoyment of the rest of the scene depends
on how well it is played
● The audience doesn’t know the rules of improv or your form and
will not judge you by those rules.
○ Moments
■ Moments exist whenever two people are on stage at the same time
■ We need to play our scenes based on what is happening as described by
the information that the audience has, not what we want to happen.
○ Assumption one
■ A truthful, reasonable, and clearly played scene will hold the
audience’s attention.
● We don’t need to be funny to capture and hold the audience’s
attention, we just need to be real.
● That doesn’t mean that we have to have scenes full of cancer and
divorce, just that we should play each moment honestly
● “Playing the simple reality that your scene presents to you is
always a strong and correct choice”
○ Anything that happens in life we can do onstage if the moment requires it
■ We can leave, die, say no, go to the dentist, lie, be drunk, anything. It just
has to be done honestly.
■ “For an audience to laugh or cry they must care. For an audience to
care they must believe.”
■ We can be in ridiculous scenarios and still behave like real people. The
world of Harry Potter is ridiculous with magic and dragons but they still
behave like real people.
○ Simple Scenes
 ■ The goal is to portray the reality of two characters rather than to be funny.
■ The initiator starts with a line taken from their real life. Nothing special or
fancy, think “This is the best soup I’ve ever had, thanks!” or “The dog
barfed on my bed again.” Then you just play the reality of that scene.
■ Play this as believable and don’t worry about it being funny. Point out
what your partner is giving you “you look angry”, “Do you want a tylenol?
You sound sick.” Those kinds of lines build out the reality
■ You don’t have to be dramatic or intense to be real. But if you really would
yell in this situation then do it.
■ Stay emotionally available, if you’re being “pinched” then “say ouch”. Try
to react emotionally and portray those emotions believably.
■ Avoid any generalities and provide as many details as you can.
■ Variations
● Portray the behaviours of people you know
● Start Silently
○ A Generic Form
■ Most chicago style shows share these elements in common, Suggestion,
Source, Deconstruction, and Reset. Here’s a breakdown of what all those
are and how to use them.
■ Suggestion
● We may want a particular kind of suggestion to match the theme
of the show. If so we ask for something specific.
● The suggestion doesn’t really hold that much power, you could
ask for anything and it really won’t affect the show unless you
shoe-horn it into every scene.
■ Source
● This is basically a generic word for a long form opener based on
the suggestion.
● Some ideas are to read an article in a newspaper, ask for a
product and play an ad for that product from youtube, an
improvised song, a press conference, a tarrot card reading etc.
■ Deconstruction
● This is a series of scenes inspired by the conceptual pieces of the
source. If the source is a living room where you talk about the
circus then your deconstruction could have scenes of people
pitching a tent, discussing animal abuse, pulling pranks on each
other, a mother “juggling” work, school, and a family etc.
■ Reset
● This can be a scene, group scene, game or anything that acts as
a new source in the middle of the show. If you’re doing an
Armondo you might jump into a new monologue, or in any other
form you can do another opener, this time inspired by the scenes
in the deconstruction.
■ Ending
 ● A show tends to last 25-35 minutes and at the end a trusted
individual (maybe director) will turn off the lights.
● It could be good to include a built in ending devise, like a final
monologue or group game instead of ending on a scene.
● The cast should also look to have the form end with Big Game
Energy (or a heightened pace) centered around an important plot
point or theme.
○ Monologue Deconstruction (Armondo)
■ A monologue is given and then deconstructed in scenes with a reset of a
new monologue
■ The monologist could be a local personality a cast member, or anyone.
The monologist could even do a Q and A with the audience to fill their
time and act as a Source.
■ This form leads to a lot of “follow me” initiations where you may want to
“yes” but not “and” until you understand the premise the initiator is getting
across.
■ Hold onto Callbacks and Second Beats till the end of the show the last
beat of the show can be a high energy Run Out of callbacks Second
Beats, walk ons and tag outs
● Warmups
○ Go around the circle and discuss something you did today (or over break) and
how it made you feel
○ Pair off, take how your story made you feel and turn it into motions and have your
partner try to copy what you do. You can speak real words or make noises and
act out any motions you want. After a minute we switch who leads.
● Exercises
○ I bring up assumption one, the generic form and explain simple scenes
○ A monologue that inspires a series of Simple Scenes
○ A new monologue inspired by the scenes that act as a reset (we’re basically
doing an armando)
Day 2: Assumption 2
● Reading
○ Assumption two
■ The audience would rather a scene or show start slow and end
strong than start strong and end slow
● When we go to Disneyland we are willing to wait for two hours for
a three-minute ride. We’re willing to wait if we know there’s a
payoff.
● An audience will give us time to figure things out, we just need to
figure it out and give them a strong scene.
● There’s no rush to be funny.
● Instead of rushing to be interesting or say something funny, let’s
take the time that we have to listen to each other and build
○ Initiating scenes
■ We spend a disproportionate amount of time working on starting scenes
compared to actually acting in scenes.
■ All initiating does is set the tone, pacing, and some initial information
about the scene, but the audience doesn’t really care about the start, they
care about the end, so lets not stress at the top of the scene and just
focus on setting up a good base reality.
■ The initiation is set in motion by a “move of consequence” something that
defines the scene and the series of moments to come.
● If the first line is “Hey what’s up” and the second line of dialogue is
“Well your sink is clogged and it’s gonna take hours to fix. I’m
gonna have to call in the crew!” then the second line is a move of
consequence, it gives actual information and can act as an
initiation. In this case the person who said the second line is the
initiator rather than the person who said “what’s up”
○ Responding
■ The person that speaks after the initiation is the “responder”
■ The only thing a responder has to do is to find value in the initiation, we
show something is valuable through our emotions so just have an
emotional response
■ A response should be to feel the emotion caused by the initiation and
express it.
○ It’s hard to “break” a scene when you play the reality of the moment
■ Weird things happen in real life and they can happen on stage
■ Here are some initiations that we can try. They may seem like they’d lead
to bad scenes but that’s not necessarily true
● Initiate your own scene after the initiator finished
● Cut your partner off with something off topic before they finish
initiating
● Cut your partner off by objecting to whatever it is they’re saying
 ● Have a huge emotional outburst before your partner finishes
● Look your partner in the eye and say nothing
● Ignore your partner either by not hearing them or acting like you
pretend no tot hear them
● Warmups
○ Trust falls
■ The point here is to trust physically that our cast will catch us just like they
will mentally
○ Conducted story with no conductor
■ Now our cast is gonna catch us mentally
● Exercises
○ I bring up assumption two
○ Emotional Noise
■ This is a simple scene where the responder must give an emotional noise
before they say their line. This can be anything like a sigh, a laugh, a
“mmmmhmmmmmm”, an exclamation like “Yikes” or “my oh my”,
anything. After this, the scene proceeds like normal but more emotional
noises are encouraged.
■ The responder’s noise is more important than their words, and their noise
should influence their words, characters, and ideas.
■ Variations
● Only Noise. The responder only gets to respond with a noise
before the scene continues.
● Restate initiation. The responder can only use the words (or
portray the same concept in the same phrasing while maybe
changing an “I” to a “you”) from the initiation. The emotion and
subtext should be different when the responder says it.
○ Split scene (Description in day three reading)
■ Four people up, two begin a scene on stage right then two join in on
stage left to begin a split scene that compliments and interwievs with the
other scene. The focus shifts back and forth till the scene is cut.
Day 3: Pace, editing
● Reading
○ Pace
■ There are two main paces, slow and fast.
● In a slow-paced show, the action happens in real-time. If there’s
a tag out then we aren’t jumping 50 years in the future, we’re
jumping somewhere in the same timeline. In a slow show, two
minutes of time on stage equals two minutes of time in the world
we’re portraying. “Playing slow means playing without jumping to
conclusions until things are ready to happen”. A mono-scene is
almost always a slow form.
● In a fast-paced show, we are trying to move as fast as we can to
put the characters in as many comedic situations as we can. This
show has lots of edits, cut-tos, and tag outs. In a fast show, two
minutes on stage may be years in the world they’re portraying. A
montage tends to be more fast-paced.
○ Editing scenes
■ As improvisers, we decide when edits occur. The easiest place is when
the audience laughs, but we should consider the style of the show, do we
want to focus on game or relationships? Maybe we want to give scenes
more time to breathe after a big laugh out of a stylistic choice.
■ Two main kinds of edits
● Sweep edit
○ Sweeps away the scene at its conclusion
○ Don’t sweep a scene you are in unless you really have to.
● Tag edit
○ A way to place a character from a scene that’s currently
happening into a new scenario
○ Don’t get too comfortable if you’ve been tagged out you
may tag back in and pick up where the scene you were
tapped out of left off
■ A Character dash is when you tag a single character into multiple
different scenarios in quick succession. This is a great way to introduce or
explore an interesting character
■ A Run is when tags and sweeps follow each other quickly. This is a good
way to build energy and increase the pace of a show. A good ending to a
show is a Run out where you throw every idea and concept and loose
end into a quick run as a grande finale. A run out can also be good right
in the middle to inject energy and more ideas.
■ A walk-on is when an actor joins the action on stage
● It’s not uncommon to have rules about when walk-ons can happen
like no walk-ons in the first third of the show.
 ■
A Split Scene involves two scenes simultaneously taking place on either
side of the stage. The focus shifts between the two scenes and this
provides a smooth way of cutting between two related scenes without a
bunch of tag-outs and tag-ins. Make sure you allow the focus to shift.
■ A Cut to lets us do a quick “flashback” to some moment that’s mentioned
in the action of a scene. You say “cut to ___” to cut to some scene and
“cut back” to bring the original scene back.
○ Soft Edits
■ These edits are a little less jarring, more like a crossfade than a jump-cut,
but require more subtlety and finesse. The most basic involves having
someone enter a scene in progress, focus the attention on themselves
and begin a new scene as the actors in the previous scene yield their
attention and walk off stage.
■ A Direct address is a soft edit where someone walks on stage, gives a
short expository monologue about the action or how their attention should
be focused next. For example “No more excuses! Principal Johnson was
going to come down hard on Tommy this time. We now join Tommy as he
pulls his biggest prank yet in the school’s north hall…”
■ A French Scene (Did you know our very own Anna Bubier visited France
and speaks the language?!?) is a lot like a split scene and a basic soft
edit. It’s used when you want to preserve the set, but change the
characters in focus. If two people are at a baseball game cheering on
their favorite scene then two other people can pull up chairs across the
stage, take the focus and begin a new scene where they’re arguing with
the concessions guy over the price of a churro.
■ A Transformation is similar to a game of “Freeze Tag” Where the
tableau of the last scene becomes the beginning of the next scene. For
example, if someone is lying dead on the floor of the last scene, the next
scene can start with someone saying “Shhhhh… Honey, Griffin’s asleep.
Do you have his birthday presents?”
○ Other Longform terminology
■ Beats are a concept which breaks a scene, show or game into sections.
Like how books are broken into chapters, improv is broken into beats. A
beat can be defined by a topic, or after one round of repetition that’s built
into the form (like the petals of a pretty flower, each petal is a beat)
■ Second beats are when you use the characters, plot, or game of an
earlier scene in a brand new one. The second beat implies that the entire
second scene draws inspiration from the first. There’s nothing stopping
you from doing a third or fourth beat etc.
■ Callbacks are like a lighter second beat where you just pull a single
concept or pattern from earlier and use it in a new context. Their overuse
can be annoying os some teams limit their use.
● Warm-ups
○ Association Circle
 ■ This is a game of free association. You go around the circle and each
player takes what the person before them said as A then they say A
makes me think of B which makes me think of C. then that C becomes
the next persons A
■ EG. Tree makes me think of flower makes me think of baking, the next
person says baking makes me think of cake makes me think of birthday
the next person says birthday makes me think of hats makes me think of
fedora…
■ After everyone understand we stop saying the Bs out loud so the example
becomes Tree-baking; baking-birthday; birthday-fedora
○ Bunny Bunny
● Exercises
○ Mapping game
■ We go up then
○ Create a strong two-person scene then use it as a source for a Montage using
the edits we’ve talked about as transitions.
Day 4: Characters, Assumption 3
● Reading
○ Assumption 3
■ The more deeply the audience understands a scene, the more likely
they are to be emotionally affected by it.
■ Improv is, at its core, information. With no information or no
communication of the information, there’s not improv. There is nothing.
■ Information is like dominos, the more we set up, the longer the chain
lasts. We should never be scared of adding more information.
■ Improvisers are often scared of adding information that seems obvious or
that might negate some future information that we’ve only imagined. We
have to erase that fear.
■ The opposite of information is confusion. Good improv can be
challenging, and subtle and ambiguous, but if we don’t know which
character is which then it’s not going to be entertaining.
■ The best scenes are those where we don’t just understand, but we obtain
complete clarity. If you’re unclear on something then you have to ask a
question about it or provide the answer yourself, otherwise, the audience
will be confused too.
○ The denial by omission
■ There’s two kinds of denial, the first is
● “Welcome to the army, cadet”
● “We’re not in the army, we’re fishing and you’re my deaf grandpa”
■ The second kind of denial is when a player doesn’t use what their partner
gives them
■ For a situational example, a player could make a choice and their partner
doesn’t know what to do with it so they ignore it.
■ Omitting details that have been established confuses the audience, they
saw it happen, and now it’s just gone. Confusion is the opposite of
information so it must be stopped.
○ Going with and going against
■ There’s two categories that situations fall into when you’re asked to make
a choice, you can either go with or go against
■ If I ask you to tie your shoes, you can either do it (go with) or not (go
against) each of those choices says something about your character and
your justification for why says a lot about you as well. It doesn’t matter
what you choose, just that you make a choice and are clear about the
choice you made.
■ Don’t change your mind halfway through, real people do change their
minds but think of changing your mind in a scene the same way you
might treat discovering a new religion. It’s not a switch you take lightly,
and you’re really going to have to be convinced by something dramatic or
else it won’t be believable.
 ○ Characters
■ The standard definition of a character is inaccessible and too analytical
for an improv scene. The following definition may seem complicated, but
most of it is a description. It’s actually a really quick way to make a
character this way and you can do it in exactly two words.
■ Our definition of a character is going to come from people we see in our
everyday lives
● The first half of the definition comes from the idea that a character
will have some trait that sticks out. Think of someone who makes
you feel any emotion, let’s say angry for example. Now think of
what that person does to make you angry, let’s say they never
thank you for your work or maybe they point out all your smallest
mistakes. Taking those specific traits that make you feel a
particular emotion and amplifying them is half the definition of a
character.
● The second half of the definition lies in the context that forces you
to interact with this character. If you didn’t have to interact with this
person then you wouldn’t. But we have to interact with people we
don’t want to every day, like in group projects and at the DMV.
■ So If you want to spawn a character, then take a trait that evokes some
emotion and pair it with a situation that forces you to subject someone to
you acting out those traits. Usually you’ll have either the trait or the
situation already, so just add the second half and you’ve got a character.
■ There’s a really good analogy for this where the character trait is a
hammer, the context is an anvil and you are on the straight man in
the scene is on the anvil getting hit over and over. Without the
hammer OR without the anvil, the straight man isn’t really affected,
but with both the hammer and anvil, they get hit repeatedly with a
trait that’s gonna evoke an emotional reaction.
■ Using an adjective and a noun also establishes a trait plus a context:
overly-enthusiastic choir teacher, talkative flight attendant, cowardly lion.
■ If you’re a character and your partner isn’t saying “ouch” then pinch
harder. If you’re a straight man being pinched, say “ouch”.
● Warmups
○ Three line scenes with a focus on emotionally reacting
○ What are you doing here!
■ The group gathers in a circle and two people step out doing some action,
the circle shouts out a character (either a well-known one like the
terminator or an adjective-noun pair like lazy janitor) and a location or
situation (e.g. in a well, skydiving, in a bank heist)
■ Person one says “[Character name], what are you doing in
[Location/situation]!”
■ Person two takes on the character and justifies what they’re doing in a
short monolouge.
 ■ Person two leaves the center, person one becomes person two and a
new person enters the center to become person one.
○
● Exercises
○ I bring up assumption three
○ Behavior/Context
■ This is a frustration game played with a character and a straight man. The
character has a specific behavior and context that defines how they will
try to frustrate the straight man.
■ Everyone chooses a strip of paper with a behavior and a context, that will
define their character which they will portray in the scene
■ Make sure the location you’re in is completely understood before diving
into the fun
■ This is not a guessing game primarily, but go ahead and guess at the
end. If you don’t get it exactly that’s fine the point is to practice characters
and the frustration game
■ There isn’t a “right” way to play a behavior or context, just make a choice
and play it
■ If you’re the responder you should yes without anding until you
understand the scene. Ask questions if you need more information
■ It’s the character who must keep the straight man on stage by altering
their behavior. The straight man can leave if it’s the honest reaction The
character should see that and change their behavior momentarily.
■ Variations
● Players choose their initiations either on their own, from a
monologue or show game
○ We see Eight
■ The whole cast (not strictly 8 ppl) go on stage and take on the same
character with the goal of deeply exploring that character’s point of view
■ The group takes turns saying lines as that character and that specific kind
of character. For example if the character is cowboys then you need to
choose if you’re a sheriff, or a traveler, or a gambler and stick to that
specific kind of character with each line. You want to explore a specific
point of view.
■ Everyone follows the pattern established by the first line/lines
■ This can start to evolove and when someone is inspired by a line from the
current character do so they shout “we see eight ___” and then everyone
starts doing that character
■ Give physicalities to the characters and make sure everyone matches
that physicality to easily differentiate between the different characters.
■ No dialogue, just short one line monologues from a specific, and shared
point of view.
Day 5: Assumption 4
● Reading
○ Assumption four
■ An audience will enjoy a funny idea, premise, or concept when it is
revealed, but their enjoyment of the rest of the scene depends on
how well it is played.
■ Arnett brings up Frank Loyd Wright and how he didn’t just design great
architecture, but also the light fixtures, the furniture, the bath robes,
everything had incredible follow through which is what made his work so
good. We should aim to have the same kind of follow through.
■ We should not just say lines we think are funny, we should be acting as a
person in a real situation and take that as far as we can. As is written
“Truthfully portray the person involved in the funny idea, premise, or
conceit.”
○ The game of the scene
■ Arnett describes the game of the scene as something that can replace the
general rules of improv. He uses the example of genre replay and says
that in the first scene the improvisers are trying to do a good scene by the
general rules (e.g. listen, yes-and, react emotionally, etc.) but the replay
scenes they are only thinking about how to fit the genres into the scene
they’ve already done. In the replay scenes the general rules of improv go
out the window and all you’re thinking about is satisfying the rules of the
game.
■ Arnett presents a few common “games” that often get played in long form
sets. This is clearly not an exhaustive list and the descriptions are
inherently imperfect, but they’re a good collection of archetypes. They are
listed below
■ Mapping game
● This game takes behaviors and rules of one situation and places
them onto a different context.
● He gives the example of someone returning a pair of pants but the
things he says about it are taken from a breakup: “I’m more of an
introvert, these are like going out and party pants. I just don’t think
they’re the pants for me.”
● Make sure to inject not only the language, but the emotions of the
other situation in to this one.
■ Genre Game
● When you use the tropes of a genre to influence the scene. Like
every single replay game.
■ Spectacle Game
● When something is going on that just steals all the attention and
you pause the general improv rules to enjoy the spectacle and let
it build.
 ● This is best explained through example. Last quarter jade had a
Dr. Seuss character and she was doing it way too well by rhyming
and keeping his themes and references to his books. It was
awesome and we knew it and the audience knew it so we paused
the action and just let her do that for a little longer.
● Arnett gives an example of a scene where there were four people
in an underground bunker after the apocalypse, then a fifth person
entered through a door on stage left so the four people in the
bunker mentioned a fifth person who’d gone out to explore, but the
fifth person didn’t enter immediately. He went through a second
door, then an eye scanner, then a crocodile pit then a whole
series of obstacles and suddenly the scene was about his physical
comedy, so the people in the bunker just started talking about
mundane stuff to let the audience focus on the spectacle.
● This game is less about trying to be the spectacle and more about
recognizing when a spectacle comes up and letting the spectacle
breathe and grow.
■ General agreement game
● This game is all about two characters with the same point of view
just acting as themselves.
● Arnett gives an example of a scene where two secretaries are
gossiping, rather than trying to invent anything funny the
characters can just be themselves. Watching two gossipy
secretaries be gossipy secretaries is entertaining in itself and you
don’t need anything more as long as the characters are honest
and the actors are committed to their choice.
■ Frustration game
● This is the most common game and is what most
character/straight man scenes boils down to: One character’s
behavior frustrates the other character.
● This game needs three things: a firm base in reality, a player with
an absurd behavior, and a player frustrated by the absurd
behavior
○ The firm base in reality gives the scene an easy to
understand context that will act as a mundane backdrop,
or canvas for the absurd behavior
○ The absurd behavior really doesn’t have to be all that
absurd, it can be anything that breaks from the base
reality. This idea really doesn’t have to be “funny”, stong
players don’t need funny ideas; they make simple ideas
funny by playing them well.
○ The frustrated player (i.e. straight man) should represent
the feelings of the audience. The straight man should try to
figure out and understand their partner’s absurd point of
 view and you’re allowed to ask smart questions to do so.
You will never truly understand the absurd point of view
because it is absurd, and that’s where the frustration
comes from. Remember that anger is not frustration.
Frustration has complex feelings of disappointment, failed
expectations, and the notion that your will is being resisted.
Anger is a visceral reaction to being hurt or denied.
● The frustrator isn’t just there to be silly, they have to frustrate. The
more you frustrate the straight man, the more opportunities to
frustrate them even more open up.
● The straight man can leave the scene if they’re forced to
otherwise the scene isn’t believable. With this in mind the
frustrator should try not to frustrate so hard that the straight man
leaves.
○ The jury needs evidence
■ The audience isn’t going to believe us (and therefore won’t be emotionally
affected by us based on assumption three) if we just tell them something
is true or if we speak in sweeping generalizations.
■ The audience is a jury watching a trial where we can create as much
evidence as we want to support our case as long as it doesn’t deny
canonical information.
■ Give the jury specific evidence and they’ll believe, and be emotionally
affected by, just about anything.
■ Rather than say “he always does that” say “My brother Albert purposefully
steals my newspaper every single Sunday just to see the look on my
face!”
● Warm-Ups
○ Pokestakes
■ We form two circles and each circle is given a mundane object
■ We go around the sub circles and raise the emotional stakes of the object
by endowing it with information
■ The two objects then face off in a pokemon style battle where the
information about the objects is weaponized against the other team’s
object, they fight until each member of the team has used an attack
based on one of their endowments.
○ The press conference
■ This is a group frustration game. The representative of the company is a
single person announcing the launch of a new product and the rest of the
cast is the media. The goal of the media is to ask absurd questions in
order to frustrate the business person.
■ For example
● Business person: We here at amazon prime video are proud to
announce we’re going to be streaming “The Price is Right”
 ● Media: Now when you say streaming, you mean you’ve built a
canal through the set of “the price is right?”
● B: No, we’re a streaming company, we stream TV content.
● M: Ah, so you’re building streams through all kinds of tv sets!
● This banter goes on and escalates until the game is called
■ It’s important to latch onto a pattern, whatever question the first media rep
asks sets the game they’re playing and how they’re gonna frustrate this
business person
■ The Business person must get frustrated and genuinely try to get the
media to understand, that will give the media more to frustrate the
business person with
■ This same game can be swapped out with Museum tour guide and tour
group, teacher and class, president and congress, etc.
● Exercises
○ Frustration scenes
○ Group Scene nothing happens (Pretty Flower/Spokane)
■ This is a lot like an armando where instead of a monologue, there is a
mundane group scene. This scene should avoid conflict, in fact
nothing should really happen. Think people chatting over dinner, spring
breakers sitting on a balcony sipping beers, kids waiting to get picked up
after school. The group scene should make slear where they are then not
bring it up again, instead favoring details about the characters lives, like a
character living room.
■ The goal of the group scene is to provide information and ideas that can
be deconstructed into scenes
■ The deconstruction scenes should be inspired by the group scene, but
not necessarily be reenactments. Then the resets are re-visists to the
group scene.
■ In this case, the petals should each try to fit within a different one of
Arnetts game archetypes.
Day 6: Show Games and Assumption 5
● Reading
○ Assumption 5
■ The audience does not know the rules of improv or your form and
will not judge you based on them.
■ Improv exists to solve a problem, entertain an audience for a period of
time. You may have a bad show but that’s not the fault of the form you
choose or they style you have, it’s just a bad show, it happens.
■ The audience just arrived to be entertained, if we “mess up” they won’t
know unless we tell them we messed up, and that’d make any show
awful.
■ Rather than playing to satisfy the rules, play the moment wherever it
takes you. Anything can happen.
○ Notes
■ It’s better to give a note on active choices rather than moments of
confusion.
■ It’s better to give a note on the moment the scene went awry rather than
on the failed attempts to fix a bad scene. We should learn to be good
sailors, not good bailers.
○ Common issues in scenes
■ Here’s an incomplete list of ways scenes often go awry
■ Navigating the “what’s next?” moment
● In everyday conversations just like in improvised dialogue, there
are pauses. Improvisers will often get scared that nothing’s
happening and invent something to fill the void.
● Arnett recommends taking that time and thinking about what else
would be true about your characters and then starting a new topic
based on that. If you’re two granny’s on the bus who just finished
talking about your grandkids then maybe you both take out knitting
needles and start comparing your stitchwork.
■ Playing emotionally bulletproof
● You gotta let yourself be emotionally affected by your scene
partners and find ways to show that emotion to the audience.
● Even an emotionally unavailable drill sergeant can show approval
or annoyance
■ Not leaving a scene
● If you’re playing the reality of the moment then you may have to
leave, especially if your scene partner is trying to “win” the
moment.
● If you’re the straight man it isn’t your job to stay in the scene, it’s
the character’s job to keep you there.
■ Always playing negative
 ● If you only ever “play against” then you should try playing with
more often. Maybe you aren’t cool with some of the stuff
happening now, so be more gung ho later in the scene.
■ Obsessed with getting it right
● The rules of improv are broad and sweeping and general. They
cannot tell you what to do all the time and if you’re obsessed with
analysing a scene instead of playing in it then relax and play the
moment.
■ Obsessed with the way other’s play
● What you improvise about is deeply personal. If you can improvise
about what you know then your partners can too, diversity of
experience is a good thing.
■ Needing to win and playing chess
● Having a strong motivation is important, but your motivation
shouldn’t be so strong that you and a scene partner are both
relentless in getting your way.
● The trick to get out of a game of chess (trying to one up each
other with increasingly witty quips) is to let one character lose
without changing that character.
■ Being funny
● Don’t break the reality of the scene to make a joke.
● If this happens you can have the other character go “are you
trying to be funny right now?”
■ Playing the premise
● Rather than making obstacles and solutions around those
obstacles, show us how the obstacles make you feel
■ Melodrama scenes
● Melodrama happens when the audience is told how to feel despite
not really having the information to support those emotions.
● These scenes often happen when you try too hard to inject
something “deep” like a divorce or a cancer diagnosis, but you
don’t play the reality of the situation which makes it feel empty.
○ Show Games
■ A show game is, by Arnett’s definition, any part of the show that isn’t a
scene. He describes it through an example of asking an improv troupe to
do a performance of a movie, the scenes where no dialogue happens but
there’s still action happening would be show games.
■ Action, quickened pace, the inclusion of the whole cast, and no true
dialogue are good indications that you’re in a show game.
■ Games make good longform openers. Most openers are show games.
■ Games can also provide a nice change of pace in a show, sorta like the
bridge in a song.
■ Games can be inspired by and can inspire scenes
■ An incomplete list of show games
● We see Eight
○ The whole cast (not strictly 8 ppl) go on stage and take on
the same character with the goal of deeply exploring that
character’s point of view
○ The group takes turns saying lines as that character and
that specific kind of character. For example if the character
is cowboys then you need to choose if you’re a sheriff, or a
traveler, or a gambler and stick to that specific kind of
character with each line. You want to explore a specific
point of view.
○ Everyone follows the pattern established by the first
line/lines
○ This can start to evolove and when someone is inspired by
a line from the current character do so they shout “we see
eight ___” and then everyone starts doing that character
○ Give physicalities to the characters and make sure
everyone matches that physicality to easily differentiate
between the different characters.
○ No dialogue, just short one line monologues from a
specific, and shared point of view.
● Scene painting
○ One at a time we enter the stage, describe one object or
add to another object with the goal of making all the
objects point to one clear context.
○ The point is to tell a visual story. Imagine a movie where a
panning shot tells a story about the plot without any words
or actors, that’s the goal
○ New details are just as important as new objects, describe
what we see.
● Character painting
○ Can be done as a continuation of a scene painting. The
mechanics are that someone walks onstage and begins
pantomiming a character established in the scene painting
and then the group can continue painting the environment
as well as this character.
○ The character can even begin silently interacting with the
environment and the group can fill in the audience on more
details.
○ Deconstruction: breaking down something into its
underlying themes and subtexts which can be used to
inspire future scenes
● Narrated story
 ○ This is sort of a conducted story with no conductor,
everyone tells a story together one person taking over for
the next in no particular order.
○ Then everyone becomes a part of the story unless they are
narrating. You can be characters, you can act as objects,
you can be any part of the story you want. People
organically take and give the role of narrator.
○ Characters in the story can interact an even talk, but this is
a show game and not a scene so don’t turn it into a scene.
● Monologues
○ It’s important to provide an abundance of details. What
you’re sharing is your point of view and the evidence to
support it, or you can just tell a silly story, as long as
there’s details you’re good.
○ Character monologues are another kind of monologue in
which you make up a monologue from a character’s
perspective and you can do this either as a character
telling a story, as talking through half a conversation (just
the character’s dialogue is spoken, sorta like that
character is on the phone and we can only hear the words
they say)
○ Monologues can be used at the top of the show or in the
middle to reset the action
○ When gathering inspiration from a monologue, don’t just
retell the story. Instead deconstruct the monologue and
use the pieces.
● The press conference
○ This is a group frustration game. The representative of the
company is a single person announcing the launch of a
new product and the rest of the cast is the media. The goal
of the media is to ask absurd questions in order to frustrate
the business person.
○ For example
■ Business person: We here at amazon prime video
are proud to announce we’re going to be streaming
“The Price is Right”
■ Media: Now when you say streaming, you mean
you’ve built a canal through the set of “the price is
right?”
■ B: No, we’re a streaming company, we stream TV
content.
■ M: Ah, so you’re building streams through all kinds
of tv sets!
 ■ This banter goes on and escalates until the game is
called
○ It’s important to latch onto a pattern, whatever question the
first media rep asks sets the game they’re playing and how
they’re gonna frustrate this business person
○ The Business person must get frustrated and genuinely try
to get the media to understand, that will give the media
more to frustrate the business person with
○ This same game can be swapped out with Museum tour
guide and tour group, teacher and class, president and
congress, etc.
● Movie Trailer
○ This is a compound game where the cast each takes on
one of three roles, there’s one narrator, a few scene
painters (they can swap with the actors), and as many
actors as there needs to be.
○ The goal is to create a movie trailer here’s better
descriptions of the roles
■ The narrator narrates: “in a world where danger is
served hot!”
■ The scene painter acts as the camera and editor.
He describes what it is we’re looking at and where
our attention should be. He can call for close ups,
he can describe the scene, he can call for slow mo,
etc.
■ The actors take on the roles of people, objects and
anything else that’s needed.
○ The beauty of this being a movie trailer is that you can cut
to nonsense things and have weird parts of the movie
appear that don’t necessarily make sense. We’re just
giving a highlight reel of the full movie.
● Warm-ups
○ Narrated story
○ Motion Machine
● Exercises
○ Montage
○ Movie Trailer