Good improviser/Bad improviser
This mind-blowing exercise I learnt from Patti Stiles at last years NZ Improv Festival.
Again I think this ties in well with the other exercises I’ve been talking about, but I might not play them in this sequence, I might do this one, then the others, then this one again to see if it helps.
Here’s how it works;
Everyone in pairs, find yourselves a space in the room. Person A is going to play the role of the worst improviser imaginable. Person B is going to play the role of the best improviser imaginable. A, try and make the scene fail. B, try and make the scene succeed. Go!
After a few minutes I’ll swap them over without discussion.
Then we talk about successful strategies for both roles. Then we try it again, encouraging each side to try different approaches, and pointing out that if they can succeed when someone is actively working against them then improv will be easy for the rest of their lives.
It’s impossible to describe all the possible ways this game can go, but I assure you, the first time you see the good improviser flip things on the bad improviser so that it looks like they’re both working together (and making them both look brilliant) you’ll be hooked.
It’s a great proof of the fact that No one can block you but yourself (As Jeff Wirth said in this wonderful but long lost article), and that if you treat your partner like a genius and a poet then they will become one.
January 28th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Yes! I love this exercise. I wrote about it here, with some weird stuff about sounds and rythms too: http://improviser.fr/blog/2007/06/13/rhythm-and-self-centeredness/
Also, thanks for the “lost articles”. I love these.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:35 am
Great post Ian. Rhythm is so important. I remember an interview with Mel Brooks saying drumming should be mandatory for comedians to develop their comic timing.
July 10th, 2010 at 1:12 am
The lost article link is lost…
July 10th, 2010 at 5:35 am
Hmmm. It might well and truly be gone now. That’s a shame because it is a great article.
Here’s the key point
“Suppose we played as if “The only person whose job it is to accept is me.” We would then take what we might otherwise perceive as another player’s block of our offer and treat it instead as an offer that further defines the reality of the scene.
When another player denies the reality I have established (”Hello Uncle Frank!” “I’m not your Uncle Frank.”) it becomes a block only if I am unable to justify the reality of what we both have established. (”I know. It’s just that after you risked your neck to get me get out of the mob, you feel like family to me.”)”