Concentration in Improv Comedy

Video Transcript

"Hi there, it’s Les McGehee, back with some more of our basic rules of improvisation. The way I phrase them in my book, Plays Well With Others, a handbook of improvisation and play. So, from a lot of years doing improvisation, thousands of shows, I found these rules to always have importance in every show that I did. Rules can be broken, but they certainly support how you play, give you guidelines to follow your mission of creativity through improvisation. The rule we’re looking at now is Concentrate; you’ll have to concentrate while you’re working. While you’re on the Improv stage, you’re sustaining information that’s just being presented, you’re discovering it at the same time that the audience and your fellow player is. So you have to concentrate and remember it and sustain it, there’s a real craft to reusing information so that it gathers importance as the scene goes on. Even in stand-up comedy, they reuse information, even in a good story they reuse information. It could be information in terms of things that are spoken or plot recurrences or physicality, the way the players move. Well you’re going to concentrate so that all the things that are built and introduced into the scene by you and your fellow players is sustained and supported and built upon, and in this way. In a very short period of time, you can create a scene or a game that has plenty of texture and context and opportunity for people to apply their talents within the group that you’re working with. That’ll take your concentration, everybody concentrating and remembering what they’re doing, what they have built, is there a doorway into the scene? If it’s a monologue, is it a mimed doorway, or we, did we pay attention? Are we using it the same way? So if you listened well, reuse those things you heard, if you listened well visually, reuse the physicality people used, don’t walk through a piece of furniture that was created or something like this, don’t drop a glass you’re holding. Concentration, a short cut that I believe in, that you’ll hear about in another clip, is believability, trying to believe what you’re doing. It’s a lot easier than keeping track of all the little things and it will help you to concentrate, and that’s rule number three on the five basic rules of improvisation as stated in my book, Plays Well With Others, the handbook of improvisation and play. Now go put it down and go play games, and then when you come back to the computer look for the other clips on ExpertVillage.com, and we’ll go over the rest of those rules. "