Avoiding Traps in Improv Comedy

Video Transcript

"Hey, it’s me, Les. We’re still going over rules, basic rules of improvisation for how you work your creativity with your group. These are from my Plays Well With Others, a handbook of improvisation and play. The other rules are up here at Expert Village too, so look those up. So the rule we’re looking at now, on my list it's rule number four, try to make the scene move forward by making an actionable choice that can be an active choice, or it can be a choice for dramatic action or plot movement or introducing the most important information you can find in a scene. But this rule is largely about avoiding the static traps, avoid remaining seated too long unless there’s really something rich going on about your work that is making that a really great idea to you. Remember, all rules can be broken. But in general you want to avoid being trapped in a seated, sitting position too long or maybe trapped in a talking situation, a transaction, sometimes traps people where they say, “how much will that cost?” and the other improviser says, “five dollars” and they say, “five dollars, that’s only worth four dollars?” Well, unless there is some reason that’s important to your scene, we’d just as soon, you did the transaction, made the actionable choice and went on the next thing, something more important to the story that you’re developing. Now within the context of making an active choice or an actionable choice, you can always do something in your environment. If you don’t have an active idea but you’re wishing you could get the scene moving, it’s very likely that there’s something you could do in the environment. And that’s a, improvisers will sometimes call this “going to the where"” If you want to do something with something in your environment; get a glass of water, go pull the blinds down, uh, pick up an orange off the tree and start peeling it and eating it. If you do something in your environment, that choice in and of itself will kind of stir the ether of your creativity in that scene and give you some opportunities. It might come out of that thing directly, or it might just be related to it, but there’s multiple benefits, you making us believe your scene more and you're pulling yourself into the context of what you have created more, and you can believe what you’re doing more and those other opportunities will make themselves. They will reveal themselves to you and make themselves apparent because you were doing things that are strengthening what you built. That will give you an opportunity to look for the actionable choice. In a story game, very often people will verbally say things like “And then they decided to” and “then they thought” and while these things might have a very nice context if it’s important to your scene, that would be the barometer. It’s important to your scene, but otherwise they’re very static and you just as soon, go straight to the active verb, and that will give you a chance of keeping the dramatic action flowing and more opportunities coming your way. So rule number four, on the basic rules of improvisation, from the enlarged appendix of Les MeGehee’s book, Plays Well With Others, a handbook of improvisation and play. Number four is try to forward the scene by making the actionable or dramatic choice. If you look around on Expert Village you’ll find the other clips where we describe the other rules from that list. In the meantime we’ll see you in the next clip. Bye, bye. "