The Fundamentals of Agreement

[mullaney]

If you have not read my January essay on agreement, go to the main page and select essays at the bottom of the page.

Feel free to discuss it here.

Wonderful essay. What are some exercises to get a group of improvisers to learn about agreement?

[mullaney]

Here are a few ideas for agreement exercises:

Ad Game as described in Charna Halperns Truth in Comedy is a very basic one that I sometimes use in level 1 classes. You get a group of 5-10 players on stage and give them the task of creating an ad campaign for a new product. You give them an everyday object as a starting place and they as a group must come up with a bizarre property for that object, a name, a tag line, a target market, a spokesperson and a jingle. The main instruction you give them is that they must treat every idea as if its the best idea in the world. They cannot reject anything, only build on each others idea. No matter what anyone says they must react by yelling "Yes, thats awesome!" or an equally giddy alternative.

The main short coming of Ad Game is that it encourages a fakey kind of agreement that doesnt resemble reality too much to me. Still its useful for getting across the idea that we are here to support each others ideas no matter what we really think of those ideas. It also feels a little dated to me. I think it might be good to update the game and call it "5 Minute Web Site" and ask the group to design a web site instead of an ad campaign and come up with the appropriate elements. (anyone have a proposal as to what those elements should be?)

Panel Discussion - This is a simplification of an exercise that Susan Messing used to do in her classes at ImprovOlympic. Im sure there are other exercises which are very similar. You have people sit in chairs and talk directly to the audience in groups of 3 to 4. The premise is that they all know each other somehow and they are here to talk about themselves. The instructor acts as an interviewer from the audience and asks them questions beginning with "How do you know each other?" The participants then create a background that they all share by telling stories about themselves. Eventually you can open it up to everyone in the workshop to ask the panel questions.

The idea is that they should tell the stories collectively, not like 1 word story or 3-headed expert, but like how people actually tell stories together in conversation. A few keys to making this work:

• Encourage the participants to not answer with monologues. Answers should be given collectively with focus shifting every few sentences. They should even be finishing each others sentences. You can facilitate this by asking the kind of questions to which they would all know the answer.
• Make sure that the participants know each other well. If they say that they go to the same high school, they should be in the same class and share some clubs or interests. If they work together, it should be in the same department. I once had a group start by saying they were in a car wreck together, 2 years ago. When I asked if they had any contact with each other after the accident, they said, "No". It made it impossible for them to yes-and each other after that.
• Discourage arguments during the exercise. Although the players dont have to be clones of one another, its a good idea that they share similar opinions on most subjects. If it begins to look a bit like Jerry Springer, you should reign it back in and try to steer the conversation to a topic that all the panelists can agree on.
• Give adequate time for each group. If I have the time, I like to give each group 15-20 minutes. Im usually pressed for time however and so I shorten it to about 10 minutes.
• Discourage players from making large leaps of fancy. Yes-anding isnt about throwing each other huge curve balls that the others have to justify. Its about building the details of a scene, one piece at a time. As people yes-and each other, they will often build something that becomes absurd. This is fine. We want this. But we dont want people establishing one bizarre unrelated detail after another.
• Encourage the players to be the best, smartest, most non-cliched examples of the kinds of characters they choose. I recently did this with a group who established they were part of a cult. They began inserting rather cliched, silly answers to my questions using details from Waco and that Hale Bop comet cult. I stopped them and asked them to start again, but this time really try to imagine what it would really be like being in this cult and answer the questions as intelligently as they could. The results were much better the second time. I believed that the characters they were creating the second time might actually be involved in a cult.

I like this exercise a lot, because it gives me a forum to hammer home a lot principles that also apply to good scene work, and it gets people used to a conversational style instead of an overly presentational improvy style.

Join Drill - This is just a drill I have been using lately while coaching. Get everyone up in groups of 7-10, and drill the beginnings of scenes. One person initiates by doing something physical to suggest an evnironment, like washing dishes, lifting weights or chopping a tree. A second player joins that activity. They dont do something else in the same environment, they join. As soon as they join, someone edits and starts another acitivity. This is not about being clever, this is about training two things to be instinctual: Starting scenes in action in a specific location and joining your scene partners activity without question. After doing this drill for a while, you can start letting people talk, first 3 or 4 lines before the edit, and eventually letting them play out full scenes.

P.S. I dont really call Panel Discussion, Panel Discussion or Join Drill, the Join Drill. I dont name most of my exercises. But I know how people like to have names for exercises so I gave them a couple. You could just as easily call them the Yakov and the Mackerel. We like to name things too much. Im afraid of someday running into someones description of the THE JOIN DRILL on the internet as if it was some canonized exercise of THE way to do improv. I find lists of exercises and games to be disquieting these days. The best exercise are the ones you make up yourself.

[Gwyn]

I feel the same way.

Stuff we just used to DO, is now "The Pat Your Butt Opening". Its gotten out of hand.

I TRY to get the team I coach (whoever it is at the time) to do all different openings, to even make them up that night, but they resist me. They constantly ask to be TAUGHT a new opening. I often hear "we never learned that" or "noone ever told us that" as a reason not to experiment. If it doesnt have a name, they dont think its real or worthy of their time.

Im baffled by this.

[goldfish boy]

Remember that kiddie Harold that Inside Vladimir used to do? It was just a Harold with a musical opening and more monologue/scene interaction, but it was a new "form" because it got a different name.

Its reached a point where some improvisers think youre not doing a Harold unless it has three beats and two games.

sigh.
.
.
.

[mullaney]

That was called a Drake, and Ill have you know that is what different than a Harold. Actually it was a monologue deconstruction and was the precurser to Armando and Asssssscat.

*challenges goldfish boy to a thumb wrestle*

[goldfish boy]

I just hired Apollo Creed to train my thumbs, because theyll need all the skill and power they can get after you read this:

In my opinion, the deconstruction is a form of Harold. As is the movie. They both fit Dels definition: "Scenes, games and monologues in some kind of interesting pattern." The definition of monologue gets a bit strained in the case of the movie, Ill admit, but then, many Harolds (especially at UCB) are monologue-free. Group scenes in ASSSSSSSSCAT and Armando easily fit within the Harold definition of group game.

R U ready to thumble?
.

[Gwyn]

You didnt say it was a Monologue Deconstruction. Like thats the name of the form. You describe it as a monologue deconstruction, precursor to...etc.

Its a description. Like describing a dessert as a mousse.
It describes it, a catagory of dessert. Thats how it should be.
Rather than "we had The Mousse after dinner..."

Anyway. I agree, I always thought naming a form...Drake. Whatever. I mean...hm....how can I say this...? "Jazz Freddy" was a show. In the show, they did a form, that consisted of.....
"The Armando Diaz Theatrical Experience...." was a show. The show consisted of a form that had....

"Mobius American Theatre" was a show where we improvised a one act play, with the ending done first.
We have resorted to referring to forms as their show titles. Lets try an Armando. I taught them Mobius,....
I catch myself doing it to. But in theory and aesthetically and technically, I dont think its correct.