So there’s this new warm-up exercise I’ve noticed taking the improv community by storm, called “Fred Schneider.” For the uninitiated, here’s how it goes: a group or class stands in a circle and chants in unison, “Hey Fred Schneider, what are you doing?” Then one at a time each person in the circle impersonates the iconic B-52s singer Fred Schneider and says something hilarious that he might be doing. For example, it might go something like this:
Group: “Hey Fred Schneider, what are ya doing?!”
Person in Circle (in Mr. Schneider’s voice): “Buildin’ a Rolls Royce out of toothpicks!”
Then the group chants again and the next person says something hilarious. I’ve seen this played with just the people in the group clapping, and I’ve also seen it played simultaneously with “George,” an elaborate clapping game that I won’t take the time to describe here but can be summarized as that up-down-together-out game.
There are a lot of warm-up exercises that can be done to prepare a group to make up stuff on the spot, and they can achieve a variety of goals with a varying degree of effectiveness. So when I realized how much I disliked this particular warm-up, I had to ask myself why. Were there plenty of other things I could’ve been asking myself? Sure, and that question was one of them. But the other questions included “Was that mole there yesterday?” and “Did the library cancel my card because I kept Steppenwolf for so long?” This question about “Fred Schneider” seemed the least difficult to answer.
Let’s go back to the issue of what warm-ups do. I believe you can boil them down to three types: Energy, group mind, and focus. There are warm-ups like “Crazy 8’s” or “Knife Throwing” that get a group’s energy up by generating physicality. Then there are group mind exercises like “Counting” or “One-Word Story/Joke/etc.” And things like “Pattern Pointing” and “Pass the Face” are great for focus or listening.
The most effective warm-ups cover more than one of the big three functions. Not only are you active during “Knife Throwing,” you also have to focus on what’s going on in the circle at all times so you know who’s throwing a knife at you. “Pass the Face” relies on watching the person passing you a face and it also can get pretty physical the longer it goes. One of my favorite warm-ups, “Yes” (where you point to someone in the circle, they say “Yes,” and then you walk over to their space while they point to a different person) achieves all three of these objectives in a pretty good way. At least I think so, and since I’m the one writing this right now, what I think goes.
So when I observe a warm-up like this here “Fred Schneider” thing, I have to ask myself which of these objectives it satisfies. Is it group mind? Well, everyone in the circle is chanting the same thing, so I suppose it could satisfy that part on some meditative, transcendental level but that’s not really satisfying to me. Is it energy? All we’re really doing is clapping. Maybe it’s listening? You have to listen in order to know when it’s your turn to say something funny, right? Yes, you do, and that’s the thing that bothers me the most about this warm-up. One of the great things about watching group improvisational comedy is that you are watching multiple people work together to make scenes and situations funny, and the reason we warm up as a group is so we can all get on the same page. The dangerous thing about “Fred Schneider” is that it gets each member of the group focused on being just as funny or funnier than the person next to them. The statements of what Mr. Schneider is doing are not connected to each other in any way, they don’t build on anything that came before or set up anything that will come after. They are individual statements made with the sole purpose of getting a laugh. And one thing I've noticed about warm-ups that focus on getting laughs--whether they are initially intended to get laughs or they just devolve into that tone due to the mood or personality of the group--is that they become about who can get the biggest laugh. So now here you are, trying to be funnier than the other people in your group instead of focusing on agreement and tuning your group mind.
It should be noted, for the record, that I don’t hate this warm-up as much as I hate “Shay Shay Coolay.” I don’t hate anything as much as I hate “Shay Shay Coolay.”
Maybe I’m a warm-up purist. To me, an exercise can be simple or complicated as long as it’s serving a specific purpose that benefits both the improviser and the team. I’ve been laying into a group I coach recently about a variation of the “Beastie Boys” warm-up they like to do where instead of everyone rhyming the same word, one person raps a line and then the next person raps a line that ends with a word that’s kind of like the last word of the previous line except it doesn’t rhyme at all. If that’s hard to understand, just imagine how complicated it is to do. The argument for this warm-up is that it challenges your brain to do something it’s not used to doing. My argument against it is that it feels like people are complicating simple things for the sake of complicating them and then being able to feel good about meeting their own complicated standards. And to that I say, “C’mon now.” There are lots of other warm-ups that are designed to be complicated, and with very good reason. Why complicate the ones that are designed to be simple?
The IRC Wiki page describes “Fred Schneider” as “a simple warm-up that focuses on letting loose, imitation, and having fun.” I think there are plenty of other warm-ups that can get you loose and having fun. Also, imitation? Really? What are we imitating? Certainly not your teammates. The only thing you’re imitating is Fred Schneider’s voice. And the only reason you’re doing that is to be funny. As our warm-ups go, so go our shows. If your pre-show rituals foster cleverness and individual hilarity over group mind, then you will spend your improv set trying to be funnier than the other people in your group instead of focusing on building scenes together and supporting each other's moves. And that will put your group on Channel Z when you should be getting to the Love Shack.
Person in Circle (in Mr. Schneider’s voice): “Buildin’ a Rolls Royce out of toothpicks!”
Then the group chants again and the next person says something hilarious. I’ve seen this played with just the people in the group clapping, and I’ve also seen it played simultaneously with “George,” an elaborate clapping game that I won’t take the time to describe here but can be summarized as that up-down-together-out game.
There are a lot of warm-up exercises that can be done to prepare a group to make up stuff on the spot, and they can achieve a variety of goals with a varying degree of effectiveness. So when I realized how much I disliked this particular warm-up, I had to ask myself why. Were there plenty of other things I could’ve been asking myself? Sure, and that question was one of them. But the other questions included “Was that mole there yesterday?” and “Did the library cancel my card because I kept Steppenwolf for so long?” This question about “Fred Schneider” seemed the least difficult to answer.
Let’s go back to the issue of what warm-ups do. I believe you can boil them down to three types: Energy, group mind, and focus. There are warm-ups like “Crazy 8’s” or “Knife Throwing” that get a group’s energy up by generating physicality. Then there are group mind exercises like “Counting” or “One-Word Story/Joke/etc.” And things like “Pattern Pointing” and “Pass the Face” are great for focus or listening.
The most effective warm-ups cover more than one of the big three functions. Not only are you active during “Knife Throwing,” you also have to focus on what’s going on in the circle at all times so you know who’s throwing a knife at you. “Pass the Face” relies on watching the person passing you a face and it also can get pretty physical the longer it goes. One of my favorite warm-ups, “Yes” (where you point to someone in the circle, they say “Yes,” and then you walk over to their space while they point to a different person) achieves all three of these objectives in a pretty good way. At least I think so, and since I’m the one writing this right now, what I think goes.
So when I observe a warm-up like this here “Fred Schneider” thing, I have to ask myself which of these objectives it satisfies. Is it group mind? Well, everyone in the circle is chanting the same thing, so I suppose it could satisfy that part on some meditative, transcendental level but that’s not really satisfying to me. Is it energy? All we’re really doing is clapping. Maybe it’s listening? You have to listen in order to know when it’s your turn to say something funny, right? Yes, you do, and that’s the thing that bothers me the most about this warm-up. One of the great things about watching group improvisational comedy is that you are watching multiple people work together to make scenes and situations funny, and the reason we warm up as a group is so we can all get on the same page. The dangerous thing about “Fred Schneider” is that it gets each member of the group focused on being just as funny or funnier than the person next to them. The statements of what Mr. Schneider is doing are not connected to each other in any way, they don’t build on anything that came before or set up anything that will come after. They are individual statements made with the sole purpose of getting a laugh. And one thing I've noticed about warm-ups that focus on getting laughs--whether they are initially intended to get laughs or they just devolve into that tone due to the mood or personality of the group--is that they become about who can get the biggest laugh. So now here you are, trying to be funnier than the other people in your group instead of focusing on agreement and tuning your group mind.
It should be noted, for the record, that I don’t hate this warm-up as much as I hate “Shay Shay Coolay.” I don’t hate anything as much as I hate “Shay Shay Coolay.”
Maybe I’m a warm-up purist. To me, an exercise can be simple or complicated as long as it’s serving a specific purpose that benefits both the improviser and the team. I’ve been laying into a group I coach recently about a variation of the “Beastie Boys” warm-up they like to do where instead of everyone rhyming the same word, one person raps a line and then the next person raps a line that ends with a word that’s kind of like the last word of the previous line except it doesn’t rhyme at all. If that’s hard to understand, just imagine how complicated it is to do. The argument for this warm-up is that it challenges your brain to do something it’s not used to doing. My argument against it is that it feels like people are complicating simple things for the sake of complicating them and then being able to feel good about meeting their own complicated standards. And to that I say, “C’mon now.” There are lots of other warm-ups that are designed to be complicated, and with very good reason. Why complicate the ones that are designed to be simple?
The IRC Wiki page describes “Fred Schneider” as “a simple warm-up that focuses on letting loose, imitation, and having fun.” I think there are plenty of other warm-ups that can get you loose and having fun. Also, imitation? Really? What are we imitating? Certainly not your teammates. The only thing you’re imitating is Fred Schneider’s voice. And the only reason you’re doing that is to be funny. As our warm-ups go, so go our shows. If your pre-show rituals foster cleverness and individual hilarity over group mind, then you will spend your improv set trying to be funnier than the other people in your group instead of focusing on building scenes together and supporting each other's moves. And that will put your group on Channel Z when you should be getting to the Love Shack.
