How to save a scene going nowhere?

[Crackalacking]

I'm fairly new at improvising, and I'm also practicing with other fairly new folks.

Although admittedly, I'm not very good at improvising, and still grasping concepts, I get most of the fundamentals of it. However, some of the folks I play with haven't gotten the 'start a scene in the middle' and 'don't pimp your partner' memos.

How can you steer a 'teaching' scene, the 'hey what's up' initiations and the 'look at that' scenes to one with a solid game?

 

[mullaney]

I think the best thing you can do when a scene is floundering is to say something truthful about what is already happening in the scene. This could be an assessment of the circumstances or simply an observation about your scene partner's behavior or emotion, or an observation about your own character.

 

[Hawkins]

How can you steer a 'teaching' scene, the 'hey what's up' initiations and the 'look at that' scenes to one with a solid game?

for these specific examples, go to the relationship between the people involved.

 

[goldfish boy]

How your scene partner says "hey, what's up" or "look at that" gives you information about his/her character. Respond emotionally to that information. If your scene partner initiates a teaching scene, build a relationship with the teaching character that goes beyond "here, let me show you how to do that." How do you feel about being taught? Meanwhile, be the best learner you can be.

 

[mike short]

Although admittedly, I'm not very good at improvising, and still grasping concepts, I get most of the fundamentals of it. However, some of the folks I play with haven't gotten the 'start a scene in the middle' and 'don't pimp your partner' memos.

Please be careful about getting into the mindset of "some people haven't gotten the memos." It is dangerously close to playing from a place of judgement, which is never a good place to play from.

How can you steer a 'teaching' scene, the 'hey what's up' initiations and the 'look at that' scenes to one with a solid game?

Don't steer. Just react emotionally. How do you feel about being taught? How do you feel about being told to look at something? How do you feel? Answer that, and play it. Don't steer.

 

[mike short]

I think the best thing you can do when a scene is floundering is to say something truthful about what is already happening in the scene. This could be an assessment of the circumstances or simply an observation about your scene partner's behavior or emotion, or an observation about your own character.

If you don't know what feels truthful, a tactic I use following this idea is to look at the scene partner and say "You are..." or "You look" followed by something you're getting out of them. Not like "You look tall" or "You are wearing a blue shirt." Something more emotional, something like what their facial expression looks like, like "You are making me angry" or "You look like you're in love with me."

 

[Lord Hatsumi]

Start denying everything!

"This isn't a classroom, this is a space ship headed for Planet Butt! AHOYYYYY!!!"

 

[jayrevis]

Don't judge it, don't steer it. Respond to the "what's up" or teaching scene or "look at that" initiation as if it's exactly the gift you were looking for. It might as well be, it's the only one you've got in that moment.

And sometimes, a great scene can come from those types of initiations. If you let it.

Rules suck.

 

[lefty]

I agree with MikeShort (always) and JayRevis.

I think something that is important or helpful anyway is to have an opinion. Teaching scenes are tough partly because the teacher directs the taught and the taught just kinda ends up passive and helpless while the teacher plays it often very safe and lame. But teachers and students have relationships or a dynamic between them and we all have very real impulses or reactions to what people are doing or what we're doing as we're in such situations. Play those and stand what ever ground you have in the scene and no one will notice it's a teaching scene because it won't really be a teaching scene.

Scenes that go nowhere sometimes also can benefit from this "have an opinion" thing. Often we play "real" and boring and establish the scene's setting and who we are (or not), but we feel like we are no one and we have nothing to play. OK, the worst thing to do is like panic and think I need to blow something up or think I stuck in this box. Just build off some reaction that you have or your partner provides. The reading of your opponent (as Mike points out) is an organic way of building the something out of what we might've thought was nothing.

 

[Holmes]

Do more of what you've already done in a bigger or new way.


Example: You started a scene as a guy cleaning up for a party. Your partner doesn't add much to the scene and just ends up pimping you into doing things. It fizzles and gets a little boring. At that point, do more and bigger of cleaning up for a party.

Your choices will take it in different ways {"I also have to get rid of all dairy and wheat, 'cause my date is allergic." vs. "There's also the closet to get to. It's gonna be an avalanche when I open that door."}, but staying on track with what everyone has already invested in will retroactively make the boring stuff seem like important set-up, and it's easier to start from something instead inventing something or starting from scratch.

Obviously having something to go off of helps, so just do something at the beginning of your scene.

Example 2: You and your partner start an improv scene completely in silence without miming anything, having any expression, or anything.
You can either treat that as a choice and invest in it, make it on purpose, or you can say or do literally anything and then go back to that same silent situation on purpose.

 

[Houngan]

One thing you can try is taking the last thing someone said or did and making it very important.

 

[mike short]

I was doing an exercise last night and I felt myself just spinning wheels. I realized in the moment that I didn't believe what I was saying; my words were empty and hollow. I didn't understand the emotion behind my lines.

I took an extra second before my next line and I let everything sink in. I thought about the emotion I was talking about and let myself feel it too. The scene quickly became much stronger and more interesting. And it became more fun for me to play in - I was now invested in what was going on instead of going through the motions.

So, I like the trick of treating the last thing the scene partner said as really important. But I am concerned that it will just lead to more spinning wheels if you don't also allow yourself to really feel like it's important.

A similar trick I heard once was to just laugh or cry at the last thing that was said - even if and especially if you don't know a good reason why. You'll figure it out in a second. The reason teaching scenes, look at that scenes, or transaction scenes, et al, don't work well is because they lack strong emotional content. A lot of these tricks all have to do with injecting emotional content of some kind into the scene. Whatever you find allows you to do that is totally cool and valid.

The other cool thing I discovered in the exercise was this: I realized I was going to get no reaction from my scene partner. In this case, it was because of an awesome reason. His character had a rich albeit self-centered inner life; there was no way the character would be able to process the emotions my character was having. So I had to react to my own reaction. My character felt unappreciated, and realizing that made her sad, which made her more sad, and so on. The character wasn't waiting for something to bounce back, the character took ownership of the emotions and followed them on their own. Sometimes the scene partner who throws out a teaching scene isn't in a place to provide a sounding board for your feelings. That's fine, we don't have to wait for them to make strong character choices on our own.

 

[high violet]

I don't know how efficient this would be in practice but if your scene is derailed and floundering stop trying to rescue/fix it and just do something fun with your scene partner, maybe using one specific from the first part of the scene. But let it burn and just enjoy the ride.

 

[Mr. Stampede]

Make something important.

 

[jayrevis]

Make something important.

This might be the right answer to every improv question ever asked.

 

[bunnyman]

stop trying to rescue/fix it and just do something fun with your scene partner

It looks like you're saying improv can be fun?

 

[Hawkins]

or you can just edit.

might turn into something later

 

[ricajonesy]

This is an awesome question and one that could be used in life too.
What do you do when you feel life is stuck and going no where?
Or a relationship is stuck and going no where? :nervous:
When a scene is going no where I like to
a) Be clear in communicating what my character is doing and is all about. It's harder for my scene partner to make a move if they don't know what my character stands for.
b) See if I can yes and support anything that my partner has created
c) State the truth of the scene, what is going on and something that I want from my partners character.
c) Go somewhere!....literally. :worm: Change the scenery and go to a new specific location or maybe the place that I'm in feels like I'm no where because I haven't really defined it. This one is tricky. I don't want to bail on something that has been created or needs to be fleshed out more. At the same time I find that scenes get stuck when 2 characters talk about going somewhere or doing something instead of really traveling to the place or doing what we're talking about.

 

[SixSider]

This is "cheat" in some ways and easy to abuse (I know I have), but if you are early in a scene, confess something. Something personal. Best if it comes from what you have already built, but whatever. Just confess. Make this the moment that you had to admit the think you have been hiding.