Exploding Out: An Essay on Variety in Improvisation

(This entry was inspired by the suggestion of “explosion”, provided by Maggie Dempsey of Chicago, IL. It’s an essay on one important element to remember when coaching or performing improv.)

I have some opinions on improv comedy. It makes sense. Improv’s been a big part of my life for nearly fourteen years now, so naturally I’m invested. That’s why I’d like to share my belief that one of the most important elements of an improv show is variety — or as I sometimes call it, “exploding out”. I’m going to tell you why I think this is, and give some suggestions on how to achieve it in the ensuing paragraphs. I hope you don’t mind.

Nobody wants to watch the same scene, with the same people, in the same situation, with the same energy, over and over and over. It’s boring. It’s flat. It predictable. And if you’ve seen the first scene, why bother sticking around for the rest? Nope, audiences want to be surprised. They want to go on a journey. Most people know that a good story (novel, movie, play, narrative improve [which I love], etc.) has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This could be further divvied up into exposition, inciting incident, rising action (with beats along the way), climax, resolution, and sometimes a denouement. Having these built-in parts of a story, automatically provides variety. Writers, actors, directors, and narrative improvisers take advantage of story format to help make their end-products interesting.

But what about non-narrative improv? How do we address variety there? Well, some improv structures have variety built-in. For instance, in a short-form improv show, the set is broken up into a series of games (scenes with a stated challenge layered on). These games are usually chosen ahead of time, and placed into a running order with variety in mind. The same is done with sketches in a sketch shows.

In longform improv (scenes with no stated challenge layered on, and that usually flow from one to another without interruption), variety is often achieved by having a pre-agreed upon structure that the players stick to. One of the best known, and most popular, of these structures is the Harold. A Harold, if you don’t know, consists of a group game, then three unrelated scenes inspired by the game, then a second group game, then a revisit of the characters or themes from the three original scenes, then a third group game, and finally another revisit of the three scenes, but this time they connect or bleed into each other, making the piece feel like a whole.

With the three unrelated scenes, the Harold forces the performers to explode out in three directions, even though they are all inspired in some way by the opening group game. This creates variety. When people talk about a killer Harold show they saw, one thing they will often mention was how cool it was to see everything tied together. But remember, in order for that to be satisfying, the show has to first explode out at the beginning.

Some improvisers find structures like the Harold to be useful, as they provide a sort of road map for where the show needs to go and when. Other improvisers find these structures to be constricting, because they’re so focused on hitting the points on the road map, that they get stuck in their heads, and can’t take the show in the directions they want to. Neither side is wrong. It’s all a matter of comfort and taste.

I tend to fall more into the latter group. When I’m doing or coaching non-narrative improv, I tend to lean towards less structure, rather than more. This means a I do a lot of scene montages, which can be great or terrible, depending on how they are executed. One of the things that can make them terrible is a lack of variety.

We’ve all seen this happen: An improviser gets a suggestion from the audience. Let’s say it’s “sponge”. The first scene presents a couple arguing because the sponge is missing. “Honey, wheeeere did you put the spoooonge?”. The next scene involves the neighbors. They stole the sponge! They spend the scene arguing about what do with the sponge. The next scene is at the sponge store! A sponge employee talks about the merits of different sponges with a customer, and they argue over the price. Then, guess what? The original couple comes in to buy a new sponge because “soooomebody stooooole our spoooonge.” Yeesh. Sponge. Sponge. Sponge. Not only are we getting pretty sick of hearing about sponges at this point, we are also getting sick of two-person negotiation scenes. So what do we do to avoid, or get out of, a string of sponge scenes? We play with an eye toward variety. We explode out.

I have three favorite ways of doing this:

1. Look for different points of inspiration.

2. Make a two (or more) degrees of separation choice.

3. Show them what they haven’t seen yet.

Let’s start with looking for different points of inspiration. You got your sponge suggestion, which led to your couple-who-lost-their-sponge scene, and now you’ve found a good edit point. For the sake of variety, don’t make “sponge” your inspiration for the next scene. Instead, be inspired by any other aspect of the previous scene. Was there a word someone said that stuck out to you? Let that be a new point of inspiration. Where did the scene take place? Was it in the kitchen? How does that inspire you? Maybe the next scene is somewhere else in the house (and has nothing to do with sponges). Was there an interesting relationship dynamic? For instance, maybe one of the characters was in charge, and the other was subservient. How could we bring that dynamic to an entirely different scene? Maybe we see a ship’s captain and cabin boy with a similar relationship dynamic, for example. Or maybe another character was mentioned, and you want to go play them in the next scene. Great! Just don’t make it about sponges!

Some of my favorite points of inspiration are:

· A word

· A location

· An action/activity

· A physicality

· An emotion

· A relationship dynamic

· An object

· A theme

But really, anything can be a point of inspiration. And you can find a new one to inspire each scene. The idea is to explode the show out in different directions, especially in the first half. And the further you can explode out before circling back in, the more satisfying it will be to both you and the audience when you do start connecting those exploded pieces later on (assuming you choose to do so).

Another tactic for exploding out is to make a two (or more) degrees of separation choice. You come to the end of your first sponge scene, and rather than using “sponge” again to inspire the next scene, you do a quick word association in your head. “Okay, what other words does sponge make me think of? Holes, absorbent, wet, pineapple under the sea, etc.” Grab any of those words, and let it be your new inspiration for the next scene.

Or, you can take it even further. For example “sponge makes me think of messes, and messes make me think of dirt, and dirt makes me think of the garden, so my next scene is going to take place in a garden.” You can get as far removed as you want, so long as you can do it quickly. Heck, if you want to get really fancy, combine this free association tactic, to the points of inspiration tactic I first mentioned. For example, “in that scene the sponge was lost, so that makes me think of people lost in the woods, and wood makes me think of a fireplace, so I’m going to be tending a fire in this next scene.” The possibilities are pretty infinite. Some people find that to be freeing, and others find it to be overwhelming. If you’re in the “overwhelmed” category, try doing just two degrees of separation at first, and go from there.

Perhaps my favorite, and most recently embraced, tactic for exploding out is to show them what they haven’t seen yet. By “them” I mean the audience, and by “what they haven’t seen yet” I mean just that. It’s looking at what has happened so far in the show, and making an active choice to do something specifically not that. Have you been doing a bunch of fast-paced, frantic scenes? Change it up, and throw in a slow one. Have you been doing mostly two-person scenes? Switch gears with a big group scene. Have you been doing a scenes where the characters are sitting or standing still? Move, damn it! Do a scene where you’re playing basketball, or raking leaves, or doing the dishes (please don’t talk about sponges). This “show them what they haven’t seen yet” tactic gets you thinking like a director. It get’s you thinking, as my friend and mentor, Will Luera, would say, “what does this show need?” It also empowers you to move away from choices that aren’t working. “Damn, these people do not like my alien sponge character I keep bringing back in every scene.” Then don’t bring them back! Explode out! Variety!

“Showing them something they haven’t seen yet” is even great for creating variety within a single scene. This is why many improv coaches will tell you to “reveal a secret” or “profess how you feel” in a scene. They want you make something happen. The only way you can make something happen is to add something new. Show them what they haven’t seen yet in this scene, and see what happens.

Now you may be thinking, “Bryce you dumb-dumb, if we move too far from the original suggestion, the audience won’t like it. They won’t be able to follow our internal associations, and they’ll think we aren’t really improvising.” To that I say “eh”. It depends. What did you promise at the top? Did you say that every single scene would be inspired by a literal interpretation of the word “sponge”? Then, yeah, you’d better get it in clearly in every scene. But I doubt you said that. What you probably said (and what I suggest you say) is “this show” or “this series of scenes will be inspired by the word ‘sponge’”. In that case, once you’ve used it clearly once, you’re off the hook. No need to come back to the suggestion, unless it happens organically. The audience doesn’t need to be able to follow your line of inspiration from scene to scene. If you’re doing quality scene work, and doing a variety of different kinds of scenes, they’ll be too entertained to even think of caring.

Okay, that’s it for now. If you’ve read this far, I sincerely hope that this was helpful to you. If not, chuck it. Being an improviser is about finding the tools that work best for you, and placing them in your tool belt. It’s also about tossing away the tools that don’t work for you. But ideally, you want to have a pretty full tool belt. A tool belt with a variety of tools. Get it?