Quick! Play!
Like most improvisers, I learned about “tagging out” to forward a particular character’s dominant characteristic (an inept McDonalds worker becomes an inept doctor, and then the inept President of the United States). But it occurred to me that there are many other kinds of tag outs that don’t quite fit that “heighten the game” category, and that different tag outs seem to be called for at different times (when they’re called for at all). So, in my typical fashion, I started making a chart of these moves.
I decided to create a larger term for all these moves, and I defined as “quick play” the whole category of moves that change the personnel of the scene and thereby speed up the pace of the show (often heightening the energy with the pace).
What is “quick play” for? I asked myself. Here’s what I came up with (and wrote at the top of the chart): “Quick play heightens energy, builds ideas faster than straight scenes, and can give a sense of immediate gratification to the audience and the team.”
This seems to make sense to me, and covers the range of different kinds of quick play I’ve seen. It also says something to me right away about when we don’t want quick play. Conventionally we talk about avoiding quick play at the beginning of a show (Harold or otherwise), because in that first beat, we’re still setting up the foundation upon which the show will rest. We’re learning about the characters and their relationships, and getting a sense of what the show wants to be about. The same move that would be fun in a second beat feels invasive in a first, because acceleration of ideas is premature when they’re still being built, and immediate gratification undermines the laying of comedic foundation that’s happening. Give the show a minute to breath; let it get its legs. Let it earn, what I like to call, its comedy capital.
Okay. But now you’re halfway through the show. It’s humming along. It knows what it is and it has enough solid characters and relationships, and a thematic center, to comfortably play in. Now you’ve earned some quick play. You’ve built some comedy capital, and now you want to spend it.
So what do you spend it on? I divide the possibilities into three categories, which seem to cover most any kind of quick play I can think of. I call these “game play”, “time dash”, and “let’s see that”. Here’s the chart I made (And, yes, I made copies for my whole team and distributed them at the beginning of rehearsal.) Go ahead and read it. Sure. I’ll wait. No problem. I’ve got some emails to answer anyway…
Done reading? Cool. Because there’s one really important thing I want to say about all of this. It wasn’t on the sheet at all, but when we got this on its feet in rehearsal, it was the single greatest insight we had about quick play (which, in and of itself tells you something about the power of the rehearsal process, I think). Here’s what happened:
Person A and Person B were in a scene. Then Person C tagged Person B out and did a quick little time dash to show how Person A got the way he was. Everything that needed to be said was said in three lines. Then the scene kept going. Person C had nothing else to say, and Person A didn’t know how to help. You could feel the momentum dropping. That’s when I looked across the room at Person B—the one who had been tagged out and was standing on the sidelines—and loudly asked, “Are you done with this scene, or are you still enjoying it?” She looked at me silently for a second, then thought and said, “I’m done with it.” “Then tag back in!” I said, and she did, and the original scene continued, informed by, but not directly referring back to, the tag out. Then I called scene.
This was a huge realization for us. The person who is tagged out is responsible for the tag out run! How is that possible? Isn’t he “off the hook”, having been relieved of his scene duties by a third party? In fact, it’s the opposite: he is now, more than anyone else on the team, very much on the hook. He is the only one who can make the move that will return us to the original scene. He may not need to—the tag out might lend itself to a “tag out run” that doesn’t require his services—but it might not, and it is the taggee’s job to notice whether or not he is needed back in the scene. His job. Not the person who tagged in—because he can’t leave until someone tags him back out. Not the person who was left in the scene—because it’s his job to figure out what the tagger wants and play along until the tagger leaves.
So, when you’re tagged out, stay on your toes, stay engaged in the scene on stage, and ask yourself, “Am I done with this scene?” If the answer is yes, it’s likely the audience is done with it, too. And although your teammates may feel done with it as well, all they can offer is another tag out or an edit. Only you can restore the original scene, and only you can know when and whether to do so.
Something amazing happened when we realized the power of the taggee. Almost immediately, the entire team felt an increased sense of empowerment over the show, and especially over our quick play. No longer did it feel like something you just did because, hell, it’s the second beat and it’s time to get wacky. Once we knew that the taggee reserved the right and sometimes even the responsibility to return to the original scene, we were more conscious of how the tag outs would affect the scene if it did resume. We played smart and we gave gifts to the scene rather than knocking off one-liners and gags that would get us laughs but not serve the show in a larger sense (although, don’t get me wrong—sometimes one-liners and gags can get laughs and serve the show).
And something else, which may seem counterintuitive to what I just said: we started bringing our quick play to unconventional places. A tag out run would occur with one character, then that character would be tagged out and a whole second run would occur with the last person who tagged in, which might lead to a full time dash scene with that person—and then we’d return to the original scene. Or not. Whatever felt right. Because we knew that the taggee was “watching over” the scene—like a little scenic guardian angel—we weren’t afraid to play around; we knew that someone was there making sure things stayed on course.
And audiences noticed the change, too. Comments like, “I like that stuff you did in the middle of the show—where you did all those tag outs and went back to the original scene and somehow didn’t lose track of where you were,” reinforced our sense that we were, in fact, doing something that was working, not just for us (which is important), but for our audience, too (which is probably more important).
There’s a lot more to explore on this topic, and my team has followed-up the initial quick play rehearsal with other rehearsals that broke down these moves even more, but that one powerful realization of the power of the person who we’d previously imagined had been “cut out” of the scene was a paradigm shift for us. It reinforced what we’d always known about group mind and the idea that you’re always “playing” in a long form show, whether you’re in the scene or not. But it also gave us a sense of control we never thought we had.
(Attached here, the link to the chart I made, revised to include the role of the taggee.)
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