The House That Del Built

Coco Chanel-prov

The iconic fashion designer Coco Chanel is purported to have given the following advice (oft re-quoted by designers, stylists, and the like): “Before you leave your house, remove the last thing you put on, as it is generally unnecessary.” Chanel was speaking, of course, about clothing and accessories, and the advice supports a general belief that “less is more,” but it also hit me the other day as expressing something deeper about how we represent ourselves and how to remain authentic to that representation, both in fashion, and, yes, in improv.

If you’re dressing for the day, you’re going to put on your undergarments first—they are the closest to your body, and nothing else can be put on until they are in place. In improv, that’s your character. Who you are, what you like, how you act. Then comes your clothing: shirt, pants, dress, shoes. When you put on your clothing, you think about how people will perceive you based on it, what image you will project.  Think of that as your relationship in a scene—you’re projecting your character into a social context with another character. Finally, your accessories add layers to the projected image you’ve created with your clothing. They fill out your public identity. And the accessories of a scene are all of the details that follow from the relationship established between the two characters.  And details are great, but there’s also such a thing as laying them on too heavily, such that they overwhelm the essence of the scene. And Chanel’s not saying that you should get rid of all of these accessories, but she is suggesting you “remove the last thing you put on.” Because that last thing you just felt like you had to throw on there—you probably don’t need it; in fact, it’s probably too much.

This particular lesson has wisdom for the short form and long form player alike. In a short form game, for example, the point is to place restrictions on the performers so that the humor can come from both their skill as performers and from their skill at maneuvering through the restrictions. But if you note the formula of most short-form games, you’ll see that there’s a threshold for the number of restrictions you can give it before you tie the performers’ hands and make them so focused on following the rules that they can’t perform. You can’t play the Alphabet Game (where each person’s line has to begin with a subsequent letter of the alphabet) and Switch Genres (where the scene keeps switching genres: Film Noir, Horror, Sci-Fi, etc.) in the same game, and keep a scene going with any sort of coherence and relationship. The line between being fully invested in being the character on stage and being conscious of your work as a performer is already the hardest one for an improviser to walk; adding one too many parameters throws off this delicate balance and, instead of being more impressive, the whole scene breaks down as the improvisers to try to keep up and “follow all the rules.” Back to the fashion metaphor, it’s sorta like when you see a person who’s clearly got too much going on because she’s desperate to seem like she’s got it together—do you really need a matching belt and purse and headband, sweetheart? Take one thing off. 

In long form, you can actually watch someone adding too many accessories the same way you could watch someone getting dressed. As I said above, the scene starts with absolutely nothing other than the context of the show (unlike a short form scene which usually has parameters and one or more inputs from the audience), and you can see each layer get “put on”: characters first, then a relationship that clarifies the characters and puts them in context. And in a good long form scene, you take care of these things—and only these things—in the first several lines of the scene. You hold off on the accessories until you’ve gotten a sense of the outfit. The top of the scene is not the place to be throwing out numerous and specific details that will only have to be justified later (We’re zombies! And we’re on the moon! And it’s Easter! And we’re wearing top hats!)—that would be like putting rings on every single finger while you stand there naked.

Sometimes, even with a strong character/relationship set-up, a player will drop one or more fundamental aspects of her character or her relationship with her scene partner as she becomes distracted by the addition of accessories. A strong choice of physicality or motive gets dropped because, damn it, we need to try to figure out how being zombies fits with everything we’ve already said in the scene and why we’re drinking Wild Turkey. That’s the improv equivalent of taking off your pants and leaving on your suspenders. You just look silly.

But even after the basic and necessary aspects of the scene are established (character and relationship in a context of where and what) and you’re ready for the details to add depth to the scene, one should be discerning about the details one adds. Perhaps you have discovered in the first few lines that you’re a dad giving your son the sex talk before Prom. You’re being awkward; he’s trying to reassure you you’re doing a good job and get it over with. It’s an appropriate time to add an accessory. But, like a watch or a belt or earrings, the accessory has to match the outfit. Don’t wear your $40,000 Patek Philippe (you own a $40,000 Patek Philippe watch?! Correct answer: No, I don’t own it; I’m just keeping it for the next generation) with a pair of ratty jeans and a concert tee. And don’t suddenly add that your son’s Prom date is in middle school, or blind, or a vampire, just because you feel like the “outfit” of the scene needs a little spicing up, or because you just love the idea of it so much you can’t help yourself. Listen to what’s already there, and be tasteful about what you add. Did you tell your son that you “didn’t know much about sex when you were his age”? So maybe now it might make sense to add that your dad—his grandfather—was an Evangelical preacher who believed in abstinence. That’s new, but it matches, and it adds depth to the scene. 

In contrast to that tasteful detail, you can see how if you’d instead suggested your son’s date is blind it would not only be superfluous, but “clashing.” The scene’s not about your son’s date and her various characteristics—it’s about your ineptitude in teaching him about the birds and the bees. Don’t get sidetracked with a piece of information that doesn’t serve that focus or you’ll just spend precious scene time trying to justify its presence. 

Of course, you can’t really “take something off” in an improv scene—once it’s said, it’s out there—so the astute improviser has to learn how to not put that extra accessory on in the first place. And you know how I’m going to say you develop that insight, don’t you? 

Yup. Rehearsal. Rehearse a scene. Stop yourself when you realize you’re about to add an extraneous detail. If you’re a coach, call out the “one detail too many” and reverse the scene to before it happened. See how much more focused, and also funnier, the scenes are when they’re not trying to figure out what to do with that giant rhinestone broche on your lapel, no matter how funny that broche might have seemed in your head. Then chase the feeling you got when the scene had just the right amount of information. Trust me, you’ll look fabulous.

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