The House That Del Built

The Intellectual Musings of an Improv Wonk.

Imitation vs. Inspiration

Could we all please make an improv pact right now never again to do a scene that is just a literal enactment of information from the show opening? Your opening is one of those documentary things and two people tell a story about one of them getting his hand stuck in a pickle jar, so your first scene out the gate is…a guy getting his hand stuck in a pickle jar. The monologist in your Armando tells about getting a measles shot when he was a kid that gave him the measles and your first scene is…a kid who got the measles from his measles shot.

Ugh.

And I don’t mean to be harsh here, but if I explain why it is that we pretty much almost never should want to do that kind of thing ever again, maybe we’ll all jump on the bandwagon. It’s worth a try.

Argument #1: The “The Book is Always Better Than the Movie” Argument:

This argument goes like this: if an event is described in enough detail for the audience to picture it, they’ve already done so. And they’ve pictured it as funny and crazy and ironically as possible, because their brain wants them to derive as much pleasure from that thought as possible. No scene you could ever do—if it is a literal reenactment of that event—will ever top the scene they’ve already and instantly played out in their heads. Just like no one could ever play Holden Caulfield in a film version of The Catcher in the Rye to any teenage boy’s satisfaction. Don’t try to be a hero—you won’t be.

Argument #2: The “Efficiency in Improv” Argument:

This argument builds from the first, and it says that, given that the audience has already “seen” this scene, you are literally wasting their time to show it to them again. And audiences bore quickly, so even if your version is wonderfully brilliant, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle to overcome their initial “Yeah yeah, I get it” response. It’s like that one really bad episode of Alias where the first half was all from Sydney’s point-of-view, and the second half was all from that blond bad guy’s point-of-view, but the two points-of-view overlapped so much that it wasn’t worth the 20 minutes it took to replay it, and it added nothing to our understanding of the plot or the characters. It was just boring. Remember Alias, guys? Remember when Jennifer Garner kicked ass in tight leather? Sigh. But I digress…

Here’s the thing: it’s not that it’s impossible to do a good “opening reenactment scene”; it’s just that it’s so easy to end up playing uninspired and uninspiring when your source material is already completely laid out. In fact, the reenactment scenes I’ve seen that do work well all have one thing in common: they start with the content of the opening but almost immediately heighten way beyond it before the audience’s “been there, done that” response kicks in. So you’ve got the opening with the pickle jar, and you start your first scene with a guy with his hand stuck in a pickle jar, and then someone comes in and says, “Perkins, finish your lunch and get out here! You’re the only man at CTU with hands adroit enough to dismantle the dirty bomb that was just delivered to the director’s desk!” The guy pulls, but his hand won’t come free. “Nooooo!!!!” he shouts, shaking his pickle-jar covered fist in the air. In this case, the pickle jar is really just the inspiration point for a full character. And it’s not like every other scene with this guy will involve a pickle jar (although it’ll most likely involve him having the innate ability to do something wonderful but being stuck in a situation that makes the execution of that skill impossible). 

If you’re buying my whole argument here, and you want to start doing scenes that are inspired by rather than imitative or reenacting of the opening source material, here’s  a nice way to think of it instead: Don’t replay it; reimagine it. A guy getting his hand stuck in a pickle jar turns into a guy whose clingy girlfriend won’t let go of his hand at a party. Sometimes we call that “mapping,” and it’s usually a lot more fun than seeing something you just talked at length about. Don’t think the audience will get the connection? Take some pickles out of the fridge with the other hand. No…don’t get your hand stuck in the jar, but use that moment to connect the two images for the audience. Maybe you’re just about to grab a pickle when she jerks you away with the other hand and forces you onto the dance floor. They audience will get it; I promise.

And you’ll be having more fun, because you’ll be inspired by the information from the opening instead of tied down by it. Do a bunch of literal reenactments and you’ll be stuck in “wacky plot world” (most likely with a series of ever tightening pickle jars) all night. Do some smart extensions of the source material and you expand your show and take the audience to new and interesting places by connecting seemingly disparate narratives through a common theme.

Also, while we’re at it, could we stop that thing where when a scene gets really confusing and weird we say “cut” from offstage and act like the whole thing was a scene we were shooting from a movie? No? Okay, cool. Baby steps.

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