The House That Del Built

The Intellectual Musings of an Improv Wonk.

Don’t Kill Piggy

Group games might be one of the absolute hardest things to get right in long-form improv. First of all, there are so many different ways teams use them: are they just a random palate cleanser? A reminder of the suggestion? An exploration of a detail from the preceding run of scenes? A reinforcement of the show’s theme?

And then there’s the inherent lack of rules and structure. You can’t really pick your group game structures in advance (as some teams do for their opening—which, truth be told is not my thing anyway) because you can’t know what the energy and tone of the show will be at that point and whether that game will fit. And when you’re picking a game on the fly, it can be difficult to get the whole team on board right away. Sure, you can start a recognizable game (a “Scene Paint,” or a run of monologues) but there’s no guarantee that everyone will get what you’re doing, and even then, there’s no way to really know what the particular rules of this iteration of the game will be.

And then, of course, the hardest part about group games is how effortless and fun they’re supposed to seem. Audiences will be patient with a scene if it builds slowly toward something, but a group game is usually expected to hit the ground running: engage Mega Laugh Riot!

I think that’s why group games are the place where I see improvisers panic the most. Today I’d like to address one form of this panic that’s the most obvious and the most frequent. I call it the “Lord of the Flies Effect.”

The LOTF Effect tends to occur at that crucial point in the group game when the exposition has been established (you’ve figured out that you’re all boy scouts on a camping trip, or you’ve determined that you are all collectively eating a giant submarine sandwich). This usually takes 3-5 lines, depending on the efficiency of the group. At this point, the game is clear, and that’s when, often, someone in the team will attempt to heighten or shift the game. Often, it’ll look something like this:

Boy Scout #1: I’ve got the bug spray!

Boy Scout #2: I’ve got the sunscreen!

Boy Scout #3: (realizing that everyone is naming things you need to stay “safe” while camping) I’ve got my Swiss army knife!

Boy Scout #4 at this point might think to himself, “Okay, I get it, but we’re going to need to kick this up a notch to really get something going out of this.” So he tries to heighten the concept of bringing things that “keep you safe” while camping:

Boy Scout #4: I’ve got a box of condoms!

What Boy Scout #4 has done is a really great example of heightening and twisting the original content, without going completely away from it (“I’ve got a parrot on my shoulder!” would be a douche move because nowhere in the first three lines was there any indication of a “pirate” motif. But “condoms” fits with the theme while raising the stakes.)

However, what often happens at this point in the group game is a feeling of “that thing didn’t fit perfectly with the first few things.” And instead of the team giving itself a moment to process it, or simply saying “yes” to it and trusting that they’ll figure it out, they often, instead, follow a different (and destructive) instinct: they turn on the outlier.

He mentions condoms, and everyone else stops what he or she is doing and turns to this guy. “Ewwww!” one whines. “Whoa,” another intones in a vaguely judgmental way. “Dude, we’re not gay,” another accuses. Suddenly everyone on stage has turned on the one person who was trying to make something interesting or meaningful (which will translate into something funny) out of the game, and now instead the game has become an exercise in ostracism.

This is why I call it the LOTF Effect. In Lord of the Flies (spoiler alert if you’ve, like, never been in middle school, I guess), the one person who tries to explain to the boys what’s really going on on the island—that they’ve devolved into beasts and have turned on each other out of fear—is turned on by the group and killed in a primitive ritual dance. In improv, I’ve never seen the reaction be quite so acute, but these kinds of gang-ups usually do end with everyone literally attacking the outlier (either verbally or sometimes even physically), or devolving into general grumbling until someone eventually swipes and puts the team out of its misery.

Now, let’s be clear, I’m not talking here about a deliberate, thoughtful choice to ostracize one player because it’s what the game calls for. I mean, if you’re a bunch of little league parents on the sidelines pleasantly cheering your kid on (“Eye on the ball, Billy!”, “Atta boy, Angus!”) and one guy comes out with the encouragement to “You’re a pimp, Teddy! Make ‘em show you the money or you give ‘em a good smack down!”, then by all means, turn on this guy, because, really, that’s what he’s asking you to do. His statement is so far afield and so offensive that the “right” move is to call him out. And he’ll feed off of that ostracism, because he’s ready for it, and because the game calls for it. But that’s almost never the case when I see teams turn on a member in a group game. It’s almost always that the group is just panicking from their discomfort.

There’s a pretty easy diagnostic test you can do to determine whether the ostracism that has just occurred in your group game is the “bad” kind or the “good” kind: Who’s turning on the outlier: the improvisers or the characters? There’s a difference, and you can see it in the body language and tone of the response. Does the turn seem genuine to the characters and following the flow of the game, or is there a pause, a hiccup, a bunch of uncomfortable shifting, and then a bunch of improvisers freaking out about what to do next? Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter. And let me tell you, the audience can tell, because in improv, there’s no set or costumes or lights or music to mask or hide that response. So when you as an improviser—or an entire team of improvisers—feel uncomfortable with a scene or game, the audience can read it like a book. And that discomfort is contagious, infecting the audience as well. Suddenly you’ve got eight people squirming on stage and a hundred people squirming in their seats.

The immediate result of this kind of “improviser ostracism” is predictable, too—the person who was turned on for offering the heighten either has to fight back or acquiesce. If he fights back the entire energy of the game is this uncomfortable “us against him”; if he acquiesces, at best you’ve wasted time and at worst you’ve lost your chance to make anything of the game at all. And as I described before, the LOTF Effect most likely ends with either screaming and yelling or grumbling, and an awkward scatter of improvisers off stage.

Which is a shame, because that one brave soul who tried to push the game into a new realm probably—as was the case in the Lord of the Flies—held the key to the game’s true meaning. He listened to the first couple offers, saw a pattern, and attempted to help that pattern really take off. Sure, there’s always the possibility that he actually just screwed up and gave an offer that had no place in the scene, but even in that extreme case, what’s better: making the audience watch the rest of the team basically punish that improviser for his bad idea, or letting the audience watch you recover and make that game work (and letting your fellow improviser take the note from the coach after the show is over)?

So please, don’t fear the one person who is attempting to push the game into real, possibly risky, territory. Instead, say yes to it. Say yes hard. Say yes and. Let the game evolve. Play like a team, not like a mob. And whatever you do, don’t use the fat kid’s glasses to make a fire and then drop a rock on his head. That never gets the kind of laugh you think it will.

  1. improvobsession reblogged this from thehousethatdelbuilt and added:
    many damn times. Read it. Get
  2. thehousethatdelbuilt posted this