jennings rampage

On the relationship between relationship and game.

Finally, I tie up the next entry in this series:

Let’s go ahead and oversimplify some concepts to help produce a few tangible frameworks for what it is we do, and make some sloppy rhetoric out of it all. (That’s not a metaphor, right? It’s just terrible.)

Why do we improvise? The correct answer this evening is: to entertain an audience. Yes, there are several other reasons to improvise, but let’s go with the entertainment thing for right now. Now, if we’ve identified a goal (entertainment) and a means to get there (theatrical improvisation), we’re ready to take another half-step back and think about how to improvise in order to most effectively reach our goal.

(Now, you may have noticed that I just pulled out the magic loaded term, “theatrical improvisation.” It’s a sure sign of improv snobbery, a clue that the speaker thinks more highly of his narrow view of art than your narrow view of art. In this case, it’s quite true. Stay with me, though.)

Since theatrical improvisation is a child of the theater, it seems appropriate to look to the theater to begin to draw parallels. What is the purpose of the theater? Again: to entertain. (It’s a very broad word, there are many ways to entertain, comedies and dramas and tragedies and dada all are designed to entertain.) And how exactly does the theater entertain? Now, here’s another very big question for which I will offer a very simplified answer: theater entertains by reflecting the human condition to evoke an emotional reaction caused by identification with the piece.

So, if theater entertains by reflecting the human condition, what tools does it use to engineer this image? More simplification and hand-waving: notice that most plays are driven by the relationships between the characters. Ancient Greek plays use relationships among the gods and between god and man to impart lessons, the Passion is about the relationship between God and Jesus and Jesus and his followers, Shakespeare magnified love and treachery to an extreme degree through his characters’ relationships with each other. Nitpick all you’d like, but good theater is driven, in general, by effective manipulations of relationships among characters.

Now, this is a very long way to get to something that shouldn’t be contentious: since theatrical improvisation has the same goals as the theater, it should observe the same conventions, and primarily use the relationships among the characters to reflect the human condition, produce a piece that can be related to by the audience, and entertain.

If the goal of every theatrically improvised piece is to reflect the human condition in some way, then every scene that does not address the relationship among the characters is wasted. When I direct a rehearsal, I demand that the relationship be defined at the top of the scene. And to give a relationship definition, it needs detail and nuance — simply calling your scene partner “Dad” can’t suffice. Now, if one character says “Dad, I need to borrow the car,” and the other character “of course, son, we agreed that if you got straight As this term, you could use the car whenever you wanted,” now we’ve got a much better idea about each of these characters individually, along with the relationship between them.

Once the relationship has definition, it is ripe for exploration. In this case, it’s natural (and therefore easy) for the players to notice details about both characters, precisely because they do connect and relate to each other, just as in theater. When an actor in a scripted piece forgets a line, they shouldn’t be at a loss — if they remain in that moment, they should be able to convey what comes next using the context of the relationship that came before. It is a natural structure, one that guides the scene forward organically, without the need to grasp for and invent new details. How often is it said: the answer is in your scene partner’s eyes.

Now, when we begin exploring the relationship between the characters, we begin applying the improviser’s mantra in order to explore in a logical and consistent manner: “if this is true, what else is true?” In our example, if it is true that a father promised his son the privilege of driving the family car in exchange for good grades, what else is true? Perhaps there’s some framework of behavior-reward at work that the improvisers can begin to clarify and heighten — perhaps, the son has to wear a crown of thorns until he quits smoking, or he can’t use the bathroom indoors until he gets his 40 yard dash time below five seconds. These examples should flow naturally from the relationship that the characters establish.

The exploration of the relationship between characters yields an unusual “thing,” or detail or dynamic, that sets the tone for the rest of the scene, and lights the direction of exploration for the characters. This framework of exploration is usually called “the game” by improvisers, and is quite often viewed and analyzed as independent of the relationship between the characters. I think this is a clear handicap to a complete view of theatrical improvisation.

I’ve often heard notes that relate to how an individual character in a scene plays the game. I’ve also heard notes that advise and encourage and foster situations where one character “has a game,” and any other characters in the scene should work to highlight that one character. This approach seems to me to be very labor intensive and inconsistent, in that you’re forced to not only think of a character, but also a game, and communicate both to your scene partner. It approaches an antithesis of improvisation in many ways. If you find yourself in situations where one character “has a game,” you’re not doing the work right.

My oversimplified world, with its clean lines and smooth edges, should lead you nicely to this simple conclusion: the game of the scene can not be played by the characters, it must be played by the relationship. What this means in practical terms is the game of the scene must be discovered through the exploration the relationship and not the exploration of the environment or any people who aren’t present or any other distraction — it must be about the people on stage. The game must be an extension of the relationship, a framework to move the action of the scene forward without a script, to further explore the nuance of the human condition reflected in that relationship. By establishing a relationship and not exploring it through the framework of a scenic game, you waste it; you fail to reflect the human condition, and you fail to create theater.

When directing, you should avoid talking about the game of a scene before talking about a relationship. You should avoid letting students proceed more than three lines without defining a relationship that can be fleshed out and nuanced. And you should probably sidecoach students who begin to play a game that exists outside the framework of the relationship between the characters. After all, this is theater.