Moving on with the story vs. Staying in the moment

When do you push the story, and when do you stop to smell the roses?

My trick: Always smell the roses. The story will reveal itself.

When we are playing a scene, we get self-conscious about scenes “not going anywhere”. We think that a scene is boring and uninteresting because nothing happens. So we try to find a way to push a story forward instead of letting ourselves sit and immerse in the environment.

I think this comes from the perception of improv as storytelling. It’s true. However, our references are theatres, movies and novels; they are storytelling devices which memorable moments come from key movements that push the story forward. There’s a mastermind writer behind it, carefully designing the pace of the story, how much to reveal, how much to push.

Improv is a little different. And as such, theatres, movies and novels are not the perfect transliteration for improv. We have no mastermind doing the big strokes, we have to do it ourselves*.

(* But there is also improv with a director, more often seen within Johnstone derivations. What it does is take the “brain” part of improv to the sideline. Thus the director can side-coach scenes gently, while the players can fully commit to being present in the moment.)

So how do we find these big moments to push the story?

A TRAP that leads us astray is by becoming too brainy and detaching us from the scene. This is, “Can we pause improvising for a minute, while I THINK of the best way to push the story?” This takes you out of the scene. (PS. This does work sometimes, so it’s not all bad.)

The BETTER way that leads to less brain-freezes is to invest in your scene and stay in the moment, and play it hard. Notice the small things. Smell the roses. Look at the rose, name how many petals it has, what are the colors, how many roses are there? How does it smell? These factoids will ALWAYS trigger something in you, either emotion-wise or ideas story-wise. If it hasn’t, dig deeper. Play harder.

Example scene

I have seen a lot of scenes like this.

Jacuzzi scene
A: Best friend, we finally made it, we are rich. *holds champagne*
B: Yes. It is nice just relaxing in this jacuzzi, finally.
A: We worked our asses off for that product. 3 years. Finally we can enjoy these bubbles.
B: Yes, finally. 3 stinking years. *toasts champagne*
A: *toasts* 3 stinking years. Finally.
B: Ok, what now?
A: We need to get to Paris!

In the mind of these improvisers… why do we say “What now?”, it’s because, wait a minute, we cannot have a scene just two friends hanging out in a jacuzzi. A scene needs FLASH! Needs CONFESSIONS! Needs ACTION!

But improv is much about tempo as it is about moves. And why the above example feels not so organic, is because these two friends said FINALLY they can RELAX, and what do they do? Immediately find something else to do. I think this happens to improvisers feeling the panic of a scene going slowly down the drain.

This is when you should stay in the moment, immerse in the environment, and the story will reveal itself. And it reveals itself in different and deliciously unpredictable ways, if you are patient.

Here’s some other ways the same scene can reveal itself by paying attention to details:

Jacuzzi scene (Alternate 1)
A: Best friend, we finally made it, we are rich. *holds champagne*
B: Yes. It is nice just relaxing in this jacuzzi, finally.
A: We worked our asses off for that product. 3 years. Finally we can enjoy these bubbles.
B: Yes, finally. 3 stinking years. *toasts champagne*
A: *toasts* 3 stinking years. Finally.
B: …
A: …
B: …
A: …
B: Look at these bubbles.
A: Yeah, so cute, different sizes.
B: Some small, some get bigger.
A: They get really big... *thinking*.. And..
B: …and then they pop.
A: Hmm, yeah. They… pop.
B: The bigger they are, the bigger the fall.
A: Do you think our company got a little too big?
B: *watches a few more bubbles popping*
A: …
B: Alright, maybe we should get back to work.
A: Back to the drawing board!

Dedicated to Malcolm Carvalho.