Buttons

You always want to go out with a bang. We want the last moment of any scene to be impactful or funny. Whenever you make a move that would be a strong point to end the scene, that’s called a button (or blow-line). You’ve offered your editor-to-be an opportunity to act. Buttons are punctuation marks in the outline of the scene. We don’t want to end mid-sente

A button is not an imperative for your editor, it’s an option; so the back-line might press it or they might not. Never rely on an edit, no matter how much you anticipate it: remain in character and in motion. Interactions don’t get swept in real life, so your character should never just stop being until the scene they’re in is officially complete. (Even better, until you’re fully off stage. Yes, exiting in character earns bonus points.)

Some solid buttons:

• A revelation that answers a significant unanswered question

• A move that opens up a whole new realm of possibility late in the scene

• Leaving the scene (which should be justified by the fiction)

• A callback

• Anything that gets a laugh (or any emotional response)

Flashing Buttons

There are a few buttons that are compulsory (most places), because we don’t want to portray them on stage:

• Grisly Violence

• Defecation

• Sex

When to End a Scene

When you’re on the back-line (or running the lights, sometimes), you’re the editor, and it’s your job to be looking for good opportunities to end the scene.

What makes learning editing so hard is that we only improve by failing. Good edits are invisible, but awkward edits stand out. This is why it’s important to edit aggressively when you’re starting out. If you think maybe now’s a good time, trust your gut and edit; either you’re right, or you’ll learn (and either way the actors will survive). When you miss an edit opportunity, early on you’ll have no idea until it’s way too late. Watch the latency between I-should-have-edited-there and I-edited-there shrink as your skill grows.

Editing is the skill new improvisers are worst at because they don’t yet have a strong instinct for when scenes should end (having never watched other scenes while actively trying to learn when they end), and are worried about stepping on the toes of the actors in the scene. That’s why improv teachers preach “there are no bad edits”: it’s much better for students to practice their skills and learn through trial and error than to be too afraid to try. Even outside the classroom, it’s much better to end a scene early than late. That said, some edits are better than others.

Good times to end a scene:

• When the actors give you a button to push

• When there’s a big laugh

• When the scene’s problem is solved

• When the next big problem is introduced

• When a whole new realm of possibility opens up late in the scene

• When there’s a revelation that answers a significant unanswered question

• When the characters leave the scene

• When the actors are out of gas

• When the scene returns to its beginning

“Whenever we hear a line from the start of the scene,
we know we’re near the end.”—Sheldon Patinkin

“The End is the Beginning”—Mike Myers

Poor times to end a scene:

• Don’t edit before we know what the scene is about.

• Don’t edit before the players have found the game and played three moves of it.

• Don’t edit in the middle of a move (unless it’s a flashing button).

• Don’t edit when the actors are excited.
  You can edit when they’re having fun, but if they’re excited, that means they’ve got something good coming momentarily. Actors being excited is different from their characters being excited; that’s a good edit.

• Don’t edit too late.
  I mean, when you miss the good places to edit a scene, you still have to edit it. I’m just saying, you can miss the boat, and you don’t want to miss the boat.

Don’t hesitate to end a scene because:

• It’s going well.
  Each scene that ends on a high-note improves the audience’s memory of the show.

• You don’t want to step on the actors’ toes.
  We can always revisit a scene that was killing.

Do worry about:

• Leaving your troupe mates hanging on stage.
  Any scene can be saved, but once the actors have given up hope, nothing good will come from leaving them out there. The best way to make your troupe mate angry may be to make an offensive demand^future of them, but the second best way is to let them languish in a sputtering scene.

It doesn’t feel great to end a scene on a low note, but it’s a brand-non-specific adhesive bandage that must be pulled because letting a bad scene continue while you wait for a button means you’re wasting time that should be spent on the next, better scene. That better scene will dull the memory of the bad one; get to it sooner.

Finishing your scene strong works similarly to everything in your scene mattering. Nothing matters unless you make it matter, so make everything matter. Your scene will end one way or another, but it can only end well if you make moves that could be good endings, and your editor recognizes one.

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Responses

The second move of a scene, immediately following the initiation, is called the response. Whatever the second player says/does in reaction to the initiator.

While the initiation is important and can be massively impactful, the responding player’s first line always is. Their response sets the reality of the scene as well as its emotional trajectory.

Here are three scenes with the same initiation but different responses.

Scene 1

Alice: Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day.

Bob: O—O—Okay, boss. Sorry, boss.

Scene 2

Alice: Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day.

Bob: No shit. If you don’t get them, it’s all our heads!

Scene 3

Alice: Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day.

Bob: Honey, you’ve gotta quit your job.

There are, of course, an infinite number of responses, but here are three grounded responses where Bob simply chose a different relationship to Alice, and that gave him a different emotion. Everything Alice offered was honored, yet those three scenes will play out completely differently.

Often new improvisers are nervous to initiate a scene because it feels like a big responsibility. Initiating is no larger a responsibility than responding. The initiator can set up the facts of the scene’s platform (the who, what, where) and possibly a premise, but the responder can define the nature of the scene, from the tone to the genre to the relationship dynamic to the game-of-the-scene.

The response in scene 1, above, is the most predictable: boss and employee with the expected statuses. Nothing unusual yet, except Bob being excessively submissive.

The response in scene 2 puts two middle managers (or one and an exec) together, which is not a scene that’s been done to death, but is still very relatable. Again, nothing stands out as what-the-scene-has-to-be-about, but it could easily be these two throwing each other under the bus.

Scene 3 moves out of the office into the home, and it also repaints the dynamic to one of loving—if perhaps frustrated—support. If Alice uses office jargon to talk about work at home with her spouse, what else does she do strangely?

Freedom, Power, Responsibility

I recently heard the first, second, and third moves of an improv scene identified as freedom, power, and responsibility. (Provenance uncertain, but possibly Rachel Klein’s tumblr, The House That Del Built 2/24/2011.) The first line has the freedom to establish anything. The second line has the power to set the scene’s course. The third line has the responsibility to set in stone the pattern implied by the second. I love that.

So what makes a better response?

Same as all improv: stick with the reality you and your partner have intimated thus far, verbally and otherwise; be personally affected; add information pertinent to what just happened, and make bold choices. The only difference is that your choice here is much more likely to set the gist of the scene, so avoid anything you’d be truly uncomfortable with and do something fun.

Scene 4

Alice: Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day.

Bob: I’m working on it! I wish you’d shut up already.

This scene could work, but it’s pointed in a really bad direction. Maybe avoid such a direct and toxic response.

Scene 5

Alice: Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day.

Bob: Reportuis Quarterus! Here you go, grand wizard.

On one hand, we’ve solved the problem instantly and need to find something else for this scene to be about. On the other hand, Bob has fully yes’d his partner while add’ing fantastically (literally, and the problem he solved was never interesting). The chances of scene 5 failing to go somewhere unique and fun are wicked low.

How much information should you add?

Depends on the initiation. “Bob, I need those quarterly reports by end-of-day” sets part of the Who, much of the What, and hints at the Where.

Here, I would look to make one of those pieces of the platform rock solid. “Yes, Mrs. Andrews” gives us our second name and clarifies that this is a boss-subordinate relationship. “I hope we finish them before the SEC gets here” solidifies the What. “No problem! Wouldn’t want to risk my job here at Simson’s Drawing & Quartering Depot” is a tad obnoxious. Each of these three responses yes-and without overstepping. Mash them together, though, and it’s way too much. That’s railroading.

“Okay” offers nothing, and is a weak response… unless your partner’s initiating a premise. In that case, it allows them to share their idea without throwing a wrench in the monkey works. A no-information response is also a reasonable to an overwrought initiation with too much info.

If the initiation lacks information, add more with your response.

Remember that words aren’t the only medium for information. Emotion, action, physical relationship, and even silence can be even more meaningful.

Of all the responses here, the strongest is scene 3’s (“Honey, you’ve gotta quit your job.”). In one simple line, Bob paints a world in which Alice is so caught up in her work that she’s talking to her family like employees and where Bob cares about Alice. The problem is not some McGuffin of a task, but within Alice and coming between her and her loved ones. The relationship here is a committed one, which means Alice and Bob aren’t going to walk out on each other, and won’t need to invent reasons to avoid doing so.

That said, response 3 isn’t the best yes-and because it twists what Alice clearly believed was happening and leaves a gap to be justified—what are the quarterly reports Alice is referencing, and is she asking Bob for them or just griping about an employee? So what would an even better response look like?

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Initiations

When you start a new scene, the first thing you do/say is the initiation.

New improvisers are scared to initiate scenes, so teachers give them rules to help guide them, and then those rules put players in their heads, and that causes stilted initiations that players feel bad about, and that makes them scared to initiate scenes.

Screw that!

There are a million things you can think about while initiating a scene. Don’t think. Thinking is the mind killer. Just do or say the first thing that comes to mind. It doesn’t matter what it is or what it sets up, because whatever comes next will build off of it. And what follows that will build the next thing and it all just flows, if you let it.

I’m not saying all initiations are equal, nor that there aren’t skills to build around them; I’m saying any given initiation will be better if you don’t worry about any of that while you’re doing it. You can analyze it later, study missed opportunities offstage, run drills during rehearsal… but on stage what you’re doing right now is all that matters and it’s perfect in this moment. (And that applies to the whole performance.)

That said, what does make for a better initiation?

The short answer is any bold choice. An emotion. A character. An intriguing line. A curious motion. Ideally, it entices and inspires your partner, without baffling them.

It is possible to establish the “who,” “what,” and “where” in the first line. Don’t do that. It’s too much. Establish one thing, then pass the ball to your partner. Don’t deliver more than one line without giving them a chance to respond. It’s less important to establish the base reality than it is to share authorship with your partner.

It’s also possible to do very little, depending on your partner. Patrick Reed and I start our duo, JK, with arbitrary physicality (as seen here).

But that doesn’t work for everyone. I once initiated elsewhere with “You won’t even know I’m here” and my partner was so lost she had to ask who I was, which killed the scene. I was setting up being a chaperone for my child’s dance, but I didn’t give enough information. I should’ve said, “Don’t worry about me being your chaperone. You won’t even know I’m here.” (I went the more succinct route because I like letting my partner add their own sauce and I wasn’t married to being a chaperone, but the riddle I put to my partner here stumped them, which is like asking an empty question.)

Don’t rush to say words. Unless you’ve got an idea for a fast-paced scene, just step out and be. Have an emotion. Be in a place. Do an activity. But don’t say anything until your character feels they must.

Half-Ideas

Sometimes you start a scene knowing you want to play with an idea that has surfaced, but you don’t know how. Your opener mentioned the “debt ceiling” as well as “glass ceilings” and your instinct is to combine those concepts. Or someone said “you’re fired” in a sexy way. That’s a great place to start from! You don’t need to know where this scene is going, you just need to get the ball rolling, and you’ve got the inspiration for it.

Share your half idea as directly as you can with your first line. That way, if your partner can paddle the same direction, you’ll find your stream faster, and if not, you can figure out you need a motorboat rather than a canoe. “Let’s shatter this debt ceiling, Brenda!”

Deals

Another solid way to start a scene is with a deal: any choice that implies an aspect of your character in this moment—a point of view, a behavior, an objective, a tactic, a physicality, an emotion, an object gripped tightly in your hands that you don’t yet know what is. Entering with a deal is like starting a street race with your foot on both pedals. You’ve got something playable right off the bat, which is a huge I-know-what-I’m-doing for the audience. It’s almost impossible for a scene like that to flounder.

You can demonstrate your character’s deal from the get-go and continue to demonstrate it in different ways throughout the scene. That will ground the scene through your character’s relatability, or else establish the unusual thing we can play with.

The character games that arise from a nice chewy deal are the easiest source of tag runs Game^future, because all we have to do is find new contexts in which to play your game, and all you have to do is keep your deal. If you ever find that you have dropped your deal, don’t panic, just pick it back up again; that’s good for a laugh too.

A deal is not a full character and should include no facts external to how you play them. “I am an astronaut” is a lovely way to inspire physicality or personality, just remember it’s only an inspiration. Your character isn’t literally an astronaut (yet), because when your partner calls you a medieval peasant, it’s impossible to reconcile both facts. But a medieval peasant who walks and talks like an astronaut? Yes please.

I enter every scene with a deal, whether I’m initiating or not. Even if your partner has a plan, your fact-less deal can only add texture.

Premises

When you describe the essence of a sketch in a single line, that’s its premise. Two naive cheerleader-wannabes are unironically enthusiastic dorks. Every improv scene that doesn’t go off the rails ends up as a sketch, and sketches have premises. The garbage man is confused by a homeowner’s attempt to woo him by throwing away things she thinks will make him like her.

Most of the time, you’ll want to discover your scene’s premise organically, one line at a time, stumbling upon the first unusual thing. But you can also initiate a scene with a premise. If some combination of ideas from the show add up to a novel idea, you can point a new scene in that direction. Scene 1 was a film noir and Scene 2 had the Terminator… let’s see the film noir version of Terminator!

When you initiate with a premise, and it’s even marginally important to you that it lands, establish that premise ASAP. Your second line might be too late. Be blunt. One of my worst improv habits is being too coy with my premises; I drop clues and slowly build toward the reveal, but my clues are too subtle for my partner and scenes don’t have time for such indulgences. It can feel awkward to state the premise, but that’s better than a scene puttering about or going off the rails.

Premise-based improv is tricky. A strong premise derived from the show so far ties things together nicely. It’s hard to put on a Harold^future without that kind of thinking. But I also see entire shows and troupes suffer because of improvisers stuck in their heads, trying to deliver premise after premise. What makes improv great isn’t a bunch of brilliant people writing a fully realized show in real-time, it’s folks who don’t know what’s next sharing random ideas that build into novel moments that we follow to their “logical” conclusions.

Premise improv has a higher floor but a lower ceiling: it’s less likely to fail, but it’s rarely as amazing as a good organic discovery.

Slow Initiations

TJ and Dave are famous for their slow initiations. They’ll each adopt a position on stage, an expression, a moment of being, then the lights come up and they observe what this moment is between them. Who are you? Who am I? Who are we to each other? What’s happening here? They allow these answers to reveal themselves based on the myriad tiny truths evident on stage. If you watch closely, you can see their reality snap into place in mere seconds.

This style eschews invention from the start, challenging the improvisers to discover everything, through careful observation of your partner, yourself, the space between you, and perhaps even the audience.

These scenes tend to be more grounded and realistic, simply because you’re unlikely to observe yourself floating through space or transforming into a dragon. They’re slow, not in the sense that the improvisers aren’t working as hard, nor even that they’re not speaking as fast, but in that they’re not racing to establish the base reality, find the first unusual thing, or justify their existence by labeling what makes this the day of days.

Rick Horner and I play a bit like this as Portmantwo. A couple of goofball geeks, we’re much more prone to label what we see as fantastical, or to have unlikely relationships, but in addition to our silly choices, we are carefully observing what was said and what was not, plumbing for the truth behind the scene. Striving to make explicit what is implicit, but also to be killer robot lovers, or whatever.

Joke Initiations

Sometimes improvisers start a scene with a joke. That gets a laugh, but they were so sure someone would edit the scene immediately that they’re completely unprepared to do or say anything else. I’ve seen improvisers literally just stand there, simply walk off stage, and even verbally ask to be edited.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a joke initiation, so long as you have no expectation for the joke to carry the scene or for the scene to be edited immediately. If the involved actors remain in character, continue to react as their characters would in that situation, and continue to yes-and or answer if-this-what-else, the scene will do everything a scene does with any other initiation. Immunity to such false starts is one of the most obvious benefits of commitment.

It’s a common and time-tested lesson to let improv students who initiate this way sit in the scene, and experience first-hand what happens when they give up on a scene before it’s edited. Sometimes, they’ll discover lovely moments that simply aren’t possible when they’re so focused on jokes at the expense of realism and acting. It does help if you can guide them through that process, and/or demonstrate the possibilities.

All that said, if a troupemate initiates with a joke during a show, edit immediately—unless you know they’re committed and ready to discover what comes next. 5- to 15-second scenes are just as useful to keep an improv show’s pacing dynamic as they are in a sketch show (where they’re called blackouts and are worth their weight in gold).

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I’m starting this blog because I wrote a book and it’s too full. I need to move like half of it elsewhere. So guess what? Here’s comes half a book, one topic at a time, completely free. The book—which I’ll talk more about when it’s close to publication—attacks the subject of improv from a very (cool and) specific angle, so this blog will attack it from not-that-angle. I’m going to go deep, blend theory with practice, share examples, and offer hard-won tips and tricks.

Why Villain Ouvre? It’s subversive for adults to play. It’s disruptive to live as other people. It’s dangerous to imagine new worlds. It’s a threat when we collaborate. To the people in power, we are villains. Sounds fun. Let’s be villains.

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