Not a super fan of a scene?  Don’t sweep it under the rug – you may want to forget about it but the audience may not be able to.  Better then to double down on it.  Use the Help Desk dynamic to heighten the interaction and turn a “not great” initial scene into the base of a beautiful run of collaborative pattern play.

That’s what The Johnsons do.

The Progression: Folding clothes to Folding pretzels to Folding bodies.

• As the situation heightens so too does the emotion and the physicality.

The callbacks: The employee’s picture on the wall, the other’s inability to articulate an insult, leaning up against the wall to watch.

• A line may not be funny once, but it may be funny twice, and it will be funny the third time.
• Choosing to repeat a moment that may have seemed like a “mistake” the first time around (like the “nevermind” in this scene) makes that line matter and makes your fellow player look good.

And The Johnsons know, too, that while there is absolutely power in the repetition and heightening of pattern, they aren’t trapped by the dialogue and action of the intial scene.  The pretzel gets a sprinkle. The ultimate yoga pose is deemed – after a pause – to be “very good.”

PLUS – see the way The Johnsons take advantage of the long Coalition stage to perform a Split Screen?  Sexy.  They don’t need to physically tag out another player or wave their arms at them to get them to leave, they just post up on either side of the stage and cede the space to the newly entered couple.  

Try it – both the Help Desk and the Split Screen.  You’ll like it.  And so will the audience.