Watch the Johnsons heighten the mechanics of an emotionally active first beat into a fun found-joke.

The first beat is a fun scene in-and-of-itself.  The players confidently engage their environment.  They take the time to see and – most importantly – feel about what they see.  They react through the scene.  They don’t stop with just Scott’s skin shirt, they ask, “if this then what” and find Lauren’s skin pants. They really listen to each other and the final joke is found collaboratively.

Later in the show, when John takes a physical position similar to that Lauren had in the first scene, Lauren follows the pattern to play the other role; she even verbally initiates with a line of dialogue very similar to that which initiated the first beat scene. Having established for each other and the audience that this will be a subsequent beat of an earlier scene, they don’t rush.  John takes the time to engage the environment, prepping what we find to be a skirt made of hot dogs. Lauren then, seeing the hotdogs and mindful of the earlier game, has an awesome reaction that heighten’s the previous scene into a nice joke for the audience: “American.”