Tag Archives: format

May 19

Ah, Horse Apples

Hi. Been a while.

Just performed with Horse Apples – Me, David, Nick, Matt, and Barry.

We want to keep doing this because it’s fun for us – we’re all dads and at least 40, so really this is the fun for us. But we’re very sensitive to holding up a space in a community we’re so glad to see growing. We want to deserve our spot, not just get to ride out our wake.

Solution 1 – Get the Young Hungrys to open the show. They’ll bring friends and family. An audience is often more family and friends than random entertainment seekers. Even in the bigger cities if you consider “students and hobbiests” who are “there to see their friends,” “there to see their friends.” Our families and friends are asleep in our/their children’s beds. The Young Hungrys’ friends and family would show up, not yet exhausted by either the invites or the improv.

Solution 2 – Cultivate Opener with TLC. Leveraging “The Lottery” approach, marry outstanding students with establishment players/teachers in a group committed to multiple rehearsals and shows. Barry coached. Casts have been great.

Solution 3 – Do better improv. Can’t coast. Gotta step up. We needed to rehearse. We needed coaching – one voice that could matter more than our opinions and align us. At The Second City, star players were going to First Cities for sitcoms they could think of you for. Think of times when you just laughed at something funny and those times you wanted the person eliciting laughter to know you were laughing so you laughed a little harder. Horse Apples are the guys who moved to Third City, Richmond VA, for family. No one in our audience is motivated to show up or laugh for us; we gotta make’em laugh.

Solution 4 – Gimmick? Tenure in improv is immaterial when a child is infinitely better at improvising than an adult. But, maybe one benefit of our beens-around-the-block is owning being a museum. We’ll fill a wheel with named improv formats written on each pie piece. An audience member would spin the wheel to determine our form for the night and give us our suggestion and the show would start.

Tonight we spun the wheel for the first time…

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Dec 17

Monologue-based Format: Here’s Laughing At You, Cancer

A monologist shares a personal story. Ideally one recreating their emotions about a specific  moment with rich details. Performers then replace the speaker on stage with a series of scenes inspired by the monologue. Ideally not just scenes reenacting the recollection but scenes that heighten the ideas of the monologue through new contexts. Maybe the monologist returns to relate another story; maybe not. If monologues separate the format into beats, ideally earlier scenes are referenced in later scenes.

That’s the Monologue-based Format.

The Armando Diaz Experience is a famous one. The Coalition Theater puts up a “Richmond Famous” wherein local public figures are invited to be the monologist.

LINC, the Legal Information Network for Cancer, puts up “Here’s Laughing At You, Cancer” annually as a fundraiser for their efforts to assist income-qualified individuals with legal and financial issues related to their cancer diagnoses (GREAT organization!).

And, yes, the show revolves around monologists sharing stories related to their cancer. Then the performers create scenes based on those monologists. Funny scenes.

And it works. Check it out.


The show’s monologists in order of appearance are: Jim Guy, Lulú de Panbehchi, Keisha Harris and Ann Hodges

The Coaliton performers are Katie Holcomb, Patrick Gantz, Matt Newman, Lauren Serpa and Jim Zarling.

Fantastic videography provided by Joey Tran and Double Take Productions.

Sep 8

Forging an Organic Format: part TWO

The first time it’s random. 

The second time it’s purposeful.

The third time it’s expected.

This progression informs how we build collaboratively in improv, be it in service of a pattern of emotional behavior, a relationship dynamic, a group game, or forging an organic format.

What is necessary to elevate a random occurence into a shared experience?  It requires that second move – the choice to make the first move matter.

Derek Sivers gets it.

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Nov 14

A Harold video example

As said best in Truth in Comedy, “The Harold is like the space shuttle, incorporating all of the developments and discoveries that have gone before it into one new, superior design.” The other way around, Harold’s learnings pack in the lion’s share of what you need to know to do any other long-form, which is why The Coalition teaches students long-form improvisation formats through the lens of The Harold first.

To provide students with an example Harold (Richmond is not, after all, Chicago, New York or Los Angeles where an improviser can see a Harold every night of the week), some of The Coalition’s most experienced players came together to perform the show embedded below. For a group that had never before all done a Harold together, it’s pretty good.

Lights were pulled before we could get to the 3C scene, but several of us had one ready. That’s why improv is a great hobby for people who like to sit around in bars and talk about what they could’ve done.
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Jan 21

Forging an Organic Format: part one

I’m enamored by memories of the Chicago teams “People of Earth” and “American Dream.” Often an audience member remembers a show by the handful of great scenes it produced. These groups of talented improvisers created memorable shows because the scenes built on each other to create a singular experience.
This post aims to provide some guidance to groups that endeavor to perform memorable shows not just memorable scenes.

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Mar 9

SWOT #17 – Playing with Flexible Formats

I like formats.  Playing within The Harold’s dictated structure of Opening, 1A, 1B, 1C, Group Game, 2A, 2B, 2C, Group Game and 3A/B/C an improviser can spend less time on the wings worrying about what to initiate and more time focused on how to initiate.

I like rules.  Rules free us to play Pavlovianly and enable audiences to engage, even subconsciously, in the pattern.  Again, while rules indicate what gets said more creativity can be pumped into how what gets said gets said.

An improv group has a lot on its plate building something collaboratively out of nothing.  A set format and established rules can be helpful spines to flesh out – useful maps on which to erect roadside attractions.  An improv group though that is experienced in a wide swath of formats, a troupe that is working from the same rulebook, can grow to trust in its ability to be flexible.

Sure, at “Harold Night” every show’s content will be different and of-the-moment.  And, sure, a known format, like The Armando, can foster a loyal crowd week after week.  But.  But if a group of improvisers who know each other, trust each other and share the same language can get on stage and follow each other into a format made up in-the-moment?  That’s improv as improv does best.

Flexible Format Capable Ensembles

If this Weakness is identified, the following posts may prove helpful in coaching to the Opportunity:
* Kick The Duck Red Rover
* Flexible Long Form “Formats”
* Establishing Organic Forms