Tag Archives: scene

Feb 19

Situational Stakes exercises

Situational Stakes:   Our “What” is emotional reactions to active elements.  Commitment and repetition are the only “why” we need.  But “Because” can elevate the emotional stakes of a scene with context.  

“Stakes” come in many forms – and we want to apply emotion to all of them.  These exercises focus on endowing premises and “wacky circumstances” with emotion.

Situational Effects – The impact that success or failure of a particular circumstance’s efforts portend to have on players’/a player’s feelings.  “We have five minutes to defuse this bomb or we’re dead.”/ “I don’t want to die.”

SITUATIONAL Suggested Exercises:

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – Players initiate two person scenes with the wildest, crazy-detailed quests/needs that they can imagine.  “It is left to us janitors to slay the dragon.”  “Build me a robot that makes robots and runs on souls.”  They seek solutions.  They pursue options.
Lessons:
• Try, don’t discuss – “I don’t know if this will work.”  Shut up.  Try it.
• All that matters is that you feel – care about what you’re doing.  Experience successes and failures emotionally.  The Matrix was totally predicated on the intricacies of plot (and special effects) and when plot failed, there was no emotion (too cool) to carry it.  Because “The Flux-Capacitor” was the only sense Back To The Future needed; it had Marty and Doc.
• Confidently engage environment – explore your wild premise beyond words.  More often, the stranger the world, the more we hang back from making physical choices (I’m “a pilot” but I don’t know how to fly a plane so I’m scared to engage the cockpit’s control”).  Do whatever confidently and deliberately (How do you build a mainframe? “Like this.  Ugh. Umph. Twist.  Torque.  Here.”)
• Get Satisfaction – We often unnecessarily fear achieving our wants to avoid dealing with what lies on the other side.  When that fear has power over the scene it stagnates.  What happens when you give the guy who wants a robot a robot?  What if you left when someone demands that you “get out of here”?  What if you can suddenly do the thing you couldn’t do?  Especially if we have emotionally committed characters, we can feel comfortable exploring the other side of our obstacles.
Variations:
•  Lead and/or break into exercise with a few environment warm-ups – “What are you doing?”, “Mighty Isis,” “Build a room,” “Environment/Dialogue Sequences,” etc.

Feb 19

Behavioral Stakes exercises

Behavioral Stakes:   Our “What” is emotional reactions to active elements.  Commitment and repetition are the only “why” we need.  But “Because” can elevate the emotional stakes of a scene with context. 

“You always sleep the day away.”

“Stakes” come in many forms – and we want to apply emotion to all of them.  These exercises focus on elevating characters by allowing choices to affect who they are as people.

Defining Behaviors – while a player who is doing something for the first time is dealing with Situational Effects, a player who is doing something for the hundredth time is defining herself as a person, and a player who is doing something for the first time after having done something else a hundred times is being affected.  The audience loves knowing our characters; it allows them to react with us in-the-moment.  We can build stakes by heightening patterns of emotional behavior.

BEHAVIOR Suggested Exercises:

(BUT) YOU ALWAYS/NEVER – Player One initiates to Player Two with a statement starting with one of the following variations:
• You Always…smile
• You Never…pick up your trash
• But You Always…read my mind
• But You Never…eat fast food
Player Two accepts the reality of the endowment.  Player Two should feel about the endowment (Not being able to smile makes me sad).  Player Two should heighten the endowment by elevating/expanding the details (“I feel like Prometheus stealing Doritos Tacos from the gods!”).
Lessons:
• You’re that guy; how does it feel? – Don’t just be Comic Boy Guy; love all things comics; despise books without pictures.
• Actively experience – Don’t just talk about what you’ve done or what you will do; engage the active elements of the present moment.

YOU ALSO / I ALSO – Every line of dialogue must start with either “You also…” or “I also…”.  Heighten the details through an emotional perspective.  Accept the endowments, engaging physically and in the present.
“You Also have booger hanging.”  “You Also have no tact.”  “I Also am disgusted by you.”  “I Also have bad gas.”
“I Also paint amazingly.”  “You Also live in a mansion.”  “I Also make computer chips without practical purposes.”  “I Also want to sell crap for millions.”
Lessons:
• Start in the middle – Making assumptions jump starts our scenes.  Choosing to react emotionally to and with those assumptions turbo charges our scenes.
• Actively experience – Don’t just talk about what you’ve done or what you will do; engage the active elements of the present moment.
• Can’t argue with these endowments

Feb 18

Memory exercises

Remember what you like; Repeat: We have to listen and retain so we can return to and heighten established information. Memory is a muscle to exercise. But the exercise can be fun – focus on what makes you laugh, what engages you.

Suggested Exercises:

STORY STEALING – Everyone in a circle. One at a time, players enter the center and tell a true, personal, 30 Second Story. Once everyone has told a story, the teacher tells the class that players now have to enter the center and recreate someone else’s story. Every story should be revisited once by another player.
Lessons:
• Don’t mock; mirror – this is not about making fun of each other, it’s about making each other look good by remembering their story
• Remember specifically – remembering a few specific details will be more powerful than remembering everything generally
• Remember reactions – our emotional reactions are improv gold; focus on those when setting other player’s stories to memory
• See what’s not shown – recreating what our fellow players initially did subconsciously is great fun. How do they stand? How do they move? What do they sound like?

SCENE STEALING – Two players do a scene. Two different players redo the scene, repeating and heightening details, characters, stakes, and emotion.
Lessons:
• We remember the good stuff – they’ll drop questions, carry over specifics, and remember good stuff, point that out.
• The bad stuff becomes good when we repeat it – make each other look good! The first time is “random”; the second time is “purposeful”; the third time is “expected.
• Don’t skimp on the emotion – Player Two might have been simply overwhelmed during the Offer dialogue, but Player Three and Four heighten the emotion of being overwhelmed characters.

Jan 29

One Person Scenes exercises

One Person Scenes: We simplify by minimizing the number of perspectives on stage through agreement. We build collaboratively through enthusiastic acceptance. Emotional reaction is most important piece of content.

Performers are: Steve Curtis, Noel Elias, Nolan Graveley, Andy Lett-Durant, Blake Mirzayan and Emma Trachman

ONE PERSON SCENES – Groups of 5 or 6, line up along an assembly line conveyor belt. Have them mime something coming down the line. When you say, “Go,” someone will voice a SCES which everyone else will agree with and heighten through repetition. Their miming is just an activity for their hands; it is NOT what the scene is about.
Lessons:
• The clearer the emotional perspective the better – if you don’t think it’s clear, clarify it by heightening the emotion
• Like 21, don’t rush to speak – You have something to do with your hands. You also have an emotional perspective to fill your face with.
• Agreeing to the emotion is more important than heightening the details with words – remember an enthusiastic “yeah” will always be funnier than a rambling monologue
• There are no questions in agreement
• Share the air space – Put periods at the end of your sentences.
• Agree despite “sense” – If someone has a tumor, each person can have a tumor. If someone’s pregnant, each person can be pregnant.
Variations:
• If an emotional perspective is heightened to its apex, the group can follow another emotional perspective, but push them to explore the heights before changing.
• Feel free to break them away from the conveyor belt to a new environment, but beware this will cause them to talk about what they’re doing and/or drop physicality – You can use the resultant chaos as a transition…
• Or… you can transition with, “Bored of the conveyor belt? Let’s work on building your own stage pictures with agreement.”

Performers are: Steve Curtis, Noel Elias, Nolan Graveley, Andy Lett-Durant, Blake Mirzayan and Emma Trachman

Jan 27

Hey Everybody Game exercise

Hey Everybody Games:  The potential for trouble in a “Hey Everybody, get out here” initiation is high. Players may rush out on stage to support the initiation with disparate reactions that then battle for dominance; chaos ensues and awkwardness follows. Or, though players may rush out on stage to support the initiation, they await to take their cues from the initiator who becomes the facilitator in a stiff and slow series of interactions that typically revolves more around thinking than feeling.  Hey Everybody game mechanics allow a group to quickly build a focused direction out of disparate parts.

Suggested Exercises:

HEY EVERYBODY – A player initiates to bring a crowd on stage; “Team, take a knee.”  Players join and players make choices quickly in succession – reacting, agreeing, emoting – to establish the sequence of contribution.  The initiating player restarts the next sequence by heightening through the filter of their initiation.  Players contribute in the order of the initiating sequence, heightening through their personal filter.

Lessons:

  • Don’t wait; react – wait and nothing will happen or you’ll be stuck negotiating.  The sooner a player reacts, the sooner they’re taken care of, and there’s one less player to “figure out.”
  • Facilitate, don’t dictate – the game’s facilitator is just another player, who happened to start the scene.  The facilitator can and should find a personal filter and not feel the need to speak any more than anyone else.
  • Play your part – trust that if you continue heightening through your personal filter at your established place in the group’s sequence then an edit will be found.  You may not be “the funny one” this time, but your consistency will allow what is funny to pop.

Variations:

  • For more than contrived scenes – any scene where a group needs to focus chaos can be aided by Hey Everybody dynamics.  Have one player initiate a scene with a Self Contained Emotional Statement and have a crowd join that scene quickly, and quickly establishing a sequence of contributions.  Restarting and repeating a sequence of contributions can focus even the most disparate parts.
Jan 27

Scene Painting/”We See” definition

Scene Painting/ “We See” – we can come in from offstage to describe (and physicalize) a previously unseen “visual” aspect of the scene. For example, a pompous character is painted with a monocle, “#1 Boss” button, etc. For another example, a scene with a child bemoaning having to do his/her chores is painted with a window showing a beautiful day outside, an Everest of dishes to clean, etc. This type of move is typically executed by a player entering the scene, not as a character, but, with a verbal aside directed at the audience. “These people are in clown costumes.” “We see this man has a hole through his torso.”

These are Detail moves, but they work best when they are delivered emotionally and when they connect with a character’s emotional behavior. That emotional perspective helps enhance the pattern we’re establishing – we can heighten it with agreement One Person Scene style and/or heighten a progression of emotional perspectives To The Ether style.

Sometimes, while contributing his verbal add-on, Player 3 will wave his hand generally over or toward the area of stage he’s referring to; but a better Player 3 will often define what he’s describing in mime as well as words. In conjunction with “We see this man has a beard,” this Player 3 shows how big and bushy the beard is by cupping and fluffing it with his hands before exiting the scene.

Jan 26

Split Screen definition

Split Screen – To heighten a two-person scene, Player Three and Player Four initiate a new scene – on the same stage, but existing in separate physical spaces. For example, a scene about a married couple fretting over money can be heightened by a couple of mice fretting over cheese.

These two (or more) separate scenes can continue at the same time (usually on opposite sides of the stage), sharing focus back and forth.  While they do not exist in the same physical space, information from one scene affects the other as the focus shifts.

Or…    The original players can fade off stage as the second set of players establishes their scene, and this second set can fade off as the third set establishes their scene.  This is especially useful with smaller numbers of players in a group and can allow themes to heighten faster with subsequent iterations.

Split Screen