Improv 101: Establish Connection

Welcome to Improv 101

If you missed the previous lesson, you can find it here:

Improv 101 - Lesson 1: Yes And.

The idea behind this series of posts is to replace a typical introductory improv course.

I figure I can be someone who writes about not only the benefits of improv, but the basics as well. Too many people can't experience or practice the fundamentals. Blockers include:

• Not living near a comedy theater
• Not having the disposable income to afford a class
• Not knowing how simple improv can be
• Fear

I'm bringing it upon myself to detail, in a series called Improv 101, the basics of improv. In each post, I'll describe a central tenet, its importance, how it achieves better scenework, how it achieves better real life outcomes, and an exercise or two through which it can be practiced.

If you want to save yourself $175+ and potentially a long drive to a comedy theater, I hope this can get you started.

Today's tenet is to Establish Connection.

Performative Improv is the Exploration of Relationships

People think performative improv is about games with arbitrary rules and punishing limitations, forcing improvisers to fail in public for applause. Court jesters pieing their own faces to please the high kings.

And while sometimes that's true, more often improv is about the?exploration of relationships.

Perhaps that seems counterintuitive to how most people view improv. The exploration of relationships?

"That's counterintuitive. I thought improv was about making off-color jokes and being very silly?" - Improv viewers, perhaps

At times, it can be that. But when?learning?improv, it's important to see?how?it explores relationships.

Why am I so incessant that that's what improv is?

As I've said before,?improv is about trust?and practicing communication.

How do we get the audience to?care?about this trust and communication? How do we create great scenes not only for the audience to watch, but for ourselves to play in?

We lay a foundation to strengthen connections and ease their establishment.

What do we need to create before we start exploring a relationship?

In ascending order of importance, we need:

• Location
• Activity
• History
• Surface understanding and a deep understanding of who these two characters are to each other (I've seen this described as a lowercase-r relationship and a capital-R Relationship, respectively. If I am referring to both, I'll use rRelationship)

Location

There's a common joke on Twitter: someone will make a controversial or disgusting claim which is followed by a reply: "Um, sir, this is a Wendy's." It implies their opinion is out of place.

Location helps contextualize a scene's conversations, actions, and rRelationships.

What does it say about two people if they're shouting about who does the dishes better?

What does it say about them if it's at the library? A public park? On a life-or-death journey to Mordor?

Location provides a way to re-contextualize a scene's conversations, actions, and rRelationship. It suggests things about people. It gives the improvisers a chance to interact with the environment on stage.

Activity

Relationships function differently based on activities. What does a couple look like eating a fancy, expensive mid-morning brunch versus two hours deep into their first marathon?

Characters, as humans, are not one-dimensional. When rRelationships are thrust into different activities, they can take on new elements.

How do these characters handle stress as they work together on defusing a bomb? What do they talk about while slurping down oysters? While re-roofing their childhood home?

The activity doesn't have to be purely physical and isolated. The activity could be pursuing a greater goal. How do these characters behave while running a business? Attending a wedding?

What are these characters up to?

History

There's a mantra in improv relating to history which states: "If your characters can't know each other for six months, have them know each other for six minutes."

History is a crucial piece of the beginning of any improv scene.

Why?

Because it's easier to continue building if we have already "built" something.

Imagine a scene where two people meet for the first time. This is largely a scene of exposition.

"Hi, I'm Dave."

"Hi Dave, I'm Dorothy."

"Nice to meet you!"

"Nice to meet you as well!"

"So what do you do?"

Boring! Not only is there no history, there's barely anything to?Yes And.

Providing history for characters helps further their rRelationship. Are these two characters regrouping for one last bank heist before they retire and go their separate ways? Is this their second date? Are they long-lost cousins?

History provides us with answers. It determines who our characters are. With a shared history bubbling under the current scene, both audience and improvisers understand these characters and their interactions more quickly.

rRelationship

This is what we're exploring, right? If improv is about exploring relationships, this is where our focus is.

The previous bullet points help with contextualizing the rRelationship. But this is uncovering the real meaning of what the performers are doing.

What do I mean when I say relationship and Relationship?

A relationship is the surface level. It's easily descriptive, such as "father and son" or "doctor and patient." It provides an easily understandable connection between the two characters.

A Relationship is the deeper, underlying connection between the characters. When I say a relationship is "father and son," there are tons of Relationships that exist within that. The father may be a strict disciplinarian and the son could be a rebel teen. The father may be a failing musician trying to get his lawyer-banker son to join the family band. The son may have all the power in the Relationship.

Capital-R Relationships encapsulate all the non-surface level stuff: status, power, desires, ultimately how they feel about each other.

Establishing connection is an excellent exercise in empathy and self-awareness.

Understanding how environments and activities shape people's behavior in ways I cannot predict. Think of the shared history of two people who graduated from the same college but decades apart. There's an immediate connection; something to build a relationship on. It may look on the surface to be a fairly weak starting point, but having something in common sparks relationships faster than starting out ice cold.

I've found myself being more understanding of behavior I don't comprehend or wouldn't do myself.

If I see someone going 45mph over the speed limit, I think about what would drive?myself?to do that. I would drive like that if it was my last chance to see my best friend. I would drive like that if I had to close a $20 million deal.

I realize we are influenced by our location, activity, history, and rRelationship.

Assuming people are doing their best and acting in a way that is rational,?I would act similarly had I lived their life and experiences.

Five Lines

There's a classic improv exercise called Five Lines to help establish connection and context at the top of a scene.

The idea is to establish as much as you can within just five lines. It always feels a little clunky - we're used to storytelling mantras such as "Show Don't Tell" or "avoid boring the audience with exposition."

When we aren't practicing improv, yes. But during?improv in private, we want to work on building our Establishing Connection muscles. Drills like Five Lines help us find, create, and explore connection.

How does it work?

Two improvisers will assume roles as Improviser A and Improviser B. Improviser A has the starting line, to which B will "Yes And", to which A will "Yes And", to which B will "Yes And", to which A will "Yes And." Then the exercise is over.

As my workshops are (hopefully) larger than two participants, I like to split the group in half, into lines of Improviser A and lines of Improviser B. The two improvisers at the front of each line will do their Five Lines exercise. After the Five Lines, I ask the improvisers what elements of Location, Activity, History, and rRelationship were hinted at or explicitly said in the exercise. It's okay if they don't get them all!

I then turn to the rest of the lines and see what they picked up on. And the lines always pick something up the improvisers didn't intend or recognize. Perhaps a way a line was instead suggests some sort of status signaling (Relationship). A person wringing their hands may indicate discomfort in the setting (Location/Activity). A quick, wry smile after a line might suggest an inside joke (History).

I send the people at the front of their lines to the back of the other lines (so Improviser B goes to the back of Line A, so they can initiate the scene next time) and continue to run the exercise until everyone has had a chance or two to initiate.

Some interesting observations:

• Beginner improvisers will restate their own information to try and establish connection. Intermediate and advanced improvisers will restate their partner's information. Remember, the scene is a joint effort; don't try to force your vision.
• The audience (in the Lines) picks up everything. Even things you didn't intend. As an improviser, it is your duty to glean as much as you can from everything your partner is offering, from the words they are saying to their microexpressions.
• Improvisers who try to be funny or clever will say a joke on the fifth line of the scene to end it in an amusing way. While this may come in handy down in future improv games, Five Lines is not the place for it. Use that fifth line to?establish a stronger connection, not to craft a satisfying conclusion.
• Sometimes improvisers get wrapped up in the scene they've created. They'll have established such a strong connection that they lose themselves in the scene. Someone will say a sixth line! If the connection is strong enough, I'll let the scene play out further.

Establishing a strong connection can spur people to forget that they are pretending. That they're making things up. That what they're saying is all imagined.

When they've established this strong of a connection, who am I to take it away from them?

Let's see where it goes.

Next Improv 101 Post coming soon...

Originally published on gusvieweg.com.