Today I had the opportunity to teach a workshop for Cornerstone Improv. I taught my Clean Your Scene workshop to an excellent group of improvisers down in San Diego.
One thing this workshop focuses on is dealing with weirdness at the top of scenes. A Miles Stroth quote I heard once said that most scenes that go bad do so in the first ten seconds. In my experience, that’s often because people don’t know what to do with what’s happened in those moments–especially if it’s weird. Confusion leads to anger, anger leads to suffering, and so on.
During the workshop we tried out a bunch of ways to deal with absurdity at the top. Here are a few takeaways that we discovered together.
Attack the Logic
Something improvisers struggle with is justifying their absurd behavior. In my opinion, justification is overrated. Too often, it undercuts absurd behavior by explaining it away (“I’m obsessed with cheese because my mom made me eat cheese a ton as a kid”). But a lot of absurdity in improv scenes can be justified without 1.) totally explaining away the behavior and 2.) denying your scene partner (if you’re playing the voice of reason) by making them “crazy”–the favorite explanation of every rookie improviser to make sense of an absurd person’s behavior. That’s the sweet spot I try to teach towards in this workshop.
If your plumber boss enters a scene and demands you cover him with shit from head to toe, you might push back against that. If he clarifies that he wants this is to give the appearance of being a plumber who’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty so customers respect him more, he’s still absurd, but we can now attack the logic. And his justification hasn’t taken away his strange point of view nor does it prevent him from playing it further.
This style of play lends itself well to responding to absurd points of view. If someone comes into a scene and says “I didn’t sleep a wink last night because I think the moon is trying to kill me”, we can point out the absurdity of that line. “The moon’s not trying to kill you, you’re just staring at it all night because you can’t fall asleep” doesn’t make the moon person “crazy”, but it also doesn’t stop them from playing their game:
“If I sleep the moon will get in through the window.”
“Well then just close the blinds!”
“Oh, so I can lose track of the moon? Whose side are you on? Did the moon put you up to this?”
But what if they’re just… too crazy?
Embrace the Weird
If someone enters a scene with such an absurd offer that you can’t make sense of it without making them “crazy”, just join in. There’s no reason to fight them on it, or to try and logic your way out of the scene. You can try playing straight/absurd but unless they have some really good reasoning behind their POV, it’s going to simplify your life to just be part of their weirdness. If someone starts a scene with, “That hobbit Bilbo Baggins slept with my wife again!”, rather than trying to negotiate whether this person is just hallucinating or imagining that Bilbo Baggins is gallivanting around with their wife, just embrace the idea that we are in Middle-earth, you’re also a hobbit, and Bilbo Baggins is bagging your scene partner’s wife.
Now we know what to do and the scene can continue without having to decipher the logic of a person in our world who delivered that same Bilbo Baggins line. This style of play helps when dealing with absurd behaviors. Rather than fighting the behavior and pointing out how absurd it is, why not just join in and have some fun too?
Protect the Weird
This is my favorite part of the workshop. Two players start a normal scene and then at any point a third player enters with any absurd behavior or point of view. However, the two normal characters just treat them as part of the scene; a person who they’re used to interacting with or who they expect to see. This is where the real magic happens, when we are not only embracing the weird choices made by our scene partners but treating them as business-as-usual.
Two doctors are prepping for surgery while talking about their weekend plans when a third doctor walks in and starts stripping naked. One of the normal doctors asks:
“Hey Dan, any plans this weekend?”
“Nah, I got a lot of surgeries lined up so I’m just gonna bam-bam-bam-bam, you know?” (Dan spits in his hands and starts rubbing them together)
“Yeah, I hear you,” (Dan spits in the normal doctors’ hands) “Hey, thanks!” (normal doctors start rubbing their hands together like they’re getting ready for surgery)
Now we’re just in a world where getting ready for surgery while naked and washing your hands with spit is fine, normal, and doesn’t need to be highlighted as unusual. We can truly accept the weird thing and return our focus to what the scene was already about–getting ready for surgery while talking about our weekend plans. It just so happens to be in a weird world, and that’s fun as hell!
Do you struggle with what to do when things get weird? Do you have trouble navigating the tops of scenes? Check out my Clean Your Scene workshop or contact me! I’d be happy to help.
