15 – Forms

[Music] Welcome to Imbroth beat by beat. I'm Curtis Rutherford. I interviewed a whole bunch of different improvisers and then edited together chunks of those interviews to investigate different aspects of Imbroth one piece at a time. This is episode 15, Forms. [Music] This episode is about different forms in general. There are some standard forms that most improvisers know after a couple years. The herald, the montage, the monocene, and a couple others. This episode is about the other forms. First, why it's important to learn other forms, and then how those forms get developed. First up is Lily Do. We started off by talking about Vantage Point, which is a class Jackie Jennings taught based off the form also known as Trancers, which Kevin Mulaney taught New York City based on the show Close Quarters from Chicago. Here's Lily Do. Actually, let's talk about Vantage Point, because I don't know that much about that one. So describe that form. So the form is that every scene takes place at the same time, at the same kind of macro location. So if it's like the three minutes before midnight at a hotel, every scene that starts is three minutes before midnight. So if somebody sets off a fire alarm in one scene, that fire alarm is going to happen at some point in all the scene. Absolutely. Tracers, I think, is another name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tracers. And so you would only see characters come back if at some point they've left a scene. And that form was really nice and challenging, because there is this lack of control. You just kind of have to free fall and hope that the form and your teammates catch you, because if that gun goes off in the first scene, and like you don't know why or what, it's a lot of unknown and it's a lot of decision making. And then with an eye always on the bigger picture and also with an eye always on timing. So it challenged me and it satisfied a lot of like the things that I like. Like I like knowing like two minutes in, a gun goes off. And it stresses me out to kind of not know who gets shot and to have it happen in every scene and to just like have someone decided in one scene, it's them or it's not them. And that's another form like, like Monocene's where it's about defying expectations in a calculated way or meeting them. If like a really bad guys and dangerous situation and you expect him to be shot and then he's not the one, that's a controlled defiance of expectations. And so what are some of the things that then you stole from vantage point that you feel like infused your improv for say a hero or anything else? I think a more willingness to free fall. Yeah. Yeah, and a more willingness to make big choices and see where they land. And I think there's certain forms that challenge you in that way. I've always heard people say like the movie was the most challenging class they've ever been in because you step out and then you're just labeled and you just have to fulfill it. I actually found the movie both easy and very hard because it is you like step out and you're labeled things which I love. And then it's like, all I have to do is take this on. And because it's the analytical part of my brain, it's just like, oh, I know we're doing this type of movie. I have to do X, Y, and Z. I only found it hard kind of in that same way that like with the pattern game when it felt like somebody was deviating from what I felt the pattern game should be. If it was like, I know we are doing a late 90s David Lynch movie. If it felt like the entire group didn't know that I would get that like, oh no, we're doing it wrong. Yeah, but that's good in a way because it pushes you to like let go. Yeah. Yeah, I like stuff like that where it's like you learn by doing over and over again to just live in those mistakes and then to make them less. I don't like a montage because you're able to like shit the bed and just like recuse yourself from it. And then you're just like free from your sins like that's I think someone posted a thing once I was like, would you rather watch like a bad herald for 30 minutes or a bad monocene? I was like a bad monocene because you'll learn so much more. You have to live in it and you have to figure your way out and then you won't make the same mistakes again. Yeah, that was lily do that lack of control is a huge part of what makes different forms fun. You have to turn off the parts of your brain that normally obsess over every part of a scene and instead obsess over the form which allows a lot of the scene work to happen more unconsciously relying on the training you built up next step is Chris Scott. We talk about creating several different forms here. I bring up Igan's a herald team that did a season finale form in which they improvised the season finale of a long running completely invented show. Chris also brings up the surling a team that Sean O'Reilly created and asked me to direct and to help create a form based on the twilight zone. Here's Chris Scott so then talking about forms so like I think of a lot of openings as like I think this is kind of the standard of like pattern game is the like or opening right is the like archetype sure. And there's problems with that and yeah I think different things but like it works as like if you know pattern game I can use that metaphor easily to transpose it to other. The idea of sharing ideas and building on each other and exactly right. Do you do any with forms like especially when you're inventing a new form with the team does it shape like do you have any of yet so dependent on what they're looking for. Because you want I feel like the opening when you're doing a form and usually forms when people are when teams are coming to me saying we want to do a specific form that I'm doing twilight zone right with you. They're going for a very specific goal not necessarily we want to do something abstract and suit to numerous things. So it's then trying to find a form in opening that fits the genre of the scenario and then tweak from there to make it useful. Usually I start from either that's a pattern game that I will start from character living room. Okay. As my first thing or like a doc sort of thing character talking or everybody together trying to get everybody out there as the base idea to start or something along the lines of I don't know seen painting maybe if it's more narrative. But they're like the more abstracted openings like pattern game or invocation it would hard for me to think of like coming to a developing a form where I would come across the invocation. Exactly. Yeah. In West like Del you were like right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. someone being interviewed or some other source material and then create games and scenes from it. So in that process, I was spending an awful lot of time just figuring out how to make good initiations. What made a good initiation for that kind of form? How to pull unusual, funny ideas from source material and then apply those to new situations and then getting people to practice that. And then just sort of letting the improv take care of itself. When I'm directing, a lot of what I have to let go of is the idea that I'm teaching anyone. It's not my job to teach people in a directing situation and a directorial situation. It's my job to be a serigate audience member and to let them know what it is that's missing or when things go horribly wrong but not necessarily to teach them. Now in some cases, you know, like the show I was just talking about where it was very much like a monologue deconstruction. I did feel like I needed to get them on the same page. But after that point, a lot of the notes were getting too fast, were piling on, we need to slow down. Or I needed to change the show in some way to get people to slow down and change the way the improvise. So for instance, at one point we changed the monologue deconstruction to what I was calling a post-it deconstruction. And basically, someone was telling a story or I guess they were reading source material from a book and that we would have people on the sides jotting down things, just words and phrases from the source material on a poster note and putting that on a board. And then very much like a second city will sometimes do this as well. People just would take a post-it note off the board, read it as if it's a suggestion for a scene and then do a new scene. And that was very useful for us to get lots of ideas out of a monologue instead of burning up the two or three best ideas and then not knowing what to do. Also, is there any like form or something that you've kind of like, I want to bring this into improv but I haven't cracked it yet? Well, the thing we're working on right now is very interesting to me along those lines because it ties into something I've been wanting to do for years. So years ago, after watching the movie Dark City, I started thinking about movies that inhabit weird universes where everything feels kind of the same as our world except something is different. Sometimes it's very different and very obviously different, something like Pleasantville and sometimes it's subtly different, at least at first like in the Matrix where it's sort of like there's something strange about this world but it takes a while for the characters to figure out what it is. It's a lot of sci-fi, it works like that. And so I would do this exercise with people where I talk a little bit about these kinds of movies, these movies with weird worlds to them and we would try to improvise scenes within those weird worlds. I think for me the key was that besides the protagonist, nobody else questions what's going on. Everybody thinks this is how the world is supposed to be and that's important. So improvising scenes, not constantly questioning this weird thing, we're in a world with robots who dress us in the morning. That's just part of the world and it happens but we don't need to question it. And then I started working on this show recently called Improvised Black Mirror. So I played with this for a long time, never really got it into a show and now we're working out right now. And it's really hard, it's really challenging. Because I once directed a team to do an improvised Twilight Zone thing and with that you have the advantage of Rod Serling character can come forward and say, "Hey, this is why this world is weird." Even after the protagonist has also said, "Why are these robots dressed in us?" But with a black mirror type thing you never have that or with a lot of sci-fi because they have the advantage of they can either reveal it slowly or it's maybe a more subtle difference that is being speculated upon. So it seems like harder if you don't have some very direct, this is what is weird about the world. Is that something then, are they like developing it within the first couple scenes? Is it something that's presented to the audience or how do they discover what that weird thing is? Well, I did something I didn't think I would do which was added in opening where they sort of delve into things they're thinking about, things that are giving them anxiety or their hopes for the future. And then somebody essentially states the premise of the episode that they're about to improvise. I found it, it was very difficult for them to sort of figure it out. And not so much because it's a difficult thing to figure out. It's because there's so many other things they have to worry about at the same time. The other thing that black mirror is is that it's really good storytelling. You know, there's very clear protagonist with clear goals and they go through these series of events that slowly ratchet up the absurdity or the slowly heightened. And that's really hard to do. So doing that at the same time as coming up with these incredible premises for episodes of black mirror and then converting that into a story all at once is difficult. We're finally going to get that on speed from an audience. We've been rehearsing that for four months so I'm excited to see it. Because I think now it's almost like I can't give them very much more until we do it in a photo. When we do it in front of an audience then it'll, I think, they'll learn a lot. Right. Is that Hardbert you mentioned a director being like an audience of one? Now it's like, okay, you've heard everything I have to say. What does everybody else think and how do we how do we adjust it? Also for when probably they're hearing laughs of an entire audience. I think it'll be much easier to realize what it is that's going on. It's also tricky because we're not trying to be comedic. Sure. It's going to be a fair amount of comedy in it I'm sure but we've kind of stepped away from the idea that we're parodying it or really trying to emulate it. And so we'll see though. I mean a lot of times what happens with a show like that is you start out with that kind of goal of we're going to emulate it. We're not going to make fun of it we're not going to parody it we're going to pay homage to it. And then it slowly becomes kind of a parody or once it's so hard once the audience starts laughing at something to resist that temptation. With a lot of these scenes it also seems like it's the or with a lot of these forms it feels like that kind of the four minute mile thing of you mentioned like an hour long two person scene now seems like not crazy. But it's like once that kind of threshold has been broken it feels like a lot easier like to start to pick apart those pieces. Oh this is what improvised black mirror would be ten years down the road because we've already done it enough times that we can kind of sort through a lot more. Oh so actually with like are there any forms that you've then returned to like monocene and you realized I wish I'd done or now I think we should do a lot more of blank in that form. Well I've returned to the idea of improvised plays quite a bit. I'm not really sure what that means you know because why you know what would that be different than the other kinds of things we do. Right. How is that essentially different but it does put people in a different frame of mind. I think for one thing that I shied away from for many years was was focusing too much on story and worrying very much about story. But I think like anything else you can be trained to tell good stories to make up good stories on the spot. It's not something that should be avoided at all costs maybe in certain forms. I mean story doesn't have much place in Harold. It doesn't have much place at all and something like Ascath for instance and a lot of improv. But there definitely is a way to tell stories in improvisation and to get better at them which I think I've embracing more. So I think I would have liked to experiment with that earlier because it is something that's I think it's very hard but definitely can be done. Oh there was another there was something I wanted to try for years and I've never had it. So maybe if I say it out loud maybe some other more dedicated young crazy Harold team will go oh that's try that. Years ago I had a team and that was coaching and I had done this course on tape on cassette tapes. This is how old this is and it was called mega memory. Okay. Anybody over the age of 40 probably remember this because it was on TV all the time and it was this guy who promised you could you will remember everything. And basically what he was teaching was sort of memory palace kinds of techniques or body peg techniques or various well defined techniques of how to remember things. And one of the exercises was this exercise where it was like a series of absurd jumps. So you have your sitting in a red corvette Madonna is sitting next to you. She's wearing a snake skin tuxedo in her lap is a purple kitten. Purple kitten is smoking a cigarette and so you're creating the series of absurd visual ideas by by marrying things together that don't fit. In a way it's kind of like an a visual a to see you know. and your body. picture in it as you go along. So everybody as a group, you're doing, you know, the exercise is that if you had 40 things to memorize that you could connect them in this way of connecting, you know, one of them has to do with the car, another has to do with Madonna, another one has to do with the purple cat and so on. But you could do this as an opening as well, where every move of the opening, everything that someone said was a absurd, not even 80 see it's like 8 a.m. move, marrying two things visually and then marrying a new thing to the new thing and a new thing to the new thing. And what could happen if people got good at it and I think it wouldn't be too hard is that they would essentially memorize the whole opening. So they would do the opening and it would be the opening be crazy and would not make any sense. But they would remember everything from it so they would sprinkle stuff throughout the show with stuff from the opening and then at the end of the show, they would redo the opening, word for word, maybe even with showing like things that inspired it. So you do redo the opening and then people would say a line from the show that was inspired by it, another one. And I just thought that would be really mind blowing for the audience to be like, what the hell, how could they possibly remember all this? And of course most people would think they were cheating. Right. I could mega memory opening. Yeah. I've coached a couple people who don't see things visually in their head. And so I've had to like, because I think a lot of memory palace type stuff for remembering openings. And so I had to like readjust how I tell people to remember things from like pattern game in the opening because they like literally won't see a picture in their head. Really? So like that memory palace style of like memorizing that they just can't do. And so they had to replace it with like, oral cues or actual like word cues. Yeah. I mean, it's apparently like, I don't know, 1% of people or 5% of people, something like that have some version of that. Even when you tell them like, just manufacture a picture and then force it together with something else in some violent or absurd, crazy way, they just can't do it. Yeah. That's interesting. They can say the words like they could say, okay, well, this is Madonna in a, you know, snake skin tuxedo. But they're not, they're not picturing Madonna with that purple cat on their lap, smoking the cigar. Yeah. It's just like one of those weird things that comes up where there's always that variation of, oh, this doesn't work for you. This works well for you. This doesn't work for you. Mega memory. That would be, yeah, I don't remember what else I was going to say about that. That's. Kevin Trudeau was the guy who sold it and he was a scam artist. Okay. And I think he was, I don't know if he went to prison, but he was convicted of fraud. I'm pretty sure you might want to edit that out in case it case. It's not true. But he definitely got in trouble for his methods of selling crap to people. That was Kevin Mulaney. Kevin Trudeau is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Alabama after his conviction for criminal contempt. A lot of directing any impromptu show and working on forms is making tiny adjustments, figuring out what doesn't, doesn't work, and then tailoring the form to the group of people performing it. Finally, here's Kevin Hines. Kevin has taught many different advanced study performance classes at UCB New York, often around forms that he has created and developed. A couple times in this interview, he'll mention Code Red, which is a team that Kevin coached as a sort of workshop for trying out different ideas. Here's Kevin. So I want to talk first about forms, right? Because you have, you've taught or developed a bunch of different forms, right? So I want to talk about first off, how do you come up with forms and then how do you kind of like develop them into? This is something I want to run as a class and then on stage. So I like, I like different forms. I've always enjoyed the teachers that have come up with different forms when I was coming up. And as an administrator now, I'm always hoping people will pitch brand new forms more than doing a form that's been done. Even only a handful times, I'm most excited when it's like, I have an idea for form. I don't know how it will work. I get very excited. So you're always kind of hoping people pitch more new forms. Yeah. So I love it when people pitch new forms. That's just what interests me. I think it's exciting. I don't know if it's true for all students. The way I teach the way I want to be taught in that I get excited when it seems like I'm as an experienced improviser. I get excited when I'm in on it with the teacher. We're doing this together. We might discover something. There are rules that you might throw out and that sort of stuff. So when I teach those classes, I get very excited about that aspect of it. Which was very fun about the first Macracing class. That feeling, I think that was my second ASB. So that feeling of, oh, we're all in this together. Kevin has this idea, but you're pushing us in different ways and we're kind of adjusting as we go. It was very fun. Yeah. And so the Macracing was the first new form class I taught that I hadn't taught before. And I think that had started in a practice group. That was pretty good. It wasn't a great practice group. It was pretty good though. There's some really good people in it. It was a practice group. And I was bored of just having them do heralds all the time. And I still wanted them to do heralds. I think that's important. But I wanted to try some other things and work some muscles. And Fond had done my Harrel team Fond had done some monocene second beats basically where our second beats all took place in one monocene. So we were all at a baseball game in different parts of the baseball game. We were all on stage at the same time, but there was something about that I liked or we would be all at the park, but we wouldn't all be on stage at the same time. We did a couple of things like that. I was like, oh, that was like really fun way to connect these scenes just spatially. What if I just did that? And so I try it when I used to coach a lot, I would just try those things with groups I coached. I'd be like, hey, can we just try something? And I would do it. And I would watch it. I'd be like, oh, let's do it for 30 minutes. There's something there. And that's basically it. It would be like, I like this one mechanism. And almost all my forms come down to one thing. Yeah. And so the macrosine was just the transitions. It's like, I like the idea of real time monocenes, but I also like the idea of going to a new location. So what if we followed the person walking? And so sort of came out of just like we're all at the park, but I didn't want to all be at the same part of the park. It always feels weird when you start a monocene and you're at a baseball diamond. And people have to walk on the baseball diamond and be like, I'm the park ranger. Yeah. I wouldn't he be doing something somewhere else? Well, we're sort of stuck here. So he has to come in and do his thing. So let's just walk somewhere else without losing the monocene. But yeah, it started as a practice group thing. And I did it long enough with them to say like, this could work if I had a great group. Which is perfect for our advanced classes where you get to select students and you get the best of the best. So the macrosine was great that way. But I don't know if you remember, but even in that class, I think very early on and people asked me, how do we end this? And I was like, I don't know how it ends. Yeah. How fast did it go? I was like, I don't know yet. And we learned that as we went on, like, when was too soon to call back a character, how long it felt right to follow a character? Like, I don't even have set rules for that now. You just do a few and you get to feel for it. We never really learned how to end it other than have a big moment. Yeah. Which is true of most improv. Sure. I mean, but I think because of the herald is such a set ending. Yeah. You feel like, well, there should be a way to end this. This is such a specific form. You have such an idea. How do you know when it's over? So you're gonna run 25 minutes. You're it's gonna be over. So find a way to end it. But we were figuring that out in the class. And you guys auto often asked me questions. And my answer would be like, I don't know yet. Let's find out. Let's run some more with that in mind. And like, convergence was the same way. I think it was something I initially tried with San Dino at the end of a rehearsal. Convergence is where I do two monocenes. We enter we switch back and forth between them. They're unrelated. But as the secos on, we find out they're related. And I think with them, I just said, I want you guys to do you for on this monocene, you for on this monocene, well, I get back and forth between them. I didn't say they should be connected. Right. I just like, I want to see what happens if I have this really talented group do this. And very quickly, they realize it was fun to have them be connected. I think one was people working on a volcano and one was a school classroom. And then when the volcano erupted, the kids in the classroom all ran to the window. And I was like, Oh, yeah, of course they're affecting each other. It's stupid if they don't. And then when I would run it, I'd be like, these should affect each other eventually. As if that was always my plan. And it eventually became a class that was really fun. And so you think more in terms of the kind of like improv mechanisms of this is how it's transitioning. Because it also very visual forms. Right. They're very I picture how they look on stage very much. So the monocenes was was yeah, it was just I want to see these two monocenes. What happens if we the monocene is such a pure form. It's just one long scene. It's so great. It is probably the most pure long form improv. Right. No multiple scenes. You can have multiple characters, but it's just it's just one act by. But it does it. Exactly. And it's improvised. And it's so beautiful. It's so it's a further thing from short form. So I keep trying to break that and make it more into short form, I guess. But it so inspires me. So I want to see this monocene if I do other things with it. So the macracing was that let's see a monocene where we can move. The convergence is let's see two monocenes. Because my pitch to that, I think to the class was it's as if a little bit it should feel like these could be separate shows. Right. And then someone after the after they watch them are like these two shows should be edited together. Which isn't 100% true because by the end they have to be connected. Yeah. For a long time, it just sort of feels like they're sort of connected. there's this moment that sort of connects. And by the end you're like, "Oh no, this is a show." And I was just like excited by that discovery for that one. It was like, "Oh, that moment when you realize why are we seeing these two scenes?" So like in a Harold, you see three scenes. There's never a point in that show where you go, why these three scenes? Yeah, even though they all connect, they all come from the suggestion, you know why you're seeing them most likely. But for this, it was like, why? What are these two having common? You live in that anticipation for the first like 10, 15 minutes of the show of just seeing slowly threads connect. Right, for me, no for a fact. For me, that's 100% what that is. And recently I did the Overachiever's form. Did you get a chance to see that? I saw it, yeah. Great, I love when you're smart improvisers. I went to smart improvisers. I think we talked a little bit about that. Yeah, 'cause that was one where it was like, "Ah, fuck, I should have taken this class." Yeah. So the Overachiever was just, I like the idea of ghosting, which was an exercise I did with Michael Delaney back in 2000. Where we did a couple scenes with ghosting, which is where there's two groups of people on stage at the same time in the same location at different time periods. So, you know, there's a mother and her daughter in a bedroom. And then there is a man and a real estate agent years later looking at this room. And so it's the same room at different times. And it was just an exercise. And I remember that in that class, someone said, "When would you use this in an improv set to Delaney?" No, you probably wouldn't. He's like, "It's a cool theater." Right. But it's more of an exercise and just like playing smart. Because conveying that, like in the moment would be so difficult. It's so confusing. And most of what you get out of it could be done with two scenes, done separate. Like if the fun of it is that it's the same location and discovering what the second scene does with it, you can do that as two scenes or even editing back and forth between the two scenes. Like with tags. You could get so much of it out. So really what the overachiever was for me was, "Is there anything though that you couldn't get?" Yeah. Otherwise. And we also increased it to have three scenes on stage at the same time. And it was why it was called the overachiever. And it was a form I came up with with other people. Hunter Nelson was a big help. A lot of the code red group that I worked with helped come up with this. But yeah, I think it was my initial germ. I was like, I want to do something with ghosting. And part of it was like, it's hard on purpose. Some of it was definitely a form for students in the sense that an audience watching that would be like, "Oh, it was funny. Why was it so complicated?" And the answer is it didn't need to be probably. Or like it did for, I think I said to the class, if we have two moments that could only be done because it was this complicated, I'm very happy with the set. And we tended to have a few moments like that then he said, when they happened, it was just such a thrill. - Right. - You know, I guess it'd be like a filmmaker filming, you know, when they did do this once in a while, like one cut, uncut movie. Why do that? You don't gain anything by that other than it's impressive. And for most audiences who aren't thinking about it, they don't notice. - Yeah. - I honestly watched Birdman and it was like two thirds of the way through before I realized it was simulating an uncut one shot. And that's something I'm into. And it was two thirds of the way through the movie. And I was like, oh yeah, they're not cutting. - Yeah. Because if it's done well, it just feels like, oh, you've changed the tone. Like you'll learn a man is that same thing of, there's the one long cut that everybody talks about. I went back and rewatched it a couple of years ago. And it's like, oh, there's so many very long cuts that just give you that feel of just this long, arduous journey. - And I think to some extent, it's lost on most people because they're just watching it's a movie. And if you catch it, it's like, oh, this is an impressive thing. But I might have enjoyed it just as much of it didn't happen. Like, I think as a good movie, children are meant to create movie. The Hitchcock movie rope is a pretty good movie. The gimmicks don't add to the movie other than you're like, ooh, it's cool. A little bit, I guess they're supposed to make it feel help you lose yourself in it. - Sure. - But I don't know if that really happens. I don't have to be losing myself in movies. - And sometimes it takes you out if you're observant of that of like, oh, I see what they're doing. But I think with this, it does add something also to, I think as creators, we're problem solvers more than anything else. And giving us that limitation, oh, I need to do this in one shot. And we talked about this after the macro scene of like, why were so many of the scenes instantly funny? Because we always had that feeling of like being on our toes of like, oh shit, they just started a scene in the freezer. I guess me and Robert in the freezer, let's figure something out. - Right. And that's a great word to use as limitation. I think that a lot of forms are a limitation. Whether you're talking about the Harold, which is a lot of limitations or monocenes, which has a very strong limitation, documentaries, the movie, there's limitations to all these forms. And then the fun is figuring out how to not let that hinder you and let you do anything. You know, you watch Netflix shows now where they don't have to, they can be any length. They might be binge-watched, there's no commercial breaks. And for some, I think creators that hurts them, they did better when they were forced to keep their shows shorter. - I think Josh Weeden is a lot like that. Where it's like, Buffy, he had very limited budget. He had this like crappy network. And he had to make, I think a better show than when they were just like, here's a bunch of money, make a movie, do anything you want. - Right, and the classic example of Jaws, where the shark didn't work. So they made a scarier movie because they were like, how do we scare people without showing the shark? And by doing that, it was scarier. They had to limit themselves. They didn't know that. Spielberg, he's a pretty good director. It probably would have worked out anyway. - Sure. - But limitations help you. And so, that's where CGI sometimes can be a problem movies where it's like, the Hobbit versus Lord of the Rings where they didn't use models. So they weren't limited to how they shot around certain sets. Those limitations made Lord of the Rings feel better. Because they made them make more creative choices on how they made that film. So limitations, I think are a huge part of it. So yeah, I think seeing how smart improvisers work around those limitations is really fun for me. Seeing how students, especially students who haven't done anything like this for the first time, learn that even though I gave them all these rules, I don't know what I'm talking about. And every now and then they need to just ignore me. - Right. - Is it very fun? You're someone who's done a lot of improv. You've been in Harolds and you've probably done Harolds where you're like, oh, I can't do this. And now you're probably at a point where you do Harolds and you're like, well, I'm just going to do it. And we'll figure out how to make it work. This isn't typically what you should do for this form, but I want to do it. Part of that maybe is because I was on a team that broke the rules, won, broke all the rules, but they were still Harolds at the end of the day. Part of it was like watching people like Billy Merritt pitch new form after new form after new form, or being jealous of my friends who did classes that were new forms, and you're like, oh, this is so interesting. So a lot of it just comes from that. Well, I was like, oh, I want to experience that feeling. And I'm a control freak. So it's nice to be the teacher of those classes so that at the end of the day, I still get to say, this is the form, this is not the form. Right. So a little bit, there's that aspect. With the limitations thing. And I think from the other side, when you're in it, focusing on those limitations, both when you, both from me doing any weird form and from watching other people do it, they just do better improv so much of the time. Right. Their teams where it's like, I'll do like the backer same with people, or with a foxhole when I was coaching them, I was working on like, oh, could we do a macar scene herald? And when we do it in practice, it was often some of their best heralds because they weren't like, are we playing game? What's the game? It's a game. They know game. They know the fucking herald. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. When I do it as exercises for indie groups, that's sort of my idea. It's like by focusing on this, you're not worried about all the things that should be natural to you. And if you're good, they'll come out. It's why you'll do exercises where you might tell a student-- every scene has to be initiated with the last line of the previous scene. It's a fun trick. And I think it does make good scenes, but it mostly is because they're so just thinking about, how do I make that line work now? They didn't make any decisions. Now they have to just adapt and roll with it. So their skills actually come out. That's right. Instead of trying to force this funny scene that they decided on their back line, it's great for heavy players. Yeah. That I was definitely at one point. Someone who would just like plan his scenes out. Take it away so that I can't plan. My favorite improvising that I do and that I watch is people who are thrown for a loop that are surprised that don't know what's going on. Have to adapt. Which is where real-door monocene sort of came from. That was something I developed with Code Red. And I don't know if it came up in a rehearsal, but I thought of it at some point. And I made them do it. Or I was just watching a monocene. And the idea of people walking in and being-- the characters being surprised by what's going on-- that artifice of walking in and saying something that you know will get a reaction of your same partner. It works and it's very funny. It's what happens in a written play. It's 100% how it should work. But I was like, oh, what if the actor really doesn't know what's going on and really is genuinely surprised? How does that change it? So we tried it with Code Red, which is a very talented group of improvisers here from New York. And the first time out of the gate was a home run. And I was like, this is something. I mean, you mentioned short form. It's very short form. Yeah. When I host it as an 11 o'clock show, I tell the audience. I took the longest of long forms and I added a short form twist to ruin it in a way. But it's-- because the audience isn't on that. There's a set game. But there's something so fun about watching. an improviser come on stage, learn what the scene he's now in about, and then do the best fucking improv you can do. Can I swear? Yeah, absolutely. And especially for someone where watching improvisers who are generally in control, like knowing that someone like Hunter Nelson is coming out and has no idea what's going on and must make that work. My favorite improvisers to watch are often the people who would prefer to be lost. Zach Willis is somebody who I think is really great at this. I've seen him do a thousand scenes. They're all great. But the ones that are eye-gate the most excited watching him or where he initiates something, his scene partner clearly takes it in a different direction or misinterprets it or makes a mistake. He lights up. There's an energy that comes through him. He gets more excited about that scene. It's like it's what he wants you to do. He wants you to break his idea. Yes. So that he really starts improvising. And there are people who respond to that like, oh, you just put a stake down in front of me. Let's just have fun. And I'm just going to like carve in. Let's just do. We just were given the biggest thing. A tiny part of him is now in the audience going, ooh, what's going to happen? But he's doing it. I love watching that. I love feeling that. But it's much easier for me to notice when I see it. Yeah. This is when I'm improvising. I don't think about what's happening. Sure, I do those moves. I help I do those moves. But I watch people do those moves and it delights me. So we, Reilder and Monocene, Convergence, Macro-Sene, and the Overachiever. Those are the big ones. Are there any that you tried with like CodeRet or with other people that you realize like, this is just a mess. This is not going to work out. You know, nothing jumps to mind. And I think the reason I can't think of any that don't work is because that's a start with such a small idea. They don't start as full forms. It's rare where I'm like, I have this idea for a form and it doesn't work. It's more like, I have an idea for an exercise or for two scenes. And if it doesn't work, I just don't expand on it and don't explore that idea until it becomes a form. Overachiever would have been my biggest guess of something that wouldn't work because it just had too many moving parts. Yeah. But it did. It worked as a class. And there's definitely some like, the first Convergence was so funny in class, it was pretty good on stage. But then we did the second Convergence and it worked great. So sometimes it's like that one I needed, I think, to learn a little bit about pacing. Yeah. And Zach helped me teach a second lesson. I think pacing was the big thing we changed. The second that we just sped it up a little bit and it worked so much better on stage. And that was Kevin Hines. Improv forms can be simple. We often think of them in terms of limitations. In this form, you are only allowed to edit like this and so on. That is, I think, good. There are benefits to having no rules at all and in any improv show you should be ready to throw everything out if needed. But there are also good reasons to give yourself limitations. It can add fun, surprising twists for you in the audience. You have to kind of work around things that you otherwise wouldn't have to. There are many songwriters who, when writing a new song in the guitar, will first retune their guitar to something other than the standard tuning. When we do something we're used to, we have this tendency to fall into the same patterns which can be helpful but can also be stifling. By switching the tuning of the guitar, the songwriter can't rely on the same chord shapes that they've trained their fingers to go to and instead they have to be more conscious about what they're doing and why. Performing the movie or the macro scene or the loronde or any number of other forms often feels like that. It takes away some of the tricks we've come to rely on as improvisers. It keeps us on our toes just when we start to feel like we can finally rock back onto our heels. That was episode 15, "Forms." After you've worked for a bit on the standard forms, the herald, the montage, the monocene, and on basic scene work in game, try to learn some other forms. Having other forms will make you a more versatile player and you may find that you do some of your best scene work when you're not actually focusing on the scene work. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes and if you have any feedback for me, please send it to [email protected] that's C-U-R-T-I-S-R-E-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D. Thanks to everyone who has already done so and thanks to everyone who is part of this episode. Hi, I'm Lily Do. I am Chris Scott. Kevin Mulaney. Kevin Himes. And I'm Curtis Reutherford.