Do Openings Ruin Improv?

Are they worth the trouble?

Yep, another improv post. The point of this one is that openings cause people to focus too much on initiating full ideas. Though a valuable skill, it’s done too often in modern improv, and it ruins shows.

Fix The Harold: Cut The Opening

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the Harold (the revered improv structure) has too many scenes. A few people contacted me to suggest that maybe the way to improve the Harold was to get rid of the opening.

I have to admit, it sounds like a pretty good idea.

Let’s talk about openings a bit.

My History With Openings

Sometime around 2008, Matt Besser did a workshop at the New York City branch of the theater he co-founded, The Upright Citizens Brigade. The students were mostly the then-current house team performers. I was one of them. Besser was talking about openings and how we weren’t using them properly.

Openings are 3-5 minute rituals and games that you do at the beginning of Harolds to turn a single suggestion into multiple ideas and themes.

There are lots of these set openings, like pattern game, invocation, character flocking, musical, documentary, sound-and-movement, etc. They’re each different, but they all expand the suggestion into many ideas. For example, in the invocation opening, a team tries to describe the associations and deeper meanings of an object. So if your suggestion is “pencil” the invocation might lead to the subjects of: communication, literature, final exams and diaries. Then you’d do scenes inspired by those subjects.

Openings were (are?) polarizing to performers. Some felt they warmed up the teams’ group mind before you started scenes. Some liked how theatrical they could be. Others found them embarrassing. They certainly were hard. You’d do a pattern game for four minutes and then do intense mental gymnastics to use whatever knot of ideas came out of it. Teams spent a LOT of time arguing over what openings to do.

In this workshop, Besser claimed that our openings — all of them — were inefficient. There’s no point, he said, in turning one suggestion into 10 more suggestions. The goal should be to develop comedic ideas and then start the scenes with those.

So if your suggestion was “pencil”, an invocation might get you ideas like this: gym class final exams, a diary written to be discovered, Hemingway obsessed with Twitter. Fuller comedic ideas, not just broad themes.

He got each house team to do an opening and a few scenes. Then he’d ask, for each scene, “where in the opening did that idea come from?” The vast majority of us had to admit we could barely explain how our scenes were directly inspired by anything in the opening.

I loved what Besser was saying, and I wasn’t alone. The workshop started a movement. Coaches and performers started working hard to make openings more useful. We developed exercises, improv vocabulary and even new openings — all designed to supercharge the starts of our scenes.

Premise Improv

By the time the UCB published their improv book in 2013, they had a name for this approach: premise improv. It meant to use an opening to start a scene with a full comedic idea. If you didn’t use an opening, it was called “organic improv.”

“Premise improv” and “organic improv” are UCB terms. If you studied improv only in Chicago at iO or Second City, you’ve never heard these terms used to describe initiation strategy. But if you’ve studied at UCB, or any improv theater founded by a UCB alumnus, you’re very familiar with this approach.

Premise improv is extremely powerful. If you’re on a team where everyone is comfortable with it, you can do an opening and start scenes with a full idea. Here’s some great initiations I remember from shows around this time. (I love all of these, but please allow for the weirdness of writing down improv).

• “Get the bear trap in the chimney, this is the year we catch Santa Claus.”

• “Well, I just got the call. The railroad’s cancelled. All of it.”

• “Guys, I think the spider that lives above my cubicle is writing mean things about me.”

• (knock knock) “Hello? It’s Triple-A. We heard you’re out of toothpaste.”

Premise improv is fun. It’s fast. It’s GREAT for audiences who are unfamiliar with or skeptical of improv. You give them a funny idea right at the top.

But now, as I type this in 2023, I think openings and premise improv have gone too far.

Side note: what if there were a zombie uprising tonight and the last thing I did with my life was write a thousand words about improv openings? Would I go to hell for wasting my last night on Earth or straight to the world’s coolest heaven? Anyway.

Problems With Premise

One problem with premise improv is it tends to make scenes absurd. You rarely get grounded, naturalistic situations. Everything is a high concept situation. Even in that list above, which were initiations that I enjoyed, the situations are all very absurd right from the jump.

An even bigger problem with premise improv is that it wrecks communication. The opening convinces people that they know what’s coming.

I coached a team this week that’s very good, but also new. They’re learning premise improv, many of them for the first time. They did a living room opening in which they discussed the phenomenon of women romantically pursuing men who are spending life in prison.

In a scene, a player initiated as someone on a date. She twirled her hair and smiled and said to her date, “So you’re like a social worker, right? Doing a lot of good?” Flirty tone, happy.

The other player responded in a realistically dour “Yeah, but it’s rough. Had to get involved in a family where there were abusive parents, get the kid out of there. Dealing with lots of depression.” Sad tone, very down.

The scene immediately started to falter. In talking to them after, the initiator was hoping to do a flip on the opening and play someone who instead of being into serial killers, was into “good” people like social workers. She was looking for an exaggerating “good person.” The woman playing the social worker thought she was expected to play a “real” social worker, doing tough cases. Perhaps leaning into the humor of being such a downer on a date.

That’s two different scenes. This is a common type of misunderstanding in premise improv. They’re each trying to play to their own interpretation of the opening.

Organic Improv

Then we tried a scene off of just a suggestion. “Cell.”

A scene started with two people working in a lab (one looks in a microscope, the other prepares slides). The conversation between players 1 and 2 went something like:

One: Wow, this virus looks spooky. You hear me? It’s spooky.

Two: How so?

One: Kinda like a baby ghost. You know what I mean?

Two: I’m not sure. What do you mean, “baby ghost?”

One: Like little orbs of light. You know how in movies when there’s a baby ghost, they’re shown as orbs of light?

Two: I don’t think I know that. But I can picture it, so please continue.

One: Like in Casper, or any ghost movie. Not baby ghosts. But when ghosts first show up, they’re orbs. That’s what this looks like.

Two: I don’t know. Horror movies aren’t my thing. I’m more a “suspense/thriller” guy.

One: What does it look like to you?

Two: (looking in the microscope) You know how in thrillers, when someone’s getting out of the bathtub, and the light comes out of the bathroom through the steam and seems to be shining on an unknown thing in the hallway…

One: I don’t watch thrillers.

This scene is more rambling, but also more fun to watch. The people were listening more deeply. Their sense of what was unusual sharper. They were taking longer to get to a clear game. But the journey felt better. We, the audience, were privy to the discovery of the unusual thing.

Of course, organic improv has its own set of pitfalls. Without a clear premise as guidance, undisciplined teams do a new weird thing in every line. Or you get stuck talking about things not present in the scene, or with no emotional stakes.

You could argue that premise improv is not the problem. It’s lack of listening, maybe. Or not initiating clearly. But premise seems to ENCOURAGE a lack of listening. From what I observe, it makes listening inordinately difficult for people who otherwise do not have trouble.

So maybe the Harold is okay without removing any scenes. It’s just time to get rid of openings.

*checks windows for zombies* Phew.

Thanks again to Jen deHaan for help with the graphic.

Plugs, Fresh

• The Smokes at UCB: A Full Hour. My UCB team the Smokes is playing a late show TONIGHT Friday September 1 at 10:30pm. We are doing a full hour.

• Beta Beta: Saturday Sep 2, 9pm. Jim Woods and I are doing our monthly show of characters, stunts and sketches at Public Displays of Altadena. Come out!

Plugs, Ongoing

• Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Comics - Comic book podcast, hosted by my brother Kevin and I. This week, Kevin and I start reviewing Grant Morrison’s mid-1990s run on Justice League of America.

• Clubhouse Fridays - WGIS’ weekly improv show. Fridays 7pm at The Clubhouse. Free!

• How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print. It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re broke and want a free PDF just email me and I’ll send it over.