Fight Well: A Workshop
learn to love losing
Cold Open: We Made Our Goal!
Before I get to today’s essay — I’m happy to report that we raised $35,000 in our fundraiser for WGIS/The Pack. Thank you to everyone who donated, which included many folks who read this newsletter. We’re now doing the work of making the renovations! I will report back in the future with our results!
Okay on to this week’s improv nerdery.
This is an outline of a workshop called “Fight Well” I taught this past weekend at the very fun EndGame Improv Festival (still going on through this weekend, i.e. today). It’s about having productive arguments in improv.
A fight is funny if someone is “wrong.” Two people who each have a reasonable point of view is mundane.
This is a mundane argument:
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes?
Other: You know I’m putting the kids to bed!
This one is fun:
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes?
Other: Not until I know our kids respect me.
The workshop is practicing different ways we determine that a party is “wrong.” They are involve a trick I totally made up called “yes anding.”
Part I: Foolish Gift
Someone starts with an “explain this” initiation. You endow the other person with some kind of weird behavior.
One: You want to tell me why you skipped work to make a snowman in the yard?
In response, the person must agree they did it and say why. Here’s a variety of reasons.
Other: Play is more important than work.
Other: I’ve realized my childhood was incomplete.
Other: Because work sucks and I hate it.
Other: It’s research. I’m an architect and I’m doing research.
Those are all “internal reason” (philosophy / emotions / desire). Those are better than “external reasons” (outside forces). Here’s some external reasons.
Other: The boss paid me to stay home.
Other: My spouse is making me play with my kids.
Other: A wizard is requiring me to do this or else he will curse the family.
In those cases, the real star of the scene is not in the scene (the boss, the spouse, the wizard).
Say yes to the foolish gift, and the fight is fun.
Part Two: Unreasonable Complaint
Part two is where the person making the complain is being obviously unreasonable. In response, you simply play it real.
One: Could you please stop being five foot ten inches tall? It’s humiliating to me, a shorter person.
Other: I cannot stop doing that.
Or this
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes? Otherwise they get mad. The dishes, I mean.
I like to use dishwashing scenes for fight examples because — side note — every single scene about a couple washing dishes becomes a fight.
Pro Tip: Turn Down the Heat
During improv fights, don’t get too angry. It can cloud the actor’s perception! Instead try “sympathetic disagreement.”
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes? Otherwise they get mad. The dishes, I mean.
Other: I love how empathetic you are, but I just don’t think the dishes really truly have feelings.
One: Don’t say that in front of them.
Pro Tip #2: Don’t Fight Mundane Accusations
If an accusation is mundane, don’t fight about it. People will sometimes use an accusation just to set a scene and all they’re trying to do is set up a who-what-where. Just agree and move on.
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes?
Other: Oh, sorry! Of course.
Part Three: Change Reality To Win (Slytherin move)
Finally, I teach what is a dirty trick. Someone makes a mundane accusation and you change reality to make them crazy for making that complaint. It’s cheating and it’s bad. But it’s also fun. And if the person making the accusation says yes to the new reality, it’s a good time.
This is part of a course I’m building that I want to call Dirty Tricks That Work.
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me with the dishes?
Two: We’re in prison. No one cares if we wash our single plate.
One: I don’t see why we can’t keep a nice cell.
It’s not “nice” but it does happen and it’s fun to learn to handle it. It is a straight up denial of whatever the first person seemed to be setting up.
One: Shh! We’re in church!
Two: But the pastor has caught fire! We need to help him!
One: Not until the service is over!
Examples this extreme are truly bad improv. But it IS worth practicing changing your view of yourself mid scene. You thought you were reasonable, but now you are not. Roll with it.
Advanced Notes
Everything above is mechanical. In my experience these exercises are fun to do and people generally get it quickly.
There is an advanced note I’m not totally sure how to communicate. But it is this: when you endowed with something, say yes DEEPLY. Don’t just give a surface yes. Make it true.
So if someone says
One: Can you tell me why you skipped work to stay home and build a snowman?
Don’t be too flippant and quick. It’s not the best to simply go “Because snowman are great and Starbucks sucks.” That will work. But if the actor isn’t really committed to their answer, the scene will run out of gas.
Take a moment. What do you think really happened if you are someone who skipped work to stay home and make a snowman?
Something like this— although less immediately funny — might make for a better scene that’s easier to play.
Other: I just can’t take it anymore. I can’t go into the office. It’s too bleak.
The “other” person is still “wrong.” They’re not “normalizing” the weirdness. They’re saying yes to the idea that something unusual is afoot. But it’s real and deep.
That’s the real way to do a “fight.” Say yes deeply.
Plugs, Ongoing
High Functioning - Ian Roberts and I do an hour of improv EVERY SATURDAY 7pm at the UCB Annex. See this video for Ian and I showing you where the UCB Annex is.
Clubhouse Fridays - WGIS’ weekly improv show. Fridays 7pm at The Clubhouse. Free!
The World’s Greatest Improv School: The improv school I run with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell. We’ve got classes online, in LA and even a few in NYC!
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 version just email me and I’ll send it over.
Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Comics - Comic book podcast, hosted by my brother Kevin and I. We are about to start coverage of the little-known 1985 comic Watchmen (yes, THAT Watchmen). Subscribe for bonus episodes!
Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About The Beatles - monthly deep dive on a little known indie band from Liverpool called The Beatles. Subscribe for access to back episodes!
Honey help me do the dishes.
Ask the snowman I made instead on going to work do it.