Getting out of your head on the back-line
And make smarter game moves
This is a guest column by Caroline Clifford. Caroline Clifford is a stand-up comedian and improviser in Berlin. She performs and teaches improv at Comedy Cafe Berlin and teaches stand-up at her own school Berlin Stand-Up School. She has her own Substack about authentic comedy The Authentic Comedian.
Caroline is one of my favorite comedians who happens to perform at one of my favorite theaters (Comedy Cafe Berlin) and I’m so glad she wrote this column!
If you want to pitch a guest column, send me a few sentences of what you’d write about and what improv teaching/performing credits you have at will@wgimprovschool.com.
One of the biggest complaints I hear from students regarding game is it gets them in their heads. You can be stood there on the back-line thinking “What is the best coolest game here that’s going to make everyone laugh and make me look like a friggin rock-star? . I just need to identify the “unusual thing” and find a pure and simple initiation for it” And by the time you thought all of that the whole scene has already been swept and everyone’s doing a group game where they are barn-yard animals or something and you don’t know why so you just start oinking.
Here’s a few tips to get you out of your head on the back line and stay present. The more you stay present, the more your game-moves will feel true to what the audience and all the other improvisers are also experiencing - and that’s the good stuff!
1. “Super” listen
Listen intently to what the improvisers are saying, little unusual things come up all the time, little mistakes and quirks. How does this scene make you feel? Not only that, but listen for the subtext, are improvisers saying one thing, but their emotions read in a whole other way? Is someone being extremely bad at their job? Is someone professing their love to someone but they don’t seem to like the other person.
2. “Super” watch
Imagine in full Technicolor the scene that’s being performed in front of you you. What exactly is the room like that they’re in? What are the characters wearing & what do they look like? This will help you stay more present to the improv. It can help you visualise, rather than invent what could come next.
3. Label real emotions
Great game moves have an emotion attached to them. And in my opinion a less interesting game move happens when the real emotion is not carried into the next scene. Start by labelling the emotions that come up in the scene: worried, self-conscious, embarrassed, people-pleasing.
Conclusion
It occurs to me that these tips might put you in your head - the irony! I guess I’m just trying to tell you to listen with all your senses to a scene. Rather than planning the next move, the next move should let itself be known to you. And if it doesn’t that’s fine too, you’re not solely responsible for making moves… unless you’re on a 3 person team :/
Hopefully these techniques should put you on the road to discovery not invention.
A real example that came up recently was some improvisers were doing a workplace scene where one of them said “I took LSD last night and now this job seems so pointless to me I don’t want t do it any more”. Cut to tags about trippy spreadsheets, dancing numbers and eventually someone winning an award for advancements in spreadsheet technology.
It was kind of fun, as much as a drug scene can be - but a little unsatisfying. These type of scenes are difficult because just like in real life, inebriated people are having an experience you can’t connect to.
If the players had “Super listened” to the scene they might have heard a more relatable subtext. Oh you took drugs at the weekend and now you can’t be bothered to do your job? That’s so lame. And the real emotion is “Quit whining and do your job!”. To me, this puts me in a much more discovery mindset because I can connect with this real emotion much more. “Listen kiddo, we’d all rather be doing something cooler than this - me? I always wanted to be a jazz drummer”
Thanks, Caroline!
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