I’ll worry until I’m home and able to check if this is correct or not, but I believe it’s your Pirate/Robot/Ninja book that offers the visual of the big question mark appearing above a performer’s head occasionally, such as when something unexpected or unusual is said, and it being the responsibility of everyone in the scene to help address that question ASAP - otherwise the audience will be too distracted by the giant “question mark” to experience the scene unfolding. Looking out for that helps me understand (and even occasionally apply in the moment) “staying grounded” or “real.” As you’re well aware, I fall into the trap of allowing things to remain confusing and overly applying the “yes and” rule all the time. I’m practicing noticing sooner how it feels even physically when there is a “wtf?” above mine or someone’s else’s head (that is how I see the question mark). Also, I watch our friend Sahil.
Ha! I did not expect to see my name at the end of this reply! But I love it. I don't remember reading the "question mark" thing in robot pirate ninja, but it's honestly the best description I've heard of how I feel in scenes. It just feels uncomfortable, and the quick math that I generally do is:
1) Explain: Give a why for the confusing thing.
2) Recontextualize: Change the base reality to account for the new confusing thing. This tends to be a hail-mary, usually when 2 or 3 new unrelated unusual things pop up too quickly to solve with a (1).
An example of (2) that recently happened in a DT show (that i didn't effectively solve) was we were in a DMV and the base reality was pretty normal: roommates at the DMV trying to get their licenses renewed, one of their licenses wasn't expired, but they were gonna try anyways - unusual thing... but then before it could be explored the waiting numbers start getting read aloud and they're progressively nonsensical (A12 d44, 1, etc), and when one of the roommates tries to talk to the DMV person they're excessively mean and refuse to serve them. A walk on appears to let the roommates know that this is how things are, they need to just accept it and not push too hard. We never solved this cos things just went to crazy town, eventually the DMV became a maze/prison, we mostly abandoned the roommates relationship. Anwyays! As soon as all those unusual things popped their heads, a recontextualization by anyone could have solved i think everything. Something as simple as "Oh shit, I think we're dead. We must be in hell." It's what most of us were thinking, I'm sure, but no one said it, so we continued to add other stuff, hoping it would all connect up eventually, but things almost never just work out in the end if the question marks are looming for more than 10 seconds.
I didn't proofread this, so it might not make any sense! Ask me again in person.
I think there’s a good shorthand to break through this stuff, and one that does favors to less cerebral players that have a harder time figuring out the mechanics of unusual things.
It’s “how does that make you feel?” As a constant side-coach. If Bill Clinton controls the weather, rather than instantly jumping to the justification/mechanics of how or why that is, the FEELING it produces is an easier first step. “That DAMN Bill Clinton, controlling the weather!” Great. Now we know the emotional valence of that thing. We’ve given ourselves a clue of what the deal is, and the emotional reaction buys us time to figure out the logic. We still don’t know how/why it works, but we know WE DON’T LIKE IT, which is extremely useful. If the next player reacts emotionally as well, they align themselves or contrast that perspective, and both players can slowly expand that information. From here, it’s easier to arrive at a justification/scene logic that feels grounded (if the emotions were not fear-based or imposed.)
This is my most-used side-coach. It accomplishes two things in the long run. First, it naturally drives students towards more grounded scenework, since they realize its easier to react to grounded things. All without TELLING THEM not to do non-grounded things - I just “punish” them when they do by pushing them to be just as emotional and authentic, and they naturally realize it’s HARD, so they use the resource sparingly. Second, whacko players can keep being weirdos, it’s just harder. But if they can pull it off, they’re free to do it.
Hey Will. Great subject. Rather than using the UCB terminology of grounded reality I find myself explaining to students about playing within parameters and constantly justifying unusual things that they introduce into the scene. Once justified, the unusual becomes a truth in the world of the scene, which is basically saying what you are saying about creating the grounded reality or staying within the grounded reality. I think it’s absolutely correct that some improvisers are going to later. Explain whatever it is they’ve introduced and then they never do and I find that very frustrating as well.
Thanks for this great video! I love this topic, and you're right not having a solid base reality is almost always where scenes start going to shit. It can be a subtle thing sometime, like it's not always supernatural. For example in a recent monoscene it seemed like we were building up the characters to have a certain kind of gen-X/millennial sensibility, life experience and wisdom, but it was revealed that they were teenagers, which suddenly made the scene feel unreal. It felt like we had to spend loads of time scrambling to make sense of this shift rather than just play the scene.
Thank you for sharing this, this is very useful! I am very curious to learn how to make funny improv scenes in a fantasy/scifi reality (to use them as a source of sketch ideas for a scifi tv show), and this video really helps to make the distinction between what is and what isn't a "grounded reality" in this case.
Although I'm a bit confused by the "Bill Clinton can make rain" and "Mailboxes cure diseases" examples - aren't those "Unusual Thing"s? Aren't they supposed to break the expectations of the base reality, as opposed to being a part of the "base reality"? (and, to make them "grounded", you're supposed fo "justify" them later?)
I think there is an unusual thing, but you only know trust because of the grounded reality. So in the Bill Clinton is a superhero, the grounded reality is a superhero/X-Men world but it’s unusual because Bill Clinton is part of it. If you don’t know he’s a mutant it’s all unusual and there is no grounded reality.
For the mailbox, same thing. The use of crystals is our reality and the mailbox being treated like one is unusual. “I meet with a spiritual guru and he told me to sleep with a mailbox under my pillow. It’s really uncomfortable trying to anything”
Things are only unusual, if someone acknowledges them as such. Often, players ignore unusual things, thus rendering them normal in this reality. You are right that in the "Bill Clinton can make rain" example, that line is the first unusual thing, and depending on the reaction of the other player it will either become an unusual point of view or a weird world. But there is a difference between a weird world and a crazy town, the former needs to be grounded, which requires work. And Will is reminding us that someone needs to do that work, and to be a good improviser you need to work that muscle of noticing when the world of the scene is on shaky grounds and some things need to be explained.
Thinking a little more about it, I'd add on something I teach my writing students: never assume the reader knows anything about the subject. We could extend this to audiences in that we need to avoid coyness and spoon-feed them everything. Taking on the formation of a weird world or outlandish reality right from the starting makes for extra work for everyone, whereas drawing on known reality or established archetypes/myths/stock stories and characters gives the improvisers a working shorthand that most, if not all, audiences and scene partners can understand. Operating from that place gives the players an easy and solid foundation to build their scene upon and provides the audience with the associated expectations that the improvisers can then undermine when they hit and then exploit the unusual thing to create their game.
For the sake of thinking it through, let's say that a character's belief is that mailboxes cure cancer. Coming up with a justification that doesn't denote a miracle/weird world would be near impossible unless that justification was rooted in the character being an idiot who drew a concrete conclusion from a coincidence: or would go to any lengths to credit anything by medicine/science with a win (probably a more specific game). It's my understanding that what makes for a playable game is a justification that tells the audience and scene partner(s) what the character's POV is, and this opens up the scene to the "If this is true, what else is true..." mode of play where the players can heighten and play the game without hitting the same move over and over. One thing to note is that, in an average Harold scene, the improvisers get about 2-3 minutes to establish reality, find a game, and make some moves that heighten it before the edit. All the work to ret-con a weird world where mailboxes cure cancer in the first beat, if the work even happens, would eat into what is already a brief amount of stage time.
That being said, IF a grounded reality was built and game was established through a fool's POV about mailboxes as stated in the first beat, no matter how laborious it was, the second beat provides an opportunity to take the character's weird take (mailboxes cure cancer) from beat one (in which it would necessarily be called out as weird, establishing that character as the fool, though I guess both scene partners could believe it in a peas in the pod way as long as they call themselves out as weird, "Can you believe they don't have mailboxes in oncology wards? What the fuck's with that?") and blow it out into a weird world without explanation because now the audience already knows about the mailbox idea and how ridiculous it is. Now the players can goof on the "What if...?" of it and have fun with absurdity with the audience going along with it rather than trying to understand it. The initiator can now step out as a pediatric oncologist at a hospital who's reassuring little Jessica and her parents that a fresh shipment of mailboxes are on their way from Home Depot and will be incredibly affective against the aggressive form of leukemia she's just been diagnosed with. In that same world, people who say that pharmaceuticals are just as effective as mailboxes are dismissed as believing in hokum, and people who can't afford medical care come to rely on black market mailboxes to get their treatment, risking paying small fortunes for placebos or counterfeit mailboxes haphazardly made in some back-alley, high school metal shop.
The examples you're confused about alter actual reality/depend on a weird world logic that requires additional work to become the grounded reality (as Will showed in his example). It makes it harder for the audience to identify with, and then you're losing them because 1) you failed to ground the world's weirdness and folks are hung up on it for the rest of the scene, leading to lack of clarity (Will's note re: people never coming back to explaining what's up), or 2) your efforts to make the world work become laborious for you and unfunny for the audience because you're forcing something and they're seeing the homework happening on stage. At least that's my take on it. The mailbox/crystal thing could potentially work if it is born of a character's POV, but difficult to play if it is an agreed upon reality with no exposition to explain it.
I’ll worry until I’m home and able to check if this is correct or not, but I believe it’s your Pirate/Robot/Ninja book that offers the visual of the big question mark appearing above a performer’s head occasionally, such as when something unexpected or unusual is said, and it being the responsibility of everyone in the scene to help address that question ASAP - otherwise the audience will be too distracted by the giant “question mark” to experience the scene unfolding. Looking out for that helps me understand (and even occasionally apply in the moment) “staying grounded” or “real.” As you’re well aware, I fall into the trap of allowing things to remain confusing and overly applying the “yes and” rule all the time. I’m practicing noticing sooner how it feels even physically when there is a “wtf?” above mine or someone’s else’s head (that is how I see the question mark). Also, I watch our friend Sahil.
Ha! I did not expect to see my name at the end of this reply! But I love it. I don't remember reading the "question mark" thing in robot pirate ninja, but it's honestly the best description I've heard of how I feel in scenes. It just feels uncomfortable, and the quick math that I generally do is:
1) Explain: Give a why for the confusing thing.
2) Recontextualize: Change the base reality to account for the new confusing thing. This tends to be a hail-mary, usually when 2 or 3 new unrelated unusual things pop up too quickly to solve with a (1).
An example of (2) that recently happened in a DT show (that i didn't effectively solve) was we were in a DMV and the base reality was pretty normal: roommates at the DMV trying to get their licenses renewed, one of their licenses wasn't expired, but they were gonna try anyways - unusual thing... but then before it could be explored the waiting numbers start getting read aloud and they're progressively nonsensical (A12 d44, 1, etc), and when one of the roommates tries to talk to the DMV person they're excessively mean and refuse to serve them. A walk on appears to let the roommates know that this is how things are, they need to just accept it and not push too hard. We never solved this cos things just went to crazy town, eventually the DMV became a maze/prison, we mostly abandoned the roommates relationship. Anwyays! As soon as all those unusual things popped their heads, a recontextualization by anyone could have solved i think everything. Something as simple as "Oh shit, I think we're dead. We must be in hell." It's what most of us were thinking, I'm sure, but no one said it, so we continued to add other stuff, hoping it would all connect up eventually, but things almost never just work out in the end if the question marks are looming for more than 10 seconds.
I didn't proofread this, so it might not make any sense! Ask me again in person.
Hey Will!
I think there’s a good shorthand to break through this stuff, and one that does favors to less cerebral players that have a harder time figuring out the mechanics of unusual things.
It’s “how does that make you feel?” As a constant side-coach. If Bill Clinton controls the weather, rather than instantly jumping to the justification/mechanics of how or why that is, the FEELING it produces is an easier first step. “That DAMN Bill Clinton, controlling the weather!” Great. Now we know the emotional valence of that thing. We’ve given ourselves a clue of what the deal is, and the emotional reaction buys us time to figure out the logic. We still don’t know how/why it works, but we know WE DON’T LIKE IT, which is extremely useful. If the next player reacts emotionally as well, they align themselves or contrast that perspective, and both players can slowly expand that information. From here, it’s easier to arrive at a justification/scene logic that feels grounded (if the emotions were not fear-based or imposed.)
This is my most-used side-coach. It accomplishes two things in the long run. First, it naturally drives students towards more grounded scenework, since they realize its easier to react to grounded things. All without TELLING THEM not to do non-grounded things - I just “punish” them when they do by pushing them to be just as emotional and authentic, and they naturally realize it’s HARD, so they use the resource sparingly. Second, whacko players can keep being weirdos, it’s just harder. But if they can pull it off, they’re free to do it.
Hey Will. Great subject. Rather than using the UCB terminology of grounded reality I find myself explaining to students about playing within parameters and constantly justifying unusual things that they introduce into the scene. Once justified, the unusual becomes a truth in the world of the scene, which is basically saying what you are saying about creating the grounded reality or staying within the grounded reality. I think it’s absolutely correct that some improvisers are going to later. Explain whatever it is they’ve introduced and then they never do and I find that very frustrating as well.
Thanks for this great video! I love this topic, and you're right not having a solid base reality is almost always where scenes start going to shit. It can be a subtle thing sometime, like it's not always supernatural. For example in a recent monoscene it seemed like we were building up the characters to have a certain kind of gen-X/millennial sensibility, life experience and wisdom, but it was revealed that they were teenagers, which suddenly made the scene feel unreal. It felt like we had to spend loads of time scrambling to make sense of this shift rather than just play the scene.
This would be a fantastic written article too. I have never heard anyone really explain this so well.
Thank you for sharing this, this is very useful! I am very curious to learn how to make funny improv scenes in a fantasy/scifi reality (to use them as a source of sketch ideas for a scifi tv show), and this video really helps to make the distinction between what is and what isn't a "grounded reality" in this case.
Although I'm a bit confused by the "Bill Clinton can make rain" and "Mailboxes cure diseases" examples - aren't those "Unusual Thing"s? Aren't they supposed to break the expectations of the base reality, as opposed to being a part of the "base reality"? (and, to make them "grounded", you're supposed fo "justify" them later?)
I think there is an unusual thing, but you only know trust because of the grounded reality. So in the Bill Clinton is a superhero, the grounded reality is a superhero/X-Men world but it’s unusual because Bill Clinton is part of it. If you don’t know he’s a mutant it’s all unusual and there is no grounded reality.
For the mailbox, same thing. The use of crystals is our reality and the mailbox being treated like one is unusual. “I meet with a spiritual guru and he told me to sleep with a mailbox under my pillow. It’s really uncomfortable trying to anything”
Is this right Will Hines?
Yes I agree brother
Things are only unusual, if someone acknowledges them as such. Often, players ignore unusual things, thus rendering them normal in this reality. You are right that in the "Bill Clinton can make rain" example, that line is the first unusual thing, and depending on the reaction of the other player it will either become an unusual point of view or a weird world. But there is a difference between a weird world and a crazy town, the former needs to be grounded, which requires work. And Will is reminding us that someone needs to do that work, and to be a good improviser you need to work that muscle of noticing when the world of the scene is on shaky grounds and some things need to be explained.
Thinking a little more about it, I'd add on something I teach my writing students: never assume the reader knows anything about the subject. We could extend this to audiences in that we need to avoid coyness and spoon-feed them everything. Taking on the formation of a weird world or outlandish reality right from the starting makes for extra work for everyone, whereas drawing on known reality or established archetypes/myths/stock stories and characters gives the improvisers a working shorthand that most, if not all, audiences and scene partners can understand. Operating from that place gives the players an easy and solid foundation to build their scene upon and provides the audience with the associated expectations that the improvisers can then undermine when they hit and then exploit the unusual thing to create their game.
For the sake of thinking it through, let's say that a character's belief is that mailboxes cure cancer. Coming up with a justification that doesn't denote a miracle/weird world would be near impossible unless that justification was rooted in the character being an idiot who drew a concrete conclusion from a coincidence: or would go to any lengths to credit anything by medicine/science with a win (probably a more specific game). It's my understanding that what makes for a playable game is a justification that tells the audience and scene partner(s) what the character's POV is, and this opens up the scene to the "If this is true, what else is true..." mode of play where the players can heighten and play the game without hitting the same move over and over. One thing to note is that, in an average Harold scene, the improvisers get about 2-3 minutes to establish reality, find a game, and make some moves that heighten it before the edit. All the work to ret-con a weird world where mailboxes cure cancer in the first beat, if the work even happens, would eat into what is already a brief amount of stage time.
That being said, IF a grounded reality was built and game was established through a fool's POV about mailboxes as stated in the first beat, no matter how laborious it was, the second beat provides an opportunity to take the character's weird take (mailboxes cure cancer) from beat one (in which it would necessarily be called out as weird, establishing that character as the fool, though I guess both scene partners could believe it in a peas in the pod way as long as they call themselves out as weird, "Can you believe they don't have mailboxes in oncology wards? What the fuck's with that?") and blow it out into a weird world without explanation because now the audience already knows about the mailbox idea and how ridiculous it is. Now the players can goof on the "What if...?" of it and have fun with absurdity with the audience going along with it rather than trying to understand it. The initiator can now step out as a pediatric oncologist at a hospital who's reassuring little Jessica and her parents that a fresh shipment of mailboxes are on their way from Home Depot and will be incredibly affective against the aggressive form of leukemia she's just been diagnosed with. In that same world, people who say that pharmaceuticals are just as effective as mailboxes are dismissed as believing in hokum, and people who can't afford medical care come to rely on black market mailboxes to get their treatment, risking paying small fortunes for placebos or counterfeit mailboxes haphazardly made in some back-alley, high school metal shop.
The examples you're confused about alter actual reality/depend on a weird world logic that requires additional work to become the grounded reality (as Will showed in his example). It makes it harder for the audience to identify with, and then you're losing them because 1) you failed to ground the world's weirdness and folks are hung up on it for the rest of the scene, leading to lack of clarity (Will's note re: people never coming back to explaining what's up), or 2) your efforts to make the world work become laborious for you and unfunny for the audience because you're forcing something and they're seeing the homework happening on stage. At least that's my take on it. The mailbox/crystal thing could potentially work if it is born of a character's POV, but difficult to play if it is an agreed upon reality with no exposition to explain it.