Let's Ban The "Voice of Reason"
set yourself free
The “voice of reason” is the one in an improv scene who “calls out” what’s unusual.
Someone says “I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
The voice of reason might say…
“But the landlord hasn’t done anything wrong! And we’ll still owe our rent anyway!”
The voice of reason speaks for the audience. They speak common sense. They force the other characters to play to the top of their emotional intelligence. They say the thing we’d say if we spoke our mind.
And they are mostly done BADLY and therefore largely UNNECESSARY.
I Know This Is Outrageous
This is truly the most outrageous essay I’ve written on here. I mean, the voice of reason is aggressively taught at most “game of the scene” improv schools. UCB teaches it. My school, WGIS, teaches it! I’ve taught it in my classes RECENTLY! It’s in my improv book! I wrote a curriculum this year and “voice of reason” was all over it.
But then I started having students run “weird world” scenes — scenes with no voice of reason.
To my surprise: the weird world scenes were almost always better. By A LOT.
Let’s compare three cases:
the voice of reason done badly
the voice of reason done well
no voice of reason
Voice of Reason Done Badly
The main reason voices of reason are bad, when they are bad, is they are done with no emotional commitment at all. Someone just shrugs their shoulder and goes “That’s not how you do that.” It borders on smugness.
Really, it sounds like what passes for humor in bad superhero films. I can hear it in my head “Yeah, that’s not how web swinging works.”
Using the example above…
“I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
“No. That’s not going to work.”
The voice of reason detaches from the scene. They dismiss. They don’t even KNOW the other person.
They have no empathy of why the unusual person is being unusual.
Voice of Reason Done Well
The good voice of reason is fully invested in the scene. They tend to know the people well. They are sympathetic while they disagree.
They say “no” the way you say it to a person you know well.
It’s hard to show what’s good in a printed example but it’s lot in the tone, but it’s something like this:
“I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
“Johnny, I can’t let you do this again. The courts are not on your side.”
The voice of reason is an invested part of the world. They are adding to the history. They’re revealing their character and the other’s character.
Another way to be invested is to be emotionally affected.
“I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
“Johnny! Come on!!! That’s gonna screw up our living situation! You’re killing me!”
Probably if you feel something, you will be invested in the world.
So that’s the answer, right? The voice of reason is fine. Just be invested. In other words, the voice of reason is good if you just do it right — i.e. be invested.
That’s what I thought. Until I tried having students do “no voice of reason.”
No Voice of Reason
As an exercise, I’ll have students do scenes with no voice of reason allowed. Every character has to be on board with everything.
(I call them “weird world scenes.” Lots of improv teachers use the term “weird world” for lots of things, but for me it’s scenes with no voice of reason.)
So the above example might go something like this:
Roommate 1: “I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
Roommate 2: “That’s a great idea. We’ll represent ourselves. We can bring up all the ways this building sucks, which we totally know well! This will be an open and shut case.
The character enable each other.
This is not just “peas in a pod” because if anyone enters the scene they also agree. Like if the landlord comes in…
Landlord: You two are behind on the rent.
Roommate 1: Well too bad for you because we’re suing you.
Landlord: Dammit! I’m gonna lose my shirt! I can’t defend myself against you guys!
First of all, these scenes are really fun. They’re also easy. You already know what your opinion is going to be — you’re on board. People SMILE as they do these scenes.
Weird Worlds Are Grounded Worlds
But then… I noticed something else these scenes had. They were emotionally grounded.
They were actually more grounded that the scenes with a voice of reason.
By “grounded” I mean the actors had a inner sense of WHY they were behaving that way. Without any prompting the characters started just explaining their emotional deal.
Continuing the above scene…
Roommate 1: “I know we’re short on rent. I’ve got an idea: let’s sue the landlord. ”
Roommate 2: “That’s a great idea. We’ll represent ourselves. We can bring up all the ways this building sucks, which we totally know well! This will be an open and shut case.
Roommate 1: We can’t let him push us around! We have rights!
Roommate 2: We totally have rights! Power to the people! Down with the 1% !
Roommate 1: We should do a sit-in!
This is no longer just a “weird thing repeated” - it’s a class struggle.
It’s grounded and human.
Alex Berg’s Hand Thing
I’m reminded of Alex Berg’s (Convoy, Sentimental Lady) “hand thing” - one of the best explanation of what “justification” is supposed to do. Berg describes it like this: “Simply put, if the first unusual thing is the thumb, the justification is the palm, and further instances of the game are the fingers.” See his whole essay about it.
In the above example, “let’s sue the landlord” is the thumb, “power to the people” is the palm and “let’s stage a sit-in” is a new finger.
We teach our students to use the voice of reason to get a “why” out of the unusual person. But it has limited success because when you ask students to consciously THINK about “why” they are doing something, they make it complicated and inauthentic.
Person 1: While we’re hitchhiking through Europe, we should try running with the bulls.
Person 2: Ew, gross.
Person 1: (being a voice of reason) Gross? That’s a weird way to describe running with the bulls. Why do you say gross?
Person 2: (feeling pressure to make sense) Uh, my father was killed by a bull.
That may be a funny scene, but it’s not an emotionally real one. It’s a contrived back story. What if they characters just got on board with each other?
Person 1: While we’re hitchhiking through Europe, we should try running with the bulls.
Person 2: Ew, gross.
Person 1: It IT kinda gross.
Person 2: It’s just… I don’t know, basic.
Person 1: It’s cliche. We don’t want to be normal
Person 2: We’re not frat guys. We’re beyond.
Person 1: Maybe we adopt a bull. Liberate it!
This scene —- which I have admittedly made up — is more emotionally real.
Temporary Ban On Voice of Reason
I KNOW the “real” answer is “just do the voice of reason well.” But from I see, most people cannot do it well. And they CAN do “weird world” scenes well.
Imagine we lived in a world where instead of improv groups, everyone is a rock band. And you see people struggling to do weird jazz chords and strange time signatures, and it’s bad. You might just go “Hey, try power chords and 4/4 time.”
This also might just be a Los Angeles thing. But I bet it’s true in ANY improv community that’s pushing “game of the scene.”
By the way, I LIKE game of the scene. But I also see what it does to people who try to go on auto-pilot. It makes the scenes really annoying.
Try a temporary ban on voices of reason. From the start of your scene, you’re on board. And if you DO disagree, you’re not surprised. You know this world. You’re fully in it.
P.S. Shout out to Cardinal Redbird - the improv group I coached for a long while. They brought up the idea of doing scenes with no voices of reason, and it was really fun. That’s what opened my eyes to how good it was as an exercise.
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Bold move, Will. Don't let Besser hear about it.
I'm afraid, if you stop playing the voice of reason, the scenes will become same-y. Doing a mix of straight-absurd, peas in a pod and weird world scenes will give you variety.
It can also easily lead to the kind of play that gives improv the bad rep, when anything at all is accepted.
This will work as an exercise or a temporary thing. But at the end of the day, you just have to learn to play voice of reason well. This is a foundational skill.
I've tried coaching groups into scenes where they're not allowed to (explicitly/out loud) justify the unusual behavior, and I've found that makes scenes a lot better! Seems like it forces the voice of reason to react honestly rather than continue pitching/prompting for justifications. Terry Withers also used that same "hand thing" analogy when he subbed for a group games class I was taking and I think about it all the time!