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Deema's avatar

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.

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Janty's avatar

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!

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