Relationship Vs Game
Ohio: First In Flight
There’s been a big uptick in followers to this Substack. Welcome! I discuss long-form improv comedy, which is the process of making up comedy scenes on a stage with no script. I studied at the UCB Theater and I founded my own theater WGIS. It’s truly an insanely niche topic which involves acting and also being funny. I get into doing it, teaching it and watching it. I am not always good at explaining context. Okay, here we go.
Greetings Cleveland
Neil Casey and I took an impromptu trip to Cleveland Ohio to watch our mutual beloved band They Might Be Giants do two shows in a row. Venues: Agora Ballroom and Globe Iron (It’s just “Globe Iron” not Globe Iron Theatre or Globe Iron Space).
The shows were fun. We expected to see a room full of old nerds like us but TMBG has a surprisingly young joyful following, who all know the lyrics better than we do.
We also went to the rock and roll hall of fame. Neil told me about how North Carolina and Ohio argue over who is truly “First in flight.” The Wright Brothers are from Ohio but the did their actual first flight in North Carolina. Interesting!
Surprise Improv Show
Friday night, I texted Michael Busch who has opened Imposters Theater to see if we could get lunch. Instead he put up a late-night show for Neil and I. It was posted to the theater’s instagram at 8am Saturday and by 11pm we were doing a sold out 2 man improv show.
Fun show. We did these scenes IIRC:
a nurse who assures a patient that whether or not he uses the iPad to check in, it will not be held against him
a doctor who refuses to see any patient with any insurance complications
two strangers in a church - one is a recovering addict and the other has a a flash drive full of passwords to a local bank
a bank manager opens the vault when presented with the passwords
a dying patient in an emergency room confronts the nurse (both from first scene) who demands he admit that God exists
Really every scene was me as a mildly annoyed man and Neil as a nosy guy who wants to philosophize about society.
Afterwards, Neil and I really indulged ourselves by hanging out in the lobby with some of the theater’s performers/teachers/students and doing a classic TWO OLD IMPROV FOLKS TALKING IMPROV. Did we drop names? You betcha. Did we talk improv theory? Oh, yes.
Relationship Versus Game
Part of the discussion was about the old chestnut “relationship versus game” which is a TRAP for me since I get caught up in a SEMANTIC ARGUMENT about using the word “relationship” to discuss improv scenes.
Here’s how it happens. I’m talking about “game of the scene” which is the process championed by the UCB Theater where you approach your improv scenes with a sketch comedy mentality. You’re on the hunt for a primary unusual thing to heighten and explore.
Then someone counters “Well, I prefer to play the relationship” and I enter BATTLE MODE.
No one even said that last night. Someone just said “You need relationship and you need game” which is a very reasonable point to make.
But I had a flashback to decades of improv students who would say to me “I don’t like game. I prefer to play the relationship.”
In my history when someone says “I prefer to play the relationship” it’s someone in my class and they are letting me know they will not be taking suggestions, and they are happy doing meandering improv, and they refuse to even consider what makes a scene funny and instead will do scenes where two people do silent object work where they do nothing unusual except fight and maybe cry.
They’ve usually studied in Chicago for, say, 2 weeks.
Really, they don’t like having to make decisions or the pressure to be funny. But those pressures are there!!!!! (me entering battle mode, laser guns charging up)
“I prefer to play the relationship” does to me what the word “socialist” does to my 82 year old Republican father. He can’t hear that there might be a new context for the word “socialism” in our modern age. He just pictures Joseph Stalin.
The GOOD meaning of the “I prefer relationship” person is (in my opinion) someone who focuses on discovery and making rich choices. They are focused on (my terms) SCENEWORK and DISCOVERY to make a funny scene.
It’s a fine point. As long as they’re not closed off to pattern and heightening.
Though I will say that the word “relationship” — even though I admit that hundreds and hundreds of improvisers naturally gravitate toward this term — isn’t exactly right. Saying “I am the parent and the other character is my son” gives you exactly NOTHING in a scene.
What you need are the characters to always be interested in each other, regardless of circumstance. And if there’s peas in a pod dealing with a weird world, the dynamic between them might be incidental.
When someone says to me “you need relationship and you need game” I just pretend they said “you need committed scenework and you need game” and then we can be friends.
This person last night was a smart reasonable person and it was chill.
Have I made even one point in this essay?
Shall we move onto plugs?
Plug: The And Camp
Myself and the other WGIS founders are the featured teachers at a new “improv camp” next fall. It’s called THE AND CAMP. September 17-20 in the Berkshires. It’s $699 for the whole kit and kaboodle: food, lodging, classes, etc. Lots of great NYC teachers (Shannon O’Neill, Sebastian Conelli, Ray Cordova, Elana Fishbein) in a beautiful setting! Tons of fun classes, shows and improv nerdery will abound!
Plug: WGIS Intensives
If you’re more west coast oriented, WGIS is having intensives several times next year.
last week of Feb, first week of March
last week of April
last week of July, first week of August
Meant for out-of-towners, you come out for a week to LA (class does NOT provide lodging) for 8 sessions and a show of advanced instruction. They will be $375 for a week of classes.
There will be a simple application and if there’s a lot of demand, we’ll pick by lottery. They are not available yet but will be in a week or so. I’ll announce in this newsletter and the WGIS newsletter.
Plugs: More Stuff
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! You can join our mailing list if you want our weekly announcement of shows.
How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print (also on my web site for more if you don’t want to buy from Amazon). It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re short of funds and want a free PDF version just email me and I’ll send it over.
Hey Will, as one of the performers/students in the lobby last night, it was awesome to hear this violent debate (polite discussion) happen live. You and Neil had a hilarious set, come back to Cleveland!
You want to talk semantics? I prefer the word DYNAMIC to relationship because it implies the energy being exchanged between the characters, the patterns of behavior (if you, will, games) that are going to set up, and maybe eventually subvert, expectation. RELATIONSHIP is how the characters know each other, story-wise, which as you said, tells you exactly nothing about what to expect or where the comedy is coming from in the scene (unless you're relying on cliche, stereotype and sitcommy tropes). So within a father-son relationship there are an infinite amount of dynamics to play.