What Forms Are There?
harold, monoscene, and er, um, ah
What improv forms are there? Here’s my quick list:
The Harold - opening, 3 beats, group game, 3 second beats, group game, third beats.
Armando / Asssscat / Monologue show - any show where you have someone telling one or more true stories, and you pull scene ideas from them.
Montage - Suggestion and go.
Monoscene - one long scene
Pretty Flower (or the Spokane) - one source scene, from which you can tag away from and back to
La Ronde - inspired by the play. First scene A talks to B. Next scene B talks to C. Then C talks to D. Continue until the new person does a scene with A.
Deconstruction - two kinds
The simple one, where you do a chatty, long(ish) scene as an opening, and then you pull ideas from that for a series of scenes
The complex one, which has a strict form I’ve never learned (source scenes, exploration scenes, ending with a run)
The Movie - improvise a movie, usually where you scene paint three locations, title it and then rotate among those situations / characters
Close Quarters (Tracers at the UCB) - a series of scenes happening at the same point in time, in close proximity to each other
Macro location - similar to close quarters, except the scenes are not happening at the same time, just in the same general area.
Slacker (proper) - Start in a scene, and at some point we follow a character out of that scene into another. UCB NY developed this as a form called “Macroscene.”
Sleepover - this was really just a show that the UCB team Mother developed in the early 2000s. The part that has lasted was their opening, in which players all start as “statues” repeating a mantra.
The Soundtrack - another creation of Mother. Get music from the audience, and the tech plays these selections as the starts/inspirations of scenes.
Road Trip - A monoscene in a vehicle.
You may know someone of these by different names. Many of these are how I learned of them at the UCB Theatre in NYC.
What else? I’m especially looking for things newer teams could do. But I’m curious about any good form that I have forgotten about or don’t know.
Plugs, Ongoing
High Functioning - Ian Roberts and I do an hour of improv EVERY SATURDAY 7pm at the UCB Annex. See this video for Ian and I showing you where the UCB Annex is.
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!
How to Be The Greatest Improviser On Earth - My improv book, available at Amazon. Kindle or print. It’s a hodge-podge of advice I wrote in 2016 about doing improv. If you’re broke and want a free PDF version just email me and I’ll send it over.
Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About Comics - Comic book podcast, hosted by my brother Kevin and I. We are covering a little-known 1985 comic Watchmen (yes, THAT Watchmen). Subscribe for bonus episodes!
Screw It, We’re Just Gonna Talk About The Beatles - monthly deep dive on a little known indie band from Liverpool called The Beatles. Subscribe for access to back episodes!
My team Spanish Embarrassment is working on La Cucaracha. It's a Bat La Ronde (La Ronde in the dark), but at the end of each scene you turn the lights on (or your screens on, on Zoom) for a crescendo, and the cockroaches start to scramble real fast.
It's a very fun form. Basic La Ronde in the dark is also awesome.
There is also The Jim, named after Jim Woods and modeled after his exercise, where a series of weirdos come up to a customer facing person, like a cashier, with an impossible ask which they cannot fulfill and have to refuse. The weirdos then return a couple more times trying different tactics.
One more fun form is The Catastrophe, which I think is inspired by The Evente, but you play a crazy heightened source scene once, then jump to the past (beginning of the same day) and play a montage showing how each of the crazy moves in the source scene came to be.
Great list, I like lists.
-The Eventé: starts at a defined event, then travels back in time some distance with one character and explores their life leading up to that event, then you return to the event, either from a different perspective (ala Rashomon) or the next part of the event. Repeat.
- Silent soundtrack. Variation on the soundtrack with no dialogue.