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!
There’s also Detours (don’t know the origin but probably on IRC wiki) which is just replaying the same scene and exploring new games/sub-games each time. Michele Guido and I did it a handful of times at Comedy Cafe Berlin. It’s a bit gimmicky but has never failed to be really dumb fun.
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.