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You already know the secret to transformative improv.

Sprawled on the floor of your college dorm room, Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief on repeat, waiting for an electric buzz to drop you through the floor into another dimension. You travelled inward to chart unseen inner realms.

Tripping may be the best improv class you can take.

But if you can’t wait for the next Burning Man, here’s some simple tips to turn your next improv scene into a profound, spiritual and/or transformative experience.

  1. Tripping is Not About Drugs. Yes, some people use drugs recreationally with the sole intention of getting high. Similarly some improvisers use 40 minutes of uninterrupted long form to chase an adrenaline rush through a series of puns and tired jokes. But tripping, like improv, can be so much more.

Your improv, like your next trip, has the potential to become a psychonautical experience. A psychonaut is an explorer who alters their state of consciousness to better understand the human condition. An astronatu travels beyond their planet to explore space; a psychonaut journeys deep within their Self to find spiritual and/or psychological awareness.psychological awareness.

Inebriation isn’t the end goal. For a psychonaut, psychedelics are the vehicle used to explore traverse inner worlds, spiritual realms, and the human mind.

But there are many psychonauts who experience meaningful trips via non-chemical means: meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, drama therapy, shamanism, controlled breathing, Reiki, or most commonly, psychiatry. Oh, and improvisation.

Try this: Your character is a powerful pscyhonautical tool that can transform your state consciousness. Focus on changing your perspective or emotional filter, as opposed to just playing a superficial accent or funny voice.

  1. Your Trip is 100% about You. You can only control your own experience. Release yourself from the judgment of others. Let yourself get weird. Your responsibility on this trip is to fully experience the moment and explore its potential.

Try this: Change your goals for tonight’s show. Instead of orienting your improv towards laughter or praise from a coach, aim to realize each experience for yourself. Maybe your character Angry Dad isn’t getting any laughs onstage, but did you succeed at exploring frustrated fatherhood? If the answer is Yes, you don’t need an audience or coach to validate your experience.

  1. Go Deep. Tripping isn’t purely recreational. If you want it to be meaningful, push yourself.

Try this: Create a list with two columns. In the left column, list all your favourite improv characters you do regularly. Beside each entry, in the right column jot down that character’s antithesis. Find three characters in the right column that are too challenging, scary, or inappropriate to play onstage. Play those character onstage tonight.

  1. Pack Lightly. You’re about to go on an intense one-way journey. Try not to bring unnecessary baggage. Leave behind jealousy, ambition, frustration, regret, self-doubt, or anything else that might slow you down along the way.

Try this: Forget agents and producers in the audience. Release yourself from the fight you just had with your boyfriend. Let go of your petty improv feuds. When the lights come up, start from zero.

  1. Journey with Friends. Don’t waste your trip with people you don’t trust.   There will be moments of vulnerability, confusion, and fear. These obstacles are best tackled with an intimate companion, one that will offer unconditional support. You’re going to need it.

Try this: Play with people you love. Don’t have someone like that? Cultivate those relationships.

  1. Your Trip is a Journey. Trips aren’t always easy, comfortable, or enjoyable. Remember your last road trip? The time you backpacked across Europe? Every journey is full of uncomfortable, unsettling, and sometimes downright miserable moments. Those who want constant comfort should stay home. Your next trip should be reserved for adventurers who want to overcome obstacles and experience something new, despite the danger.

Try this: Your scene just took an awkward turn? Don’t pull out of the experience in an attempt to fix it. Instead, try sitting in that moment. Experience it fully and completely. A weird moment doesn’t mean you’ve screwed up; it only means your experience is weird. But improv scenes, like life, are full of weird (but valuable) moments. Whoever told you improv should be fun all the time, lied to you.

  1. Seek Out Ego Death. Ego Death occurs when the tripper feels their Self dissolve into something greater than the individual: nature, ancestral spirits, humanity, or the cosmic universe. In improv, the term Group Mind describes the experience of an individual giving over to the collective decision-making powers of the ensemble.

Try this: Let go of trying to be different in scenes. Revel in sameness. The Group Mind will take you to places you could never get to on your own. (See: Organic group games, mirroring).

  1. Be Safe. You’re going to need support on your trip, so support those around you. By making others feel welcome, smart, and valuable, you empower them to do the same for you.Stressed out, fearful and/or distrustful trippers worried about their own shit are unable to help you on your journey when it gets rough.

Try this: All the things listed above. But remember your own journey         shouldn’t come at the expense of your improv partner. Help each other go deeper in your scenes for more satisfying scenes.

Yes, improv is a fantastic writing tool. And improv exercises can be used to facilitate corporate communication workshops. Dr. Know-It-All can be a real hoot at children’s birthday parties.

Beyond that, improv can deliver truths about the human experience, invoke forgotten deities, or transport you to hyper-corporeal realms beyond the stage you stand on. You choose the course of your improv journey every time you step onstage.

My advice? Go limp. Enjoy the ride.

Artwork © Anne Douris

Artwork © Anne Douris

Rob Norman is an award-winning actor, improviser, and merry prankster. He is the author of Improvising Now: A Practical Guide to Modern Improv, as well as co-host of the weekly improv podcast, The Backline with Rob and Adam. For those interested in psychonauts, shamanism, and ethneogenic compounds, check out Breaking Open The Head by Daniel Pinchbeck.

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“You’ve gotta learn to love the bomb.” – Stephen Colbert

It’s been 10 years since I performed for the first time at Second City Training Centre. I was on stage for all of three minutes, dry-mouthed and sweaty-palmed while I tried to remember what comes after “B” in the Alphabet Game.

Since then I’ve had various anxious moments, but rarely does my adrenaline spike like it did in that first year of improvising. Which is why I was intrigued (and terrified) by the notion of Bombbaes. I asked the show’s co-creator, Rob Norman, to explain.

P&C: What is Bombbaes?

RN: Bombbaes is designed for good improvisers to do something that they’re not good at: either stand-up, solo sketch, clown, a character piece, magic tricks… It really could be anything. You could write something and read it out loud.

P&C: What made you decide to start doing it?

RN: It comes from the idea of, improv is based on risk and danger, and if we’re not doing something that’s risky and dangerous then we shouldn’t be improvising. Every time we step into a scene there should be some kind of risk. And so for me and Adam, the other co-creator, co-producer, we were feeling very comfortable in improv, and so we wanted to do stuff that made us feel very uncomfortable.

There’s also a selfish element for me. I’ve been doing improv for a long time. I improvise with Adam in Mantown, I improvise with Adam in RN & Cawls, I have a podcast with Adam… It’s a lot of me and Adam in partnership on things.

[An improviser] came up to me the other day and said, “Hi, I know you’re Rob and Adam, I just don’t know which one you are.” I said, “I’m Rob.” Every time we see her she’s like, “You’re either the Rob or Adam, I don’t remember.” And so there’s this kind of pairing that happens in people’s minds, which is awesome, but I think as you get a little older too you wanna be able to say, “This is me, this is my voice, this what I do.”

And so the big push for me in Bombbaes has been developing some kind of stand-up act. I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in the stand-up community, just because of the way I’m wired and the way the stand-up community is. It’s a very harsh place and you have to have a very thick skin, and I do not have one, so Bombbaes is a good place for me to get good and figure things out in front of other improvisers who are going to support me before I get good enough to go out into the real world and suffer criticism.

P&C: And how’s that going?

RN: I just did my first stand-up show with a regular audience at Mullet’s Night Show on Thursday, and it was so weird for me.

Before I was always doing shows where people in the audience knew who I was; maybe might even be excited about [seeing] me as an improviser. So when I was doing stand-up, there was a little bit of protection I guess, because people knew who I was. So when I made a joke that tested some boundaries people were like, “Oh man, I know who Rob is, he’s pushing boundaries but I trust where he’s going.”

At [Mullet’s] I did five jokes and three of them were great, but two of them… This one woman in the audience called out and repeated back premises to me: “Where are you going with this?” “What are you saying?” “Are you a monster?!” And I was like, “No, no, wait for the punchline please!” So that was like a whole other world for me. I was out of my safety zone; no one knows who I am, nobody cares what I do, and so I’m kind of back to basics.

P&C: For anyone interested in taking part, Bombbaes is a solo show?

RN: Because improvisers work so well in ensembles and duos, the thing that most people are most excited about doing or trying is solo pieces. So there’s no rule about doing more-than-one-person stuff, but I think we’ve only ever had one person do a duo. Everyone else has done solo pieces.

P&C: And what’s the coolest or most memorable act you’ve seen?

RN: The best, weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at Bombbaes is a woman who was an owl for seven minutes.

P&C: Wow…

RN: There was no comedic element to it. She’d taken a clown class and wanted to experiment with something, so she was just an owl and she just interacted with the audience.

P&C: That’s incredible. And is seven minutes the average stage time?

RN: It’s five to seven minutes.

P&C: Awesome. Well, I guess now I’ll have to find the courage to try something.

Bomb Baes happens every other Tuesday, 9:30 pm at SoCap Theatre, 3rd floor.

Be sure to check out Rob and Adam’s improv podcast, The Backline, and Rob’s book, Improvising Now: A Practical Guide to Modern Improvisation.

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – Joni Mitchell

For the last six months I’ve been studying Harold with Alex Tindal.

I signed up because (a) it’s Alex Fucking Tindal, and (b) I was tired of doing montage-style sets, and wanted to challenge myself. It had been years since I last did a Harold, and I was excited to be part of an ensemble again.

The course was thorough, taking us back to basics with scene work, group mind, physicality and point of view, culminating in the classic “training wheels” structure.

After our grad show, we decided we’d like to keep performing as a team. Someone suggested we enter a festival, and a teammate replied:

“We’re the only true Harold team in the city so we definitely offer something unique…”

I’m sorry…what?

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I stopped and re-read what I’d obviously misread.

Then re-read it again.

Improvisers, amiright? I mean, phhhhht, c’mon. There’s gotta be at least…uh…well…let me see now…there’s…uhhhhhhhh…hmmmmmm…

Now, before I get banned from every long-form show in Toronto, let me just say there are lots of great teams doing great long-form shows. But I couldn’t think of a single group who identifies as “a Harold team,” performing what they’d call “a Harold” on a regular basis.

Back when Cameron and I first learned long-form, The Harold was so revered that several schools had entire nights devoted to it. Teams performed for 25 minutes. Each.

So what happened???

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The year was 2007. Guitar Hero was cool, The Colbert Report was just hitting its stride, and the world was about to discover what “subprime” really means.

Cameron and I had completed Level E at Second City, plus a teaser class called Intro to Harold. That was all the long-form they offered, and we were jonesing for more.

Matt Folliott told us about a place called Impatient Theatre Company, whose sole emphasis was on teaching The Harold. Cameron and I enrolled the next day, and from the very first class, we were hooked.

Long-form seemed like the answer to our prayers: a way to expand and explore the skills we’d learned at Second City.

Image © nobodyssweetheart.com

Image © Dyna Moe

It took me about a year to wrap my head around openings, beats, tag-outs, group games, tangents, connections, and callbacks. (And don’t get me started on game of the scene.)

But once I had the Harold down, a whole new world opened up.

Suddenly I was writing scripts – something I’d been doing for years as a copywriter – faster, better, and funnier. I saw patterns and connections in everyday life, and ruined TV shows and films by analysing their structure out the wazoo.

ITC wasn’t the only place teaching long form. Bad Dog Theatre had a thriving Harold program, and Vanguard Comedy Theatre offered classes as well. Different theatres had different styles, and there were heated debates on the merits of organic versus premise-based.

Every week we’d watch other Harold teams, inspired by the sheer variety on stage. There were physical teams, cerebral teams, teams that used the whole theatre as their stage, teams who did ghosting, teams with no chemistry, and teams who thought and moved as one.

It was fun and inspiring as hell. But after a few years of doing opening/first beats/group game/seconds beats/group game/third beats, the structure that had brought so much joy started to feel like handcuffs.

When Charna Halpern visited Toronto in 2008, she taught a workshop on Cat’s Cradle. It’s a form where all the performers are onstage all of the time. There’s an opening, but no set beats or group games, and the structure can be anything you want.

“Cat’s Cradle,” Charna told us, “is a Harold.”

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It was like finding out your old toy truck was actually Optimus Prime.

Other improv legends came to teach: Joe Bill and Mark Sutton, David Razowsky, Susan Messing, Todd Stashwick, Jet Eveleth, and TJ and Dave.

Their organic, be-in-the-moment approach fired our imaginations.

The idea of not thinking or pre-planning moves was very appealing. Many improvisers also attended festivals, where they saw long-form teams doing sets without openings (gasp!).

More and more teams started trying what they’d learned on stage. But – and this is a huge but – they already had the Harold training as foundation. Subconsciously or not, they were able to fuck around without structure in a way that still made sense. Like a pianist who learns scales before playing jazz, the improvisation was still connected to skill.

People began producing shows independently, experimenting with their own styles of long-form. Performers from different schools of thought started coming together, and new teams were formed.

Fast forward to 2013.

After years of struggling financially, ITC closed its doors. Vanguard had already ceased to operate, while Bad Dog was forced to close when their lease expired.

It was a dark time for improv in Toronto.

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Some teams, like Mantown or Standards & Practices, still drew regular crowds at Comedy Bar. But for less-skilled performers, the road was much rockier.

Players took whatever slots they could. With so few theatres and so many people vying for stage time, sets shrank to 15 minutes, 10, even 5. And since no one was attempting a Harold, it didn’t seem to matter.

Teams stopped rehearsing. After all, why rehearse every week when your only show this month (if you’re lucky) is a jam, or a 10-minute montage?

Sets deteriorated into free-form fuckfests, with players going meta and no stakes whatsoever. Audiences felt the lack of commitment, or simply couldn’t understand all the inside jokes. There were often more people on stage than in the house.

Without new students to fill the seats, even long-running shows failed, and many teams (my own included) called it quits.

But then, somewhere on the horizon, hope appeared.

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Today Second City has a comprehensive long-form program, led by improv impresario Rob Norman. The course teaches Harold, but also encourages students to develop their own forms.

Ralph MacLeod and Carmine Lucarelli created a new place to play and take risks, with the Social Capital Theatre. Their repertory program teaches Harold, and also gives ensembles a dedicated coach. And…(drumroll)…they’re bringing back Harold Nights in early 2016.

Bad Dog Theatre re-opened, first at Comedy Bar’s Cabaret space, then their own home just down the street. When they asked Alex Tindal what he’d like to teach, he told them, “A classic Harold.”

And so, like the Harold, things have come full circle.

Thanks to Alex and my talented teammates, I’ve rekindled my passion for the form.

And while the training wheels format may not be the only “true” Harold, it was only when it went away that I realised how important it is.

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Image © David Kantrowitz

Part of the fun of doing improv is being able to do anything. Like Neo in The Matrix, you can fly, stop bullets, or even hook up with The Woman in the Red Dress; things mere mortals can only dream of.

Sometimes we add crazy elements to a scene, thinking we’re making it funnier. But what often happens when characters go to Mars is so does believability.

The audience needs a reason to believe.

I once saw Jason DeRosse, Rob Norman, and Adam Cawley ask for a location that would fit on the stage. Someone yelled out “Shoe!”

The guys paused and looked at each other, then played 25 minutes as three roommates trapped in a stiletto.

The setting was absurd, but their reactions and their relationship to each other were grounded in truthfulness. And nothing is funnier than truth in comedy.

In this Fast Company video, Ricky Gervais explains how he used to make up crazy shit until he discovered the  power of keeping it real. Click here to watch.

Photo © Kevin Thom

Photo © Kevin Thom

If you’re a comedian living in Canada, it’s likely you’ve heard about this Guy Earle case. And for good reason.

In 2007, while dealing with a table of hecklers (Lorna Pardy and her girlfriend), stand-up comedian Guy Earle let loose a series of lesbian jokes (maybe homophobic slurs?) which later brought him in front of the Human Rights Tribunal. He lost the case and was forced to pay $15,000, which coincidentally is the annual income of the average stand-up comedian.

Last week the Supreme Court of British Columbia upheld the ruling.

So what does that mean for you, an improviser working (for free, probably) in Canada?

You have to deal with the audience’s suggestions every night. And most of those suggestions are “dildo.” What rights do you have?

Plus, you’re not perfect. Some scenes work, others fail. Most new jokes fail. And like all comedians, you love pushing boundaries. (Have you ever seen the Catch-23 improv game, “More Rape, More Retarded”? You’re probably better off if you haven’t…)

The question for every comedian in Canada is: What jokes are in your act that could get you pulled in front of the next Human Rights Tribunal?

More importantly, is Canada still a safe place for edgy, alternative comedy?

This question bothered me so much, I spent a weekend with a bottle of Glen Livet and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and found out the answer. And it’s yes. Surprisingly, yes. Canada is a great, safe, liberal place to make jokes at the expense of others. But there are some limitations.

With the help of a few lawyer friends, I put together some easy guidelines (not actual legal advice, they made me say that), to prevent you from accidentally joking your way into Guy Earle-like martyrdom.

The Guy Earle case has taught me how much freedom we as comedians actually have, and how one stand-up could get absolutely everything wrong in a single set. So let’s get started…

1. There’s a big difference between playing a paid set and an open mic.

At an open mic or an improv jam, you’re a patron of the club just like everyone else. But as soon as you become a paid comedian, you could be considered an employee of the club. Now you’re subject to workplace discrimination laws, which are more restrictive than the “freedom of expression” afforded to you in the Charter.

Guy Earle wasn’t charged for Hate Speech (inciting violence towards a minority group, one of the few limitations of free speech), but rather discrimination in the workplace. Section 8 of the Human Rights Code protects minority groups from being harassed while obtaining a service available to the public. The Supreme Court ruled the heckler (Ms. Pardy) had the right to hear Earle’s act without being singled out as a “stupid dyke.” [324]

2. Your jokes about ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedom.

Even if you’re being paid, most jokes you make are protected as free speech. Even if they are offensive. Even if they aren’t funny. Even if they seem racist, sexist, or homophobic to your audience. Or if you clumsily parade sensitive topics like rape, incest, or the Holocaust. You are welcome to act like a bigot onstage, provided you can argue that these jokes “expose prejudices” of bigots. [336]

Guy Earle argued that his interaction with Lorna Pardy was satirical: “an aspect of self-realization for both speakers and listeners.” Which is kind of insane. He argued he was pointing out the problems with homophobia, by directing slurs at an actual lesbian. But if the same exchange had occurred between two comedians onstage (or at least not directed at a specific audience member), Earle’s case may have been summarily dismissed. [453]

3. Leave what happened onstage, onstage.

When hosting a comedy event, you have to shut down hecklers. It’s one of your few jobs. (Others include pretending that last act was funny, continually asking: “Is everyone having a good time?” and sitting in the green room playing Kingdom Rush on your iPad.)

But shutting down a drunk, belligerent heckler is when things can get out of hand.

Do what you need to onstage, but don’t continue the conflict at the bar. Go home. Have a smoke. Get back together with your ex. Do whatever it takes to stop yourself from re-engaging with your heckler.

A big problem for Earle was that he continued to call Pardy names after the set was over. He even escalated events by breaking her sunglasses. It was impossible to justify Earle’s comments as “performance” after it continued away from the stage. [330]

4. A “justified response” has a lot to do with what has come before, and what your peers are doing.

Shutting down a heckler is a common practice in comedy. How other comedians deal with the audience is a great benchmark for how you should treat your audience. If you can prove your jokes are common practice, then it’s harder to suggest discrimination.

You don’t have to perform the same jokes, sketches, or shortform games as others, but as long as you’re in the same ballpark, these could be argued as “common practices.” But as my lawyer friend explained: “ultimately, it depends on context.”

One of Earle’s biggest problems was that he couldn’t prove his conduct was typical for a comedy club. Not when he personally dealt with hecklers. And it wasn’t part of his act. He couldn’t even prove that it was an average response for other stand-ups dealing with a hostile crowd. This part of the ruling made me wonder if Earle was even trying to win the case.  [332]

5. Clearly establish the heckler before ripping into them.

Asking “Who just said that?” is great protection for comedians. Shutting down a heckler is common practice (so it has a justified response), but accosting a random audience member out of the blue is not. Just make sure you have the right person first, then let your Reign of Burns begin.

Improvisers might also think about getting consent before bringing an audience member onstage. Or riffing with them in the crowd. You might be able to argue that by agreeing they are now a participant in the show. Which is an entirely different legal relationship.

Earle’s lawyers argue that just by Ms Pardy calling out, she involved herself in the show, making anything said part of the show. Unfortunately, no one could prove Ms Pardy heckled during the show. None of the other comedians or witnesses could confirm that fact. Another major fail for Earle.  [323]

6. This isn’t legal advice at all. It’s common sense: don’t be an asshole.

It has happened to every comedian I know. Something goes wrong in your set. You offend someone and then during or after your set you are confronted. Maybe you break every guideline listed above. If you do, find that audience memeber and make it right with them.

That doesn’t mean you have to apologize for your joke. But sympathize with their concerns. Try to explain your perspective on why what you said onstage is important. Don’t expect to change their viewpoint, but just by listening you lessen their outrage. The less angry they are, the less likely they are to take legal action.

Lorna Pardy has spent the last five years dealing with lawyers, testifying in court, and dealing with appeals. That’s a massive commitment of her life. No one wants to take legal action. No one thinks “I’ll sue that comedian wearing Modrobes pants from 1995 and then I’ll be rich!” They do it because their beliefs are important to them, and if they don’t stand up to you, no one will. So make it easier for them. Let them be heard.

Personally, I think Guy Earle could have prevented this whole situation with a simple apology afterwards. Instead his stubbornness and pride (how proud can you be when you’re hosting a Tuesday open mic at a place called Zesty’s?) allowed this to become a human rights issue.

This has become an important issue for comedians in Canada. None of us want to sit around making safe jokes about the suburbs (Whitby) and making fun of shitty universities (Lakehead).  Ethically, we are obliged to push societal taboos and challenge our audience. It is literally in our job description. So go ahead and keep doing it.

Just don’t get yourself sued. And if you do get sued, it’s probably because you’re a gay retarded Muslim woman rapist. (Thank you Charter of Rights and Freedoms.)

Special thanks to Alex Colangelo, Claire Farmer, and Katie Beahan.

Rob Norman is an actor, improviser, director, and a writer for Sexy Nerd Girl. He’s also a Second City alumnus and four-time Canadian Comedy Award nominee. You can catch Rob performing at Comedy Bar with the testosterone-infused improv juggernaut Mantown.

“Everybody’s talkin’ at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin'” – Nilsson

If the thought of doing a silent scene fills you with nightmare visions of Marcel Marceau, relax. You don’t need to chew the scenery, and not everyone has to be mute.

Even one silent character can steal the show.

Second City actor Jason DeRosse played a baby in a five-person scene. The other performers were hilarious, but the audience was riveted on Jason. He didn’t make a sound; just lay on his back looking wide-eyed and innocent, occasionally grasping a mobile overhead.

When I asked him about it afterwards, he told me “Strength in silence!”

If you want to strengthen your non-verbal muscles, the following exercises can help.

Photo © Kevin Thom

Photo © Kevin Thom

 

Music is a powerful emotional cue. Some of the most memorable scenes in movie history use music in place of dialogue:

• The shower scene in Psycho

• The opening montage from Up    

• The iconic slow-mo walk from Reservoir Dogs  

Rob Norman and Becky Johnson did a silent scene with music at Comedy Bar. The audience shouted out “colonscopy” and “Titanic.”

Mark Andrada cued the title song, and Rob and Becky played out a love story between doctor and patient that could only happen in improv.

Now it’s your turn…

Emotional Soundtrack

For this exercise, select two performers.

The Coach/Director plays a piece of music. It can be anything from Carly Rae Jepson to Jay-Z, from jazz to blues to hillbilly music.

The music sets the mood for the scene, which the players perform without words.

They can be sitting, standing, miming an action; it doesn’t matter, as long as there’s eye contact and a connection between the characters. Let the musical changes inform the action and reactions.

Try it with different kinds of music, with or without chairs.

You can also try adding sound effects.

Watch how sound effects heighten the tension (and hilarity) in this scene from Boogie Nights. (Yes, there is dialogue, but the tension is in the spaces between the words and sounds.)

Inside Voices

This is similar to the Gibberish Translation exercise, except the people on stage are silent.

To begin, choose four people. Two will be in the scene, and two will be Narrators. The Narrators stand on either side of the stage or rehearsal space. The other two ask for a location, then start the scene without speaking.

They can be sitting, standing, miming an action; it doesn’t really matter. The only rule is, no talking.

Allow the performers to settle in for 20 to 30 seconds, giving them time to get comfortable with their character and make eye contact with their scene partner.

One Narrator then voices a thought inside the head of the character closest to him.

The second Narrator then voices the other character’s thoughts.

Since all the dialogue is internal, the characters can’t hear what each other is thinking. For example:

Narrator 1: Look at Brad, sitting there all smug. What a d-bag.

Narrator 2: Cathy sure is pretty. I wonder if she likes me?

So we’ve established that Player 1, voiced by Narrator 1, is repulsed by Player 2. Meanwhile Player 2, voiced by Narrator 2, has a crush on Player 1.

From here, both the Players and Narrators can have fun ratcheting up the tension between them, since all of the thoughts – however outrageous they might become – are in the characters’ heads, while their outward appearance might suggest something else.

1 to 50

This exercise demonstrates the importance of tone and body language, and the unimportance of words when we communicate.

Two people start a scene, with or without a suggestion. Instead of words, they can only say numbers. The players take turns until they reach 50. For instance:

Player 1: One.

Player 2: Two.

Player 1: (quizzical) Three, four?

Player 2: (excited) Five-six-seven!

Notice how quickly we become emotional when we don’t have words to hide behind. In order to communicate your point of view, tone and physicality become much more important.

Good Morning Fucko

This exercise is great fun to watch and play. The Coach/Director may side coach, in order to keep players focused on responding to each other, while maintaining their own point of view.

To begin, place two chairs close to each other, facing the audience. This will be the bed.

Two players lie back in the chairs with their eyes closed. They silently choose a deal, or point of view, for themselves as they “sleep.”

After 10 or 15 seconds, the Coach/Director says, “Good morning, Fucko.”

Both people wake up, in character.

The scene plays out silently, as the performers discover where they are, and who these characters are to each other.

Are they married? Roommates? Was it a one-night stand?

Remind players to check in with each other as they go about their day.

Don’t race through activities. If your character makes the bed, don’t just flip the covers and walk away – unless that’s how that character makes a bed.

If you step in the shower, turn on the taps. Then grab the soap. Does it have a hair in it? Ewww. Find the shampoo, and so on.

Or maybe you skip the shower and find yourselves sitting across the table having cereal.

What is the vibe between you? That’s the scene.

(Thanks to Todd Stashwick, Adam Cawley, Rob Norman, Jason DeRosse, Susan Messing, Tom Vest, Greg Hess, and David Razowsky for their help with this post. Stay tuned for more exercises in Part Two.)

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain

For years, Chicago audiences have watched scantily-clad men improvise some of the dumbest scenes ever played on a stage. Now it’s Toronto’s turn.

Created by Mick Napier of The Annoyance Theatre, Skinprov is pretty much like it sounds: a bunch of guys do improv while wearing increasingly smaller pieces of fabric. Which makes the non sequitur scenes all the more hilarious.

Audience favourites Adam Cawley, Rob Norman, Wayne Jones, Kris Siddiqi, Dwayne Wilson and Matt Folliott bare their souls, or at least their flesh, next Wednesday, November 21st, 9:30 pm at Comedy Bar.

Ladies, start planning your staggette party.

Imagine a place where beer flows like water, fearlessness is a way of life, and shirtlessness is always an option.

Welcome to Mantown, an improvised frat party featuring Adam Cawley, Bob Banks, Jason DeRosse and Rob Norman.

What began as a side project has turned into one of Toronto’s longest-running comedy shows. They perform to packed houses the first Friday of each month at Comedy Bar, from 10:30 p.m. till the last person is wheeled out from an overdose of awesomeness.

We caught up with them to talk about improvising, childhood heroes, and vuvuzelas for the inaugural All In interview…

Rob Norman is an actor, improviser, director, and a writer for Sexy Nerd Girl. He’s also a Second City alumnus and four-time Canadian Comedy Award nominee. You can catch Rob performing at Comedy Bar with the testosterone-infused improv juggernaut Mantown.

I don’t know you (or maybe I do; it’s hard to see your face past this dense, ethereal veil known as “the internet”) but I’m going to guess what your problem is: You don’t have any money.

That’s obvious. You’re reading a blog about improvisational comedy. Only a working comedian trying to unlock the secrets of their craft would think that’s a good use of their time. Or you’re a very, very bored poor person. Either way, you should probably be on Craigslist finding a real job. Shame on you.

Onstage, your improv-related problems are idiosyncratically linked to whatever psychic inadequacies you possess. Each show is a battle fought with internal reminders: Stop trying to control everything. Build on other people’s ideas. Be more vulnerable. Stop trying to be entertaining. Create scenes that make sense.

Despite knowing what you should do, it seems you can’t help but repeat old habits. So for the next fifty kilobytes, let’s abandon the idea of doing “good improv.” Instead let’s focus on improvising more efficiently. After all, you have limited resources (stage time, energy, the audience’s goodwill).

Great improvisers seem to float through scenes without ever wasting a single line of dialogue, while struggling newbies flail about aimlessly, creating superfluous information that only serves to confuse everyone onstage. So how do you focus on the essentials in a scene?

Player A: Oh no, Jim! My best friend of fifteen years. Look, this nuclear bomb is about to explode.

Player B: Quick. Let’s try to fix it!

Player A: Yes and…we did it.

Player B: Hooray!

Great “Yes anding.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t care less. Why do we put so much focus on imaginary things? I don’t care about the nuclear bomb. And your special effects are unimpressive (the drunken audience’s imagination plus your mime skills do not a good scene make).

I also don’t care about the story. If the bomb blows up, it’ll irradiate an imaginary mall and kill two made-up characters (that no one cares about) with a fictitious backstory that probably wasn’t compelling to begin with.

But there is something real happening onstage: the dynamic between you and your scene partner.

Behaviour is what draws us into your scene. It’s the only thing we see onstage and recognize as true.

You’ll be a better improviser when you stop seeing what could be (or should be – all those helpful improv rules you’ve learned) happening onstage, and start reacting to what’s happening right now, in front of you.

Player A: Here’s my test, Dad. I think I failed.

Player B: That’s terrible. You’re grounded until your marks improve!

Does this sound like a decent improv scene to you? Do it onstage, and watch what happens. At worst, it bombs. At best, it bombs with some funny moments. But why is that? Both players are adding information in a simple fashion. They’re developing the scene together.

The problem is, the star of this scene isn’t Player A or Player B. It’s about some imaginary kid (don’t care) and his grades in school (I also don’t care). For the most part, real kids in real schools living real lives don’t care about their grades. Why would you want to make that the focus of your scene?

An improviser’s only job is to create a dynamic between the characters onstage. It’s how you’re affected by your scene partner that pulls us in. Each time your partner adds information, ask yourself, “Do I love or hate what was just said?”

Player A: Here’s my test, Dad. I think I failed.

Player B: Go fuck yourself!

Whoops! You’re not choosing whether you love or hate your scene partner in their entirety. This is equally boring. It creates a dynamic that exists entirely in the past. You’ve already made a firm decision about your scene partner and there’s no room to build (or heighten the pattern). Instead, think “Do I love or hate what my partner just said?”

Player A: Here’s my test, Dad. I think I failed.

Player B: Oh that’s the worst! Now you’re not going to amount to anything!

Player A: It’s only a test…

Player B: I can’t believe you think that. You’re a failure and naïve!

Great! So each time Player A speaks, Player B is affected personally by it. And Player B has chosen to hate it. But the reverse also works.

Player A: Here’s my test, Dad. I think I failed.

Player B: You are so brave for telling me!

Player A: Dad…

Player B: It takes one hell of a man to look his father in the eyes and admit he failed. I’m going to buy you a car.

Player A: I’m fourteen.

Player B: But with the integrity of a man in his eighties!

Also great! Do you see how both of these examples are happening right now? It’s not about the failed test, it’s about how a kid tells his Dad he failed the test. Do you see how both players are forced to immediately respond? Everything else: characters, environment, action, story – are just by-products of being in the moment. And the context of your scene is an imaginary (and often accidental) construct generated by actively playing the dynamic.

And that’s something you can easily create. Try it. Let your scene partner speak, then decide to love or hate that idea. Once you’ve mastered that, expand “love” to any positive emotion (contentment, admiration, lust, comfort) and apply that to your partner. See what happens when you use the same technique with negative emotions.

In the end, there are two kinds of improvisers: Players who invent information. And players who discover information.

You can make a scene happen, or let your scene happen to you. If you focus on creating less, you won’t have to improvise in the future or the past. You can spend more time with your scene partner. Onstage. In the moment. Inside of the scene. And less time reading improv blogs on the internet. Seriously, you really need to find that job…

Photo © Kevin Thom