Matt Besser 11/16/06 Part 3

JF: In your opinion, how important is it to be good friends with people on your team?


MB: I don't know. I'd have to say it's important, because that's how it worked for me. I also have to be able to believe you'd be able to be in a good group that rehearsed a lot and you didn't hang out. I know there are those groups. It's just once you're with people for a long time you either become friends or you probably don't like each other. There's not much neutral ground. Usually the people you don't like get kicked off the team. It's just more like natural selection.
The other problem is sometimes someone stays on a team just because they a friend and they're not that strong an improviser. That's very unfortunate. That causes a lot of drama for both theaters and teams, that is addressed or not addressed. It's one of the flaws of ensemble comedy.



JF: Do you think the term 'the game' or the concept of the game gets a bad wrap sometimes?


MB: Yes, I think what they really referring to are improv scenes that start with a very clear premise. Those critics will say that that's not organic. But as long as that improviser didn't come to the show that night with that premise in their head, and it's not in their bag of tricks, and they're getting it from an opening, then that's improv. I find when an opening with a group mind creates premises that's much more organic than scenes that start with 'Give me a word,' then someone steps out without a premise. It may be just a location based on that word and they start improvising, then they organically find a game. But it's like 'Yeah, but the beginning of your scene just came from one guy's head, not from the group.' Whereas with the group that used the opening, the opening of first scene came from the group, not one person's head.

I think there's pluses and minuses. There's all types of long-form these days. Even at our school there's two different kinds of long-form. There are people who like to start organically, and there are people who like to start with a premise, but we don't do narrative improv here, which we look down on as kind of boring, as silly stories. It's just a matter of opinion. Whatever floats your boat I guess. To me, how you arrive at the improv, as long as you're not cheating, it's whatever philosophy you think is ok. I think it's silly to look down on one method or the other. Some methods are called more 'pure.' I think that's ridiculous. Just because I start my scene with a premise doesn't make my scene any less pure.



JF: When you say 'starting with a premise,' do you mean having the 'who,' 'what,' and 'where,' or do you mean having an idea for the game?


MB: Yeah, an idea for the game. You have to start with the who, what and where, that's completely different. Some people say 'start with a half idea,' but a half idea isn't an idea at all. It's usually just a location or an emotion or something like that, or an object that was mentioned in the monologue. An idea, a funny idea is something that was taken from the opening, that was already funny in the opening. So, we already have this funny thing that we've all seen, that the group mind has all been aware of. Now we're going to start our scene with that funny thing. It's not coming from one person's head. It's something that the whole group mind observes, so two people are on the same page about the game right away, instead of meandering about trying to find it, trying to discover it.

People think 'Well, that means you're writing the whole scene at the beginning of the scene.' No, no, no, I'm going down the path towards the game really. I'm not just laying out the game on the table and saying let's do this. I'm saying 'Let's go down this path. I think this thing from the opening is funny. Let's go down this path and heighten this funny thing.' By the time we get to the end of the scene, this game has gotten more complex and has its subtlies and its philosophies behind it. It's much more interesting than whatever the original initiation line was. It's not like you've written the whole thing and done all the work by yourself when you come out with a premise line anymore than when you sit down at a sketch meeting and someone says what if we do a scene about this. They haven't written the whole scene. They're saying let's brainstorm. What's next? How's that heightened? Why does he do that? Let's explore that. So, it's really no different. It's writing a sketch on your feet. You start with a premise. When you rewrite things, no matter how you arrive it, you're going to cut away all that meandering that walked up to the premise when you write that scene up. You always start with a premise in a written scene. You don't go a page into the scene then start that premise, but that's how so-called organic improv does. It meanders about until you run into it. Try to cut all that fat away when you actually write that into a scene. So, if you can, why not start with a premise? I'm not saying that's the best way, but it's certainly not a lesser way, or a more impure way.



JF: Do you like to initiate physically? Do you like different types of initiations?


MB: Yeah, and like I said, your idea doesn't have to be a full premise-y, writerly line. It can be as much as the other night Jeanne Garafolo was saying something about not being able to open her window. It was impossible to open. So, I initiated a scene just trying to open the window and becoming outraged at the window. I don't think I said one line, but I think everyone understood on stage that 'Look, how funny it is that someone would get so mad at a window.' I just took a funny thing everyone recognized from her monologue and started there. So, everybody got where I was coming from and knew the path to walk down to find out what this scene is really going to be about, what's going to make it more complex and funny.



JF: What makes a good team to you?


MB: Well, after everyone gets off stage, there shouldn't be an audience member who says 'I really liked so and so. He was the best.' If people look at improv that way, they don't get what improv is. It's like only liking the Vince Carters in basketball. It's like 'Yeah, Vince Carter is great. He scores a ton of points, but look at Jason Kidd too. He doesn't average twenty points, but look how many assists he gets.' You have to appreciate everybody on the team for what they do. I think after a group has been together for a while everybody starts to fall into what they bring to the team. I think everyone starts to realize what they bring to the team, then everybody appreciates each other. Once everybody starts listening and to realize that, it probably become so easy to that group, whereas it almost becomes hard to do it with people who aren't in that group. That's how I feel some times.



JF: How do you encourage group mind in a group that you're coaching?


MB: I love doing pattern games. Anyone who's been with me as a coach knows that I love doing pattern games and showing the magic of that. That's something you would hear with Del and be like 'Yeah, whatever,' then once you bought into it you'd be like 'Oh my God, this really does work.' He would have us chat hours on end, just chant words. You're like 'What kind of Indian hippy bullshit are we doing here? I don't get this.' Then if you really give over to finding patterns, not getting so in your head about what's coming out of your mouth, just saying what's on the tip of your mind, saying that, and listening to the last person and incorporating what the last person said, you realize that the ideas form themselves and you don't have to be clever and come up with ideas in your own head. The ideas just come together themselves in front of you.
I think a lot of people look at openings like they're annoying performance art pieces that you have to get through to get to the scene in the Harold or whatever your form is. Some people just do away with openings completely. I think that's a shame, that gets rid of the moment of the group mind coming together. A lot of the veteran groups don't need that opening anymore, but I think it's a shame when newer groups don't use an opening. I think it's a detriment.



JF: What makes a good opening?


MB: What makes a good opening is one that you can easily pull ideas from. You don't get a suggestion, 'Give me a word!' You don't get a word to get a hundred more words. You get a word to create ideas. That's the mistake people make. They're just thinking 'Look at all these words to work with.' No, we don't need words. We need funny ideas. If that's all they're doing, free associating, finding patterns, but not realizing what they've found with the patterns, then they're wasting that whole opening.

It depends on what works for you. I always found the Innovacation difficult, but I just worked with a group today that did it really well and found a way to get ideas from it. So, that worked for them, that's great. But the interesting thing was that when Harolds first started people didn't have set openings. The Innovacation was about the only opening that wasn't an organic opening. Pretty much people would start with word patterns. Words would become phrases. Phrases would become spinnets of dialogs, sound, motion, a scene would start. So, it was always different what a person's opening was. It was completely organic. It was only in the mid to late 90's when everybody had their signature opening. That wasn't even done when I started. I think that's a shame when people do an opening just because it's neat and it doesn't provide them with information.



JF: I've heard that you're very good at remembering things within pattern games. Is that something you've worked on?


MB: I think that's a good muscle, that's why I like doing word pattern games. The easiest opening to get scenes off of, to me, is a monologue opening, that's why we use it in ASSSSSCAT. You may ask 'Why shouldn't everybody use a monologue opening all the time?' Because to really get the muscles going in your head for listening and believing in patterns, you should do the pattern games first, because they're so hard. Once you can find information and premises from a pattern game you can do it in everything. I really believe in that. I've always worked with my teams on one word pattern games. It really gets them to listen. It's obvious when it works, and it's obvious when it doesn't work, so it's something that they can tangibly look at and go 'Oh, I saw it working,' or 'Oh, it didn't work that time.'

When you start to think in those terms and start to listen to people like that on and off stage, you look at the world as a possibility of patterns coming together and forming comedy, that muscle gets better and better in your head. I have a terrible memory when it comes to things in general, but when it comes to things like that I've excersized that muscle enough I guess that's the one thing I'm good at remembering. [laughs]



JF: What makes a good improv teacher or director?


MB: I think there are different kinds. We have some that are very nuturing and coddling. You probably need that kind of teacher when you begin. Then we have teachers like me who can be a bastard and can be really honest and give you notes that really cut you to the core. I think you need that at a certain point. I think you need all kinds. You need to go through a lot of teachers usually to find out one that's going to speak to you. I think it's easier to say what a bad teacher is than what a good teacher is, because you really need a lot of different types of teachers I think.
You shouldn't only want teachers that are nice to you, and say you're doing well. That's why a lot of people liked Del. You just got to a point where you just wanted to be told 'What am I doing wrong? Tell me.' He would tell you.



JF: How important is being a good actor to being a good improviser?


MB: Well, I don't know that much about acting, but what we learned to do at one point is to play it real. You have to ground the scene, like what I was talking about earlier with scenes not taking place in crazy town. You have to ground the scene in some kind of reality, so we can appreciate the thing in the scene that is unusual, so you have to act real. How would you act in this situation? You can't have everybody be 'Yesand! Yesand! I say 'yes' to everything. I don't have a problem with anything.' The enthusiasm of yesand sometimes destroys realities. So, that's what acting is to me, it's just playing the scene real. Outside of that one premise we have while we're building everything else needs to be real. How you react to that premise needs to be real, otherwise I don't get why it's funny playing the scene real.



JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future, artistically and commercially?


MB: Artistically, I don't care about improv all over the world as much as I care about it in my theater, so in my theater I would like us to all be more and more, as teachers, on the same page. That's kind of a difficult thing to do. That doesn't mean we all have to teach the same thing, but maybe we can all have the same language. That's an interesting thing about the improv comedy in general, we all use the same terms for a lot things but mean completely different things when we say it. That can be very confusing for students, because they hear a teacher at one school say one thing and a teacher at another say another thing. They seem contradictory, or they're using different words, or even within the same school it seems like you're getting completely different notes. That can be very confusing for students. They're like 'Well, you told me to do this, and he told me to do that.' I'd like to see less and less of that in our own school.



JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out?


MB: How about sometimes 'no, but' is 'yesand'?



JF: Sounds great. Thanks.