Miles Stroth 11/16/06 Part 3
JF: What about Dan made him an attractive scene partner to you?
MS: He was good. I guess this a better answer to what you're asking: he was a good balance to me. He's more of a character player, while I'm more of a classic straightman in my tendencies, so it was a natural balance like that. He's also bald and I've got a lot of hair.
JF: That's true. That's another ying and yang aspect of you guys. Was it ever uncomfortable for you to essentially be teaching someone you were performing with?
MS: No. Why would it be? To me, I was just hoping it would be great training for Dan. It was also interesting to me to say 'well, here's a guy who's already real good. How much better can I make him quickly?' He had just finished the training program, and probably 6 months later into doing our show Noah [Gregoropoulos] invited him to do the Armando show in Chicago, which was mostly reserved for people who had been there forever. He had just gotten that good. It was mostly his natural talent I would say, but in watching him play for a long time I was like 'his talent is his own, but his formal instincts right now are mine.' He was making the moves that I would make. Even just watching him in shows I could see what he was trying to do, and I'm like 'yeah, that's exactly what you should be trying to do.' [laughs] Good for him for getting it all. A lot of people given the opportunity to learn things don't learn.
JF: Can you describe what the show Zumpf was like? The different edits and the different pacing within the show?
MS: The thinking initially was 'let's be faster-paced,' because that was my experience and habit and the other shows hadn't really done that, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves from those shows. It was kind of a Deconstruction in that we did no opening. We just started with a scene, but it wasn't in anyway a classic Deconstruction. It was 'we'll start with this, then we'll move away from it and we'll eventually get multiple scenes and eventually weave them together.' The interesting thing about trying to move fast-paced with two people is even when you think you're whizzing by you're not moving that fast. It might feel like you're moving fast because you're working real hard, but you're really not moving that fast. There's only two of you.
The different edits, some of which we got from Trio, was the idea of when you played a multiple person scene you didn't have to run around necessarily to get to your other characters. The audience was absolutely willing to let you walk from one character over to that character, do whatever you need, then move back to respond if you needed. Then we started thinking about how quickly can we switch in and out of scene. It got to the point where there were times when it was just one of those wonderful improv moments where we'd be in a scene, both recognize that we wanted to go to this other scene with these other two characters. Without saying a word we would immediately start playing the other scene, and it would already be going. There was no pause. There was a line in the first scene and the next line was this other scene going on, then we would go back to the first scene without ever missing a beat. That was a way to get the piece moving faster, but at that level you really have to know each other. You really have to be thinking very similarly.
Most of the edits were, it's kind of a common sense thing. You'd ask 'ok, how do I need to move to make it clear that we're starting a new scene?' I remember realizing that to completely change a scene you didn't have to do too much more than change your voice or the way you were sitting, and the other person had to immediately recognize something has changed, so we're now in a different scene. That picks up the pace, not having to bother with stepping across the stage to do an edit, or running across the stage. You can just shift and be in another scene.
Other than that, I remember we liked multiple person scenes, if we could find a location for them. We didn't like to repeat locations too much, because that was cheating. I think the most we ever got into a scene was something like 16 characters, that was on a plane. That was a lot of fun, trying to keep track of 16 different people that you've put onto this plane.
JF: How long was that scene?
MS: That scene was probably 10 to 15 minutes.
JF: What brought you out to Los Angeles?
MS: I chased a girl out here.
JF: How did you adjust to Los Angeles? How did you find the overall artistic climate and how did you find the improv scene?
MS: The overall artistic climate barely exists for me, as far as improvisationally. I think out here, even moreso than anywhere else, the idea is to put up a show that gets you a break, so the pursuit of the artform is almost nil. We didn't have our own space out here really when I got out here. We had kind of a rented space. We didn't have the nice theater that we have now.
JF: What year did you go out there?
MS: Four years ago, I think, in 2002, I guess. There were students who were interested in the art and wanted to learn. There were also students who were very threatened by it, where 'we don't give a shit about about the art about it. We just want to be funny. I want to be in commercials and on tv.' I was like 'alright, you shouldn't be in my class then,' because you might learn some useful things, but I don't want you to be in my class.
That kind of attitude effects the class. It effects the work. It was like 'well, the idea here isn't to be slapsticky funny.' I think a lot of students were going through the training program to just get the opportunity to be on stage. Yes, that's a wonderful opportunity, but take advantage of the damn training. Get some training. So many of the students who got on the stage out here, they basically just finished the program. They're barely good enough to get on a team. They get on a team. They put up some shitty work for a while, then they move on or hang out forever. Never getting any better.
JF: Do you feel it's changed over time?
MS: It's getting better. Los Angeles is somewhere between ten and twenty years behind Chicago as far as an [improv] community. It's funny. There are more good improvisers right now in Los Angeles than anything else in the world, yet we still have a hard time getting houses at all. But that's because this community isn't used to it. They're used to short-form. They're used to The Groundlings. Other crap like that. But we're training them slowly, just like we did back in Chicago.
JF: How would you like to see the community in Los Angeles change? And what do you think might be some specific steps to enact that change?
MS: By community, I'm referring to the people who support improv as well as the improvisers. I'd like to see the community, who's at large and could be supporting our shows, to pull their collective heads out of their asses to come and watch the shows and see what a wonderful thing it is we do. As far as the students, I'd like them to stop thinking so much about trying to put up a show that gets them get a break, that gets them a tv show. That's fine if that happens, but you study the art form to study the artform. This is an artform. This is important. You'll actually be better off if you stop thinking about your career for a couple years, and actually really try to do something interesting, and let your career fall in place around that.
JF: You're viewed as a very mathematical person when it comes to improv.
MS: Who says that!?
JF: Uhhh.
MS: I'm kidding. I say that all the time.
JF: Oh, what does that mean? In what sense are you mathematical about improv?
MS: I say that because I approach it formally first.
JF: What does that mean?
MS: It means when I get on stage I have a basic equation in my head of what I'm going to do. It's not like the scene's pre-written, but if I have an idea I will say it right away and let my scene partner what I need them to do. If I don't have an idea, I will not say a word and will wait until they tell me what I'm supposed to do.
JF: Even if you walk on first?
MS: Even if I walk on first. There's a possibility I might be in it just because the edit needed to be made. You know immediately when you're doing a scene if somebody has an idea or they don't. Basically, you check in with them real quick. If they look at you with that same sort of blank look, that means no one has an idea, then you just start simply. Don't worry about invention. A mistake people make is people panic. They invent too early. They get caught in the cross-fire of two people inventing, and there's no sense on stage.
Also, when I teach, I tell people they made right and/or wrong moves. You could say 'well, any move is potentially valid.' I'm like 'yeah, you could say that, but, for me, I say that one's wrong, for these reasons.' There's no move that I make on stage that I can't point to the reason that I made it. It's usually a formal reason. Usualy, I made it because the other person did this, that was my indicator to do this. Eighty percent of my work on stage is listening.
JF: What are some of those reasons that you would give someone for saying this is a right move or this is a wrong move? What are some of the underlying justifications or principles behind it?
MS: There are a bunch of different ones, but for example, if someone comes on stage and they say something absurd, my first instinct is to be the straight man in this scene. That means alright, my job is to call attention to this absurdity. Call it out as being absurd, yet still be able to bend with it as the scene moves. I now know how I'm going to play the rest of the scene. That's based off the other person's opening line of dialog.
If the other person comes in, begins a scene, and they're very sort of more bland and they say something more realistic, I'm going to start exaggerating myself. I'm going to play opposite them, play off them. What's going to be comic in this moment? Sometime I'll start slowly and get to that, but the idea is that there are comic elements that make up a scene. You have to satisfy them in an improvisational scene. You can learn to recognize them in the first few lines of a scene. A lot of people just do it naturally. A lot of things that I came to do naturally I had to go back and figure out why I was doing them. I was like 'here's why I'm doing it. I notice this. I notice that this person is doing this, that's why I did this.'
JF: It sounds like you're trying to create the one unusual thing. By you playing the straight man, you're heightening the unusualness of the other person's initiation.
MS: The focus of the scene. Yes, usually that thing becomes the game of the scene, the behavior that surrounds that focal point becomes the game of the scene. Once you have the game of the scene, you can move onto other formal elements that feed back into the game. You can go 'alright, I've established the game of the scene. I've established the focal point. Let me throw out a line that deepens our relationship.' We can use that information to pull back into and play the game.
JF: What do you think about mirroring people? Is that something that you do or advocate?
MS: I've used that technique in teaching, but rarely in play. You're talking about sort of a classic yes anding, where someone plays an absurd character and the other person says 'yeah, I'm that way too. Now we're both crazy'?
JF: Yeah, or a certain type of character or a certain type of mood.
MS: I generally say you do not want to be in the same emotional place as the other character on stage. The idea in comedy is that in every comic moment there is tension, so where do you want to establish the tension? The best way is to establish it between the two characters. What happens when the tension is not between the two characters? Now it has to be between them and something else. It might be between them and what they're saying, but now all the pressure is on them to invent something funny to play off of, which is much harder to do. Being harder doesn't make it better. It just makes it harder to do.
Generally speaking, mirroring is not the way I would go. However, I may mirror, if I choose to play a character-based scene. If someone is out on stage, playing a grumpy old man on a bench, I might be a similar grumpy on a bench. Now we're characters. Now we're both exaggerated. Now we're both absurd on some level. Now the scene is going to be all about what the crazy old men on a bench are going to say next. Now it's harder. It's based on my invention, but I've made my invention a little bit easier because I've chosen the character to focus on. The main thing that makes invention so difficult is when you're just being yourself on stage, then you have to invent things. There's no focus for it. The pressure is all on you there. You're not sure exactly where to put your focus. If you give yourself a focus by playing a character, you can say 'alright, what's the focus of my character. I'll put all my intention into that?'
Generally, when someone is happy on stage, most of the time I'm not going to be happy with them. I think of a scene beginning 'I love you.' 'I love you too.' ...Alright, there's nothing going on. What's next? Now we have to invent something else, find what the tension of the scene is. Whereas my preference is: 'I love you.' 'Yeah, I know,' or 'yeah, whatever.' Now all the sudden the audience is like, and you're like, 'what a minute? What's going on here? There's something wrong between us.' It catches your ear and you start exploring that. For me, that's being formal, not clever. That's just recognizing things to listen for, then reacting appropriately to them. Invention is, again, the last thing I use.
JF: So, if someone says 'I love you' and you respond with 'yeah, I know,' you're in a sense making yourself, or your viewpoint, the unusual thing, in a normal context.
MS: Yeah, if it's wrong for me to not love them, I'm absurd. If let's say they're a serial killer, it's right for me not to love them and they're absurd. The thing is we already have tension, so we're already tending toward a comic moment.
JF: Do you ever find that other teachers disagree with you about the importance of tension? Some people say 'oh, you don't want tension in an improv scene.'
MS: Some people get hung up on not wanting conflict in an improv scene. Tension they don't object to as much as conflict. Heaven forbid there should be conflict in a scene, which I think is sort of old school and fearful. There's always some kind of conflict.
Some teachers might disagree with me and the way I say it, but if I were to sit down with them and we were to express everything we were talking about, for the most part, 90% of it, we'd agree.
JF: So how do you make conflict funny? And keep it from stalling a scene?
MS: If you get into an argument, that's fine. People argue. That's real. I'd make distinctions. Try not to bicker. Try not to argue over something that's not important. If you do get into an argument, that's fine as long as the scene keeps moving forward. Don't just stay as the same point of the argument, saying the same thing. As long as the scene keeps moving forward. As long as we keep adding new information to the scene, to the characters, it's fine for the argument to be there, but if all the scene is is just the argument then you're not moving forward. You're not exploring. It has to be moving forward. I say argument is ok. It's dangerous, because it's the habit of the people to stay in the argument until it's resolved. Once you recognize this, you have to go 'ok, my habit as a person is to finish this argument, but as an improviser I have to know that arguing is just an element in my scene right now. I have to keep my scene moving forward.'
JF: What do you think are some key elements in good improv?
MS: There's so many. Good improv I think starts a little slower. I think people listen better in good improv. The editing is better in good improv. I'm trying to think of the elements. Everything's being done well. [laughs] I think it's easier to point at the bad elements, why the improv suffers. If you do everything well, then you listen to the person who initiates a scene was listened to. The scene attained a focus that was then surrounded and moved forward. The game grew out of that focus. Information was given that was fed into that game that can be used later in the piece when the scene or scenes are called back. If all that's happening, you've got good improv going on. If the scene was edited when it should be editted, if that consistently happens, you're going to have a good piece.
JF: Do you ever find that being so analytical about improv ever effects the acting aspect of it?
MS: No, that makes we think of a couple things. I don't like the improv jargon phrase of 'being in your head.' People toss that around. 'You don't want to be in your head, man. You want to be in the moment.' The fact is you're always in your head. You're never not thinking. Implying to people that they can be in this state where they're not thinking and doing brilliant things is, I think, trecherous, because it's misleading. I think the idea is you have to be able to think very quickly while your doing things. On the other hand, I also try to teach that you think as much as you possibly can while you're off stage. When you're on stage, you play your instincts. You train your instincts off stage, then you play them on stage. In any given moment, all you can do is take care of the specific moment, and try not to make a mistake in that moment. If you train yourself well enough off stage, it becomes instinctual on stage.
JF: When you say think as much as you can off stage, I thought you meant while you were on the backline, but you meant actually...
MS: I meant both. When you're on the backline, on the side of the stage, and I also mean when you're not performing at all, train your mind. Train your tool. Develop that muscle as much as you can before you get on stage. Also, when you're on the side of the stage, you can be thinking about what do I want my scene to be about? What am I hearing now that might be able to use later? Try to come up with a full idea for a scene, rather than a half idea, like 'I want to do something with Pirates.' You can start it, but you don't know what the other person is going to do. You have time to think in a long-form show. If you're on stage one third of the time in a long-form show, you're on stage probably too much, right? If you're in an eight person group, which means two thirds of the time, you're not on stage. If you're making use of that time, to me, you're wasting that time.
JF: How do you balance trying to think of initiations with also watching a scene to try and support it?
MS: It's a judgement call in the moment. There's no perfect way to do all these things. There are a bunch of tools that can be used, but only to some degree of effectiveness. The fact is, when you're listening to a scene and you want to start thinking about an idea for maybe the next scene, you lose a little of your focus in the scene. You stop hearing things quite as well that are going on on stage. I'll usually watch a scene in the beginning. I'll try to as quickly as I can see what this scene is about. I see what they're doing basically. I don't see anything that I can do to heighten what's going on right now, so I'm not going to be walking into the scene. I've got a little more time where I can think about what I want to do in the next scene. My mind splits basically. I'll check in with the scene, go back to thinking, check in with the scene, go back to thinking. Although some of the time I think you're able to think while you're listening. You can actually hear what's going on and putting together disparate thoughts at the same time.
JF: In your opinion, what makes a good initiation?
MS: A good initiation clearly tells the other player what is expected of them.
JF: So, you would have an expectation of the other player beforehand?
MS: In some cases yes. This some people call premise-based improv. If I get an idea off stage, I get the whole idea. I want to do a scene where a therapist is mistreating their patients, and I want the patients to object to it. That's the other half of the idea. Whereas most would be like 'ok, I want to be a bad therapist' and go out and play it. The other person agrees with them, and they're cured. No, there's no bad therapist there. There's just a weird therapist. There's no tension between the two characters, because they were cured. That scene to me doesn't really work. It's much harder for me to make that scene entertaining, and it certainly isn't interesting. So, if I want the other person to object, I need to a.) start the scene as the bad therapist, telling them they're objecting to the way I'm treating them, or b.) being the patient objecting to what the therapist is doing. So, in my opening line I've created their behavior. So, off the opening line now we both know how to play this scene.
That's one type of great initiation, I think. Scenes can work for different reasons. I can start a scene with a very strong character, and the other person can make a great move and play a perfect character that plays with me and off of me. I guess part of me thinks that happens, but I'm also very skeptical because more often than not too many improvisers bring that trunkload of monkeys with them. Where I say something no matter what it is, they say 'great, I've got a truckload of monkeys, because monkeys are funny, and I got a truckload of them. Get it?' It's like 'alright, you just wanted to say something crazy, and I didn't give you any limitations in my opening line. I didn't tell you that you were angry. I didn't give you something to focus on. I just said 'ah, my office is finally clean. Isn't that great Jenkins?' 'Yeah, that's great. Now let's bring in this truckload of monkeys.' It's like alright. Now what the scene's about. No matter what idea I may have had in my brain. The scene is now about a truckload of monkeys.
There are a bunch of formal rules that can be learned. For example, if someone walks on stage talking, to me, that tells me they have an idea, but they might not have it all worked out yet. So, I'm going to wait until I know what I believe the right response to be. If they say an opening line and I don't know whether I should be happy or angry, or with them or against them, I'm just going to sort of yes them, recognize the truth of what they're saying, but not really add anything, because I don't really know what they want me to do yet. I'll give them probably three lines like that. I'll give them three different attempts to try to tell me what they want me to do. If it becomes clear that either they don't know what they want me to do or maybe they didn't really have a whole worked out idea, then I have to make a judgement call, and take a direction, but I'm still going to give them the opportunity to tell me what their idea is.
JF: In your opinion what does the term 'the game of the scene' mean? And how important is it to good improv?
MS: I think the game of the scene refers to the thing that has become odd, or that caught your ear, that is the focus of the scene, and the way the characters act around that. There's no way to describe the game of the scene in one description, because there are different kind of games. The game might be between the characters. It might be between the characters and their environment. It's ...ah, the thing you're forced to react to in disparate ways. It's hard to nail it down.
JF: How important do you think it is to be friends off stage to being a good team?
MS: I think it's essential. You can be a good team if you have a bunch of talented people who work together, but I don't think that the work starts to get to the special places until you really get to know each other.
JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future artistically and commercially?
MS: I would like the tenets of improv to become kind of a world religion, that is followed and everybody is in on it. Commercially, I hope to leave it the hell alone.
JF: You don't want people to start getting paid more or whatever?
MS: I don't want it to become bastardized by television. I would love to see it be on television, if it weren't corrupted by television. I'd more rather it'd be a world community of improvisers, where you could do a bit with anybody on the street and they'd get it.
JF: Do you think the medium of television corrupts it, or do you think executives corrupt it?
MS: The medium of television is going to be difficult, because improv is classically live. I think that's part of the experience. The beast that is television is made up of the people who run it. I think that compromises anything in its path.
JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out in the interview?
MS: No, I have no general statement to announce to the improv community [laughs]. If anything, it'd be that last thing: become a world of improvisers.
MS: He was good. I guess this a better answer to what you're asking: he was a good balance to me. He's more of a character player, while I'm more of a classic straightman in my tendencies, so it was a natural balance like that. He's also bald and I've got a lot of hair.
JF: That's true. That's another ying and yang aspect of you guys. Was it ever uncomfortable for you to essentially be teaching someone you were performing with?
MS: No. Why would it be? To me, I was just hoping it would be great training for Dan. It was also interesting to me to say 'well, here's a guy who's already real good. How much better can I make him quickly?' He had just finished the training program, and probably 6 months later into doing our show Noah [Gregoropoulos] invited him to do the Armando show in Chicago, which was mostly reserved for people who had been there forever. He had just gotten that good. It was mostly his natural talent I would say, but in watching him play for a long time I was like 'his talent is his own, but his formal instincts right now are mine.' He was making the moves that I would make. Even just watching him in shows I could see what he was trying to do, and I'm like 'yeah, that's exactly what you should be trying to do.' [laughs] Good for him for getting it all. A lot of people given the opportunity to learn things don't learn.
JF: Can you describe what the show Zumpf was like? The different edits and the different pacing within the show?
MS: The thinking initially was 'let's be faster-paced,' because that was my experience and habit and the other shows hadn't really done that, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves from those shows. It was kind of a Deconstruction in that we did no opening. We just started with a scene, but it wasn't in anyway a classic Deconstruction. It was 'we'll start with this, then we'll move away from it and we'll eventually get multiple scenes and eventually weave them together.' The interesting thing about trying to move fast-paced with two people is even when you think you're whizzing by you're not moving that fast. It might feel like you're moving fast because you're working real hard, but you're really not moving that fast. There's only two of you.
The different edits, some of which we got from Trio, was the idea of when you played a multiple person scene you didn't have to run around necessarily to get to your other characters. The audience was absolutely willing to let you walk from one character over to that character, do whatever you need, then move back to respond if you needed. Then we started thinking about how quickly can we switch in and out of scene. It got to the point where there were times when it was just one of those wonderful improv moments where we'd be in a scene, both recognize that we wanted to go to this other scene with these other two characters. Without saying a word we would immediately start playing the other scene, and it would already be going. There was no pause. There was a line in the first scene and the next line was this other scene going on, then we would go back to the first scene without ever missing a beat. That was a way to get the piece moving faster, but at that level you really have to know each other. You really have to be thinking very similarly.
Most of the edits were, it's kind of a common sense thing. You'd ask 'ok, how do I need to move to make it clear that we're starting a new scene?' I remember realizing that to completely change a scene you didn't have to do too much more than change your voice or the way you were sitting, and the other person had to immediately recognize something has changed, so we're now in a different scene. That picks up the pace, not having to bother with stepping across the stage to do an edit, or running across the stage. You can just shift and be in another scene.
Other than that, I remember we liked multiple person scenes, if we could find a location for them. We didn't like to repeat locations too much, because that was cheating. I think the most we ever got into a scene was something like 16 characters, that was on a plane. That was a lot of fun, trying to keep track of 16 different people that you've put onto this plane.
JF: How long was that scene?
MS: That scene was probably 10 to 15 minutes.
JF: What brought you out to Los Angeles?
MS: I chased a girl out here.
JF: How did you adjust to Los Angeles? How did you find the overall artistic climate and how did you find the improv scene?
MS: The overall artistic climate barely exists for me, as far as improvisationally. I think out here, even moreso than anywhere else, the idea is to put up a show that gets you a break, so the pursuit of the artform is almost nil. We didn't have our own space out here really when I got out here. We had kind of a rented space. We didn't have the nice theater that we have now.
JF: What year did you go out there?
MS: Four years ago, I think, in 2002, I guess. There were students who were interested in the art and wanted to learn. There were also students who were very threatened by it, where 'we don't give a shit about about the art about it. We just want to be funny. I want to be in commercials and on tv.' I was like 'alright, you shouldn't be in my class then,' because you might learn some useful things, but I don't want you to be in my class.
That kind of attitude effects the class. It effects the work. It was like 'well, the idea here isn't to be slapsticky funny.' I think a lot of students were going through the training program to just get the opportunity to be on stage. Yes, that's a wonderful opportunity, but take advantage of the damn training. Get some training. So many of the students who got on the stage out here, they basically just finished the program. They're barely good enough to get on a team. They get on a team. They put up some shitty work for a while, then they move on or hang out forever. Never getting any better.
JF: Do you feel it's changed over time?
MS: It's getting better. Los Angeles is somewhere between ten and twenty years behind Chicago as far as an [improv] community. It's funny. There are more good improvisers right now in Los Angeles than anything else in the world, yet we still have a hard time getting houses at all. But that's because this community isn't used to it. They're used to short-form. They're used to The Groundlings. Other crap like that. But we're training them slowly, just like we did back in Chicago.
JF: How would you like to see the community in Los Angeles change? And what do you think might be some specific steps to enact that change?
MS: By community, I'm referring to the people who support improv as well as the improvisers. I'd like to see the community, who's at large and could be supporting our shows, to pull their collective heads out of their asses to come and watch the shows and see what a wonderful thing it is we do. As far as the students, I'd like them to stop thinking so much about trying to put up a show that gets them get a break, that gets them a tv show. That's fine if that happens, but you study the art form to study the artform. This is an artform. This is important. You'll actually be better off if you stop thinking about your career for a couple years, and actually really try to do something interesting, and let your career fall in place around that.
JF: You're viewed as a very mathematical person when it comes to improv.
MS: Who says that!?
JF: Uhhh.
MS: I'm kidding. I say that all the time.
JF: Oh, what does that mean? In what sense are you mathematical about improv?
MS: I say that because I approach it formally first.
JF: What does that mean?
MS: It means when I get on stage I have a basic equation in my head of what I'm going to do. It's not like the scene's pre-written, but if I have an idea I will say it right away and let my scene partner what I need them to do. If I don't have an idea, I will not say a word and will wait until they tell me what I'm supposed to do.
JF: Even if you walk on first?
MS: Even if I walk on first. There's a possibility I might be in it just because the edit needed to be made. You know immediately when you're doing a scene if somebody has an idea or they don't. Basically, you check in with them real quick. If they look at you with that same sort of blank look, that means no one has an idea, then you just start simply. Don't worry about invention. A mistake people make is people panic. They invent too early. They get caught in the cross-fire of two people inventing, and there's no sense on stage.
Also, when I teach, I tell people they made right and/or wrong moves. You could say 'well, any move is potentially valid.' I'm like 'yeah, you could say that, but, for me, I say that one's wrong, for these reasons.' There's no move that I make on stage that I can't point to the reason that I made it. It's usually a formal reason. Usualy, I made it because the other person did this, that was my indicator to do this. Eighty percent of my work on stage is listening.
JF: What are some of those reasons that you would give someone for saying this is a right move or this is a wrong move? What are some of the underlying justifications or principles behind it?
MS: There are a bunch of different ones, but for example, if someone comes on stage and they say something absurd, my first instinct is to be the straight man in this scene. That means alright, my job is to call attention to this absurdity. Call it out as being absurd, yet still be able to bend with it as the scene moves. I now know how I'm going to play the rest of the scene. That's based off the other person's opening line of dialog.
If the other person comes in, begins a scene, and they're very sort of more bland and they say something more realistic, I'm going to start exaggerating myself. I'm going to play opposite them, play off them. What's going to be comic in this moment? Sometime I'll start slowly and get to that, but the idea is that there are comic elements that make up a scene. You have to satisfy them in an improvisational scene. You can learn to recognize them in the first few lines of a scene. A lot of people just do it naturally. A lot of things that I came to do naturally I had to go back and figure out why I was doing them. I was like 'here's why I'm doing it. I notice this. I notice that this person is doing this, that's why I did this.'
JF: It sounds like you're trying to create the one unusual thing. By you playing the straight man, you're heightening the unusualness of the other person's initiation.
MS: The focus of the scene. Yes, usually that thing becomes the game of the scene, the behavior that surrounds that focal point becomes the game of the scene. Once you have the game of the scene, you can move onto other formal elements that feed back into the game. You can go 'alright, I've established the game of the scene. I've established the focal point. Let me throw out a line that deepens our relationship.' We can use that information to pull back into and play the game.
JF: What do you think about mirroring people? Is that something that you do or advocate?
MS: I've used that technique in teaching, but rarely in play. You're talking about sort of a classic yes anding, where someone plays an absurd character and the other person says 'yeah, I'm that way too. Now we're both crazy'?
JF: Yeah, or a certain type of character or a certain type of mood.
MS: I generally say you do not want to be in the same emotional place as the other character on stage. The idea in comedy is that in every comic moment there is tension, so where do you want to establish the tension? The best way is to establish it between the two characters. What happens when the tension is not between the two characters? Now it has to be between them and something else. It might be between them and what they're saying, but now all the pressure is on them to invent something funny to play off of, which is much harder to do. Being harder doesn't make it better. It just makes it harder to do.
Generally speaking, mirroring is not the way I would go. However, I may mirror, if I choose to play a character-based scene. If someone is out on stage, playing a grumpy old man on a bench, I might be a similar grumpy on a bench. Now we're characters. Now we're both exaggerated. Now we're both absurd on some level. Now the scene is going to be all about what the crazy old men on a bench are going to say next. Now it's harder. It's based on my invention, but I've made my invention a little bit easier because I've chosen the character to focus on. The main thing that makes invention so difficult is when you're just being yourself on stage, then you have to invent things. There's no focus for it. The pressure is all on you there. You're not sure exactly where to put your focus. If you give yourself a focus by playing a character, you can say 'alright, what's the focus of my character. I'll put all my intention into that?'
Generally, when someone is happy on stage, most of the time I'm not going to be happy with them. I think of a scene beginning 'I love you.' 'I love you too.' ...Alright, there's nothing going on. What's next? Now we have to invent something else, find what the tension of the scene is. Whereas my preference is: 'I love you.' 'Yeah, I know,' or 'yeah, whatever.' Now all the sudden the audience is like, and you're like, 'what a minute? What's going on here? There's something wrong between us.' It catches your ear and you start exploring that. For me, that's being formal, not clever. That's just recognizing things to listen for, then reacting appropriately to them. Invention is, again, the last thing I use.
JF: So, if someone says 'I love you' and you respond with 'yeah, I know,' you're in a sense making yourself, or your viewpoint, the unusual thing, in a normal context.
MS: Yeah, if it's wrong for me to not love them, I'm absurd. If let's say they're a serial killer, it's right for me not to love them and they're absurd. The thing is we already have tension, so we're already tending toward a comic moment.
JF: Do you ever find that other teachers disagree with you about the importance of tension? Some people say 'oh, you don't want tension in an improv scene.'
MS: Some people get hung up on not wanting conflict in an improv scene. Tension they don't object to as much as conflict. Heaven forbid there should be conflict in a scene, which I think is sort of old school and fearful. There's always some kind of conflict.
Some teachers might disagree with me and the way I say it, but if I were to sit down with them and we were to express everything we were talking about, for the most part, 90% of it, we'd agree.
JF: So how do you make conflict funny? And keep it from stalling a scene?
MS: If you get into an argument, that's fine. People argue. That's real. I'd make distinctions. Try not to bicker. Try not to argue over something that's not important. If you do get into an argument, that's fine as long as the scene keeps moving forward. Don't just stay as the same point of the argument, saying the same thing. As long as the scene keeps moving forward. As long as we keep adding new information to the scene, to the characters, it's fine for the argument to be there, but if all the scene is is just the argument then you're not moving forward. You're not exploring. It has to be moving forward. I say argument is ok. It's dangerous, because it's the habit of the people to stay in the argument until it's resolved. Once you recognize this, you have to go 'ok, my habit as a person is to finish this argument, but as an improviser I have to know that arguing is just an element in my scene right now. I have to keep my scene moving forward.'
JF: What do you think are some key elements in good improv?
MS: There's so many. Good improv I think starts a little slower. I think people listen better in good improv. The editing is better in good improv. I'm trying to think of the elements. Everything's being done well. [laughs] I think it's easier to point at the bad elements, why the improv suffers. If you do everything well, then you listen to the person who initiates a scene was listened to. The scene attained a focus that was then surrounded and moved forward. The game grew out of that focus. Information was given that was fed into that game that can be used later in the piece when the scene or scenes are called back. If all that's happening, you've got good improv going on. If the scene was edited when it should be editted, if that consistently happens, you're going to have a good piece.
JF: Do you ever find that being so analytical about improv ever effects the acting aspect of it?
MS: No, that makes we think of a couple things. I don't like the improv jargon phrase of 'being in your head.' People toss that around. 'You don't want to be in your head, man. You want to be in the moment.' The fact is you're always in your head. You're never not thinking. Implying to people that they can be in this state where they're not thinking and doing brilliant things is, I think, trecherous, because it's misleading. I think the idea is you have to be able to think very quickly while your doing things. On the other hand, I also try to teach that you think as much as you possibly can while you're off stage. When you're on stage, you play your instincts. You train your instincts off stage, then you play them on stage. In any given moment, all you can do is take care of the specific moment, and try not to make a mistake in that moment. If you train yourself well enough off stage, it becomes instinctual on stage.
JF: When you say think as much as you can off stage, I thought you meant while you were on the backline, but you meant actually...
MS: I meant both. When you're on the backline, on the side of the stage, and I also mean when you're not performing at all, train your mind. Train your tool. Develop that muscle as much as you can before you get on stage. Also, when you're on the side of the stage, you can be thinking about what do I want my scene to be about? What am I hearing now that might be able to use later? Try to come up with a full idea for a scene, rather than a half idea, like 'I want to do something with Pirates.' You can start it, but you don't know what the other person is going to do. You have time to think in a long-form show. If you're on stage one third of the time in a long-form show, you're on stage probably too much, right? If you're in an eight person group, which means two thirds of the time, you're not on stage. If you're making use of that time, to me, you're wasting that time.
JF: How do you balance trying to think of initiations with also watching a scene to try and support it?
MS: It's a judgement call in the moment. There's no perfect way to do all these things. There are a bunch of tools that can be used, but only to some degree of effectiveness. The fact is, when you're listening to a scene and you want to start thinking about an idea for maybe the next scene, you lose a little of your focus in the scene. You stop hearing things quite as well that are going on on stage. I'll usually watch a scene in the beginning. I'll try to as quickly as I can see what this scene is about. I see what they're doing basically. I don't see anything that I can do to heighten what's going on right now, so I'm not going to be walking into the scene. I've got a little more time where I can think about what I want to do in the next scene. My mind splits basically. I'll check in with the scene, go back to thinking, check in with the scene, go back to thinking. Although some of the time I think you're able to think while you're listening. You can actually hear what's going on and putting together disparate thoughts at the same time.
JF: In your opinion, what makes a good initiation?
MS: A good initiation clearly tells the other player what is expected of them.
JF: So, you would have an expectation of the other player beforehand?
MS: In some cases yes. This some people call premise-based improv. If I get an idea off stage, I get the whole idea. I want to do a scene where a therapist is mistreating their patients, and I want the patients to object to it. That's the other half of the idea. Whereas most would be like 'ok, I want to be a bad therapist' and go out and play it. The other person agrees with them, and they're cured. No, there's no bad therapist there. There's just a weird therapist. There's no tension between the two characters, because they were cured. That scene to me doesn't really work. It's much harder for me to make that scene entertaining, and it certainly isn't interesting. So, if I want the other person to object, I need to a.) start the scene as the bad therapist, telling them they're objecting to the way I'm treating them, or b.) being the patient objecting to what the therapist is doing. So, in my opening line I've created their behavior. So, off the opening line now we both know how to play this scene.
That's one type of great initiation, I think. Scenes can work for different reasons. I can start a scene with a very strong character, and the other person can make a great move and play a perfect character that plays with me and off of me. I guess part of me thinks that happens, but I'm also very skeptical because more often than not too many improvisers bring that trunkload of monkeys with them. Where I say something no matter what it is, they say 'great, I've got a truckload of monkeys, because monkeys are funny, and I got a truckload of them. Get it?' It's like 'alright, you just wanted to say something crazy, and I didn't give you any limitations in my opening line. I didn't tell you that you were angry. I didn't give you something to focus on. I just said 'ah, my office is finally clean. Isn't that great Jenkins?' 'Yeah, that's great. Now let's bring in this truckload of monkeys.' It's like alright. Now what the scene's about. No matter what idea I may have had in my brain. The scene is now about a truckload of monkeys.
There are a bunch of formal rules that can be learned. For example, if someone walks on stage talking, to me, that tells me they have an idea, but they might not have it all worked out yet. So, I'm going to wait until I know what I believe the right response to be. If they say an opening line and I don't know whether I should be happy or angry, or with them or against them, I'm just going to sort of yes them, recognize the truth of what they're saying, but not really add anything, because I don't really know what they want me to do yet. I'll give them probably three lines like that. I'll give them three different attempts to try to tell me what they want me to do. If it becomes clear that either they don't know what they want me to do or maybe they didn't really have a whole worked out idea, then I have to make a judgement call, and take a direction, but I'm still going to give them the opportunity to tell me what their idea is.
JF: In your opinion what does the term 'the game of the scene' mean? And how important is it to good improv?
MS: I think the game of the scene refers to the thing that has become odd, or that caught your ear, that is the focus of the scene, and the way the characters act around that. There's no way to describe the game of the scene in one description, because there are different kind of games. The game might be between the characters. It might be between the characters and their environment. It's ...ah, the thing you're forced to react to in disparate ways. It's hard to nail it down.
JF: How important do you think it is to be friends off stage to being a good team?
MS: I think it's essential. You can be a good team if you have a bunch of talented people who work together, but I don't think that the work starts to get to the special places until you really get to know each other.
JF: Where would you like to see improv go in the future artistically and commercially?
MS: I would like the tenets of improv to become kind of a world religion, that is followed and everybody is in on it. Commercially, I hope to leave it the hell alone.
JF: You don't want people to start getting paid more or whatever?
MS: I don't want it to become bastardized by television. I would love to see it be on television, if it weren't corrupted by television. I'd more rather it'd be a world community of improvisers, where you could do a bit with anybody on the street and they'd get it.
JF: Do you think the medium of television corrupts it, or do you think executives corrupt it?
MS: The medium of television is going to be difficult, because improv is classically live. I think that's part of the experience. The beast that is television is made up of the people who run it. I think that compromises anything in its path.
JF: Do you have anything that you would like to say to the improv community that we didn't get out in the interview?
MS: No, I have no general statement to announce to the improv community [laughs]. If anything, it'd be that last thing: become a world of improvisers.
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