Ian Roberts Part 3 - 2/16/07

JF: It sounds like getting the specifics in there at the beginning, that’s the key element.

IR: Yes, if you’re working from neutral, when you’re working off of a one word suggestion.

I believe that the degree to with which you come in with a premise is inversely proportional to the specificity of the information you’re using to start. So, if I start with a one word suggestion, there’s really not much of a justification for coming in with a premise. If I do, it will probably be generic and the kind of thing that I’m saying you’ve learned from ‘I Dream of Geenie’ and ‘Bewitched’ re-runs. It probably won’t be very good. So, you want to start yesanding, waiting until something happens that’s unusual, then discover what pattern that partakes in. Start saying ‘if-then.’ If this unusual thing happens, then this would happen, then this would happen.

On the other end of the spectrum of suggestions is it comes from something as full as a good comedic monologue. If you’ve got that, I think it’s more than justified that you would come in with a full-blown premise. Come out with a first line the purpose of which is who we are and what I want to happen, what I want the kind of game to be. My justification for that is why do a monologue if not for that purpose? In a long-form, a don’t feel the purpose of a monologue in an opening is to be entertaining in and of itself. It’s to be inspiration, and information to do the scene work. So, you should use the any information or inspiration to its fullest benefit.

The only things we remember in life are the days where the pattern was broken, the day that was not the everyday. It was the specific day. So, when someone steps out to tell a monologue, they’re telling it because its unique. No one tells some boring sorry where nothing out of the ordinary happened. There’s already a game implicit in this monologue that they’re telling.

So, what I suggest to students when somebody’s giving you a monologue for inspiration, the first thing you can do is look at what made you laugh in that, then take away the subject matter of the monologue, take away who was in the monologue, where the monologue took place. Say what is that fundamentally. It comes to somebody acting inappropriately for the circumstances. Or I don’t know, it’s hard without a specific monologue. You break it down to what it fundamentally is. Then you say in your mind ‘I want to come up with an analogous situation.’ Then you come out and start a scene.

Even between those things, a one word suggestion and monologue, you’ve got pattern games. Pattern games might give you a general take on the information, so go towards that.

I hate when there’s been more full information, and someone takes one word out of it and uses the location to start a scene. To me, that’s a misuse of a monologue. Say the monologue took place in an old folks’ home, but the game really had nothing to do, fundamentally, with the old folks home. That’s just the location of it. So, why use that information, [why have the monologue,] when it could have been someone yelling out ‘Old folks’ home’ and you start a scene from neutral?

We need to address this in our own organization. There are camps developing. We don’t believe that it’s more pure to have no idea what the scene’s going to be. At the end of the day, there’s still huge improvisational elements involved in laying out a premise from a monologue, but some people in our organization say that’s not real improv. It’s kind of like… At the theater, the emphasis is more on comedy for us. If that’s how you get to good, unique comedy, [do it].

The benefit of working that way I suggested of yesanding until you get to something unusual, then once something unusual happens you start asking ‘if that happens, what else happens,’ the value of that is to make you be unique, and specific and hopefully do great comedy, like improvise a great sketch. But you can have a great sketch taking the unique thing that this person shared with you about their life. That only happened to them. That’s their story. So, they have done that work to take it to a unique place, so go ahead. Use it to your benefit. Hit the ground running. Come in with a premise. Because it’s not some generic regurgitation of a sitcom premise, it’s from this person’s real life.

So, whatever it is that keeps you unique and specific and not just doing an imitation of an imitation of an imitation of old-fashioned stuff we’ve seen in sitcoms and movies, that’s fine with us. Get there however you get there.


JF: What do you have to say to people who are like ‘I just can’t initiate with a game in mind. That’s just not the way I work’? Do you think they just need to work that muscle more or do you think it’s legitimate where people are like ‘I’m not built like that’?

IR: Since it can be done, there’s no such thing. Yeah, I guess I’d say, going off of what you said, it’s something like working a muscle. I’m sure when someone who’s driven an automatic gets in a clutch car you would say ‘I just can’t do it. I don’t drive that way.’ Yeah, well no kidding. You’ve never been in a car with a clutch so you don’t drive that way. I’d like to teach you how to drive with a clutch.

So, yeah, I don’t find that a legitimate [argument]. Like I said, if someone tells me ‘this exercise puts me in my head,’ my answer is of course it does. [laughs] You’re good at what you’re good at, and you’ve practiced, and you’re not good at what you haven’t practiced. But, I mean, you can get by. It’s great working from neutral and finding a scene. It’s fantastic, but if someone wants to come out and layout a premise for you, it’s the same thing. Just like would know how, if a game crept up on you, how to be your side of it, how to be the yin to their yang. But you’re saying what if somebody says ‘I can’t do that myself’?


JF: Yeah.

IR: Well, if you can’t, go ahead. It’s not going to hurt to take away one thing from a monologue. The only thing is I would challenge people with is ‘Why on earth are we listening to that monologue?’ I guess you could say it’s a multimedia show with one part of the comedy is people telling personal monologues, but that’s not the way I’ve ever looked at it. I look at it as the improv I do is scenic improv. Everything else is inspiration for scenic improv. So, then I would like Socratically ask them ‘Well, then you tell me what the monologue is for? Why do I need to hear some monologue that has a good comic premise in it if I’m only going to take a word away from it? Why not take three one word suggestions from the audience? Why are we even fleshing out the information then?’

The opening has three purposes. One is to develop a feeling of ensemble, start working together, develop a group mind. Two is to be, in and of itself, is to be interesting to listen to and look at for the audience to watch. But three, and it’s huge, is to provide information for the piece. So, anything that’s happening there I would use that information presented to its greatest benefit.



JF: As far as the information contained in an opening, the more closely that information is aligned with a game the more successful the opening is in your opinion?

IR: No, it’s not better. It’s nothing. It just is what it is. Use what you want. If you go with a monologue, use the monologue, but then if you don’t want to use the monologue you can start… I don’t think that everybody has to start scenes within Harolds with premises, absolutely not.

In ASSSSCAT, we tend to do a very much of a layout the premise type of show, that’s because the whole thing is monologue-based. We kind of break down the monologue and use it to start comedy scenes, but no I don’t think it’s more successful, because then it would come down to ‘Well, let’s do all monologues, so we can all have ideas of what’s going to be funny and a starting point of what the scene’s going to be like to begin with,’ and I don’t feel that way. It can be either or.

That’s what I’m saying. It seems like there are these camps developing within our organization. I need to write an email. We need to start talking about this, because it’s just like ‘No, there are no camps. It’s the same thing.’ Like I say how I think it’s bogus for people to set up camps of game and non-game improv. It’s like wake up. There are no camps. If you’re doing comedy, the game has got to be there, just do the game well. If you’re going against the game, I guess you’re not seeing it done well or you’re not doing it well. So, let’s not develop factions about how you have to start a scene. Just don’t say one or the other is invalid. They’re both valid.


JF: So, what are some qualities of a good teacher?

IR: I think to always be able to bring your comments down to a rule. What I’m never into is what I call ‘Master Blaster Teacher,’ that’s a reference to a Mad Max movie where the little guy rides on the big muscular guy’s shoulders and tells him what to do. If a teacher is just telling you what they think is funny, that’s not helpful. If you see a problem with someone’s scene, you need to be able to tell them ‘Here is the rule that you could apply to help avoid the problem in that scene.’ If you can’t do that, it’s bogus. It’s bullshit. I can’t be there and ride on your back and tell you how to be funny.

Like I tell people, so often you or your scene partner will frame the unusual thing. I explain that like this: it’s like our brain has three holes. One’s a square. One’s a circle. One’s a triangle. All day we have squares, circles and triangles come at us. You’re almost on autopilot. My kid started to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before. Goes in the triangle hole. They’re so funny. They reach for everything. They’re always pulling things down. Go it. Whatever. He did the strangest thing. He took the pillow down from the couch, tied it around the dog like a saddle, and rode the dog. He rode the dog? I haven’t heard that before. So, you’ll frame it often. So, often in life you’ll repeat it back to the person, or we’ll go ‘What?’ You frame it because it doesn’t fit.

So, that might be something that I tell someone. You went right by the unusual thing and continued to yesand. We needed at that point we need to start exploring the world where if a kid ties a pillow around a dog and starts to ride it, then what else? Are they on an adventure? A kid who’s incredibly inventive? A kid who torments animals? Are they obsessed with Western culture? What pattern does it partake of? So, we need to build that pattern. We need it to heighten. You stayed on the same level too long. People will get bored.

Then you can drill them to make sure they’re doing it consistently. You weren’t playing it straight. You rolled with the guy who wanted to chop up the dresser for firewood, instead of getting some from outside. You said yes to that. You weren’t the wall for that person to play handball against. Be a human being. Be at the top of your intelligence. Tell him to go out and get some firewood. Don’t be a lazy fucker and chop up the dresser.

If I can tell them ‘Here is the general thing you did wrong. This is a rule. If you can drill so you consistently do these rules, you’ll be a good improviser,’ that’s what I think a good teacher has to have. You have to have a method. If you don’t have a method, you can’t teach it. You can’t teach painting. You can’t teach ballet. You can’t teach guitar. You can’t teach driving. You can’t teach operating a piece of equipment.

I am so against… here’s a school of improv that would set itself up in opposition to what we do: ‘You’ve just got to be free. Open yourself up and let the inspiration flow.’ Horse shit! What else does that? You would walk away from a driving teacher in two seconds who said ‘Just go! Just do it!’ ‘What do you mean!? I don’t know how to do it! What do I do!?’ ‘Just go! Follow your instincts!’

I think why people do that is because improv looks like talking and walking. The assumption is we talk and walk all our lives, just go up there and talk and walk, but no. We’re creating fiction. You’re doing what a writer [does]. A writer has a concept, finds a game, writes a short intro that doesn’t meander. So, we’ve got to give you rules that help you do all those on your feet. Just going up and talking to someone and moving around won’t do it.

Same thing with basketball players. Think of Michael Jordan. People describe what he does as poetic or as having artistry. I guarantee you if he had never seen a basketball, never knew it existed, and at the age he is right now handled a basketball he wouldn’t do what he did. He couldn’t. He’s as good as he is because he drilled the fundamentals endlessly, and plays hours and hours and hours, and had coaches who told him what to do. Like I said, I love the title ‘Respect for Acting.’ I encourage people to have respect for improv.

If there’s not a method, why on earth would you take a class from me? I can’t teach you how to be inspired. I can teach you a bunch of rules, that when you do them, allow inspiration to come out, that allow you to find things you didn’t know were there. Michael Jordan knows his fundamentals so well that he creates opportunities that seem insane. That’s because he’s seen the floor so many times, and he’s seen these scenarios so many times, and he’s practiced these moves so many times they just come. That’s the same thing with comedy, improv comedy. You learn these fundamentals to the point you can depend on them.


JF: One of those rules I’ve heard ascribed to you is ‘only say no once.’ Why is it important to only say no once, and do you need to do anything else in addition to make that work?

IR: I don’t understand that one that’s been ascribed to me. I don’t even understand it.


JF: So, if someone’s asking you to do something crazy, you say no once, then if they ask you to do it again you’re like ‘Ok.’

IR: I disagree.


JF: Really!? I’ve heard many people say that, that Ian Roberts says.

IR: Ok, I’m in a scene, and my scene partner says ‘You know what? You should just jump out the window. Say ‘screw you’ to ‘the man.’’ And he opens up the window and says ‘Come on.’ ‘I can’t jump out of the window.’ ‘Come on, man. I thought you were a radical.’ If I jump out that window, the scene is over. No human being on earth would jump out that window. It’s less than likely than anyone but one idiot would think that’s a good idea. I’d say no to that all day.

Here’s something that gets misinterpreted. People hear ‘Don’t deny,’ and they think don’t deny means don’t argue. My response to that is that’s the craziest comedy rule I’ve ever heard, since the heart of much comedy is nothing but arguments. The Parrot sketch [in Monty Python] is nothing but a protracted argument. Not that I think it’s great comedy, but Neil Simon is never ending two hour arguments, his movies or his plays. So, can you argue in support of a game? Absolutely.

What don’t deny means is that in the yesanding process don’t deny someone’s reality they’ve set up. ‘Hey, your dog went to the bathroom on my lawn.’ ‘I don’t have a dog, Jack.’ Well, ok, scene’s over. I’m crazy. ‘Man, it’s freezing out there.’ ‘It’s the middle of July.’ Ok, I’m an idiot. I’m crazy. That’s denial. If someone is offering me a cup of coffee, can I say no? Of course, I can say no. ‘No thanks. I’m good.’ That’s just very basic.

So, no, I don’t agree with that. Was that ascribed to me or our organization?



JF: To you.

IR: To me? [laughs] Well, I think I have something. I know have something in my notes. I think this might be it. ‘Sometimes when people say no, they’re trying to express how their character feels about something.’ For instance, you’re playing a guy who you think is the last person on earth who would want to go to the opera, and the wife says ‘Come on. Louis, let’s go to the opera tonight.’ ‘Ahhh, the game’s on tonight. It’s the quarter finals.’ ‘You promised.’ ‘Can I bring my radio with me with earphones?’ ‘No, I want you to watch it with me!’

If you can, don’t ever say no just to show your character’s opinion about something, but if it completely rebels against the logic of the character of any rational human being you need to. You need to keep at the top of your intelligence. So, I think that may be what’s been attributed to me. If you can say yes and still get across how you feel and move forward, go ahead, but if you need to say no [say no]. If you would leave the room, it’s better to just walk off stage. You know what? More likely than not, they’ll stop you. That happens in real life. If I’m having the balls-out, worst fight in the world with my wife and I’m about to storm out, more than likely she’ll yell ‘Stop.’ For the guy who wants you to jump out the window, the biggest favor you can do him is say no, because he’s going to now try to talk you into it. He’s going to have to keep answering you. You’re saying no, but now you’re being the wall for him to play handball against. If you didn’t, the ball will dribble away. Jump out the window and the scene is over.

It’s going to make him play his game more. ‘Ok, how about this? Let’s disfigure ourselves, just to say we’re not interested in cosmetic beautify and all that bullshit.’ ‘No, I don’t want to do that either.’ Or the guy gives you the reason why you should jump out the window and the effect it’s going to have. ‘Just like 9-11 it will live on.’ ‘No, no one will care. We’ll just seem like two crazy guys who jumped out the window.’ ‘No, we’ll seem like two guys who made a statement.’ Maybe he compares himself to the guys who burned themselves with gasoline because they didn’t want to go to Vietnam. ‘But no one even knows what we’re against! You’re against what, the world?’ ‘Yeah.’ That gives the guy a better chance to play the game.

Now, there’s two totally different ways to approach your scene once you know you’ve got something unusual going on. It’s either kind of everyman, kind of straight man thing, or it’s peas in a pod. And that guy [peas and a pod] might go along with the guy. Although in that case it would be unfortunate, but taking away that extreme circumstance you could play it, I call it mirroring each other. Instead of being this wall to play handball against, the other side of the yin yang symbol to the guy, you mirror each other. You make the choice of ‘I like everything you like. I hate everything you hate. I have the same prejudices as you. I have the same educational background. I’m from the same region of the country.’ Both of those ways to play the scene are completely valid, because they both exist in life. Sometimes bozos with idiot opinions who do stupid things find each other. They cliché is birds of a feather flock together. An example of that in scripted comedy is ‘Dumb and Dumber’ or ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.’ I’m sure there are others.

And they don’t always have to be idiots, like two gonzo cops. In that circumstance, the straightman is implicitly the rest of the world. The audience knows the way things generally go. We think these guys are off. So, these two ways to play a scene are just as valid.

That’s the thing about improv, most of these improv rules are also life rules. We do them in because that’s what happens in life. Why do we [say know each other in scenes]? Because we have conversations with people we know. I’ll ask ‘What was the last conversation like that you had with a stranger you were waiting on a subway platform with?’ The answer is typically ‘I didn’t have a conversation with a stranger.’ That covers one of the rules. In general, why do we say ‘Don’t do scenes with strangers?’ Because, in general, they don’t happen. Our lives don’t happen with strangers. Are there a million exceptions to that? Yes.

In general, don’t do transaction scenes. Why? Because once the transaction is over, the scene is done. That doesn’t just mean a business transaction like ‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a candy bar’ and paying the guy money. It means starting a scene with something like ‘Can I borrow the car tonight?’ If the person says yes, if they give you the keys, then go. So, don’t start scenes like that, because they don’t go anywhere in life. They’re just transaction scenes.

Yesanding comes into that category. Why do we yesand? Because it creates the type of conversation that happens in life. When we talk to people, we’re able to talk to them because we have the same frame of reference. That’s what yesanding is. I agree with your reality. ‘I live in the world where it’s snowing outside. I live in the world where we had a big party in the house last night. I live in the world we’re both fry cooks at the same restaurant. When you say that thing about the manager, I know because I work with him.’ So, with yesanding that’s what you’re doing. When I add more information in my line, it makes it sound like life.

So, those two things are life rules. So why do we either be top of our intelligence and react to the unusual thing the way you would react to the unusual thing if you weren’t on board for it, or the other way we said I mirror you [the two methods of playing the game described]? Because that’s the way life goes. Either things are unusual and you shock us, or they’re unusual, someone else might find them unusual, but you’re into it. Say you have two guys who are working out and they’re both those kind of bozos and scream at each other going ‘Come on you pussy! Don’t you wimp out on me, fucking you puss! Push it! Push it!’ If the other guy does the same thing back to him, that can be a really funny scene. That makes sense for them. They’re two maniacs and they found each other. They love to scream at each other while they work out. Or you can go the opposite way. You can find a comedy scene with a guy who’s working out with one of these maniacs and he’s just trying to get a regular workout. And this guy’s saying ‘I will punch you in the face! I want you to die!’ ‘Oh my God! Please help me!’


JF: In your opinion is there anything that improv can accomplish that sketch can’t accomplish?

IR: I’m not sure I understand the question. In what realm accomplish?


JF: Is there anything that makes improv unique as an art form to you?

IR: Well, yeah, excitement for the audience. There’s that. I never want improv laughs to be ‘Oh, look how we’re screwing up.’ You can get laughs like that, where it’s kind of post-modern, the audience appreciating the difficulty the performers are having, but that really to me is the lowest accomplishment in improv. To me, the highest accomplishment is to do stuff that appears to be scripted. So, at it’s best I don’t see it as, in what’s done, very different.

Ok, here’s something. You should write this way. You should write in a way that takes you to your unique point of view on things. When I teach sketch writing, I’ll encourage people to think of their memories, because their memories will tend to take them to unique places. Don’t sit there and try to create absurd premises or bizarre takes on things. More let them come to you. What have you observed? What do you know? What have you experienced? What have you done? But a lot of people don’t do that, and I think a lot of the benefit of improv is taking people to places they didn’t know they would go to help them to be funnier than they might think they are.

That’s why I beg people to trust in the process. Don’t come up with a comedy scene. Come up and just be looking right in front of you. At the beginning your responsibility is to just yesand that line that I just heard, then when something unusual comes up my responsibility is to recognize that. Now, my responsibility is to do something else or to do something else in keeping with that unusual thing. The end of it all will have been having done a good comedy scene. When people try to be funny, that’s when they suck.

So, I think what it does for a lot of people is it helps them get in touch with far more unique things than they might if they sat down and tried to be funny. I believe the way we teach, teaching the game, is most applicable to writing. At some point all writing is improv. Before you type it, that line didn’t exist on the page. You don’t know what the guy is going to say next until you write that line and imagine what the guy is going to say next. In fact, in my writing we literally talk out loud. We do the dialog back and forth and it is improvised, but that’s nothing special. All writing is improvised in that it didn’t exist then it exists [laughs]. If you’re composing music, you’re asking ‘What seems to follow. What seems to follow?’ So, some times improv can make a person a better writer on their feet than when they’re sitting in front of a computer.

Like I said, I think the other aspect of it is just for an audience’s enjoyment, knowing ‘Holy shit. It’s happening. This is happening right here.’


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

IR: I think I said a lot of it. [laughs] It’s so self-serving. Is this written or do you play the tape?


JF: I transcribe it.

IR: Ok, you’re going to have to get across that I’m laughing at myself, because I kind of would want to say ‘Guys, you’ll be happier if you do things our way.’ [laughs] But that’s so self-serving.

I guess it’s kind of that I don’t buy these divisions. I don’t buy this wanting to set up camps. It’s crazy. I know it sounds like you’re a Nazi, but I don’t buy it. It’s this thing that’s out there that I’m only identifying. I want people to be happy. If you want to be happy, please don’t reject the game. Show me all the comedies you love, the movies, the sitcoms or the sketches, and I’ll show you the games. So, you do need to know how to find the game. Maybe what you’ve seen with the game has had its shortcomings with the way it’s been played. If you want to do comedy improv, don’t reject that.

Relationship is covered. It’s covered in the yesanding, but when you abstractly go after it, the same way you can’t just try to be funny, when you try to do relationships, just yesand. How could the characters agree with and add to each other’s realities if they don’t know each other?

So, I want to get rid of the divisions, but that can be interpreted as this: I don’t believe in ‘[Sing-songy gibberish] We can all…’ I’m against some schools of thought. I’m not touchy feely like ‘The improv community should just get along. Do it that way or do it this way.’ No, just the same way as there’s only one way to drive a stick shift. Take your foot off the gas, put your foot on the clutch, change the gears, take your foot off the clutch and put the gas down. There’s a way to do things. You may do what we’re doing wrong and have it be bad, but when it’s done right I’m not sure why you would be against it if you want to do comedy improv.