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“MY NEW, PURIFIED SPIRIT”
Improv comedy is supposedto be unplanned, but from what I’ve learned in the last few weeks, there are rules to it, and they include the following:
you are not supposed to start kissing someone during an improvised scene, and
whatever happens between you and your scene partner, you aren’t supposed to take any of it too seriously.
Let me paint a picture first.Imagine a group of grown adults standing around after a few glasses of wine, pretending to be something they’re not. It’s a typical night out in your thirties, perhaps, complete with white lies about the fun jobs people pretend to have, the trips they didn’t really enjoy, the romances that aren’t quite living up to expectations.
Then imagine that everyone is doing this cheerful prevarication as a planned activity. They are gathered in a snug living room in a remote city in Canada, willfully lying to each other for their own entertainment. That will give you a pictureof the Newfingers, Newfoundland’s premiere (only?) improv group, getting together for a practice.
Mark, Lisette and I arrived at Paul’s house at 7:30 sharp that evening for improv practice in his living room. Paul is in his mid-thirties, a couple of years younger than me, and his place is very typical of downtown St. John’s: a wooden clapboard rowhouse from the 1920s, painted a bright yellow outside and small and cozy inside—thoroughly Canadian right down to the antique snowshoes on the wall and the wood stove in the corner. You could practically be living in a Canadian period TV drama when you’re at Paul’s place, complete with wartime yearning and hand-written love letters, if it weren’t for Paul’s extensive DVD collection of 1990s action-comedies.
The improv exercise we were practicing was simple: Paul and I were supposed to act as two characters with different goals, and we would be given a location and an object by the other members of the group.
“Okay, a location,” Lisette said, pursing her fuchsia-tinted lips. Lisette is tiny and bleached blond, with a narrow face and pointed chin; she looks like a grubby Victorian street orphan who got dressed at a punk rock show. “How about a café?”
Paul nodded, and I smiled at him with the adrenaline rush that you get when you know you’re about to embarrass yourself.
“What’s their object, Mark?” Lisette asked.
Mark, the other member of the group, sat back and considered the question like he was a smug political commentator on a news show, sliding a thick hand across his five-o’clock-shadowed chin. “A cassette tape of Miles Davis.”
“Great,” I replied dryly. It was a very Mark choice: irritatingly specific and calculated to be nearly impossible to include in a café scene. Good luck withthat, said his dry little smile.
We had to incorporate both elements into our scene, ideally with humor and surprise. Humor is one of the big goals ofimprov, but it’s also the most elusive one, because you can never achieve it if you’re trying to be funny. You know that feeling when you make a joke and the people around you fall silent, the room sinking into a painful mix of embarrassment and pity? Doing bad improv feels like that, distilled and bottled into an eau du parfum.
Kissingdefinitely wasn’t on the list of scene requirements, so what happened next was probably my fault. I decided to pretend to be Paul’s ex-girlfriend, trying to get back together with him. That would be easy enough for creating conflict, right?
That was my first mistake. Paul is handsome in a quirky way, tall and thin with an unruly cap of curly light brown hair. He has a lopsided smile and boundless energy, and it would have been safer for me to pretend I was his eye doctor, perhaps, or his disgruntled garage mechanic. I’d only known Paul for a few weeks, but I was pretty clear on who he was: one of those charming guys who totally wants to be friends with you and puts up sturdy fencing around the edge of that friendship. The polite heartbreaker. Mr. This-Is-Definitely-Not-A-Date.
Paul started the scene neutrally, sitting at his dining table a couple of feet from us, acting like he was silently meditating. I watched him for a moment and then made my approach.
“So you’re back,” I began. Not the strongest opening line, but that can be a good thing. It leaves the scene room to grow.
“From the monastery, yes,” he said.
I was still pretty new to improv, but I knew enough to take whatever Paul said and run with it. ‘Yes, and…’ is the unofficial rule of improv. Don’t argue with someone when they introduce an idea. Don’t say that they weren’t at a monastery. Say yes to the monastery and add more.
“Well, you look good,” I said. “It looks like you lost weight there.”
“We ate eight hundred calories a day. Near-starvation focuses the spirit.”
“Is that why you ordered a hamburger?” That was my attempt to bring in the café location again. Well done, me.
“I’m not going to eat the bun,” he replied defensively, and Lisette laughed.
I sat down across from him. “So have you been dating anyone since we split up?” There was a twinkle in Paul’s eye as he realized which direction I was taking things.
