In improv, an initiation is the first line or action of a scene that communicates information about what one player is interested in exploring comedically to another player.
I was recently at a bar after a show hanging with some friends and we began playing a game to see who could come up with the worst pick up line. And whoever had the worst pick up line was then exhorted to actually put it into action at the bar. Being that I was sitting with a group of comedians, most of whom were geniuses in their own right, their versions of “worst” pick up lines were fantastically absurd, ridiculous, harrowing, disturbing and, of course, hilarious to imagine putting into action. Whenever I’m in these situations I always get a little nervous because I never feel like I can live up to the jokes of the people I respect. So as I watched the bit circling my way, listening to my respected peers and teachers pulling out some pretty amazing, horrible lines, I realized I was way in over my head.
So I didn’t try to be funny. I just tried to be worse. And I offered up my worst pick line:
“You know the saying ‘like father, like son?’ Well, my father is on death row for rape and murder, want to help me prove the saying wrong?”
Needless to say I won. And it wasn’t long before I was up on my feet making a fool of myself in front of the first girl I could.
ME: You know the saying ‘like father, like son?’ Well, my father is on death row for rape and murder—
HER (interrupting): No shit! I love serial killers!
ME: Excuse me, what?
HER: I love serial killers. (leans in, whispering) How many people did he kill?
ME: (taken aback) Uh, one… (realizing) Uh, well, none actually… (beat) I don’t think my dad is guilty.
An uncomfortable beat of silence. Then:
HER: Oh
She got her stuff, closed her tab and left without so much as justifying why she was tottally hot over my dad being in prison and then so blarringly cold when I revealed that not only is my father not a serial killer who killed tens if not hundreds of people, but that he probably didn’t kill anyone at all.
So I turned around and walked back to the table to relish my relative success.
My dad’s situation is indeed the worst pickup line ever.
CORPORATE GIGS!
I just did my first corporate improv gig. It was at a Radisson Hotel in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I will repeat that because I think it bears repeating for the sheer ridiculousness of it: paid… improv gig…at the Radisson Hotel… in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania..
It was a convention for an organization called LEARN (Logical Education and Research Network) and its members were extraordinarily hospitable and welcoming but they were also the type of people you’d expect to not only be in an organization called LEARN but to actually travel across the country to attend a convention being held in a Radisson Hotel in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Because of this, there were a few pre-show guidelines that we went over. And by guidelines I mean we were told what we could and couldn’t do and what specific “go-tos” that work at the theater should almost certainly be avoided in front of this crowd. Naturally, the four of us asked what our go-tos were. We were told. The other go-tos were general basics: sex, race, violence, etc. My two go-tos were hyper specific: homeless bums who philosophize about how the world is overrun with conspiratorial aliens (this is a GO-TO mind you, something I apparently do A LOT at the theater!) and depressing references to having a dad on death row.
YIKES! I can understand homeless bums and alien conspiracies. Those are merely things of interest. But to be told I couldn’t use real content from my real life in an improv show when I have been specifically trained that there is TRUTH IN COMEDY was shocking to me. Admittedly, it was not as shocking as the fact that I make enough references to homeless people and alien conspiracies to be considered a go-to. But it was still shocking.
I don’t normally respond well to being told what I can’t do. And I especially don’t respond well to it when I’m being told not to be who I am—and having a dad on death row is very much an honest and open part of my life. BUT there was no argument. I was being paid $100 to do improv, which is a fucking victory in and of itself, and we were being told what we couldn’t do while eating a complimentary grilled lemon chicken and garlic mashed potatoes dinner that all of the other convention attendees were eating. So there was literally NO hesitation to accept being on my best behavior. For the record: the going price of my artistic integrity is $100 and a chicken dinner.
And then the show started. Everything was going fine until a scene happened wherein a businessman was on a bus to Baltimore because he thought it was going to be his Shangri-La.
Now let’s parse that real quick:
A businessman (white, moneyed, college-educated) on a bus (what happened that justifies why a man of means was riding the bus?) to Baltimore (a crime-ridden shit hole of a city!) because he thought it was going to be his Shangri-La (what kind of crazy person would tell him this and why?!).
To me, the answer was pretty obvious. I tagged my teammate out and became a crazy homeless person with paranoid conspiracy theories telling the businessman that because Baltimore is the only place where you can get away with murder and not go to jail—because the alien conspiracy had selected Baltimore as a city to house all of the “unwanted” humans—it would be a veritable Shangri-La for anyone looking to satiate their murderous urges on weekends and be back home for the family during the week.
Reading that back in print makes me sound like a pretty disturbed and potentially terrible comedian. Doing it live in front of an audience I was specifically told to avoid said attempts at humor in front of made me feel like a genius. Because the audience fucking LOVED it.
No one mentioned the irony on the car ride back to the city. All we could talk about was our free chicken dinner.
A couple days ago in my Advanced Study class at UCB half of the class got up to do a Harold and we did a pattern game for our opener (see below for a brief explanation of a pattern game if you are unfamiliar). The suggestion was JURASSIC PARK. Someone said STEVEN SPIELBERG. Someone else said DAD ISSUES. And someone else said ALL THE DAD ISSUES SPIELBERG HASN’T TACKLED YET. This led to everyone throwing out some dad issue that he or she thought was funny or interesting. This consisted mostly of premises like DADS WHO TRY TO LIVE THEIR LIFE THROUGH THEIR CHILDREN and DAD WHO NAGS HIS SON FROM THE GHOST WORLD. These premises, while I suppose mildly humorous, were pretty hackneyed and uninteresting to me, which is why I went for broke and said HAVING A DAD WHO IS ON DEATH ROW FOR RAPE AND MURDER… LIKE I DO.
The class came to a stand still. Most of the people in the class didn’t know if I was joking or serious. That had a lot to do with the fact that most of the people in the class don’t know me much outside of class, aside from the occasional meeting at this or that improv jam. So this was the first time any of these people heard me say that my father was on death row, but I could pretty easily tell this was the first time any of these people had heard ANYONE say that their father was on death row. Sheltered, privileged lot these are.
I could sense the tension I created and loved it, but for the sake of the class I felt it necessary to at least attempt to cut through it, so I followed my reveal up with “REALIZING MURDER RUNS IN YOUR FAMILY BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS KILL A CONVERSATION… LIKE I JUST DID WITH THIS PATTERN GAME.”
This made things exponentially worse. Not only because making jokes in improv is counterproductive to really discovering the overall comedic game of a scene, especially when the joke is meta and ironically detached, but mostly because this just fucked with the white, middle-class, innocent, SAFE sensibilities of the people in my class. Sex jokes and Star Wars references are the comme il faut source of comedic material in the NYC improv community, not brutal truths. So dropping something like this was particularly wicked of me to have done. But any comedian lives for these moments. Some even kill for them. Runs in the family. See, I couldn’t resist.
PATTERN GAME
An opener for a Harold that employs free-association in order to generate ideas and themes and, especially at UCB, games for the scenes in the Harold. The pattern game begins with a suggestion. Off of that suggestion players begin making word associations using a technique called A to C where one word makes you think of another word that makes you think of another word. That third word is then offered up to the group as the association. Eventually, a sequence of words will emerge that together generates an interesting or unusual idea that is called out or labeled. This is often the idea, theme or game that is further explored as a potential premise to begin a scene with.
For instance, if the suggestion were STATUESQUE (A), a player might think of STATUES (B) and then might think of VENUS DE MILO (C) and say “Venus de Milo.” Hearing VENUS DE MILO (A), another player might think of HAVING NO ARMS (B) and then might think of PROSTHETIC LIMBS (C) and say, “prosthetic limbs.” At this point, the audience laughs because there is something interesting about the juxtaposition of VENUS DE MILO and PROSTHETIC LIMBS. A player might hear this and think of SOMEONE WHO PUTS PROSTHETIC LIMBS ON THE VENUS DE MILO (B) and then might think of SOMEONE WHO GOES AROUND “FIXING” WORKS OF ART (C) and say, “someone who goes around ‘fixing’ works of art.”
This now becomes an idea, theme and game that can be played in a scene and the players begin exploring various instances where this is true. One player might say STRAIGHTENING THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA. Another player might say ENLARGING DAVID’S PENIS. And another player might say SPACKLING THE CRACK IN THE LIBERTY BELL. Hearing that the team has rallied around the idea, a player will associate off of the last pitched idea and go back to a pattern of associations in order to return to the suggestion. SPACKLING THE CRACK IN THE LIBERTY BELL (A) to SPACKLING HOLES IN MY APARTMENT (B) to GETTING MY LANDLORD TO FIX MY APARTMENT (C). And so on from there until you return to STATUESQUE.
And the suggestion we received was DEATH PENALTY.
As is so often the case when asked for a suggestion of “anything” at all, an audience member will yell out a suggestion that is timely or controversial. If it is both timely AND controversial it’s all but guaranteed to be enthusiastically proffered. And considering that we are currently in the midst of the hoopla over the upcoming execution of Troy Davis, DEATH PENALTY seemed pretty apt.
Now, everyone on my team knows about my father. So they all kind of turned to me in deference of any moves I had up my sleeve. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of people in the audience — a lot of friends and students come out to the house team shows so I know a lot of people in the audience and many know all about my family situation — were doing the same. So I felt a nagging pressure to step out and take the stage that seemed to be left alone for my taking. So that’s what I did. I fucking took the stage, even though I honestly had no idea what I was going to say or do when I got there.
But as I was stepping forward, something flashed in my mind. I thought about how much I felt the Troy Davis thing had become a circus of needless opinions and thought about how people were talking about the death penalty and Troy Davis and the judicial system at large the same way they would talk about the Yankees at the bar. I also thought about what it would be like to watch my father be executed and if there would be similar hoopla when and if that ever comes to pass. So I had all of those ideas swirling in my head and somehow something instantly synthesized them all into one crystal clear initiation as I walked on stage, pulled two chairs out with me, sat down in one of them and began pantomiming that I was eating some sort of junk food from a concessions stand.
ME: Take it all in, Son. These are the best seats I’ve ever gotten to an execution before.
There was a HUGE LAUGH from the audience. Probably out of shock. Maybe the hipper people could already see what this scene could become. But at this moment I knew I had them on my side, even though I didn’t yet have a clue what came next. That was until I continued:
ME (cont’d): You can actually see the brand name on the injection cocktail from here! (reading) Nembutal.
ANOTHER LAUGH. This one was a little bit smaller, but it was because it was less shocking and the audience was computing the comedic game in their head. The hippest amongst them could see that this scene was most likely going to be a scene about taking your child to a ball game and all the proud father-son relationship business incumbent with having scored some impressive seats. What makes it comedy is that the ball game was an execution—a very simple “mapping” game, as it were, and my scene partner was all over it.
SON: That’s the drug all the best executioners are using these days, right Dad?
From there, my scene partner and I created a beautifully haunting scene about the experience of a father taking his son out to a ball game and sharing his experiences and imparting life lessons. There were mentions of past executions seen both on television and live at the prison, and how much like a baseball game in a ballpark, the colors and sounds and smells you only get from seeing the event live added so much to the richness of the sport—again, the sport was a murderer being injected to death with drugs. There was talk of fundamentals, sacrifice and teamwork. There was even a moment where the comparison was heightened to the surreal:
ME: I know you’re good at killing little animals son, but if you ever want to get to the big leagues you have to practice. 10,000 hours of executions.
It was a beautiful textbook improv scene and the audience rewarded us for our play. And it all was made possible by the fact that I have a dad on death row and a personal connection to the memories of seeing games with my father and watching him shine as a dad.
Sometimes I can’t help myself but I love any opportunity to contextualize a scene by making it take place in a prison, especially if the improvisers in the scene haven’t established a location yet and my doing so as a prison makes the audience re-contextualize everything they’ve seen with the reveal that it was always taking place in the most fucked up space. A perfect example of such a move happened in my show last night.
Two improvisers took the stage, sat down and began playing Monopoly. After a few back and forth lines, one of the players labeled the other as “SON” and made himself “FATHER” and the game of the scene became the “SON” always getting annoyed that the FATHER always took on a ridiculous persona whenever they would play a competitive board game or sport (in this instance the FATHER had taken on a persona of a late 19th century industrialist named Charles Beauregard). What made the scene really pop was that the SON would get more and more frustrated because the FATHER would take the persona further and further depending on how much he was winning, which in this case was by a lot. Naturally, the scene boiled to a moment where the SON stands up and calls his FATHER out on his behavior.
SON: Your name is not Charles Beauregard. You’re not an industrialist from the 19th century. Your name is Bill and you’re an idiot.
The SON threatens to leave if the FATHER continues behaving this way. The FATHER drops the persona and says in his real voice:
FATHER: Please don’t go. You rarely visit me.
Again, up to this point in the scene there had been no mention of where they were, and with the improviser’s use of the word “visit” and no real reaction from the audience it seemed like a fair assumption was that this was taking place in the home of a parent who lived far away and given the absence of mention of “MOM” was perhaps a divorcé or even a widower. But that’s not what I saw.
The second I heard the word “visit” I thought of my father. Because that’s the word in the prison world for seeing someone in prison and I sure know what it’s like to not visit a father in prison who lives on the other side of the country.
So in my mind this is all taking place in prison and I walked onstage, went to where the improviser-qua-FATHER was seated and I said to him sternly,
ME: You got ten minutes, Bill. Then it’s back to your cell.
And just like that, this scene was now taking place in a prison. And when the audience realized that that meant it always had been taking place in a prison they howled. And then I howled.
Because when I saw this scene in my mind I thought to myself what could be more ridiculous than my dad in a prison jump suit and chains beating me at Monopoly and doing a crazy 19th century voice to me to rub it in?
Nothing.
I am participating in National Sketch Writing Month and am basing all of my sketches off of a suggestion from Wikipedia’s random article generator. The titles of each sketch will be the titles of the articles. Along with a link to my sketch, I have included a link to the Wikipedia entry so that you may see my source of inspiration (and if so inclined, care to locate the actual moment in the article that made me go: PREMISE!).
Here is the latest sketch:
And here is the Wikipedia article it was based on:
I am participating in National Sketch Writing Month and am basing all of my sketches off of a suggestion from Wikipedia’s random article generator. The titles of each sketch will be the titles of the articles. Along with a link to my sketch, I have included a link to the Wikipedia entry so that you may see my source of inspiration (and if so inclined, care to locate the actual moment in the article that made me go: PREMISE!).
Here are the last three sketches:
Southern California Institute of Law
And here are the Wikipedia articles they were based on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasie%C5%84,_Gmina_%C5%81opuszno
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_Institute_of_Law
I am participating in National Sketch Writing Month and am basing all of my sketches off of a suggestion from Wikipedia’s random article generator. The titles of each sketch will be the titles of the articles. Along with a link to my sketch, I have included a link to the Wikipedia entry so that you may see my source of inspiration (and if so inclined, care to locate the actual moment in the article that made me go: PREMISE!).
Here is today’s sketch:
Here is today’s article:
I am participating in National Sketch Writing Month and am basing all of my sketches off of a suggestion from Wikipedia’s random article generator. The titles of each sketch will be the titles of the articles. Along with a link to my sketch, I have included a link to the Wikipedia entry so that you may see my source of inspiration (and if so inclined, care to locate the actual moment in the article that made me go: PREMISE!).
Here is today’s sketch:
Connecticut Academic Performance Test
Here is today’s article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Academic_Performance_Test
I am participating in National Sketch Writing Month and am basing all of my sketches off of a suggestion from Wikipedia’s random article generator. The titles of each sketch will be the titles of the suggestion. I will also include links to the Wikipedia entry so that you may see my source of inspiration. Here is today’s sketch:
