Part 1: Beyond Yes and No

Two things compel an audience’s attention, Character and Story. I think of Story as being characters getting from point A to point B. Writers can exercise their godlike overview to balance the exploration of Character and the advancement of Story, but an improviser must perform the balancing act live. The central tenet of TheatreSports is “Say Yes” because it helps preserve that balance. Actors love Character, love slipping into that mask because being in Character is being in the moment. I remember Geoff Hyland saying that the aim of the actor is to preserve life on stage; the shaping is the director’s purpose. In performance improvisation (as opposed to rehearsal or therapeutic improv) the shaping is equally the actor’s, leaving no space for being in the moment as an abdication of responsibility. What do I mean by this? Bluntly, too often I’ve heard actors defend a choice or, worse, a block onstage by talking about what felt right for a character. The following are my thoughts on several issues that have been raised and briefly explored during the weekly TheatreSports classes.

First of all it must be clear that Improvised performance is not a chess game, what is less clear is that it does share similarities. The correct moves and responses are infinite but not wholly unpredictable. Like mathematical chaos it is non-repeating but self-similar. With 2 clear goals in mind the performer can reliably produce work that will engage the audience. These goals are interesting Characters and a satisfying Story. The Story is a collaborative creation, while Character is the individuals’ responsibility. Saying Yes is how we accept the past conditions of the characters and story (the relationships, where they came from, the characters’ histories, etc), the present conditions (what they want, where they are, what that sound is, etc) and the future (what we will do next, what will happen if we cut this wire, etc). The foundation of Improv is acceptance – it is the first skill that needs to be learnt to play successfully. And it is a skill. Our habit as actors (especially formally trained actors) is to put our characters first and create conflict with other characters. An aggressive philosophy of Yes breaks this habit and from there the performer can grasp the different nuances of accepting offers and collaboratively creating Story.

But Yes isn’t the totality of acceptance and No is not always a block. That binary is a learning tool and like any lesson, once mastered it reveals its limitations. Experienced Improvisers have mastered acceptance and know how to judge offers coming at them and shape their responses to create a satisfying story. It now becomes harder for me to categorise acceptance because Yes and No are too limiting, we need to have the words to express the qualities and conditions a performer colours his acceptance with. The lexicon must expand to Yes, No, Accepting, Blocking, Justifying, Ignoring, Tilting, Gagging, Delaying, Rushing, Resisting, Negating – all of which affect Character and Story in different ways. Let’s first have a look at this lexicon.

• Yes – The basic touchstone of acceptance. It’s almost impossible to Block when you begin your sentence with Yes. It becomes a tricky subject when followed by modifiers like But and Just as we will see shortly.
• No – the original block, whether it’s trying to establish past or present conditions or propose a future course of action. It’s beguiling because as a response it has the potential for 2 things that actors love: Reversal of Expectations and Conflict.
• Accepting – when the Improvisers agree on the Past and Present conditions and proposals for the future. The opposite of Accepting is Blocking.
• Blocking – undermining the shared reality of the scene (Performer 1: “What’s that sound?” Performer 2: “I don’t hear anything”) or ‘blocking’ the forward momentum of the scene such as by refusing to perform a proposed action (like refusing to hand over the cash).
• Expanding – ‘Yes and…’ accepting the offer and building on it. It doesn’t have to be literally worded but the concept is the foundation of great collaboration (“Is that the letter from Dad?” “Yes, he writes about how sorry is about the holiday”).
• Justifying – the very subtle art of keeping reality together. Mostly accepting offers is enough, but sometimes a contradiction emerges on stage. These are usually accidental like misnavigating the mimed environment or getting a character’s name wrong, but sometimes they’re created by performers insisting on their own agenda in a scene. Justifying is reconciling the contradictions, when done obviously it draws attention to the mistake, when done subtly it creates a satisfying and rich world on stage.
• Ignoring – when an actor doesn’t respond to the offers of another actor, this can range from the gentleman’s block of changing the subject (Performer 1:“How was your holiday in Majorca?” Performer 2: “Do you hear that scratching sound?”) to outright ignoring the other performer. But by far the most common form of Ignoring is ignoring the set-up of space such as the door and table the first performer has lovingly established.
• Tilting – is the accepting of an offer, but in the process modifies it in an unexpected way, hence ‘tilting’ our expectations (“Is the weather bad outside?” “Terrible. Sunny, not a cloud in the sky – horrible for Vampires like us”). It can be a very funny and very satisfying moment, often enough to be the punch line ending a scene, but it can also be frustrating if played too often, or it can create Pointless Originality, and then there is Tilting’s evil twin, Gagging.
• Gagging – is making a joke (often a terrible pun) at the expense of the scene. It can be the deliberate misunderstanding of an offer (“Do you know John too?” “John 2? Yes, and John 3, 4 and 5… But I’ve never met John 1”) or playing the parody of a genre, rather than the genre itself (A cliché in Soap Opera scenes: “Dan! My long lost brother’s fiancé’s uncle’s bestfriend’s former roommate’s evil twin!”).
• Delaying – holding back the action while accepting an offer. This is a Yes, But or Just – as in “Yes, but just let me shut off the alarm.” Delaying is not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you need to complete an action to Justify the reality of the scene when another actor gets ahead of himself. To know when Delaying or Rushing are right depends on the performer’s sense of the pace of the scene.
• Rushing – accepting the offer, dealing with it and moving on to a new proposal (Performer 1: “I’ll give you the money, but first you must find and return my mother’s pearl necklace” Performer 2: “OK, great. Luckily I found it on my way in. Here you are”) again, it depends on the pace the scene needs. That exchange would be terrible if played in the opening minute, but necessary if an ending was needed.
• Resisting – accepting but not committing to the acceptance. There are 2 sides to this: the resistance of the actor and the resistance of the character. The first is unacceptable, pointblank unacceptable. The performance is a group creation and 1 actor being ‘above it,’ ‘out of it’ or generally telegraphing to the audience a negative judgment of the ideas of the others is a saboteur. The resistance of character is a different animal, a character can be scared to go into the cave, unsure that robbing the bank is a good idea or furious that they’ve fallen into a trap – but they go into the cave, rob the bank and fall into the trap none the less.
• Negating – making proposals that counter the offers of the other performers to keep the negater in control of the progression of the scene (Performer 1: “I anticipated your betrayal and removed the bullets from your gun!” Performer 2: “I anticipated your anticipation and put them back”).

Ok, that brings me to the end of part 1. In part 2 I’ll explore how these concepts relate to Character in a more detailed way and conclude in part 3 with Story.

I have been a performer of TheatreSports since 2005 with ImproGuise (formerly Improvision) and owe a lot of my ideas and understanding to the members of the company, past and present, especially Megan Furniss. And of course to Keith Johnstone and the ITI.