Improv calls upon you to think "outside the box" a lot. How do you do that?
"Think outside the box" is just a cute way of saying: add context surrounding the thing you were given rather than limiting yourself to just the thing alone. Where is it? Who owns it? How did they get it? How did we meet? What relationship do we have? What is your social class? What is your job? What city are you from?
When people get big laughs with this sort of thing, it's not obvious how it works. It looks like they're being contrary: going against what they were given. At home, though, you try asking yourself "What wouldn't happen here?" or "What doesn't make sense here?" and everything goes dud. For example, if you're given something red, you say it's blue, or given a helicopter, you say it's got wings and a jet engine. You could call that "against the box".
Opposing what you were given isn't outside the box: it's still inside the box, because you're limited to the kinds of terms that you were given. Outside the box is: if you're given color, you add shape, or weight, or political party, or period in history, or religious symbolism, or childhood event that the color reminds you of, or...? Given a helicopter, you add what you see on the ground from the helicopter, who's in the helicopter with you, where the helicopter is going, where the helicopter took off from, what corporation owns the helicopter, or...?
Outside the box, there's an infinity of possibilities, and no two people's imaginations find the same ones.
For each of the following, imagine which response opens up the most potential for your scene partner.
Here is a cake.
Inside the box: It's got chocolate frosting on it.
Against the box: And look, it's got pickles for frosting!
Outside the box: It says, "Happy Birthday, Fidel Castro--Viva la Revolucciòn!"
Here is a glass.
Inside the box: It's a tall glass with water in it.
Against the box: It's solid glass, holds nothing!
Outside the box: A shot of 120 proof pure single-malt whiskey! Bottoms up, pardner, then we play poker.
Here is a pen.
Inside the box: What a beautiful fountain pen!
Against the box: It's got no ink!
Outside the box: Just sign on the dotted line, sir, and your mother will spend her twilight years in the finest assisted comfort.
What a tall man you are.
Inside the box: Six foot four, to be precise.
Against the box: (Scrunch down) I'm only four feet, and yet I'm tall!
Outside the box: I know the Men's Fashion Depot is San Diego's finest, but I just want an ordinary suit, one that will make me fit in with the common people.
Good morning, Doctor Johnson.
Inside the box: Give me my stethoscope.
Against the box: Can you help me, Nurse, I don't feel so good.
Outside the box: Please send in the patient who was complaining about depression.
You look marvelous this morning!
Inside the box: Isn't my hair especially pretty?
Against the box: Except for this big zit on my nose!
Outside the box: Why, thank you, Big Daddy. I'll turn you some big-spendin' tricks today, I promise!
If you do nothing but "outside the box" stuff, then nothing will exist! To make a convincing reality, you do need some sort of inside-the-box stuff. The cake does need frosting, or a shape, or writing, or some sort of cake-attribute, put in somehow (perhaps in a way that also suggests context, of course).
Often, a lot of the funniest payoffs of building up a rich reality come when you respond in the most obvious, inside-the-box way possible.
For example, in a cooking show where I was playing a superhero who could stretch out his legs very long, I was put into a flashback scene where I was to explain how my super power helped me prepare the dish. Someone added that there was a chicken, and a player entered the scene as the chicken. I said, "I'll trip him," stretched out my leg, the chicken tripped forward, end of flashback. The payoff line was completely inside-the-box, but it was possible only because someone thought to do a flashback and add a chicken--things that were not within the box of earlier action. -- Ben Kovitz
If the scene feels stuck, and you feel mentally stuck so outside-the-box ideas just aren't coming, here are some things you can try:
| • | Just add something inside the box. Maybe that will trigger your scene partner's mind. Or maybe once it's in the scene, that will trigger something outside the box from your mind. Not every line needs to be a wild outside-the-box shift. In fact, most don't. (However, do resist the temptation to go against the box.) |
| • | Pause. Go silent for a moment, so your mind can clear, take note of the scene so far, and let your imagination look for what is just outside the details added so far. Sort of like when you're driving along just noticing the street in front of you, and then you look "more widely" and you see sky and hills and buildings and people all around you. |
| • | Flesh out the platform. If there is no location, where could the scene be? If there is no relationship, how do the characters know each other? If you aren't doing anything yet, what purpose do you have for being here (stakes)? |
| • | Change the subject. A neat technique, when you're stumped, is simply to talk about a completely new subject. For example, if you're in a kitchen, and all the ideas that are coming are just flour and spatulas and you've been at that for a whole minute, you can say, "Say, this morning at Wal-Mart, they had a new greeter." As if the character's mind has wandered. This creates new potential to explore. Maybe you will connect it with the rest of the kitchen scene, maybe it'll lead you in some interesting new direction. |
| • | Cop an accent. Once you're doing an accent, all kinds of other stuff tends to follow. As actor George Segal once told Del Close, "Even if you're five minutes into a scene, it's not too late to put on a foreign accent!" |
| • | Double Word Association. Sort of like getting a random word from a dictionary and then seeing how something in the scene could relate to that. |
| • | Raise the Stakes. If you're doing something for a reason, bring in a deeper reason why that matters do you. |
See also: Context.
Version 31 2005-Aug-10 09:03 UTC
Last edit by Stephen Wilder
