Take The Obvious Choice

Take The Obvious Choice

Sometimes a player in an improv scene is tempted to reject the idea which immediately comes to her in response to an offer. The response seems too obvious, not creative enough. The moment an improver starts commenting or judging herself or the scene in this way, she distances herself from the lifeblood of a scene (her character as well as its evolving status and relationship to the other characters and entities in the scene). She searches for an escape, which often involves sexual material, insults, profantity, etc, which do not spring organically from the scene.

Allowing yourself to take the obvious choices in a scene means trusting the scene and your character's relationship with the other entities. The various primary colours, just as plain colours, are in no way creative in and of themselves. Yet mixed together and juxaposed on a canvas by a painter, they can permit highly creative results. In an improv scene you are a colour (or rather, your character is) and the group mind (your and your scene partners' unconscious minds) are the painters.

Improv audiences get part of their pleasure from seeing improvers give themselves totally to the demands of the scene, including taking the obvious choices. If this sort of improver is playing an assassin, then her scene partner grabs her gun and shoots her, she dies- rather than saying: ha, ha, that's the sample assassin's gun, hands-up here's the real one.