Being an Asian comedian, I like to break things down to their components and figure out how things work. Improv is no different to me. My desire is to perform the best improv comedy that I can. In order to do that, I need to understand what works and what doesn’t work. As a result of my years and years of performing and now that I’m teaching improv, I am coming close to understanding what works in improv and why. Also, what doesn’t work in improv and why? I’m going to do a series of blogs on Improv Comedy Theory. I’m going in no particular order.
Today, I want to talk about motivation. By motivation I mean character motivation - what motivates your character to act or react the way they do.
Rookie Mistakes: When new improv performers step on stage as a character, I generally see a strange and wacky character. Maybe they have a foreign accent, speech impediment, or they walk or move in a weird way. The other thing I see is the overreaction. Characters tend to be super angry, super horny, super happy. I believe “over the top” best describes these characters. If done well, the audience will laugh when the character walks on stage – Mission accomplished. Now what? The rookie has nowhere to go except to maintain this kind of energy.
So you’ve got this great character, what do you do with it? The answer to simple – History. Simple answer but difficult execution, especially when you created this character 10 seconds before walking on stage.
How do you execute motivation? By making motivation and history the first thing you think about before you add character traits and attributes. If you can create a character that has history that person now has depth. After that, when you add personality traits the character has dimension.
What is motivation/history? In real life, people are not happy, sad, angry, high strung, insecure, romantic, etc. because it’s their personality. They exhibit these emotions for a reason. I’m may be insecure, because I don’t trust myself to make a good decision. I’m high strung because I don’t trust people to live up to my expectations. When I have 10 seconds to come up with a character, I ask myself, what my character wants from the other actor’s character. Once I identify what I want, then I decide how I’m going to get it. Will I be aggressive? Passive? Cunning? Once I know what I want and how I act to get it, when as the scene progressing, I can develop history.
This past weekend, I was playing Potpourri Replay. The premise was an alligator escaped from a farm. A little boy sees the alligator and decides to make it his pet. The alligator then eats the boy. We had to replay the scene in three styles: Shakespeare, Western and Musical.
I was the little boy in the scene and because I was going to get eaten 4 times, the goal is to make the approach to the scene different each time.
The set up scene was easy, the boy’s motivation was he wanted a pet because he has no friends. He finds an alligator that will be his friend. . And then he gets eaten.
In Shakespeare, the boy’s motivation was the exploration of friendship. And in Shakespearian fashion, the boy monologues about the virtues of unconditional friendship be it between people or animals. And then he gets eaten.
The Western was my favorite. The boy’s motivation was that he was man enough to have a real pet. He was kicked out of his home, because his father thought he was a sissy boy for playing with cats and poodles. To prove his manhood, he takes an alligator as a pet because he knows his dad will be proud. And then he gets eaten.
Finally for a musical, a young boy with dreams of making the world a happier place sings about the wonderful things in life, such a bright colors, flowers and rainbow. Even a pet alligator, can be a wonderful, colorful experienced. And then he gets eaten.
A boy taking in an alligator as a pet is a weird concept. Just that idea the scene is in danger of going nowhere. But when you add motivation, you have a scene that can come to life.
The Crazy Character. So I have this crazy character that I think the audience will love. If you don’t have history or motivation, you’ll find that your crazy character will appeal to the audience for just a few seconds. You essentially have a one note character.
I see this alot from rookie players. They come on stage with a character that has a really heavy ethnic accent. Then they go into a series of ethnic stereotypes. And that’s it. Aside from being offensive, all this crazy character really has is an accent, and the only comedy you can pull out of it is stereotypes and then raising the stakes by becoming increasingly more and more offensive. That’s fine, but you run the risk of alienating your audience and coming off as a racist moron.
By giving the character a history and motivation, you can take this character with the accent and give him dimension and reason to act the way he does.
I have a character that I like to use in Good Advice, Bad Advice. His name is Bruno LaFontaine and he’s…let’s say incredibly effeminate. Other people have described him as gay. But I definitely play this character over-the-top effeminate/gay. What makes the character work is not that he gay and everything he does is pick up guys and play into other stereotypes, its his history. I made him the current Mr. Universe but he used to be a dancer in Musical Theatre. I use this character in Good Advice, Bad Advice, because he can relate to the audience is a funny way. When an audience members asks, whether or not they should quit their job. Bruno speaks of a time when everyone expected him to be a dancer on Broadway, but he’s not a dancer. He’s a body builder. (It’s funnier on stage).
Whether Bruno is gay or not is not the most important thing for the scene. Bruno being incredibly effeminate is secondary to a character who finally is happy with himself because he’s following his passion of being a body builder and not a dancer.
I’d love to hear your comment about this article and whether you agree or not.
Alan
www.mypalal.com
www.themeparkshopper.com
www.nationalcomedy.com
