Assuming

Kevin Hines used to tell me that the voice of reason was the “Keeper of all truths.” This basically means that, your character has already experienced the unusual thing your scene partner is doing (unless you are strangers tsk tsk). So nothing should come as a completely surprise to you, and you probably know their reason for being unusual.

I think this is important because we the improviser do not know why, but our character does. And when we the improviser say something about our scene partner, it feels like we are assuming something, but in reality, we are just pulling out a fact from a scene/world that we just happen to be a part of.

For instance, in a show I did this weekend, my scene partner Crispin (wife in the scene) had an odd energy and facial expression towards Andrew’s character, and when I saw that, it felt familiar to my character, so me the improviser made an assumption that Crispin felt some sort of way about Andrew. But my character having lived a life with Crispin simply said “don’t try to adopt this one (adult man) too” because to them they had already tried to adopt adults in the past. Nobody knew this until my character said it.

I could have just as easily asked “why are you looking at him like that” but the stronger move was to endow because of course my character already knew. I wasted less time and got to the meat and the fun of the relationship instead of waiting for Crispin to fill in the gaps.

There is nothing wrong with asking why…..I actually love when students get to the point where they are asking why, but remember that a majority of the time your character ALREADY KNOWS and you the improviser are just dodging making a choice for the scene.

If you are ever in your head thinking you have no idea what is going on in the scene, trust me, everyone in the scene is thinking the same thing. You can clear all that clutter up by just making some choices for what you think is going on. You can’t break the scene because there is nothing to break yet. The worst choice you can make is no choice. Any choice you make breaks us from that feeling of “I don’t know.”