Emotion in improv: when to start big and when to stay grounded

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Emotions make us human. And it's something that we normally want to have in our scenes. I hope. I hope you want to have some emotions in your scenes. Because this is what will connect you with your scene partner. It's what's going to

And emotions is also what we can use to relate to what's happening in the scene. To our character. It can give our characters some depth. And it's what makes all of us pay more attention. Usually to a scene or ourselves or our characters. Like if you burst into tears or you fly into rage. We're going to be paying more attention in these scenarios.

And these emotions, they can let us achieve this quickly at the top of a scene. And that's what I'm talking about in this episode. It's what I've been talking about in the previous few episodes. Initiations, setting that base reality, what happens at the very beginning of a scene. I'm Jen deHaan and this is Your Improv Brain, where I break down improv concepts, often through a neurodivergent lens, and give you exercises

to practice with a scene partner or solo.

Now, emotions can certainly be complicated, and some of us don't process them immediately.

Like delayed emotional processing, it exists, it's a thing.

Some of us, it takes a while to process those emotions, and for other people, they can process them right away.

Some of us have a very tough time labeling an emotion accurately. Or at all, really. This is a real thing that affects some of us. We might have difficulty taking that emotional label and then knowing how to express it, what that's like, what that even feels like. Alexithymia affects 10% of the population and includes things like this. So if you experience it, I do. You're not alone.

if you have some of these issues. These are challenges for some of us, especially when it comes to improv, where a lot of our classes assume we know how to do this. I've never had a class that I've taken from somebody that has ever, ever addressed this issue. I've taken hundreds of improv classes. I've done so many emotions-based

exercises. I've never had anyone talk about this. So please know that you're not alone and please know that there are workarounds at all times for all of these exercises. You can implement them yourself and you oftentimes don't ever have to bring that up and say, hey, I have this or I need to do this. You can just do it yourself. Regardless, these are challenges that we can work on.

But for now, we're talking about the top of a scene. So emotions within the context of base reality. Now, I suspect that some of you might be thinking, but we never want to start a scene with a big emotion. Most scenes start fairly grounded. This is true. The most common scene starts grounded, regular level emotion, everyday scene, and this is good.

We want most scenes to start off this way. This is what works best usually. It's a good way to start a scene when you're newer to improv because it's more difficult to start a scene with a big emotion. So this is why we're often taught don't have a big emotion right at the top of the scene. It's sometimes turned into a rule, but sometimes you can break that rule. And when it's broken, it can be fantastic.

It can be bad, but it can also be great, as is true of most improv. Like, I remember a scene stuck in my head, and that's rare. I've seen a lot of scenes. I forget most of the scenes, but this is one I remember when it was initiated by grabbing a chair, standing on that chair, and just yelling top of the lungs, top volume, huge emotional outburst, and it was absolutely fantastic. It was one of the best scenes

I've seen. So you can start with this kind of emotional overreaction and oftentimes to something mundane. That sort of seems to be how it goes. You're going to be starting that scene with an emotional level of 10. You have that huge energy and then you have to bring it down and then you can bring it up again. This is a challenge. That's a more advanced move, but it can be great. It can turn a scene into something very memorable, but you have to practice this as well.

to start a scene in the middle of that level of drama and emotion. If it's done well, it can be great. But to do those things well, you do need to practice. So here is some practice that you can do to practice this technique so you can get good at it. So two people are up for this first one. And for the next version of the exercise, it will be a solo practice. So for the first one, two people up.

This is great as a warm-up style exercise, or you can let that scene continue and do a full scene. So I'm going to call this exercise It's Tuesday. So player one is going to initiate the scene with a really mundane statement, something like It's Tuesday. And then player two is going to react to that initiation with a huge emotion, a great big emotion sound. For example, they can react

with extreme terror.

They don't need to use words.

They can just use a big sound to start it off.

And then they're going to justify why they find that statement.

So say terrifying or exciting or whatever the emotion is.

So mundane statement initiation, player one, player two, extreme emotional reaction,

and then justify that reaction.

The scene can play on from there. Another way to do this exercise, pretty much the same thing, is flipping that. So player one instead is going to initiate the scene with that huge over-the-top emotional statement or emotional sound. And then player two is going to react to that with just a level-headed justification for whatever it was player one did.

So this one's a little bit more challenging. It might be the version that you play after this first one that kind of as a level two of it because player two has to come up with an immediate justification for that big emotional sound. So a solo practice that you can do for this. You're going to be practicing making big emotional choices right off the bat.

big emotional sounds or big emotional statements as a justification. So you're going to be practicing this one alone in a room. Divide up your room into segments and each segment is going to represent an emotion. So assign those emotions to each segment. You can write them down if you want or you can just have segments without emotions applied in your room and you're just going to express a bit of a

So step into each space in your room and immediately start a monologue or a sentence in a big emotional state. So step into space one, big emotional statement, then go into a new segment of your room and switch right away. And this is again, training your ability to just really ramp it up really quickly.

fast without needing a scene partner to provoke you. Because a lot of us do use our scene partners to sort of bounce off emotionally, which is great. But if you are doing this at the top of a scene, you oftentimes don't have anything to go off of. So that's what you're practicing in the solo exercise. And remember, if you have difficulty processing emotions, improv is about accepting what everyone puts in.

into a scene. And we're all supposed to be there. It's all valid for us to be there. Even if we process emotions differently. And again, that's 10% of us. So if you don't know what to label something or you don't know what you're feeling right now, anything within this realm of alexithymia, you can always use what word or what description comes to you first. If you need to express something or anything,

You can always go with whatever you're actually feeling even if you don't have a name for it and heighten that thing right away. You can if this works for you, you can use flash memory jump back to a time in your life where you felt a certain way. Maybe you've processed it and have a label for it now, but it happened way in the past. Jump back to that time. Remember how you felt and then use that in a scene that works for some of us.

And scene partners, if you don't have alexithymia, you don't have any emotional processing issues, remember to have everyone's back. Know that 10% of improvisers, which is probably someone that you're improvising with, does function this way. And it's physiological for many of us. We're born this way. Sometimes trauma starts it. But a lot of people have this. That's what matters. So have everyone's back. I'm Jen deHaan.

And this is your ImprovBrain. You can find a bunch of improv resources, including downloads, at improvupdate.com. Bye for now.