You don't need backstory: starting scenes in the middle

WEBVTT

So here we are at the very beginning of the scene, the top of a scene. You're starting a scene and you need to set up some kind of base reality. You have to figure out what this scene is about.

And if you want to make it really hard on yourself, you can have two people up standing there on the stage asking, hey, so who are you? Or what are you doing here? Or what are we doing here? Backstories and long explanations are something that we often do if we're writing a story, like a piece of fiction or something, or a long audio fiction series, because you have to get that reader up to speed about what's going on.

But in improv, particularly if you're doing game-based scenes or game-based improv, we don't want all of that backstory. We don't want the exposition. Because that sort of stuff, especially at the top of the scene, is going to get in the way. It might even bore people. It's just not needed, basically. In this episode and the next few episodes of this show, Your Improv Brain, I'm talking about the top of the scene.

and our initiations and setting up these realities. 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. There's a book out there and you might have heard of it. It's called Truth in Comedy because it's widely referenced. If you've taken an improv class, you've probably heard of this book.

It's very famous. And I'll add a link to the show notes. This book states fairly explicitly that this kind of exposition, this background story stuff, it's not great. Like if you're watching a scene as part of an audience and you're watching these two performers up there on the stage, just kind of working this stuff out at the top of the scene, it's not exciting and it might be pretty dull for you.

you want to skip all of that. You want to, you know, like if you're listening to podcasts, you're hitting that fast forward 30 second button. So it's the job of the improv performers to kind of hit that skip button, to skip past of that part of the scene. And one way to avoid starting the scenes this way is to just pretend that the scene actually began a while before it actually started. And that you as a performer, you already know all that stuff. Even though as a performer, you don't.

actually know all that stuff yet so the relationship is already established at this part of the scene the context is already clear to the characters you know why you're there you also know why the other person is there so as performers you just need to kind of step into the middle of this action and this ends up sparing the whole audience all of that negotiation phase

between the actors about that thing that's actually happening. It's kind of fourth wall breaking if the audience is watching the actors kind of work this stuff out, which is why you don't want to do it. You also don't want to do it because it takes you as the actor out of the character if you're trying to work that stuff out. And this is because you're thinking about the improvisation, not about just being that person, being that character.

and sort of sort out the backstory, all those little details about what's happening, why it's happening, all that kind of stuff, while you're flying through that scene when it comes up. So that pertinent backstory, those parts, the ones that you figure out actually matter, are going to be discussed along the way while you do that scene. Only the essential pieces, like through justification and so on. Those are the pieces that you're going to add.

All right, let's get back to the top of the scene stuff, how this relates to the top of the scene. So I'm going to give you a couple of exercises to help you with this. So one of the exercises is going to work if you have a scene partner or scene partners. And the other exercise I give you is something that you can do to practice on your own. So for the two person scene, you're going to have two players up. And this will also work really well if you want to do it as a warm up exercise.

if you don't want to run through the whole scene. Because this is a top of the scene practice, it works very well as a warm-up. So player one is going to start a physical action and player two is going to immediately identify what that action is and also justify it. So you're going to be agreeing on this reality that you set up right away. Whatever the action is, whatever is happening right away, right now. Get it out of the way.

So this ends up forcing the scene to just kind of start with a little bit of momentum behind it. Now if you want player one can also start that physical action and player two can identify the action and then it can go back to player one to justify it. So that's a little bit more working together and a little bit more challenging as well because you have to be on your toes about what your scene partner says if you're player one what your player two scene partner says about what you're doing you have to be ready to just

justify it right away and you don't know what they're going to say because a physical action can be a whole lot of different things depending on who's interpreting it if you want a little bit more challenge still the coach or the teacher can actually make certain physical actions illegal they can write them out you can't wash dishes for example that's a very common one so if the coach or the teacher wants to add a little bit more challenge they can say a whole bunch of physical actions are not allowable

All right, so let's get to the solo practice. You can try a solo version. I call it narrate this. You can record yourself for about a minute. You can perform that physical task, whatever it is, like folding laundry. You can make physical tasks illegal as well if you want to be your own teacher or coach, or you can allow any of them. But it doesn't matter nearly as much for this particular exercise because the point of it more is to narrate the content of the practice.

of each little action you're making, say with your hands along with it, telling an imaginary audience what you're doing, why you're doing it. So you're basically saying what you're doing and justifying it along the way. You could even use the emotions that your character is feeling along the way and kind of detail those, explain those a little bit. And what you're doing here is sort of this ongoing thing where you're explaining, you're noticing your actions, you're saying what they are, and you're justified.

them.

So you're getting used to doing that quickly, which will help you at the beginning of a scene that you do with another person.

I'm Jen deHaan, and this is Your Improv Brain.

You can find a bunch of improv resources, including downloads, at improvupdate.com.

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Bye for now.