Getting to the bottom of Top of Your Intelligence

Play to the top of your intelligence.

It’s one of those pithy idioms we pass around, those house rules bumper stickers that haunt you like ‘make your partner look good’ and ‘stop shoe-horning your Italian chef character’. But what does ‘playing to the top of your intelligence’ actually mean?

I’m sure you’ve got the right answer. But I’ve heard a lot of right answers. These answers are by and large good advice, but they’re different pieces of advice.

So while I’m convinced Playing to the Top of Your Intelligence is good practice, I’m not sure what the practice is.

Let’s look at the different advice, organised in blurry categories. I’ll try to refrain on whether I like this advice or not, now is not the time.

Be Human

This advice has come in these forms

A) Make the choices any human would.

B) Act ‘Por Los Beuono’ (for the good)

These all come to roughly the same. Living things, all living things, seek pleasure and avoid pain. Your characters will be the same.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? Possessing the sentience to keep yourself out of harms way is a biological definition of intelligence, so why not. However, Por Los Beuono (from the West Coast) or Be a Human (from the mid-states) is specific and succinct.

Be a Human (You)

Play to the top of your experience. It makes wisdom. Make the choices you, the specific human you are, would make if this was 100% real. Wear the clothes you wear and eat the food you eat. Your knowledge of these is rich in that most coveted of detail: both specific and universal. If a character shares your opinions and history, your scenes could last your entire life.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? Again,’ what would you do’ seems simpler.

Be Humane

This includes the similar, if sometimes conflicting, advice

A) Avoid cheap jokes, guttural topics and sophomoric scenes. Avoid sensitive subjects

B) Make make strong, opinionated scenes, with clear satirical messages. Embrace sensitive subjects

C) Make positive choices about sexuality attitudes, gender rights, and other hot-button issues. Play people unlike yourself (whatever that means) with dignity. Be sensitive about sensitive subjects.

Telling is the use of ‘subject’ as in making an issue into the main focus of the scene. Compare this to a scene approach where a character, a relationship or an idea is what the scenes ‘about’.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? Such an academic and polemic approach seems worthy of ‘Top of your Intelligence’. But this is less improv advice and more the role of comedy in society.

Be Homo Sapiens

Don’t play dumb, be as smart as you are.

This includes

A) Point out the absurdity.

B) Make connections we would make, in life. ‘This is like this movie’ ‘That sounds like a trap’.

C) There might be a temptation to make a dumb move. You know, for comedy! Deliberately missing the chair, missing the point, missing a beat. Don’t have characters believe clear falsehoods and partake in clear set-ups to slapstick. This sucks. Avoid obvious lies and obvious pies

D) Play real. Even if your character is pretty dumb, don’t make them that dumb at other things. The ‘bad driver’ character can be funny, the guy who also can’t count and can’t stop dribbling is pushing it.

When most improvisers are starting out, if they are asked to sing or dance in a scene, they will sing and dance poorly because they think that is funnier choice, but 95% of the time it not.

{ Jimmy Carrane, on Top of Your Intelligence}

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? This is the strongest argument so far. I guess this is also related to ‘be human’, but we have a tendency to concentrate on the foibles and failings of humans.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

{Agent K. Men in Black (1997)}

We see humans as the idiots that cut us off in traffic and pump petroleum into the arctic. But humans are also your teachers, your friends, and the millions who watched Columbo. ‘Being human’ leads us to be imperfect and meandering, instead of an apex predator with a brain firing off billions of synapses a second.

Be Homo Superior

Fill the dialogue and scene space with as much detail as you can.

As improvisers we have no props, costumes, no stunt men, no cameos from Drew Barrymore to push our story. We have to put that stuff in ourselves (sadly I can only do a Lionel Barrymore).

To fill in these specifics, we need to be more than ourselves. Top of our abilities. Go a little deeper with a choice, think a little harder for a connection. Most premises have been done. It’s the specifics that differentiate them. Take the idea and personalize it. Make each scene unique by burrowing to the full story.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? I’m not convinced. ‘Top of your intelligence’ is accurate, but might mislead anyway. This is less ‘try to be clever’, and more ‘being clever’. The object isn’t to show off your arcane knowledge, but use your common knowledge. It’s less being able to list a dozen racehorses, and more about brushing a horse’s mane like its a living warm heavy skittish animal. It is knowing where you keep your pots and pans, or how to sit on a the bench as a premier soccer player.

Homer Simpson

Play to the top of your characters intelligence/ experience.

To a man with a hammer, everything becomes a nail. Have a point of view, and filter all offers and choices through that.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? No. It seems willfully misleading to miss the word ‘character’. One could argue your character should have the same intelligence as you, but that’s different advice altogether (covered above in Homo Sapiens).

Home Run

Play to the top of your ability.

You may be smart, but even a dumb audience has the brains of 30 men, and they are doing nothing but watch you. They will see prat before you can fall. This goes beyond the ‘Homo-Superior’ instructions. There, it was enough to be your human self. Here, it is advised you go beyond. Make the best moves you can, as often as you can. Push yourself like a sprinter trying to break the sound barrier. The top of your intelligence is the brink of everything you’ve got, anything less and they’ll see right through you. In the crazy ever-changing world of an improv scene, competence can only be bought by greatness.

If you treat the audience like poets and geniuses, that’s what they will become.

{Adam McKay, on top of your intelligence}

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? I don’t think there’s a pithier way of expressing the idea that you don’t need to invent mistakes. You’re improvising; you’ll make mistakes on your own.

Home Cooking

Just do the best you can. You’re only human.

We are human, we are making this up as we go along, be satisfied it’s working at all and stop stressing.

Should these be ‘top of your intelligence’? I first I was sceptical, but I’m coming around. If we consider improv to be a playground of the intellect, then ‘intelligence’ could easily be substituted for ‘ability’. But why bother, say ‘try your best’ and be done. I quite like its emphasis on ‘your’ though.

Home Office

Think about what this scene is about. What is the game. Think.

You should always be concentrating and thinking. This doesn’t mean getting in your head, worrying and fretting about how well you are doing. But you should be aware of what you are doing, and what you need to do next. Instead of trying to plan ahead, map where you have been already. Instead of trying to control the scene, let the scene push you where it wants to go and take note of the direction. Intelligence means listening and responding and computing. Keep your head in the game, and soon you’ll hit flow.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? Sure. I mean, the advice is good. There are far worse places to be in a scene than in your head, and done well it’s more green lights than red. My problem is (spoiler: this is a recurring problem) the advice is worded so obtusely.

Home is Where the Heart is

Play to the top of your emotional intelligence.

Very similar to Be a Human, but there are points of difference. While Be Human relates to your motivations, here we discussed what your motivated to do. Emotions are reactionary, so react. Unlike Be a Human, we are asking you to react to the top of your emotions. Be a live wire. Be invested in every beat of the scene, and make sure the cheap seats can see your investment. Use your whole body. Use the whole stage. Care enough not to just comment. See my brilliant essay on emotions for my crackerjack tips.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? Absolutely, if emotional wasn’t dropped off for no God damn reason! Sorry, sorry, I’m just expressing my anger for the cheap seats.

Homogeneity

Play how the teacher thinks you should play. Cynically, I suspect this is the note behind the note too often. The way you playing isn’t doing it for me, can you do it a little better? More like how I play/enjoy watching. I don’t even think they mean it in a controlling, intolerant way ie I’m the boss and I’m the best. I posit it’s closer to ‘you’re following all my instructions, there’s nothing wrong-wrong, but you need that bit of oomph, that little something that I like and can’t see yet’.

Should this be ‘top of your intelligence’? God, I don’t know any more. It has the word intelligent, and the note is asking you to be a mind reader, so go for it!

I feel ‘top of your intelligence’ has become a Nostradamus epigram, interpreted by and reinterpreted by improv archaeologists, theologists and military zealots for generations. It is touted as law, but amounts today as hearsay and I don’t have time for it. Okay, I clearly have time on my hands, but I suggest we simply do away with the phrase and keep the lesson. Whatever that lesson is, well that’s up to you. Please stop screaming in your head what the lesson is, I can’t hear you.

Comment below your little theories on what Top of Your Intelligence really truly this time for sure is.