Improv Technique #823: The Save The Marriage Baby
The Save the Marriage Baby is an idea thrown in by a third party (via scene painting, walk on, or the dreaded swinging door edit) to save a scene. It’s dicey. Sometimes it works and we’re happy families again, sometimes it stinks and you’re stuck looking after a baby too (or in improv-ideas terms, a wizard who eats murder evidence).
Imagine a scene is a fire. You feed the fire with a log (a related, often next-logical-step idea) when the coals are still hot but the fire is getting small. You fan the flames with a bit of gusto (fresh air and energy) when the logs (ideas) are there but not burning like they should. Sometimes, unneeded really, you just throw on the odd twig or bit of paper because it’s red hot and you just want to see what it can eat. However, the Save the Marriage Baby is like finding a spark, any spark, and throwing on a bucket of kerosene. Maybe the fire is washed out completely. Maybe you lose your eyebrows. Maybe it’s a beautiful fire-work. The risk is yours to take.
That bucket of kerosene grenade is great for getting a scene started in a hurry. TNT is faster than digging. But when there’s already people in the scene, throwing a grenade can be reckless.
Like always, if you follow the improv kitchen rules you’re success ratio will likely be higher. If you’re using good listening, and the scene-marriage is faltering because of the lack of a baby, well then a baby would be about perfect for this scene.
