Lesson Epsilon: EMOTION
The fifth in a series of improv lectures from 2016
At the top of the page, I sincerely apologise in advance for the tone of this week’s notes.
By any comparison, they will be significantly and thoroughly more philosophical and Socratic, diverge even further off the path of fact and into opinion and conjecture, and not least of all will be far more personal and self-involved than ideal.
Thank you for your patience.
Today’s lesson is on Emotion. It is a different kind of lesson than say Scene Types or Game because
1. Within improv, I am not very good at it
2. Within improv, it is not very good
Let’s unpack that load of manure
I am not very good at Emotion
Improv is a grab bag of skills already, there are bound to be weak spots, and Emotion for me is one.
Hopefully, this will work out in your favour. As an area I’ve had to really work on, I believe I have managed to scrape together a nice cheat sheet how to get by in emotion from someone who needs all the help he can get.
Just know this is far from the final word on the topic, and if you think you can do better, or have more insight, you probably do. A lot of what I’ll say will seem very old hat if you have any kind of actor training or lived as a person in society for more than 4 months.
Also keep in mind I said cheat sheet, not a substitute for years of study.
Emotion is not very good
Emotion and I have a bad history. Which sounds like I’ve killed someone. I haven’t killed someone.
A long long time ago, when I was a younger improviser and Cougar Town was maybe in season two, I felt that emotion as a tool in improv was more the dominion of the actor-type players (as opposed to the writer-type players, or as we were known back then, the Lindsay-type players). And there’s no denying emotion was used: scene after scene would be actory actors, their bodies and voice and outlook on life riddled with emotion, starting emotionally, getting more emotional before end in a great crescendo of emotion (when it did end: in my day scenes would long and patient and rich and terrible). It seems scenes were ABOUT emotion, or its dreaded brother relationship, and I was too young, childish, untalented or ironically emotional to deal with these nice adult scenes.
And then after I got some confidence, I dismissed this kind of improv as a bunch of crap and a worse kind of improv, which was a very convenient thing to think so good for me.
And of course, I was wrong. Improv scenes, any scenes, need emotion. It belongs in comedy as much as it belongs in tragedy, and scenes (my scenes) were alienating, mechanical, and often came across as cruel without emotion
But I wasn’t that wrong. When I say ‘emotion is not very good’, I do so because a lot of people think it’s very good indeed. Maybe you’re one. All power to you, go do your thing. But keep in mind emotion is a powerful tool and therefore like any tool comes with safety instructions.
Here are some I learnt the hard way
Emotion is Reaction
Everyone has a different way they like to start a scene. With object work, or by curving their back, with an accusation, a incongruous statement, whatever. To each their own. One very popular start I could never quite get behind was starting with an emotion. For my money, it’s almost always a misfire and leads to not-great scenes. It’s like coming into room where a toddler has crying: it’s going to be a while before you get any concrete information so you know what’s happening. This is because to me, like in life, emotion is reactive, not proactive. Something happens, and you respond to it with emotion. So if you playing a character you decide completely ahead of time they are going to first pump the air a lot, you need something to make them pump the air.
I have talked about the importance of reacting in improv. I don’t think you can have a Game of the Scene without it. It’s a cornerstone of IO improv, as well as any Venus improvisers.
Information in a scene can’t just enter your logical brain, Molly Lloyd (of Airwolf) says, you have to ‘let it hit your heart’. You have to LET it HIT, show the impact to the audience.
Reacting is literally Yes-And.
Re = Regard
Acting = Acting, both in the sense of stage acting, and in that sense of creating an action. Emotion is yes-anding with it’s reactive.
Now, you can have emotion that not reactive, that’s more of a state of being. But for the purposes of improv clarity, I’m going to call this Mood. Mood is a subset of POV, which we will discuss further down the line. You can be in a grumpy, angry, or horny mood. You still need a little fodder just to have something to talk about, but yes this a filter you see the world not, not just a reaction based on each subsequent thing. Emotion is what you feel, Mood (and POV) is how do you feel: how does your emotions influence you, fire you, tire you. Is this just semantics? Partly, I just like semantics, but mostly not. Frankly, I just find improvisers literally act differently with different words. Thinking about your ‘mood’ breeds subtler, more whole-body improv. Thinking about your ‘emotion’ create louder choices.
Which leads to this
Emotion is a Spectrum
It’s not all big.
So many scenes start huge, and have nowhere to go. Much like starting with too big a premise or too much absurdity, too much emotion makes it hard to keep the plate spinning.
I’ve given the crazy town train analogy before (you can go to crazy town but you have to take the local), similarly I feel too much stuff too quickly is like stepping on a moving train for the audience. They struggle to keep up, and you might abandon them completely.
I’m not saying a good scene can’t start big, on either of these fronts. But I am saying a bad scene often starts this way. So, to me, you can start in a distinct emotion, but leave room to grow in your volume. This can be volume physically, vocally, or statement-wise (e.g ‘Move please’ ‘get out of my way’ ‘I will rip your little dumb head off’). Come on too strong, and you will be at worse an awful loud person the audience tunes out, or at best you are now considered a plain absurd character, the girl who yells or the guy who is screams. This latter option, the absurdity, is all well and good i your partner knows how to play off it and you know how to play with it. But it’s really hard! You are making a lot of noise and we’re trying to a get a dialogue going. Emotional people crave listening because they are in no position to do so themselves. It’s like playing memory games while you’re in a tumble-dryer, why make it hard on you the improviser. So your partner can’t talk over you yelling, and you can’t talk because you’re yelling, so now your nice happy scene turns into a genuine argument on stage.
Emotion is a still a Spectrum
Emotion is a spectrum, and like any spectrum the lines blur. When these lines, these borders, blur then we are able to travel across them. This is good!
Let me re-emphasise a difference between Emotion and Mood, Mood is a state of being as much as being snooty or excitable is a state of being, a constant character trait you can build sturdy ship around. Emotion, as a moving living thing, moves and lives. One emotion feeds into another emotion, can become something else.
Have a look at this quite beautiful emotion atlas by Dr Paul Ekman (the Tim Roth character from Lie to Me was based on him, although not the drunky Dr House side of the personality). It’s pretty fun to noodle around with. Maybe that’s just me.
As you can see, some emotions are subsets of other emotions (states within continents to continue with the atlas’s metaphor), and even those continents intersect and crash in the great Pangea of you.
Let’s look at one of these continents closer
Hello Sadness my old friend
Just like at that thing. Different emotions, seamlessly flowing into each other, that increases with intensity. A literal map how to play an emotion in a scene.
Start with hopelessness or, god forbid anguish, and you’re starting too strong. But start with disappointment are let it grow as the scene progresses and you got bonafide drama my friend. Cheat sheet!
Remember our old pal Explore and Heighten from Lesson Three: Game? Well, the Game of the Scene (to me) needs that reaction to the unusual, and emotional reaction is part of it!
You got you’re heighten all wrapped up, now just make sure you reacting TO something and you’ve got your Explore.
It works for the straight character, getting more and more disappointed/discouraged/resignation/helplessness. It also works for the bent character, giving us more of the same while changing the taste so we don’t get bored. Boom!
So that’s how you move between different emotions within the same continent, but big whoop right? It’s pretty much just different flavours of the same food. Can you change your horse midstream? Can you emotion hop? Well yes you can, because emotion leads to action, action leads to changes in scenario, and changes in scenario bring about certain emotions. A wise alien once said “fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering”. We’ve all laughed at the scene where two characters, at each other’s throats, reveal they are attracted to each other the whole time (Elaine May, of the Compass Players, says ‘when in doubt, seduce’). The judgemental mother in law softens instantly when she finds out her child is having a baby. When Ross (in Friends) finds out about Monica and Chandler (also in Friends) goes from angry (“My best friend and my sister!”) to overjoyed (‘my best friend and my sister!”) and then to angry to overjoyed to angry again as new information about Monica and Chandler’s romantic liaisons comes to light. I guess love truly conquers all.
But even this maybe skirting around the issue of, like the atlas says, emotions bleed into each other. Indeed Robert Plutchik, another god damn behaviour expert, stresses that many emotions are actually combinations of other emotions (and have opposites and all sorts of good stuff, check out this handy diagram below)
It even looks like a flower, that’s how emotional it is.
I really thumbnailed Plutchik’s work by the by, check out his books, or at least this Wikipedia page for more about the interlocking nature of emotions.
Ok ok these are but examples though. How do you actually make the switch?
Let’s say you’ve done the wrong things by a scene. You started small, you slowly built your way up big, but you’ve done such a good job the damn scene won’t end. To make sure you don’t just a hit a wall at maximum emotional volume, you might want to employ the Jerry Chart.
The Jerry Chart is tool created by improv weirdo Dave Razowsky to deal with emotional heightening. Basically, as your emotion heightens and heightens (or gains energy, as per the chart), at a certain point (specifically from reaction 4 to reaction 5) you’re reaction ‘breaks’, and resembles another emotion.
Hot improv tip: Cover the ‘break’ with a big exhale. All the cool actors are doing it. It shows change!
You see this all the time, a character pushed to the limit shifts into a new emotion (and new beat) when their last emotion reaches a crescendo. The highest point of one emotion is when it manifests into another, and what’s more it usually starts at a relatively low point in the new emotion. The highest point in one is the lowest in the other. Go figure. Which in turn means you can heighten, going from one emotion to another, all day, or at the very least all scene.
Let’s look at an example, right from Razowsky himself.
Level 1 (Angry): Jerry, you’re late.
Level 2 (Angrier): This is the second time I’ve told you’re late.
Level 3 (Angrier): This is the third time you’ve been late.
Level 4 (Angriest yet): The guidebook says I have to fire you.
Level 5/ Level 1 (Sad): I don’t want to fire you Jerry.
So now you go into the new beat, Sad.
Level 1 (Sad): I don’t want to fire you Jerry
Level 2 (Sadder): I like you so much Jerry
Level 3 (Sadder): You can’t leave me
Level 4 (Saddest yet): Don’t ever leave me Jerry
Level 5/ Level 1 (Desperate/threatening): If you leave, I don’t know what I’m going to do
Now you’ve got a new new beat. Just like the beats in a Harold, this allows a scene to have an arc. This especially becomes useful when, like Razowsky, you are doing single no-edit scenes over 10, 15 minutes, even two hours long (I know that might seem like you’re unlikely to be doing that anytime soon, but….yeah actually that seems way off)
As I stated, this phenomenon (heightening one emotion till it becomes another) is surprisingly common in all walks of narrative, and the levels (which aren’t iron clad at all, it’s just an illustration) can come over a long period of time, or very quickly. Since I’m not going to link an entire damn movie, here is an example of the very quick emotional heightening by Sally Field in Mrs Doubtfire.
Emotion connects
I mentioned this in passing, but emotion and empathy go together like a horse and her long lost love, taken by The Great War but back in her waiting hooves again (this is a joke on the common human expression, back in her waiting feet). Ideally you felt more about that horse now you know how she feels about someone and something, even in that context of that joke dumb sentence you project onto the horse that she would have felt loss and ecstasy and contentment and all that gooey girl stuff. In fact, you would have felt (however slightly, however briefly) those emotions yourself, drawing you in, making you part of this narrative. Now again, I’m not saying I’m blowing your minds with this stuff, it’s as old as the hills (those lonely horny hills, why can’t they touch the sea), and at least as old as the Kuleshov effect and Sigur Rós, but it’s often forgotten how powerful it can be in a scene. I forget it for years, I still forget it now. One you start getting in desires, which isn’t the same as emotion but they often go hoof in hoof, then you’ve got the essential of all drama ever.
But let’s simmer town a little and get more practical: emotion connects you not just (just, phht) as organisms to organisms, but as player to player, and player to an audience.
Player to Player
A lot of skills in improv are that, skills, learnt and honed. Luckily, a lot of skills in improv you are already possess and it’s more a matter or repurposing or really simply getting out of your own way enough to let them kick in. Unless your me, and I’m working on it, recognising emotion in other people is one such skill that even the shittiest improviser (Raif Douthwaite) should come pre-loaded. You’ve been working on this one since birth. So if you want to communicate your idea, or connect with your partner’s idea, or even just simply connect with your partner, emotion is a cracker. “Look a dog” gives you some information (I see a dog) and acting instructions (face where my finger is pointing), but “gah, a dog” or “ooooh a dog” or “Mmmm, a dog” gives you that information plus way way more, and whole body acting instructions.
Player to Audience
Theatre, and improv very especially, is pretty bare bones. Therefore, most of what we depict must be imagined. In a play you might have the luxury of a steering wheel, but you don’t have a car, and improvisers don’t even have a wheel. We are miscast for most of our roles, often several different ones a performance. We have no set, not backdrop, no costume, or even little glossy guides telling you background information about the play. We got nothing. Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter how much sauce we put into our object work, the audience is having to pick up a lot of slack suspension-of-belief wise to make it work. However, as Alex Berg (of Convoy) points out…
Emotional responses appear more or less on stage as they do in real life. When a character appears angry in a scene, their anger feels very similar to the anger we see in the world around us… Therefore, it would behoove us as performers to make emotional responses the foundations of our scenework, so that the audience has something real on stage that they can unequivocally recognize and latch on to.
— Alex Berg (Convoy)
Scene Types
I am on a roll, so I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I am beginning to think it’s emotion that truly separates the two major scene types (peas in a pod, and straight/bent). The latter may be obvious, as has been discussed many times by now it is your reaction (often emotional) that defines a game, and indeed even absurdity in a scene. In straight/bent, there are (at least) two characters whose reactions to a stimulus differs enough to have a whole thing between them about it.
In the former, Peas in a Pod, they are on the same page almost definitely emotionally. Indeed, I would state (here’s where the limb comes in) that this emotional mirroring is what truly makes them Peas in a Pod, not their appearance, look, everything you might think you need to mimic (ahem, Fruit in a Bowl). Indeed there’s an activity described later (The Company You Keep: Advanced Round) where I would happily encourage you to see how far you can push this, how different two characters can be (a riverboat captain and a golf ball, go crazy) whilst still being pea’s in a pod because of their philosophical and emotional agreeance. It certainly makes Pea’s in a Pod seem far less stifling.
Emotional means more than Angry, Crying, or Racist. It’s a Spectrum God damn it.
Let’s say, against my better judgement, you want to play around with emotion as a state of being rather than a reaction (which I will stubbornly call Mood). A negative or bad mood to me is often a hard game to hoe. But it’s a very common scene choice.
Let’s say you’ve chosen distraught. It is an unusual thing sure enough, but it’s not that funny. It’s kind of upsetting, to be honest. As an audience member I feel bad, and as your scene partner I find it hard to act against, to repeat, so it’s my instinct to try and calm you down (making it no longer unusual because it’s not happening) or justify your mood (making it no longer unusual because it has been explained away). Now, is there room for an audience to be uncomfortable, or my scene partner to have to feel something for once in their soft life, of course. But know you’re doing it. If you’re going for a quick laugh and you get stone sadness, something’s amiss.
Now the good news. Positive emotion is quite a bit better, say being excited or happy or sexual about something not typically seen as exciting or happy or sexual, but it’s not all that great. The reason it works at all is because of the SOMETHING you’re excited or happy or sexual about, let’s say it’s pointy Nazi hats or Ray Romano. I could totally see a funny scene about a girl who really digs pointy nazi hats despite their friend saying the history of that object trumps the fashion of that object, or a funny scene about a guy who is really excited about Ray Romano might show up to this party despite there being little to no evidence that is likely to happen. But, again, to me these are good scenes with emotions, not scenes about emotion. This might be a mindset difference, but there you go.
I’m sorry if that good news wasn’t as good as you hoped. I do have some more good news. You can play anger, if you’re smart about it. I go into this much deeper at my blog.
For more on anger in improv, there is this and this by the very angry Jimmy Carrane. You can also just watch a Jim Carrey masterclass.
Emotions come bundled
Ok, maybe this is re-treading the same ground, so let’s treat this as a pseudo conclusion.
Emotions are rarely found alone.
They connect with other emotions for starters.
If you having trouble having an emotion, express an opinion. Opinions, any opinion (however inane) often comes bundled with emotion, just like character, just like events, just like a point of view, just like desires (so important to plot), just like pretty much anything. To say emotion motivates these things I believe is misguided, but to say you don’t need them at all is dumb. Playing to the top of your intelligence (have you come across this term before?) also means playing to the top of your emotional intelligence. Characters, real people, care enough to not just comment.
A few years ago, I would have said Emotion was probably the most overvalued skill in improv, and the most undervalued was being able to react to all of the information being presented (not simply bits of it). It is only now, writing these notes, that I realise how misguided I was. For one, the more overvalued skill in improv is silly accents. And two, crucially, reacting to all the information MEANS reacting emotionally. Emotion is improv.
Gross.
Activities
Hooray/ Oh No
Like Fortunately/Unfortunately, but you’re playing the scene, and your interpreting the news the other person says as bad instead of having clearly bad circumstances. For good news, put your hands up and cheer, for bad your hands are down downtrodden
For example
‘hooray, I got a promotion at work’
‘oh no, you were just about to quit your job, at the shit eating factory ‘
‘hooray, all that time filling out quitting paper work, I can spend on family and friends’
‘oh no, you hate your family and friends, you always resented them because of their refusal to acknowledge your life partner’
‘hooray, my life partner and I have grown stronger in adversity, and now we’re been voted best couple in this here magazine’
‘that magazine is called Practical Joke Monthly’
‘hooray, I love to laugh, and making other people laugh’
You might notice, maybe not, that the optimistic person seems like an idiot, and the negative person seems practical. I don’t know why that is, maybe I improvise that way inventing worse bad circumstances than good ones. I dunno. Feel free to try to ‘win’ your point of view.
Also not, you refute the other’s point of view with a ‘fact’, but then push that fact further Elaboration, or ‘therefore’. This pushes the story, kinda, along, and also gives more fodder for the other person so it doesn’t become a straight he said she said argument ie wizard battle.
I say this is a scene, it’s still kind of inactive. So I suggest you start in the environment, so you have somewhere to go
BONUS ROUND: Instead of one person being positive, and one negative every line, have two positives in a row, then two negatives so you swap and agree more. This means you both get to play the wrong and right, but it also means one person because they’re disagreeing every 4th world
The Company You Keep
One person in the circle. Describes an object, or state of something ie ducks have great beaks for quaking, but terrible legs for running. True or at least true enough we’re going for. It’s out base talking point.
Then, a second player comes in and, to no one really, has an emotional reaction to that thing. It can be a simple as ‘ugh, I hate their terrible legs for running’ BUT try to add more facts, if this then what, to your emotional reaction.
The first person then mirrors you. Agree’s with the full emotion. If you can lock in a catch phrase all the better. You don’t need to mimic actions, if you have a different version of that emotion or state, but feel free to. After a second or two, no one person is the leader, or even the follower.
The first leaves openly, a third enters and continues the topic but in a different emotion or state. The second mimics, but by transition but do what you can, that new emotion or state.
Same deal. Second leaves, fourth enters. I the topic is moving on, fantastic.
BONUS ADVANCED ROUND: You begin entering as a character/stereotype. Some emotions and states simply just make sense that way. The second enters with their own character, and their own emotion. The first adopts that emotion, but keeps their character, and so on and so forth with the third and fourth etc. A character that usually feels one type of emotion now feels a new type etc a strict army general is now lovey-dovery, or loosey-goosey, or excited-lexcited.
This added level also has a nice little bonus result as it can show how while some ‘characters’ have natural opposites that produce juxtaposition humour (a horny nun) this can be first thought and well-worn to an extent, while really a character might have several less obvious opposites that lead to juxtaposition (an angry nun leads to swearing and blasphemy, a suspicious nun leads to quoting Richard Dawkins conspiracy theories, a happy flighty nun leads to her getting a job looking after the Von trap children). Hey, maybe by changing the emotional bearing of a character, you might discover a far deeper and at less well rounded person then the costume you put on out of cliché. Or you might get to be a sweary nun, it’s all gravy.
There is also one final neato little result, in that you can if you choose explore these differing characters interacting on the same emotional wavelength.
