Improv Guide: The Montage
Don’t Call it a Comeback
The Montage is the King of Formats. Don’t try to argue otherwise. It is everywhere, whatever your training. If you’ve done group based long form, I’d wager you’ve done a montage. I’m even writing this essay from the backline of a montage.
Long live the king.
The Montage and You
Now your attitude to the Montage depends on your attitude to kings. Are they fat, unjust and out of touch with the people? A charming relic of a simpler time? Or is the Montage ‘king’ for a reason; the best, the powerful, sitting on a throne of skulls from vanquished shows.
Like a king, your relationship with the Montage often seems paternal. It is the format you start with as a beginner, and you think everything it does is amazing.
Then as teenager you think you’re smarter and cooler than your dad, and you want to sample the fruits of the world. You want to do what your parents never did, be a punk for a while, or even do some things that would make Papa Montage mad.
You live abroad. You make a few formats of your own, you begin to see maybe the Montage didn’t do such a bad job.
Montage and Everything
There are two key factors that make the Montage so alluring, for such a vast spectrum of players.
- You don’t have to do anything
- You can do anything
You don’t have to do anything
The Montage is simple, it’s ready out of the box, you just have to play. Scene, edit, scene, edit, onward till you puke.
Scenes can be any length, in any amount, for any amount of time. You can choose your style, and you can choose your focus. You could choose not to bring back the game for the third beat if you don’t want to. Your Montage can be a series of monologues, or start with a sound and movement opening, or follow a recurring narrative. Anything. Ride the wave.
You can do anything
Part of the advantage of a malleable structure, along with your ability to not do what you don’t want to do, is doing whatever you want. More than that, what the audience, what the show wants. This is an ability I don’t think we the community take full use of. Usually, we just do a series of unconnected scenes. But why? If you bring back a second beat in a montage, you’ll get a lot more credit that in a Harold. Make this scene a musical. Start this scene identical to the last scene about plagiarism. Sing, dance, mime, start a crowd riot.
Which is all very ra-ra aspirational, but I mean it in cold hard practical terms too. You are doing your show, and your audience, a disservice if you give them less than you’re able. If you’re doing less than normal in a format that allows more than normal, something’s amiss. You are doing the montage wrong. The Montage can be more. After all, The Harold was just a series of scenes before we codified it (Del Close literally called any improv over 20 minutes a Harold).
Perhaps this still sounds aspirational. Perhaps this sounds like something you can do “down the line”. Something you do once in a while, maybe, if you get lucky, but that’s not how you play on the regular. That’s not a real Montage.
I’m not so convinced
A Real Montage
Let’s wipe the slate clean and imagine for a moment you have never seen The Montage before. It never existed, until know. You are about to see it’s debut. What do you assume is going to happen?
Well, maybe you think of a montage like we use in Rocky or something, a Training Montage. A series of scenes to show the passing of time, usually over a piece of music. That wouldn’t be a bad guess. We’ll come to the use of time in a Montage in a minute (no time joke intended).
Somehow I doubt this is what the original creators of the Montage had in mind. Let’s not forget, the Montage was created and named like any other format, by wanky theatre types. It is my opinion the Montage was (instead of a training montage) named for an older concept, dating back to the early days of cinema. The Soviet Montage.
In a nutshell, the Soviet Montage was coined by Lev Kuleshov as the product of the process we know now as film editing i.e assembling (montage from the french word to assemble or to join) a series of filmed shots into a cohesive whole. To assemble into a cohesive whole. Not just throw a bunch of scenes together willy nilly, but as a deliberate act of juxtaposition.
In this context (and, as I hope I am swaying you, in an improv context), scenes are judged/absorbed/understood not simply as scenes, but as a whole piece. These vignettes (French, again, for little vines) snake back to the source plant. Every other improv format (that I recall) is treated as such, so would should the improv format named after the very idea be the odd one out? That seems illogical. Therefore the Montage is not only able to offer something broader, by definition it requires it.
OK, great, fine, you get it. So what can we do?
Plenty. Let’s look at the different kind of montages we can have, and the different sorts of relationships the scenes can have to each other. This list may well not be exhaustive; trying to catalouge every single variation of the base model of formats would be folly. Some of them may overlap, some of them may contain sub-entries, but lets see how we go.
I have also separated the relationships into three broad families. If you imagine scenes has little houses, these three groups are used to get between them. They are Pathways, Transport, and the Journey. This may add little in the way of clarity, but I’ve done it now. I do like the idea of a ‘scenic route between scenes’ though.
Pathways
These are the relationships you can follow from scene to scene, usually over several scenes. It could be seen as the equivalent of a game plan, or a heighten.
Variations on a Source/ Scene Forensics
A montage that over several scenes explores various aspects of single idea. I’d call this a theme, but that clashes with a term down the road, so for now we’ll stick to Variations on a Source.
Now, in a montage this often manifests in several scenes from the single suggestion.
For example, here the suggestion is Touch.
This is quite a simple relationship. I’d dare say you have done a version of this in your travels.
Here is improv’s sweethearts What I Did For Love showcasing a similar strategy
It’s simple, but very effective. Very effective. Openings such as the Pattern Game, Sound and Movement, any opening really, show this breakdown slowly and before the audience’s eyes. The Armando, when done right, is a montage with a story suggestion. It is a narrative exploded. Crash forensics. Kids stuff. Montage does it without going on about it.
This type of deconstruction is also prominently featured in the format The Deconstruction. Who would have guessed. I won’t dwell on that format just here, but rest assured it’s worth a look, as every little part of a opening is explored deeply.
Chain Smoking
The first scene is inspired by a suggestion, the subsequent scene is inspired not by the suggestion, but by that first scene. You’ve probably done this one as well. Congratulations!
This a relationship prominent in formats such as La Ronde. Theoretically it could run forever, but players usually run out of steam for two reasons.
a) They just run out of steam i.e they need the respite of mentally wiping all the previous scenes clean (even if there was little reason to hold onto them in the first place).
Solution: The brief and small process of getting another suggestion can often be enough.I’m not sure why either. It’s like shaking off a mistake, it resets the system.
b) The scenes run out of ideas to explore. This is a pitfall, often caused by drinking from the same stream of inspiration each time.
Solution: If you took the same location for scene two, maybe for scene three you take inspiration from a line of dialogue, or an object, or something.
There are variations of this that I can think of, but I’ve made them independent entries
Narrative
A version of chain-smoking. There are entire schools that focus on narrative. I think by now story has proved itself that it is a viable, popular mode of entertainment. However, narrative is often restricted to one long format (such as monoscene, or an improvised play), and the Montage is often left with no narrative links between scenes. When you think about it, that’s sort of bizarre. How much media that we are being influenced by is both scenic and narrative? Basically all of it? That sounds about right. Most films, all sitcoms, even some sketch shows (surely the closest equivalent to an unrelated montage that exists) use it. We don’t even need to follow the same characters, just the knock on effect of their actions.
Below is an example of a Pretty Flower, which has scenes that follow one game and that’s it, but also have scenes that tell one long narrative.
Game Beats
This aspect of chain smoking is the bread and butter of the Harold, but The Montage can skip the bread of having to do it every time and just enjoy the sweet butter of doing it when it counts. Now you might have done second beats in a montage, but how often to you do a second beat later when the audience has forgotten about it like in a Harold? How often do you carry a game analogous, instead of simply time dash? Second beats are remarkably rare in montages, considering how they’re drilled into us in the Harold and company. Maybe it’s because it’s drilled into us.
Weirdly, we are only too happy to utilize the third beat (where previous characters interact with each other, more or less). Many a montage can turn into Walk On City. Population: Every Character So Far.
Joke delivery
A montage can be used to condense time and space, but they can also be used to serve up scenes as punchlines. I suppose this is more a sub-section of montage since it still serves a larger narrative purpose (shortening time) but it’s so common it warrants its own entry. A tag run after a longer scene is an example.
Transport
These are the relationships between scenes you can follow on a scene by scene basis, as opposed to show wide. The glue, if you will. You could stick to one throughout a montage, or alternate between them, or even utilize several at once. It could be seen as the equivalent of a sports play.
In any of these Transport techniques, you can use them simply for the sake of using them. That may sound snarky, but its perfectly legitimate. Improv moves made out of aesthetic considerations are valid. However, you can also use any of the Transport techniques to follow narrative, or to follow game (show-wide, not just scene wide). Maybe you’re really cooking, and you do all three!
Time
Time is a oft manipulated dimension in storytelling (we can see the impact over decisions over time i.e timedash). But we can also manipulate time for storytelling purposes by way of flashbacks, concurrent events, alternate dimensions, and anachronisms, it’s a long list. These techniques are probably in your vocabulary, but are they in your repertoire? I’m not saying their not, but are they? In that montage, with no rules stopping you, do you dare make the move? Or does it feel wrong, or confusing, or art for art’s sake? This aspect can be as simple as making the effort to set your scene in a particular time period. Or could as complex has repeating a scene temporally like Run Lola Run. There is an existing improv format called Tracers which shows scenes set in the exact same time span in a similar location (etc the upstairs neighbor, the laundry room in the buddings cellar, the street outside etc).
Even the very common technique (outside of improv) of the assumption that scenes happen sequentially through time (even when taking place at a new location) can be utilized if shown clear enough (for instance, show a character walking out of a room at the tail of one scene, and the same character walking into a room at the head of the next). Flourishes like that push factory floor formats like montages into something befitting their French name.
Context
Scenes commenting upon (and in the process re-evaluating and contextualizing) other scenes. This can be as hackneyed as making the last scene a simulation, or a terrible movie they are returning to blockbuster, or a potent dream of what’s to come (to be fair, this last one isn’t actually done much in improv, perhaps because it’s just that hack elsewhere). I rag on them, but they are genuinely effective. I’ve used them, I’d use them again.
But context does not stop there. There is a myriad of ways you can make an audience re-evaluate previous scenes. Maybe we find out this hotel room was actually a wing of the White House. Maybe we simply see, in subsequent scenes, the subtle and not so subtle repercussions of actions. As improv is usually played in a black box theater (with no props, costumes or synopsis on Wikipedia), context in general is a powerful tool easier to use that other similar mediums.
This is musical improv group Rumpleteaser. It’s a fun show, but look at the connections between the scenes.
Have you watched the video? I just don’t want to give anything away, my point isn’t that dramatic. So each scene gives new context to the previous one. It’s narrative, sure, but it’s also new sets of characters each time. Some of the scenes are set in overlapping time periods. One reveals the previous few scenes as a what-if morality tale.
We were on drugs this time
What if we were kinder to women?
What if improv was played with chairs instead of people
All of these have been contextual movies played in improv.
Eventé is a format based entirely on this concept. The Eventé is a form revolving around a single event. The first scene establishes the event. That scene is followed by several more which focus on a particular character from the event. Then the event scene is performed again, taking into account new information discovered by the background scenes. I will repeat that: the first scene is performed again, now with added vigor and context. If you did that shit in a montage peoples minds would explode out their trousers.
Aspects
If Context relates to the external, Aspects covers the internal (portrayed external, because this is theater not therapy). Much of this was also covered in La Ronde, but as a quick recap: Where the character is, when the character is, and who the character is with, might change the character. Or if it doesn’t, we want to see that too. A man sad about a bad sandwich is a little odd, a man continuing to be sad about a sandwich at a funeral is odder. It is also a good opportunity to show lying (very hard to do in improv, as we are always ‘making it up’, so our body language already says lying). At it’s most extreme, these aspects can influence the reliability of what we are seeing, the very fabric of reality. If you are feeling clever, you could have a Rashomon style montage wherein we see several characters’ versions of events. Fuck, actually I am keeping that, you come up with your own thing.
Quantum entanglement
How do these disparate elements react to each other, even across the universe.
A necklace in a pawnshop scene is around the neck of a beheaded Romanov royal in the October Revolution scene. The phrase ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ is mangled in separate scenes. Someone throws an apple. You could utilize the snatch edit (start a scene with the physical object or word of the last) or you can incorporate details and make connections as they occur.
Quantum Entanglement is a powerful tool, but weirdly as improvisers we may try to rid themselves off. We feel our scenes are ‘too close’ to another, a rip-off, or we’re caught in an endless riff on the previous scene. This is a lot of montages to be fair. But the ability to see connections, or make connections, or call back and riff is an important one in improv. Sometimes making a connection nobody saw is pure magic. It’s a showstopper.
Quantum Entanglement is also an unusual inclusion to the ‘Transport’ section, in that it’s built on the details that one would usually see as mere coincidence (or, worse, a rip off). These might be fun, they might make a nice call back, but they don’t define a scene.
Let me clarify
- As mentioned, the thing that defines the scene is rarely the little details, but the game/narrative. They are no more scene defining than the location or the time line (as indicated by the Romanov necklace example), unrelated jokes (stitch in time example), or patterns without purpose (the apple thrower example). While some of these might aid the game or narrative, typically they are enjoyed as as ornaments rather than the tree.
- Quantum entanglement CAN evolve into something if done with enough je ne sais quoi (magnitude, quantity, gusto and deliberateness). Then, it becomes a motif, and might even evolve into a Theme.
Theme
There are different attitudes utilizing an improv suggestion. Many formats, such as the Harold, encourage you to use it simply as a jumping off point. They even put a buffer (an opening) between the gross suggestion and your nice clean scenes. The Montage usually doesn't have an opening, so there is room for the next type: format-long theme. Scenes have a POV, or a game. Theme could be seen as the game of the show. If you were to describe ‘this show was about…’, most of the time you are describing the theme. If you want to get high minded, theme could be seen as an invented ‘thick description’ of the scene(describing not just the scenes behavior, but the milieu of the scene’s behavior). If you want to get low-minded, it’s the sex in Can I Do It… ’Til I Need Glasses?. It’s either the je t’aime or the Paris in Paris, je t’aime, but it is not New York in New York Stories, nor the future (but rather the conflict of man’s fundamental emotional nature clashing with machines fundamental unfeeling nature) in The Illustrated Man. I am choosing anthology stories specifically as theme is not tied (necessarily) to narrative or game beats. Where the Quantum Entanglement is the strings, Theme is the puppeteer, the background external force of the universe these scenes take place within. Am I just as confused as you? God (background external force of the universe personified) yes.
Alright, let’s try this. As mentioned in the article, within improv we often ask for a suggestion. Without an opening, this suggestion simply feeds the first scene. Even if you plan to have more than one scene, it will feed the first scene first. However, some formats such as The Movie or The Musical format (both quite similar) often ask for a title as suggestion. This title can, and perhaps should more often, feed not just the first scene but the whole show. The title is not a narrative, this comes within the scenes, but something else. A kind of north star, guiding the scenes along. This can also help your montage. Think of your show as ‘the secret show’ or ‘cowabunga show’ or ‘pineapple show’. This does not have to be explicitly stated to the audience (although it sure can be), but if executed right the audience will refer to it as such anyway.
We just looked at an example of theme that was applied from the beginning (from the suggestion itself in fact). But theme can also be applied from the middle, often making official what started off as accidental theme. If two scenes ended in a gun shot, why all of them? Why not explore what would have happened if the gun didn’t got off? As mentioned before, Context is a powerful tool in improv, as is Time. You can both (and anything) to serve/explore/reapply the Theme.
Again, theme is just asking what is the POV of the show? or what is the show’s Game?, and it can be as minor or as prominent as you like.
Variety
The more variety in a show, the more I can keep the audience interested, delighted, and engaged, punching the show up and delivering great momentum and more laughs. The spice of life. — Mick Napier
Variety within your scenes, that is making sure your scenes each have a different feel from each other to increase excitement and reduce monotony, is such a broad subject I won’t even attempt to cover it here. Mick Napier, as quoted above, dedicates at least five chapters over two books to it, and calls it the number one improv lesson he tries to stress. It is also hard to write about because everything and anything is the right answer to combat it: try a new voice next scene, shake up your genre, maybe go into the audience. Variety borrows from almost every other improv lesson: more or less emotion, more or less physicality, try a different character, or even try a different era of time as mentioned in this very article.
If I was to boil it down to a pocket-sized tip, just be aware of your stage picture. Most scenes are ‘Magic 11’s’ i.e two people, standing apart, near the middle of the stage, having a conversation. However interesting these two people are, after a while it feels static.
If nothing else, just try altering from scene to scene. Change your gender dynamics, your height ratio, your number of players, your number of chairs, your distance apart, your distance from audience. Stand on something! Bend you’re spine! Talk to the ceiling!
Extra note! Variety does not have to come at the expense of theme, or narrative.
You’ve actually seen these exercises utilized in shows, either by choice or by accident in the long forms you have witnessed. You may simply remember them as “great shows.”
— Mick Napier
Energy
This could go under the same umbrella as variety, but I am going to give it it’s own section. You might see this as the pace, the rhythm, or maybe the heat, or the weight, or even the mood. I believe it’s all these as one. What is the volume of the scene (not just you, but how loud is the scene perceived). What is the importance (to us, an characters). Was their gaps between the dialogue? Did the sketches differ in run time?
Energy could also be seen as a style. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones used the same instruments in the same era, but they songs sound differently (excluding I Wanna Be Your Man and Their Satanic Majesties Request of course). More specifically, their songs sound differently in the same way.
Sculpters have a style. Sports teams have a style. So improv teams, filled with human beings relying on their inner individuality to spew forth without edit, certainly has a style. Many formats, lovely as they are, restrict your style because of their rules and regulations. Many house teams come with house walls to box you in. But in The Montage, anything goes, so go anywhere.
Journey
Rather than how you arrange the scenes, this is the effect the order of scenes can have an audience (which in turn could influence how you arrange scenes). This idea is really at the heart of the Soviet Montage theory; the idea of an intellectual montage. Man is a pattern creator, it has led us to survive and thrive, and it craves and rewards meaning between disparate elements. Some of these are innate in the human brain, some have been learned over time. In film-making, it may be simpler: if we see a shot of a man peering through a window, and then we see a shot showing a living room from the angle of the window, we assume that is what the man see’s. In a staged play, we make these assumptions from scene to scene (instead of shot to shot). To be fair, it is less pronounced on stage (shots can be edited so much faster as the stage doesn’t have to be manually reset in the blackout), but the effect remains.
Holiday Road.
Classic. This is often what people think of as a montage: to condense the passing of time, usually to show a journey either geographical (travelling), educational (training ie the training montage) or task based. Also includes the “put on their armor” montage, as well as the ‘introducing the team ’ montage (as seen in a lot of sitcom opening credits, heist films, and One Direction’s Steal My Girl music video).
We as an audience have learnt overtime that the missing information/scenes denote ‘more of the same’ whether that’s repetitive boring information (getting better and better and punching that beef in Rocky) or repetitive exciting information (the 12 Labors in Disney’s Hercules). We an audience fill in the blank much like a narrative thaumatrope. All that said, it is probably utilized less in improv, as it takes some rapid fire scene painting, several times in a row. You also (usually) don’t have the luxury of music to score your montage, a key element in the film medium (and the basis of many music videos). What the stage does offer, however, is changing focus from blocking. Basically, you can pull and push focus on even when multiple elements are present, something harder to do in film (who with the power of the close up often sacrifices the power of the static wide shot).
Minds Eye.
Another common ‘montage’ association is showing the mental state and perception of a character. This might be illustrating a drug bender (pink elephants on parade), or echoes of memory (‘dental plan, Lisa Needs Braces’), or magic of the psychedelia kind (Dr Strange). Characterized by a less formalized cutting technique, with characters and elements rolling in and out of the stage area, but I would still call this a montage. If unsure how to begin one, just talk in a sing-song voice and wiggle your fingers.
Parallel Edit
This montage suggested the scenes are happening concurrently, often (but not by definition) with the idea these scenes are heading for a conflict. Formats such as Evente and the The Harold will contains elements of this as we the audience know the games will crash into each other in the third beats. In the simplest form, although still extremely effective, is to show the hero setting out on their journey in one scene, then show their obstacle (the scheming villain) in the next. Or you might show two rivals,7 or maybe the gods/birds/door handles observing the action. As in film, it cuts down on your stage/screen time, and allows simple actions to stand for grander events. If you need to ramp up the energy, this is a good way to do it.
Contrast Edit
While other edits invite you to make connections and find mirrors in the works, this invites identity through difference. If you have a shouty scene followed by a quieter scene, the quieter scene will seem all the more quiet. Deliberately quiet. A received pronunciation accented scene will be even clearer along side a New Jersey based scene. Painting a red bird on red paper will be less effective then red on white.
Gestalt
If the French don’t have a sonnet to describe something, the German’s have a word. This is a theory that essentially says that if given small bits and pieces, we will form them into a complete whole (not to be confused with the previously discussed intellectual montage). Much like the use of metanyms in improv (the part standing for the whole), except instead of specifics in the environment standing for the environment (scene painting a milkshake with two straws brings to mind a date at a diner during the 50's), here we are looking at the small recurring details that create a shared world between the scenes. Sometimes this happens deliberately (like if you walk on as the policeman from an earlier scene i.e third beat connections) and sometimes natural similarities are connected by the audience (a villain was crunching cookies, and then accidentally because you’re on a role another character later is crunching cookies, and the audience interprets this as both characters are villains)
The Mixed Bag
Montage is scenes with connections, and connections can’t really fail. They might not be funny, but a connections a connection. The worst you could say is it curbed you exploring something new, and hopefully it has been illustrated by now Montage can be a powerful tool for exploration
Of course, there’s an exception.
We still have the date we walked in with. The girl next door. The montage with no connections at all. Sometimes, you want a montage precisely because the scenes won’t link. You want a series of isolated scenes, that can entertain on their own merits, that don’t need beating to death, or frankly can be left alone if they die on debut. No other format offers this. It is refreshing. It is easy to digest. It is the ultimate freedom. Perhaps, for all my huffing and puffing, this is the real montage after all.
Conclusion
Come at the king you best not miss
— Omar (The Wire, teacher at BIG theater)
So what do you think, did I just make the perfect no-think no-stress format into a fat bag of too much effort? Don’t let me put you off: use the montage however you like. The Montage is like duct tape, the roman alphabet, or an AK47: international and adjustable.
Montage is the king. Like the king in chess, it can move anywhere you want it to go. There are no restrictions, the king makes the rules. You can take that as a warning, or an invitation.
Yes, I see what you mean. This does all sound too ra-ra inspirational.
