Improv (when I’m loving it) is the most minimalist art form.
Improv tends to be better when we bring only a little bit of ourselves to it; when we plan as little in advance as possible. The best, most honest, improv moments are when you stare across the empty void space of the stage into the mutual nothingness of another improvisor doing the same and something from nowhere/somewhere bubbles up and you begin working with it.
We call interesting on-stage accidents “gifts” because they add information and colour that nobody expected or forced onto the art.
Handles/Games and props and theatresports can be fun and stuff, but I find them frustrating because they impose an a priori structure or idea on the scene, even just accidentally.
Case in point, I just got back from seeing a show (in London!) with 2 guys on stage and one music guy on keys on the edge of the stage. It was a cool set, with the performer’s hosting personas blurring into their scene personas, with tangential, sudden transitions between scenes sharing only a common line or idea. The music guy was quite good (he played a little as people came in), even though I feel like he played a little too much during the scenes. I’m not interested in going on and criticizing this show. However, many of these scenes became about the music. Music can be a good accompaniment, or on equal footing with the players in any show. However, some action in the show came to be that way because the idea/feeling expressed by the music guy came in the form of music. At one point, an argument was breaking out between the players, and duly the music increased in intensity as well. The music guy was fantastic in expressing the mood of the scene (in parallel to us choosing to observe the scene on stage, slightly redundant). But because music, as a form of expression, is naturally rhythmic, the arguing actors began dancing. Completely, inorganically, de-railing the interestingness of the argument. Laughs from the audience at the absurdity of an argument turning into a dance. This happened a few times throughout the show, where the improvisors would implicitly or explicitly respond to the music-ness of the music in a fourth-wall-savvy “isn’t this crazy?” way.
I think the problem is that the form of augmentation to the natural minimalism of improv is overwhelming the normal organic generation of ideas, killing the show.
This is why I don’t like props or pre-themed shows, or anything with too much structure. I’m working on a system to augment improv, and I’m trying to do it in a way that lets improvisors express their bubbling ideas better, or in a more interesting way than before, without over-powering the process.
Perhaps the problem is novelty factor. When a thing is new to the players or the audience, the natural take-everything-insanely-seriously part of the improv will latch onto it and deconstruct it. This leaves us with a husk of a show that isn’t about anything other than the implicit and explicit choices about the structure of the improv made by the augmentation designer (i.e. me).
Let’s say I design a system that constantly records the show and lets players bring back old scenes, projected on the stage, and make direct references to them, place them out of content, or reinterpret them.
A good set of improvisors, when first confronted with this system, will use the tools at hand. You’ll see a show about regret, or misinterpretation of memory, or generational repetition, or people re-writing their version of past events, or how you’re in love with your doppelganger, or how you’re fond of the past.
If you have a hammer, then everything looks like a fucking nail. Tell a friend to do an interpretive dance about how they feel today. Tell another friend to do the same, but give them a hammer to hold and I guarantee you the second dance is going to be angrier and some more shit is going to get smashed.
I admire traditional creative tools like the paintbrush or the pencil. They have their pre-imposed difference (“flowy stuff” vs. “sketchy stuff”), but when you pick up a paintbrush or a pencil, usually the first thing you are compelled to make isn’t a work of art that is about painting or sketching.
I want to make a tool that affords new things, but I also want its implications to disappear into the background. It’s kind of hard to compete with the status quo tool, which is “nothing”. So, I’m working hard on the improv paintbrush.
Hopefully, fans, you’ll get to see the results of this pondering some time in June/July.
Dustin Freemans of the Internet
My name is relatively rare, but not so rare that I’m in the only one with it. I first became aware that there were other people with my name out in the world when I was 12. I was getting my first bank account so I could be paid for a paper route, and my Dad was treating it like a rite of passage. The teller idly mentioned that there was another Dustin Freeman who lived in Winnipeg. I knew immediately that he was my sworn enemy for stealing my individuality.
I “work” in a field where online presence is important. People need to be able to find you and cite you easily. Papers often have…unusual and expressive titles so that they are easy to search. Take my first paper for example: ShadowGuides. We could have had the title Shadow Guides, but that produces less unique results. It brings up Shadow of the Colossus, though which is nice, because that is a beautiful game.
Everyone’s competing for name space, and personal names are no different. Ever since I’ve started googling myself, I’ve been tracking how the other Dustin Freemans are doing out there, over the years. I’m the biggest Dustin Freeman on the internet these days, but it wasn’t always that way. Here’s the ones I’ve gotten to know:
Dustin Freeman from Wichita, Kansas, who has a great picture.
Dustin “Bugger” Freeman, an amateur rapper that apparently died before his time and has a kid out there somewhere.
Dustin Freeman from Florida, who apparently was arrested for massive amounts of cocaine possession.
Dustin Freeman from South Carolina, who got busted for stolen prescription drugs. He might also be the same as Athletic Dustin Freeman from Charleston.
Yet another Dustin Freeman from Florida who was busted for possessing amphetamines. (What is the DEAL with people who get arrested for drug dealing using my name? Maybe I should take it up)
Nanotechnology Dustin Freeman, whose picture always comes up for some reason. (This reminds me of Data Analysis Cosby, har har)
Dustin “DJ Basha” Freeman from Myspace.
Dustin Freeman from Texas, who is hilariously involved in a class action lawsuit against Apple and others about personal information sharing.
I haven’t tried to engage with any of these Dustin Freemans. I have tried to join fan clubs made on Facebook for other Dustin Freemans to cash in on the love, but it hasn’t worked:
This post was precipitated by some fool in California who has started giving out my email address as his own. From the emails I’ve received, I can tell that:
- he rents cars frequently
- he buys girl’s dresses, or approves them or something (I got an email with the subject line “dresses” and a bunch of pictures of models wearing dresses. I replied. It definitely isn’t spam.)
- he works for some company that does shipping “Choice Logistics RMA’s” (I’m currently stuck in a Reply-All trap with these guys)
Stop giving out my email asshole! Get your own!