Improvisation! - A Glossary

Some good information on this webpage. Click on the title of this post or go to the list of articles and click on Improv Page. Meanwhile, read some of the terms below and see if you can identify some of them in the work we've done in class.

A Glossary of Improv Terms

The following is a list of terms used in teaching and discussing improvisational theatre. If you have any additions or modifications you'd like to see made, email me (broehl@improvcomedy.org).
Accepting
Embracing the offers made by other performers in order to advance the scene.

Advancing
The process of moving the scene forwards.

Ask-for
The question asked of the audience in order to start a scene.

Beat
A unit of action in a scene. A scene is made up of a series of beats.

Blocking
Rejecting information or ideas offered by another player. One of the most common problems experienced by new improvisors. In conventional theatre, the term is used to mean something different (pre-planned stage movement).

Breaking the routine
Interrupting an action with another action in order to advance the scene.

Cancelling
Making previous action irrelevant. Once an action has been cancelled, it's as if it hadn't happened at all. Usually a bad idea.

Charm
The quality that makes an audience enjoy watching a performer.

Commenting
Stepping out of the reality of the scene by saying or doing something that refers to the fact that it's a scene being played. Also refers to "playing" an emotion rather than feeling it. Should be avoided, though used sparingly it can sometimes be effective.

Complementary offer
An offer that meshes well with what's already gone before (and usually enhances it in some way).

Conflict
Many (but not all!) scenes are about a conflict of some sort. If there's no conflict, the scene may still be truthful but somewhat dull.

Context
The broader setting for the scene (political, social, etc).

Corpse
To break up laughing while playing a scene. Usually not a good thing to do.

Denial
See "blocking".

Driving
Taking over a scene and not letting other performers influence its direction. Makes you an unpopular improvisor.

Endowing
Assigning attributes to another performer's character.

Explore and heighten
To take an idea and see where it leads, exploring its natrual consequences while simultaneously raising the stakes.

Extending
Taking an idea and letting it become the central theme of the scene.

Focus
The audience's attention should only be in one place at any given time; that place (or person) is the "focus" of the scene. If more than one thing is going on simultaneously, the focus is split. Experienced improvisors will smoothly share focus, less experienced improvisors often steal or reject focus.

Gagging
Trying to make a joke or do something funny that doesn't flow naturally from the scene. Always a bad idea.

Gibberish
A nonsense language.

Gossip
Talking about things instead of doing them. Also, talking about things that are offstage or in the past or future.

Handle
The premise for a scene or game.

Hedging
Making smalltalk instead of engaging in action.

Information overload
Introducing too much information into the scene, making it difficult or impossible to ever find a satisfying ending that resolves everything.

Instant trouble
Making an offer that introduces a problem or conflict but that doesn't relate to the narrative of the scene prior to that point (see "Offer from space").

Interactive Theatre
Any form of theatre in which the audience is not a passive performer. Encompasses a range of different styles, ranging from "spot" improv to loosely-scripted stories such as murder mysteries or faux events (e.g. Tony and Tina's Wedding).

Masking
Standing in a place where you can't be seen properly, or in such a way that you're hiding someone else or some important action. Should be avoided.

Mugging
Making silly faces instead of reacting truthfully. Generally frowned upon.

Commedia to Comedy!

Commedia Dell'arte is the precursor of all modern comedy including improv comedy, sketch comedy, situation comedies and more. In the articles list, click on the website for Commedia Dell'arte and spend some time researching. Record some of your findings in your journal response in the comments section.

Journal Question!

We're working on freeing your voice. Why do you think we are starting with relaxation and breath?

How does theater help to tell stories that otherwise wouldn't be heard?

How Children Experience War and Its Consequences

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
What comes to mind when someone says the word war?

For Adbul Hakeem Paigir, 14, from Afghanistan, the response was simple and solemn. ''Wives without husbands, children without parents,'' he said, bathed in a warm white spotlight. ''People forced out of their homes.''

For Fatu Sankoh, 15, the word conjured up images of running through streets filled with rotting corpses, a horror she endured fleeing from her home in civil-war-torn Sierra Leone. ''I think whoever is fighting should put us on a plane and let us go,'' the doe-eyed Ms. Sankoh said from her seat onstage. ''And when they finish fighting, bring us back.''

The bracing perspectives are featured in ''Children of War,'' a production that opens tonight at the Theater of the First Amendment at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The oral-history project, which tells the harrowing stories of six young refugees now living in the Washington area, is one of several productions under way nationwide taking a contemplative look at the human realities behind the stark headlines of military conflict.

The cast members in ''Children of War'' are not actors, and their stories, though scripted by the director, are not made up. In addition to Abdul and Fatu, the cast includes Dereen Pasha, 15, a Kurd from Iraq who saw his father murdered by Iraqi soldiers; Awa Nur, 15, from Somalia, whose baby sister was shot and killed by guerrillas during her family's exodus from Mogadishu; and Yarvin Cuchilla, 18, who suffered years of domestic abuse in a family torn apart by civil war in El Salvador.

There is just one adult in the ensemble, Farinaz Amirsehi, who spent seven and a half years in prison in her native Iran in the 1980's. Ms. Amirsehi, 42, now works as a therapist, treating victims of torture and abuse. During the 75-minute performance, the six principals use call-and-response storytelling to recount their individual experiences of loss, torment and adjustment to a new life in the United States.

The production, which is directed by the New York-based playwright Ping Chong, was commissioned by the Center for Multicultural Human Services, a mental-health organization in Falls Church, Va., that offers counseling services to immigrants and refugees.

While the themes of the production are particularly poignant as the United States teeters on the brink of war with Iraq, its creators say it is not intended as a statement for or against a military strike. ''It is meant more to remind people of the costs of war,'' Mr. Chong said.

Dennis Hunt, executive director of the counseling agency that commissioned the play, said it was a cost often disproportionately felt by children. ''It reminds us that there isn't always a direct cause-and-effect link between what is done wrong and who gets punished,'' said Mr. Hunt, who, along with Mr. Chong and a group of therapists, interviewed more than 80 refugee children to select five emotionally strong enough to tell their stories onstage.

The project is one of several productions that are, directly or indirectly, examining issues of war. Peter Sellars's update of ''The Children of Herakles,'' a tragedy by Euripides about the plight of refugees and war victims that is scheduled to open next month at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., incorporates real refugee children into the cast.

Caryl Churchill's ''Far Away,'' playing in New York, is an apocalyptic fable of a world where war is eternal and all the planet's creatures have taken sides. Tony Kushner is working on a short play dealing with the Bush administration's handling of the crisis in Iraq.

Nationwide, artists are participating in teach-ins and convening workshops like ''Making Theater During Wartime,'' which will be held at Fordham University in the spring, to encourage a sense of cultural activism in the artistic community.

''When people are being backed into right and wrong, yes and no, pro and con, theater works to open up people's hearts,'' said the playwright Eve Ensler, whose recent work, ''Necessary Targets,'' explores the effects of war on women in a Bosnian refugee camp and who is currently supporting theater projects in the Middle East. ''Theater opens people up to duality, and complexity, and ambiguity so that other parts of the mind start to operate.''

At a preview on Wednesday of ''Children of War,'' audience members, squirmed in their seats as they grappled with the complexity and ambiguity of the six lives laid bare on the small stage before them.

In the case of Dereen, whose family fled Iraq, audience members heard the story of how his Kurdish parents first met on a street in Sulaymani, in northern Iraq. They were noticeably moved as he told of running to his gunned-down father, who died on the floor in front of him. They laughed as he related changes in his life since moving to the United States six years ago.

''In our town house every day from 5 to 7 p.m. I watch the Kurdish channel from Iraq with my mother, to stay in touch with my homeland,'' Dereen said. ''Then I go upstairs to my room and watch 'The Simpsons.' ''

Shayan Pasha, Dereen's mother, like all of the parents of the young cast members, had initial concerns about the project. ''I worried a lot about the hidden feelings inside of him,'' Mrs. Pasha said, in the audience for the preview performance. ''But after doing this his dark personality is more open. I can see his smile again, and for the first time he is talking about the future.''

It is a future, Dereen said before a recent rehearsal, that feels precarious because of new prospects of war. ''Saddam Hussein has caused my family much pain,'' said the teenager, whose boyish face and dark eyes carry the weighty seriousness of a much older man. ''But I still have hundreds of family members in Iraq. If we go to war, the United States will be killing my family, too. That's why I wanted to do this, so people would think about that.''

People, for instance, like Jan and Ron Stanley, who sat wiping away tears after the performance. ''This makes me think more about what I'm doing to make sure this stops happening,'' said Mr. Stanley, 44, an English teacher who taught the cast member Ms. Cuchilla last year, but who was hearing her full life story for the first time.

''Children of War,'' which runs through Dec. 15, cannot tour in the traditional sense. The cast members, after all, have school. But its creators hope it will be replicated in other cities with other refugee children. They are considering creating a video version of the production for educational and therapeutic use.

''With everything that's going on in the world right now,'' Mr. Chong said, ''I suspect this project will have a future.''

Puppets Help Evoke China's History of Love and War

November 1, 2005
THEATER REVIEW | 'CATHAY: THREE TALES OF CHINA'

By MARGO JEFFERSON
For Marco Polo in the 13th century as for Ezra Pound in the 20th, China was "Cathay," a land of mythic wonders. For the American-born director and writer Ping Chong, to visit China and make theater in the West meant exploring myth and history, joining Asian and Western traditions. The result is "Cathay: Three Tales of China," playing at the New Victory Theater through Nov. 13. It is enchanting.

"Cathay" is a collaboration with China's Shaanxi Folk Art Theater. Mr. Chong is well known for his ingenious blend of film, theater and graphic art. Here, working with the director Liang Jun and a superb design team, he adds nine puppeteers and various puppets to the mix.

Instead of a curtain onstage, we see a screen with the imposing look of marble. Dark wood divides it into panels. Once the lights go down, different panels will become settings for the action: traders, horses and camels trudging along the Silk Road; the jewel-toned opulence and cruel intrigue of a medieval court; World War II devastation; and the sleek efficiencies of a 21st-century hotel.

But our first encounter is with two enormous animal statues, bronze-colored with winged heads and bright blue eyes. We hear their loud, grumbling voices. They've guarded the royal tomb for centuries; they're bored. What happened to the old days, they complain, "the enchantment of splendors past" in the Tang dynasty, when they were important?

The stage goes dark, and the "The Emperor and the Lady" begins. It is a tale of love, greed and rebellion that ends in tragedy. Two circles light up on opposite sides of the panel. The emperor is inside one, wearing robes of gold and black brocade. His discreetly elegant prime minister is inside the other. Above them is a long rectangle of deep blue sky, a full blue moon and a branch with just four leaves.

The panels serve as puppet stages. But they could be small movie screens, too, given the variety of line, shape and perspective. When the chamber of the emperor's beloved lady, Yang, appears, it is shaped like a fan. The colors are lustrous pinks, and blues, pale yellow and coral with a touch of strawberry.

The second tale, "Little Worm," takes us into a world of pale grays. This is the countryside of ponds and reeds, frogs, water buffalo and huts. Families anxiously watch the sky for Japanese planes. Mr. Chong uses shadow puppets and digital animation up to the moment the Japanese attack. Then the animation becomes newsreel images. We see plunging airplanes, fire, soldiers turning guns and bayonets on unarmed people. It is shattering.

The third tale "New," brings us to an ultramodern hotel in China. Each floor is named after a dynasty, and women who would once have schemed to win an emperor's favor scheme to win a promotion from the hotel manager.

I won't reveal the ties that bind this tale to the other two. I will say that the result is charming, but also poignant. Mr. Chong is a theatrical magician with heart and an acute sense of history.