Hey everybody, welcome back to the SoCap Improv
Comedy Podcast. Today it's episode number 43.
A note on playing baddies, villains, or agents
of chaos. I'll use all three interchangeably.
Bad guys. Yeah, so my name is Ralph. I'm the
owner and artistic director at the Socap Improv
Comedy Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I
invite you to send feedback, questions, notes
on how terrible you think I am, or better, how
much you're enjoying this dumb thing that I am
really enjoying doing. Yeah, so we have classes,
drop -ins, regular classes. If you're not in
the city of Toronto, maybe you'll pass through
someday and you're like, oh, well, I'd like to
see what he's going to say all the fuss is about.
But, well, there's a lack of fuss. Any hoodle.
Yeah, so I want to talk about playing villains
in the style that I teach, which is less game
of the scene. Not that I'm opposed to game of
the scene, but I much more take a scene starts
and, you know, follow where the scene goes. And
for me, that's mainly in character and story.
And most of my scenes that in my classes follow
that simple three act structure and often have,
you know, a main character and then antagonists,
villains, as you will, you know, a classic. A
scene that I'll be using today and I use a lot
is, you know, a couple and one of them is cheating.
You clearly, in that case, have a main character
who is sympathetic and an antagonist or a baddie
who is cheating because they are lying and they
have power over our main character. So, you know,
villains are, of course, necessary. Luke Skywalker
needs Darth Vader the way Dorothy needs the Wicked
Witch. villains uh help take our main characters
through um the crucible uh that builds empathy
and uh ultimately leads to catharsis on behalf
of the audience watching them and uh just a side
note you don't need to be aware of this while
you're improvising because you know stories are
so part of our makeup and our dna this just happens
automatically um but in this case you know where
you have these scenes with uh often I don't know
how often. I mean, more than half probably, but
not every scene for sure. Where you have like
a main character and then a villain character.
And often these scenes will fail near the beginning
because one character will refuse to become the
villain. One of the actors or the improvisers
won't want to play a villain, won't know how
to play it, and they'll kind of deflect. And
in these scenes, you'll see two actors kind of
competing to make the other one worse than they
are. Well, I cheated, yeah, but I only did that
because you insulted me or you did this or you
did something else. And they just muddy the water
and nobody cares and people tune out. It just
sort of fizzles out. So number one, when in doubt
as a villain, my... advice, my best practice.
Again, this comes with a bunch of caveats that
I'm not going to go into right now. But in general,
you want to not deflect. You don't want to deflect
that. In this example, hey, you've been having
an affair. We're characterizing this to character
B. You've been having an affair. Generally, what
will happen in... on stage and in class is that
character that's endowed that way will deflect.
What? No, I didn't. What are you talking about?
Oh, you're misunderstanding. Or they'll minimize
it. Oh, it was one time. I'm really sorry. It'll
never happen again. But in general, they're trying
to not embrace being the villain. and they're
trying to save some face, and the stakes, of
course, are just lowering, and the air goes out
of the scene, and nobody has a good time, and
the audience is bored, and you're probably pretty
bored too. So deflection, defensiveness lowers
the stakes and makes the scene harder. It makes
the job of the improviser harder because now
you've got to come up with something new, right?
Or you've got to... push through these objections.
It's classic, like, non -agreement, right? It
muddies the water. You know, who's really the
villain? Where did the cheating start? You know,
and I hear you say, but Ralph, if I'm character
B and I'm cheating, I'm going to deny it. And
you know what? I get that. And I've covered that
in other podcasts. And I'm not going to go through
it again. But in short, you want to, if that
is your goal, is to lie. and try to lie about
it. Oh, no, I'm not cheating. You have to do
it in a way that makes clear to everyone, that
is the actors in the audience, not necessarily
the character, but the actors in the audience,
that you are lying. But what I would suggest,
particularly if you're new to this, if nuance
is something that you're still figuring out,
is to just accept. and accept what you've been
endowed with fully. Have you been cheating? I
sure did. And you know what? And I'll do it again.
In fact, I'm leaving right now to go see my,
you know, I have a date, right? This is high
status acceptance. And there are other ways to
say yes to this. But since I'm talking about
villains, I'm going to go the villain route.
And here you have accepted that you are the villain
and you're playing it. And that right now sets
up a nice little scene that we can now play.
And for our main character in this, the one who's
been cheated on, their job is much easier because
they can just, how could you do that? How can
you possibly justify doing this? What's the matter
with you? To which you can have fun answering
those questions. Now, one thing about, so that's
step one. Embrace. that you're the villain. Now,
the next thing is to try to avoid being cruel.
So, and that's mainly what I want to get into
is you're playing the villain and you've been
cheating and you could say something very villainous
and heavy. It makes the scene heavy. You could
say, yeah, I cheated. I cheated because I find
you ugly and you're the B word. It's like, oh,
wow, that's mean. And there's no fun. There's
no joy in that. And that just makes everybody
be uncomfortable and it kills all the fun. So
you want to deliver a similar kind of line, right?
But you want to do it with playfulness and delight.
And I'll just add this now that I say all the
time. Remember, none of this is real. You're
not actually cheating on the other performer.
character there is no real affair there's no
even a real relationship it's all pretend right
we're all pretending so um you want to respond
you know why did you cheat i cheated because
i really don't like you and now it's like oh
it's it's more fun it's more palatable it's like
cartoony evil you want to look at my myself my
personal experience you know, because I like
to talk about myself, is when I book TV and film
and commercials, I do book a fair number of,
you know, baddies or baddie adjacent, you know,
sometimes straight out evil characters. I've
done that on a sketch show. And often like curmudgeons,
people who are like a little PO'd about something.
They're kind of agents of chaos. And I think
personally, that the reason I booked these characters
is because I have fun and you can see that I'm
doing these things, but beneath the yelling and
the shaking of hands and the gnarling of teeth,
no, it's gnashing of hands and grinding of teeth,
I forget, is I'm having a good time. And if you
want to see an example of this and you haven't
seen it, go watch Alan Rickman or just clips
of it in Die Hard. He plays Hans Gruber. If you
haven't seen the movie, again, I would just go
see clips of it. But basically, he's a baddie.
He has taken over the top of this high -rise
building. He has dozens, if not a hundred hostages.
And he's threatening to kill them all if he doesn't
get his demands met. But you can see him in that
movie. He's just having a great time. It's hard
to take your eyes off him. He's having so much
fun, you know, shooting people and doing all
these terrible villainous things. But it's not
real. You know, in the real world, the man is,
you know, it's not even, you can't even describe
him, the level of psychopathy. But because it's
play, it's great. So we want to be villains.
And we want to do it in a way that is very palatable
and enjoyable. for yourself, for the other performers,
for the audience in general. And I would say,
I would suggest you try it with a smile. A smile
transforms it. And it's a smile of like, ah,
I'm having a good time because as a villain,
I believe I am the hero of this story and everything
I do is justified. You know, like in the real
world, when people who are villainous actually
think what they're doing is not only... not only
do they think it is like uh okay they think is
they they think any other way it would be stupid
like it has to be this way so a smile transforms
your villainy into comedy so you know have you
been cheating i sure did i did cheat i did it
and i can't wait to do it again right did you
steal my car i sure did oh and i smashed it up
boy That car went real fast and it just came
apart. As soon as I hit that parking meter, it
just flew apart. It's going to cost you a lot
to get that fixed. These are really fun ways
of playing villains, right? And the smiling signals
to everybody. Hey, we're playing. We're playing,
which is what we're doing, right? We're taking
it seriously, but within the context of what
we're doing. You know, and audiences love watching
people being bad. They love watching bad examples
of people. Psychopaths, you know, we love watching
them. And, you know, in the real world, this
is the same like when you're with friends and
you call each other idiots, right? You're doing
it because it's fun. You know, you can say things
to your friends that you can't say to other people.
In fact, part of the joy of friendship is, you
know, having someone say really bad things to
you, like in a fun... playful way hey you big
jerk hey you dummy because it's oh they care
enough they feel comfortable enough around me
to call me these things so it's it's kind of
a badge of honor you know and um you know someone
says to me like if someone insults me you know
says ralph i think you are a horrible person
you know and if even if they're sincere like
i'll smile and i'll say you my friend are a fine
judgy character And it takes away all the sting
of any kind of insult. It's very playful. Anybody
who has no ability with, you know, interpersonal
relationships has no idea what to do, and it
dispels any kind of conflict. So it can diffuse
tension, you know, it removes power, gets a laugh,
calms everything down. And also, smiling, just
as a side note, I'll probably do this one in
another podcast. But, you know, often in scenes,
you will come into contact with a character who's
doing something wacky. You know, something that,
I mean, this is particularly, again, newer improvisers
will try to make the situation funny. So, for
example, my favorite example is they'll play
a doctor, but this doctor will not operate with
the tools that a doctor would operate with. They'd
operate with a chainsaw. And it's weird, and
they do it because they think it will be funny.
But, you know, anything like that, if you encounter
another character doing something weird, the
tendency is to, you know, frown, kind of look
at them like, well, that's weird. Very judgy.
And then it tends to make them stop doing things
because they feel like you didn't like the idea.
So once again, bring out that smile. So someone
does something, you know, they operate with a
chainsaw. You look at them like, wow, that's
one wacky hospital. Really? Chainsaw, huh? Okay,
well. hey, I got nothing. Why don't you take
out my gallbladder? Again, not real. You can
take out your gallbladder in a scene with a chainsaw
and I bet you'll survive. So less of you're being
weird in a bad way, but you're being weird in
a totally fun, cool way. And it'll encourage
people to open up, give you more stuff. The audience
will laugh along with you and you'll just be
more fun and playful. So the main takeaway here
is, When endowed as a villain, try to own it.
Try to own being a villain. You can, if you really
need to, go another route. But the number one
is own it. Keep the stakes high. Don't minimize.
Don't deflect. Don't get defensive. Own it. And
then deliver your villainy with joy and playfulness.
And a smile will certainly help with that. Your
audience will enjoy it. Your partner will enjoy
it. And you will enjoy it. And the scene will
thrive. Okay, so that's for me today. That's
for me today. That's it for me today. This has
been Ralph, SoCap Comedy, SoCap .ca. Please send
me, you know, questions, topics, anything, anything
you want. And if you're ever in Toronto and you
want to come and try a dropping class or something
else, give me a shout. All right, thanks, everybody.
Have a great day. Ciao.