Hey, everybody, and welcome to the SoCap Improv
Comedy Podcast. My name is Ralph McLeod. I am
the owner and artistic director of the SoCap
Improv Comedy Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, where
we do improv classes, shows, rentals, events,
corporate events. I have a corporate company.
I have a corporate company called Yes Unlimited,
where we do corporate work with my partner, Tracy
Shade Porter, who I'm going to have on at some
point. We'll talk about corporate work. Corporate
improv, how we can bring improv into your workplace
to transform teams, to make a workplace that's
more conducive to saying yes and getting along
and communicating and embracing mistakes and
creativity, thinking outside the box, stretching
up against your edges of your comfort zone and
expanding them and all that great, wonderful
stuff. Also, you can come and take a class with
me online every Wednesday at 6 to do a Zoom class.
And we regularly, or I guess the Royal League,
regularly have students from all over North America.
Arizona, New York, Connecticut, Canada, of course.
So that's been really, really fun and interesting.
It's a nice community of people who still come
and get together. Started during the pandemic.
And boy, if you told me before the pandemic that
I could teach improv online through Zoom, I'd
say you're nuts. But I actually still do it and
quite enjoy it. It is not the same as real life
being in person, but it certainly has advantages
that I've discovered and like. I recommend trying
it if you are in a roommate place, remote place.
I recommend it. But you can come to our website
at socap .ca, S -O -C -A -P as in peter .ca,
and try it out. We usually have at least one
person who's new, which has been exciting and
fun. Great. Also, every podcast has a sponsor.
This SOCAP podcast is no different. Today's podcast,
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Anyway. So this improv comedy podcast is about
improvisation, but more bent or geared towards
people who are not interested in performing.
Certainly we will cover some improv performing
topics. But as I have covered before, why should
you as just an average Joe person or Jane person
or whomever person who doesn't want to be the
next Tina Fey, why would you take improv? Well,
there's a legion of reasons that I've gone over
and I won't. Go over them again. You can certainly
search other podcasts. I think I even have one
called, Why the heck should I even take improv?
Or what is improv? Why is it important for me?
Well, it helps you overcome such things as your
self -consciousness. It improves self -confidence.
I say, you know, get out of your head and into
the moment. Getting out of your head is an interesting
one. Because what does that mean? You've never
heard that term before. Get out of your head.
Well, it really means... get over that thinking
part of your brain that wants to do everything
right good and perfect just learn how to be yourself
and connect with people because at the end of
the day isn't that what we all want just to be
ourselves and find people who will like us for
who we are well those people exist so uh but
you can never find them if you're so fixated
on presenting a version of yourself to the world
that's not real right which we all do because
it's protective for a myriad of reasons but uh
we all have our own reasons but it's a general
thing and not everybody but a lot of us have
this mask that we wear that we present to everybody
else the best version of ourselves and idealized
versions of ourselves whatever that is but it's
not real and uh it's limiting and boring so what
improv will help you do especially in my class
i shouldn't say all classes do this i think i
think if you start actually learning to improvise
i think any class We'll break down those barriers
for sure. Uh, even if you just do it yourself,
don't even have someone who can show you because,
uh, that's fun too. Uh, or I expect it would
be probably frustrating as well. I don't know.
Uh, I just remember like starting and, uh, we
didn't, we had some people would show us some
things. But I think by and large, we figured
it out ourselves, which made it very exciting
and also frustrating, all kinds of things. But
now I'm very, very happy that I had that path.
Anyway, today, what I want to talk about is scene
structure. And this is more for performing or
for more theory, I guess. But it does, it is
helpful. to understand sort of the dynamics of
scenes, the types of scenes we'll run into. And
I'm not going to talk about all the types that
we'll get or even the top four or five, but one
particular type of scene that we will get. And
this type of scene I call, you know, or I call,
I didn't make this up, but I borrow, you could
call it the hero's journey or the story circle
scene or the three -act structure. And this is
very familiar to us if you've seen any kind of
movie with one hero. So the original Star Wars,
Harry Potter, any kind of James Bond movie, action
movies, Die Hard. These are all movies with a
single hero facing insurmountable or I guess
not insurmountable because they surmount them,
but they face odds. And that can be. summarized
uh in the story circle there's a book uh man
of a thousand faces by oh my gosh i just blanked
on his name that's terrible oh boy now i'm not
googling it because i'm live um i will mention
it on the subject of podcasts and i apologize
that i forgot the name uh but this gentleman
was a researcher and he discovered that he was
investigating uh native myths uh from north america
and he discovered similarities between these
myths and then he started looking at other myths
around the world and found that stories from
every part of the planet had similar uh elements
within them and so he documented this in a man
of a thousand faces Which then George Lucas or
George Lucas' wife, if you believe the conspiracy
theories, wrote the original Star Wars using
the Man of a Thousand Faces as a guide. And that's
one reason why the original Star Wars, if you
saw it before it was bastardized in the 90s,
really fit that story structure perfectly. In
more recent times... Dan Harmon, the creator
of Community and also Rick and Morty, has coalesced
that down to his story circle, which he has about
eight elements within. And for my purposes through
improv, I reduce it even further and really boil
it down to its essence. And so I'm going to go
through very quickly. I'll do the story circle
in greater detail at another time because today
what I really wanted to talk about. was one particular
kind of scene the most common kind of scene which
does follow this this structure um pretty well
and um one other thing i just want to say before
i delve into this is this is not something that
will be running in your head while you're improvising
you know i'm not i'm one of those people who
want to get you out of your head that is not
thinking about structure and uh and character
i want all these things to be in our bodies you
know the same way that driving when you start
driving of course you have to check your mirrors
you have to think about these things and you
do them again and again and again until finally
they're just in your body and you don't think
about them right like if you watch concert pianists
you know there's a thing in their brain telling
them to move that finger but uh you know it happens
so fast it's it's no longer it's beyond conscious
control Like a lot of these reflexes that we
have, you know, that can become like if you drive,
you know, you're the impulse or the instinct,
I guess, to hit your brakes at the sign of trouble.
You know that your foot is on that brake for
your brain recognizes there's a thing going on.
That's a conditioned response. And that's what
I'm trying to get to is a conditioned response
where we say yes by default. We do these things
by default because they're within our bodies.
So I'm actually running out of time. So I'm going
to. I'm going to hold off on the story circle
for another podcast. But what I am going to talk
about is this three act structure as it relates
to this one particular kind of scene, which is
a scene in which there is often these are duo
scenes. I guess almost exclusively duo scenes,
unless a third character may enter, may be part
of it. But there is in this, there is one main
character. That is, there is a character that
is. has a point of view that is more, I guess,
uh, more has more in common is more representative
of the people as a whole. So for example, let's
say you have a couple and a married couple, uh,
and one of those, and the, let's say this one,
one of the spouses has, has discovered that their
partner is having an affair and they confront
them. Uh, now in that little, bit of a scene
in the setup that would be the first part of
the scene the world as it is the starting conditions
this is what we know and just by virtue of being
cheated upon the spouse who is the I guess the
cuckold in this case is the main character they
are vulnerable they're sympathetic you know this
is why all heroes are orphans or their parents
are mean to them or they are somehow sympathetic
or vulnerable even in Die Hard John McClane afraid
to fly so vulnerable sympathetic and that generally
shows us a main character again i don't want
you to think about these things while you're
advising but it's it's good to deconstruct them
uh scenes and and go through them anyway so this
is the type of scene that we tend to have this
this scene with joe's represents i think probably
50 to 60 percent of the types of scenes that
you will see in character and story scenes not
game of the scene but i don't teach game of the
scene although that they they come up and i'm
i love game of the scene but i don't i think
any scene that starts is not some a scene that
we want to impose anything on i think we want
to let it breathe and we want to discover what
kind of scene this is maybe this is a scene where
there are no laughs uh that's rarely it's very
very very uncommon that you will have a scene
with no laughs that is entertaining and that
has to do with where the laughter comes from,
which I don't have time to talk about today,
but that's the 10 episodes right there just on
why we laugh and the difference between laughter
and humor. But we laugh at things with improv.
We laugh not so much as a joke or the humor of
it, but for the connecting of it. Anyway, so
at the beginning of a scene, we have generally
an identifiable main character in this case,
and we have a... clear villain or agent of chaos
or antagonist, a baddie. First of all, we have
the first beat of this scene is the world as
it is. It's understanding who, what, where in
that parlance or just the world as it is, the
starting conditions. Who are we looking at? When
a scene starts, it can be anybody. We want to
know who we're looking at, what they're doing
and where they are. I don't think they're ever
extraneous, but they're less important as to
what's going on. Like what's happening between
these two characters right now? Oh, it's a couple
and one has just discovered that the other one
is cheating on them. So that's starting conditions
and that's the world as it is. That once that
is established, that's act one in the three -act
structure. Act two comes when we understand what
the main character, wants to do as a result of
finding out this information? Do they want to
leave their spouse? Do they want to congratulate
them on also joining the ranks of people who
have affairs? What is the main character's reaction?
And based on their reaction, what do they do?
Are they going to leave? Are they going to scream
and shout? Are they going to cry? and beg for
sympathy or forgiveness or try to fix it what
is the decision the main character takes and
that takes us into act two and act two is the
playing out of that beat leaving uh and let's
say that's what the character chooses because
that's the most relatable choice and which will
always work and then what's the character do
once we play out that beat the leaving okay and
then what does the antagonist do as a result
of that And then act three happens at the end
when we know for sure what's going to happen.
Will these characters be okay? Will they come
back together? Will they have a new understanding?
Will the affair that happened cause them to reevaluate
their relationship and start over again? In which
case we're looking at a comedy. Or will the characters
break up and then we're looking at either a tragedy.
Yeah, we're looking at a tragedy. So that's act,
that's the three act structure. And why that's
helpful is once the first act plays out and we're
all natural storytellers, so we know it has to
move on. And so newer students will kind of get,
will dry up at this point, like their brain,
they'll like, wait a minute, they'll run out
of an idea and they'll be, and that's your brain
telling you, move on, move on to act two, which
is make a choice. Make a decision. Do something.
There's other things to segue us into Act 2,
but that's the most obvious and common one. You
make a choice. Based on everything that's happened,
here's what I decide to do next as a result of
that. And then we play that beat out. And then
are they going to stick with their idea? Are
they going to have another opportunity to make
another choice? And it's at that point that we
enter Act 3, and that is the end of the scene.
So in my example, the character discovers their
spouse is having an affair. They make the choice
to leave. There's some back and forth. There
is some cajoling. And at the very end, the person
who did the cheating asks one more time for the
main character to stay. They've learned their
lesson. They'll do better. Or they've offered
some kind of assurance or gift or offering to
make the main character change their mind. And
the main character may go, OK, you get one more
chance or be too late, sucker. I'm out of here.
And so that's a three act structure. And that
will work in many kinds of scenes. And that's
highlighted by two characters in which there's
conflict between the two of them, which is not
all scenes. And it's not necessarily the best
scenes, but it is one of the most familiar and
it is one of the most common. Anyway, that's
it for today. I'll be back next week with some
more improv -related information and content.
Subsequently, I will talk more about the different
kinds of scenes. I will do a whole episode just
on the story circle because I think it is very,
very important just to understand it. Again,
this is not something that while you're improvising,
you pull out of your back pocket like, oh, guide,
okay. Oh, now it's time to, you know. to enter
the second point of no return. Or now it's time
to, as main character, has to go through a bunch
of trials. Not that. This comes in our body.
And the thing about stories is it's already in
there. We just have to get out of its way and
let it out. But our thinking brain causes us
to not trust it and run away from it. Anyway,
that's it for me today. Thank you all very much.
I hope to see you back here next time. for some
more SoCap .ca. And remember, if you've got a
baby in your life, Coup GQ, the magazine for
the well -dressed baby. Let's face it. Who doesn't
want a well -dressed baby? Take care, everyone.