Hello, everybody, and welcome back 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, Canada, located
at 154 Danforth Avenue above the Black Swan Tavern.
The URL is socap .ca. That's S -O -C -A -P as
in Peter dot C -A. Yeah, and... We teach improv
there and we have a venue with two stages that
you can rent and put on your own shows. We cast
things from time to time. We do corporate events,
private events, whatever you're looking for.
I'm sure we can help you out. Now, every podcast
has a sponsor. Tonight's episode is no different
today. Our sponsor is, hey, are you looking for
some naughty lingerie or some other, shall we
say, things to spice up your relationships? Well,
look no further than Labidness. Labidness is
the company for all your adult needs. So Labidness,
check it out. All right. So today. uh what i
want to talk about is um something near and dear
to my heart is uh well actually everything is
near and dear to my heart um and it is the what
can we do uh you know at the very beginning of
a scene whether we get a suggestion or not and
uh if you know me or have worked with me you
know i don't like getting suggestions um for
a number of reasons number one if you're asking
a room and there's comedians in there or even
even if you're even if it's just you know the
general public they will tend to give you something
that they think will be funny uh and often these
things are harder to use them so you kind of
hamstring yourself in a sense of like when you
ask for a suggestion and you get umbrella well
95 times out of 100, the scene will start with
somebody opening an umbrella. They'll take the
suggestion very literally, and these literal
suggestions put us up in our heads, and they
start us writing fiction. So I'm much more organic,
and what I mean by that is looking at your scene
partner, checking in with yourself. listening
for the audience, listening for sounds in the
room, and using everything to sort of set a tone
or a mood that suggests where things are. So,
yes, that was a big divergence away from what
I wanted to talk about, which is what can we
do? A lot of people, especially newer people,
will think about a line to open the thing. a
scene with, a funny line. There are certain traditions
that encourage this kind of writing, a line,
and often these lines, depending on what they
are, can start a situation between two characters
or even the improvisers that is... you know,
defensive or acrimonious or looks for negativity
or puts another character in a spot in a bad
way. So this is an actual example of a line that
one character said to another one. This is a
couple years ago in one of my classes where character
A walked up to character B, looked him square
in the face and demanded of them, quote, why
are you eating your pants? Now, that seems like
it would be funny, right? first of all it's not
the reaction from myself and you know i watch
the other people watching the scene is one of
consternation perplexed um they're like what's
going on uh not that that's necessarily bad which
i we may get into if not in this podcast in a
subsequent podcast where we talk about dissonance
but for now uh what what does that do well the
other the person receiving that line has no idea
they were doing any of that, but has been in
doubt as eating their own pants, and then immediately
called out for it in a negative way and demanded
of them an explanation be given as to why they
are doing that. Now, can that work? Of course
it can work. And if I were working with certain
people, that's a line, I mean, if I'd use that
exact line, probably not. But something similar
where I endow them as doing something and demand
an immediate explanation from it because I know
they're going to give me one that's going to
be funny and funny because what the reason it
will be funny is they'll make it make sense.
Why are you reading your pants? Well, I couldn't
eat yours. See, that's work. I mean, I think
that works to me. That works. It's funny because
it clears up the dissonance in a way. Not entirely,
but enough that it makes it makes it funny. Oh,
of course, you have to eat your own pants if
you can't eat someone else's. Of course, it doesn't
explain the underpinning of like why you eat
pants in the first place. Is there some kind
of famine going on or your pants delicious? I
don't know. But justification, which you say,
well, I'll do that in another episode. We'll
talk about justification later. But so you can
do that kind of stuff. And I'm not and I'm never
against really. There's very little things, a
few things I'm against. I would, you know, if
I had a student, and in this case I did, I had
a conversation about why I don't think that was
a great idea, especially working with someone
you don't know, someone who's also fairly new,
because you put people back on their heels, and
then if they can't answer it, they're going to
feel bad, and they're not going to like you,
because they'll remember you as the one who embarrassed
them, and it's not going to go very well for
you. What I really wanted to talk about is not
what you shouldn't do, but what can you do? To
me, the good practices, right? These are things
that I do, the things that I encourage my students
to do. And I see again and again and again, when
they do these things, they tend to be more successful
than not. So what are those? Well, you can make
a choice about how you feel, right? I feel happy.
I'm happy. Not like over the moon happy like
I've won the lottery. But I feel like in a pretty
good place. And whoever my scene partner is,
and of course I don't know who this person is,
you can make some decisions about that. And again,
I would caution you not to. Only because if I
make a choice about the person that I'm with
in this scene is my doctor. Say, okay, you're
my doctor. And before I have a chance to say
something, they turn around and they say, so
inspector, have you solved the case? Uh, okay.
Now, yes, I can still move forward with, this
is my doctor. And then what they're choosing
to talk about is this, but now I've got a bunch
of writing to do. I've got a bunch of, um, uh,
I'm not damage control. That's too strong of
a word, but hope you understand what I mean.
Like I've got to now contextualize why my doctor
is calling me inspector and asking me about his
case. Maybe we're Sherlock Holmes. I don't know.
But I mean, we can make that work. So it's, again,
I want to be clear. There's very little few things
that I say never do these things. But these practices
will tend to put us in our head. They'll tend
to lead to some miscommunication. So my best
practice is make a decision about something like
an emotion. I'm happy. Therefore, no matter what
my scene partner does or says, I can still be
happy. Have you solved the case, Inspector? I
certainly have. Turns out you're the person who
did this, right? And I'm happy I've caught you,
right? So it can work. Or if I choose to be happy
and the character turns around on wheels and
says, I hate you, or I can still be happy. I
know. Finally, I've gotten you upset, which is
what I've wanted all along. You know, happy.
Good morning. Good morning. It's a beautiful
day outside. Oh, it's gorgeous. Let's go fishing.
You know, you can react happy to everything or
angry and like you. So you can pick an emotion,
happy, angry, sad, guilty, jealous, paranoid.
These all work. And it's not like, you know,
maybe you choose paranoid. The other person says,
have you solved the case, inspector? Or good
morning or whatever. You can maybe, if it really
doesn't work, I'm trying to think now, it seems
like it always works, right? It's just all the
cases back there. Why are you asking? Has the
chief been asking you to ask me about this? Are
they mad? You know, you can react to, you can
keep that initiation by one thing. And the nice
thing about choosing something, rather than just
being a blank slate, because you can say, well,
Ralph, just be a blank slate. You can also do
the same thing. True, you can. But then the tendency
is to react either minimally or what tends to
happen more often in my experience is I have
infinite choices. And much like sitting in the
grocery store in front of like a thousand bottles
of salad dressing, I can't make a choice. I grew
up at a time, or at least I was fairly young,
I guess in my 20s, when Blockbuster came out
at video stores. And people would spend hours
in the video store agonizing over which movie
to take home. Because you had so many choices.
Especially if the one movie you went there to
get, the new release, they're all out. And then
you go find a plan B. That was awful, but also
amazing. But it was hard if you had a family
of four and everybody's fighting over the choice.
It makes it even worse. But yes, so when you
make no choice, you have choice paralysis. You
tend to. Or you tend to underreact things. Because
as human beings and as novel improvisers, we
tend to live in that middle range of okay. Things
are okay. How are you? Not bad. But we like living
in that place. We don't like living in the extremes.
But on stage, we want to be in the extreme. And
I find even in real life, I don't want to be
maybe extreme, but I want to be more than okay.
When people ask me how I am, I tend to say, I'm
great. I'm doing great. How are you doing? Rather
than, okay, you know, and not to make a meal
out of, you know, casual conversation, like,
how are you doing? But I tend to say great, you
know, or, or when I'm being playful, you know,
if someone gives me a compliment, Ralph, you're
so smart. I'll say like, you have no idea. It
still makes me laugh because to accept compliments
or even accusations, accusations or insults,
you know, Ralph, you're. a garbage person. Oh,
you have no idea the depths of my depravity.
Like you can very playful. You can do these things
and it, and it makes you very likable. So anyway,
so going back to the initiation, pick, uh, an
emotion. I'm happy. I'm angry, sad, um, continent,
whatever. Pick an attitude, which is kind of
like an emotion, an attitude about the person
you're with. I like you. I don't like you. I'm
suspicious of you. I feel I'm better than you.
And then status status is the third one. you
know, I'm above you, I'm beneath you. And that
goes into, I want to be your friend or I'm going
to crush you utterly. And it's going to be, I'm
going to have a really good time doing it. So
these will all work and they happen no matter
what the other person says or does. You don't
have to pivot away from your choice and rewrite
and do anything else. And the nice thing about
making a choice and having an initiation is you
have now a thing, to react to the beginning of
a character i'm playing a character who is happy
you know i don't know why he's happy or she's
happier they're happy but i will figure it out
in the fullness of time and then uh because that's
that's one thing that happens when you make these
choices is at least for me and i see it in my
students all the time too uh that why you are
happy or why you are paranoid or why you are
feeling guilty will come out, even without really
focusing on it. It's just our brain just starts
giving us the contextualizing machine that is
our brain will just start giving us lots of reasons
as to why we feel a certain way, why I am happy,
why I am sad, why I am guilty, why I am bad.
These will all start falling into place as we
uncover what's going on. What are we participating
in? What are we watching? What is growing here
in front of our eyes? So for initiations, especially
for newer people, or if you're experienced but
you're working on something you don't know, I
caution you to stay away from singing up a line
of dialogue and saying that, which contains information.
this sort of approach of the laying on of information
in which a character will say something like,
well, darling, here we are, walking along the
shores of the Champs -Élysées. I mean, that gives
you a who, what, and where in one line. And again,
I'm not saying never do that. Sometimes it may
be necessary. But to me, it robs your scene partner
of any opportunity to be a part of the creation
of... the context. They just have to go, yes,
and of course, skilled improvisers will say,
that's right, sweetheart. And, it's great to
be here with you, back in the place where we
celebrated our honeymoon. Arena, renew our vows.
Why did I say honeymoon? I can't remember what
I said in my first line. Here we are at our honeymoon.
Yes. So, it would be stupid if the characters
said yes on our honeymoon. Sweetheart, here we
are, walking and then along the Champs -Élysées
to celebrate our honeymoon. Yes, the skilled
supervisor would say, yes, that's right, my love.
You know, from the moment I saw you, I knew there
was no one else for me but you. There we go.
We got a beginning of a scene. So you can do
it. I'm not saying never do these things. What
I'm saying is that when you do that, you may
find that you then will have to do some writing.
or some flipping, or some contextualizing. And
again, those can present opportunities. Like
in the case of, why are you reading your own
pants? Well, because your pants were dirty. Okay.
That works. All right. But I strongly recommend,
especially for newer people, to pick, rather
than a thought bug and an inventive lie, to be
a receptive participant in what's going on by
making a choice. And focusing, not focusing,
filtering whatever information you get through
that. You know, if you're happy and you look
over at your scene partner and they're scowling
at you, well, now you know why you're happy.
Because you made them upset. Don't know why.
That we will get to, right, in the fullness of
time as we discover that together. And that divergent
process of making these discoveries together
during the beginning of scenes and divergent
thinking. which we'll get to another time, is
exhilarating, you know, as we all make these
discoveries together in real time. Anyway, that's
my thing for today. The moment before, the moment
you can start, no matter what your suggestion
is, rather than, you know, literally doing that
thing, opening an umbrella if it's an umbrella
or cutting cheese if it's cheese or, you know,
cutting carrots if you're making dinner, also
think about how you feel. And if you don't know,
if you can't make a decision, like. Be happy
like the people you're with. It will make you
much more likely to say yes, much more likely
to buy into what you're doing, much more likely
to work together to create the fiction and uncover
or discover who we are and what is going on.
And when conflict arises, it's much more likely
to make that conflict outside of the two of us.
So the conflict does not exist between the characters.
at least original. It exists outside of us. We
have to face this together. And while that may
seem more difficult, I don't know if it does
or not, to write that kind of scene or create
it in real time, I find it's not. And they're
often way better scenes. The scenes that are
really hard are the ones, or the most difficult,
especially for newer people, but they are more
comfortable and familiar. is the scenes in which
there's direct conflict between the two characters.
Mom loved you best. No, she didn't. She did not.
She loved you more than she loved me. How could
you say that? Obviously, it was you that she
loved more. Oh, au contraire. Not in my experience.
Anyway, that's my thing for today. Pick an emotion.
Pick an attitude. Pick status. And always, always,
always have fun. If you want to pick angry, pick
angry because it's fun to do it. Not because
you're... upset right if you're upset fight against
that like you as an individual as a performer
if you're having a bad day don't get having a
bad day as a character trait because it's it
can be really hard to watch a character who's
having a bad day go up on stage and have a bad
day but if you're having a great day go up on
stage and have a bad day that's that can be really
fun because it really comes down to what do audiences
react to the way the actor is feeling that they're
watching that's the magic of it you'll know how
you feel all right thanks everybody thanks for
tuning in we'll see you next time here on the
socap improv comedy podcast socap .ca brought
to you by libidinous libidinous for all your
sexy needs bye