Your brain went blank? Try this scene start instead

WEBVTT

When we're new to improv, initiating a scene can be pretty stressful and hard.

I mean, I probably want to scratch that.

When we're doing improv, initiating a scene can be fairly stressful and hard. What on earth are you going to say up there? We go up there and we might be looking at another person or we might be just looking at an audience if we're doing solo improv. And then our brains sometimes go blank. There is nothing there. What do we do then? Or we're worried that it's going to go blank.

And then it actually does.

So this month, I'm talking about the top of the scene.

I'm talking about those initiations.

I'm talking about setting that base reality right at the beginning of a scene.

I'm Jen deHaan, and this is Your Improv Brain, where I break down improv concepts,

often through a neurodivergent lens, and give you exercises to practice with a scene partner or solo.

Will Hines is an improviser and a teacher and a lot of other things, and he's pretty good at a lot of those things as well. Anyways, one of the things that Will says to help improvisers at the top of a scene is pretty astute, actually. Don't tell him I said that. He says that a useful thing is to try answering the question, where are you?

Where are you? So if you establish that location physically, you don't need to speak it either. So there's a lot of ways to, you know, establish where are you. You can say it, or you can do a physical action to kind of tell the other person what might be happening or sort of do half of it. That might give them an idea about where you are. So there's a lot of ways to do this.

And if you do that thing of establishing that location physically, you don't need to speak. And I believe that's one of the reasons that Will says it so great. You don't have to speak. This gives you some time. It buys some time. You can just start doing a physical action and it gives you and your scene partner something to go on and it gives you a little bit of time for that brain to

to figure out what's happening and where you are. So you can let that environment dictate the behavior as well. So this allows the scene to start with an action instead of also needing to discuss things, to talk about things. And that's all good because you don't want to get into discussing and kind of having this negotiation in the setting of the base reality. So this is a great way of

starting a scene.

Or if you prefer, you can use your words to set that location.

So if you have nothing and you are blank, just put that question in your head.

Don't say it out loud.

Where are you?

And simply answer it.

Just make sure you don't get stuck on discussing the location too much.

Think about who you are and what you're doing as well. So let's do an exercise for this. So I'll give you two exercises actually. I'll give you another one. I'll give you a solo one and I'm going to give you one for you and a scene partner. So here's the scene partner one first. So two people up and I'm going to call this exercise, This Place Has So Much Flavor. So the person initiating.

Player One is not going to use any words, but they are going to make a choice that establishes both what the flavor of the space is and shows some kind of physicality. So it's going to be doing something like doing an action, but also doing it with emotion. So there's your flavor. Player Two is going to join in with that action and just

They might join in with the same emotion as well, or they might use a different emotion that works with the scene. The two players are going to continue this without any words for a moment. Before they speak, this is going to give you a little bit of time to sort things out. And then you have your base reality, your silent, no words, base reality.

Of course, then both players have the next challenge of somebody has to speak and set up what they're doing and where they are. Figuring out what the heck you're up to. But you have something active to go on and that activity is your joint initiation. So if your mind goes blank, this is always an option that's available to you.

on your own. The solo adaptation I'm going to call The Garage. So you're going to start this off as a solo improviser, imagining that you're in some kind of specific location full of items like an attic or a thrift store or a garage. Hence the name The Garage. So imaginative and creative, isn't it? Decide where this is when you start out and your emotion as you handle a few

objects one by one. So start handling those objects. Pick something up. You're thinking in your head what this object is and figure out your emotion as you handle these objects. Once you've done a few different objects, stop your session and then verbally describe to yourself this base reality that you just formed. Figure out who are you, where are you, and why.

Don't try to figure it out just right away. Who are you? Where are you? And why? You can also if you haven't already try to figure out what is the connection between these objects that you're handling. That's like an advanced move. Make those connections and why you feel the way you feel right now. Your character anyways. So this solo adaptation is going to help you when you're doing this with a scene partner up on stage or if you're a solo improvise.

is going to help you start off a scene with hopefully a lot more momentum than otherwise. I'm Jen deHaan and this is Your Improv Brain. You can find a bunch of improv resources and downloads and my newsletter as well at improvupdate.com.