People have a lot on their minds these days — the economy, Iraq, “American Idol,” Internet piracy, John Kerry’s hair. . . .
But mostly, they’re thinking about sex toys and bodily functions. At least that’s the impression created by the suggestions that actors at the city’s leading improvisational theaters say they get most often from their audiences. Something in the nature of improv brings out the 13-year-old boy in audience members, who frequently respond to requests for comedy sketches with sexually and scatologically oriented topics.
At a recent improv set at Second City e.t.c., the request for “Hulk Moments” (tense situations that would turn you into a green-skinned monster) drew the replies “constipation” and “impotence,” and the theme “Things I Did the Last Time I Was Drunk” prompted the suggestion “incest.”
Requests for a profession have been eliciting “proctologist” and “gynecologist” for decades. Asked for a style of book, someone in the crowd often yells “porno.” The bathroom is a prevalent location, and being gay a common secret.
Regularly offered examples of relationships over the years have included president and intern, priest and altar boy, and the timeless favorite, hooker and pimp.
By all accounts, the most common suggestion is a word that can’t be printed in a family newspaper, which refers to a kind of sex device. “You can never escape it,” says Antoine McKay, who’s currently performing in the Second City’s “Doors Open on the Right.” “Out of the six improv sets we have in a week, we will get the suggestion [unprintable] every night.”
“You’ll ask for an activity, and people will yell [unprintable]. They break down the traditional noun-verb structure,” notes Peter Grosz of Second City e.t.c.
These suggestions presumably seem hilarious to the people making them, but the more outrageous they are, the harder it is for improv comedians to come up with funny, inventive material. Once the initial shock value of an off-color idea such as “proctologist” has worn off — which takes a matter of seconds — the actors are left with a suggestion that is going to produce more squirming among the audience than laughter.
“They don’t know that they really don’t want to see that scene,” says Annoyance Theater founder Mick Napier. “What they have in their mind is the image of what proctologists do. We could reproduce that image onstage improvisationally, but we could do it in four or five seconds, and that’s it. We have no foundation for a scene, but the audience doesn’t know that they don’t want to watch that image for four or five minutes.”
It’s the twist that’s telling
The problems these suggestions cause illustrate a fundamental truth about improv comedy — the funniest moments aren’t found in the dirty or taboo, but in the unexpected twist on the ordinary.
“When people are first exposed to improvisation, they have to invent funny. Whereas comedy is something that happens when you open yourself up to it,” observes Matt Elwell, an ensemble member at Comedy Sportz.
“In improvisation, we look for the vaguest or most banal scene. We know that `classroom’ is going to get us farther than two gay guys in drag driving down the road,” Napier observes. “We just want a simple suggestion so we can develop our own point of views and our own characters and relationships.”
It’s inevitable that the audience-performer interaction at the core of improv comedy would motivate crowd members to try to be as funny as the actors onstage, but the instinct to play class clown is counterproductive. “The funnier they try to be, the worse the sketch is,” says Second City alumnus-turned-television/theatrical star (“Mad About You,” “Spin City,” “Bounce”) Richard Kind.
Paradoxically, the most provocative suggestions force actors to work harder to go beyond the expected. “The worst situation is when somebody shouts out `proctologist,’ and instantly somebody’s bent over,” says “Doors Open on the Right” cast member Lisa Brooke. “That’s when I wish the floor would open up and swallow me.”
Rather than giving in to — and being limited by — the literal meaning of a suggestion, improv actors are trained to use their skills at free-associating to find the unexpected meaning, implications and interpretations of an idea. So instead of bending over, the actor may improvise a scene about a proctologist on the way home from the office, at dinner or on a date.
“The thing I teach people is it’s just an inspiration,” Charna Halpern, co-founder of Improv Olympic, says. “There’s no such thing as a bad suggestion; it’s what the group does with it that creates the theme out of it.”
Confronted with dark side
That approach becomes particularly important when improv actors are confronted with dark or cruel-minded suggestions (presumably from people taking a stump-the-band attitude toward the show). Abby Sher, who teaches and performs at Improv Olympic and also works with Second City, once was performing a storytelling skit that called for her to stop periodically so that the audience could complete a phrase for her.
When she paused after saying “I always wanted to marry a man who . . . ” someone in the crowd yelled “beat me.” Sher turned it into a tennis joke, expressing her happiness that she’d found a husband who could give her a game.
Actors and audience are better off when the performers are given suggestions they can work with rather than ones they need to overcome. Because audience ideas play such an integral role in improv, actors try to solicit suggestions that come from the top of people’s intelligence rather than the bottom.
“Be conscious of yourself, be conscious of what you believe in, be informed socially and politically,” McKay recommends.
“The way that we generate through material is through the improv suggestions,” Brooke adds. “So if there’s something on your mind don’t be afraid to talk about it.”
Unless, of course, what’s on your mind is proctology, gynecology or [unprintable].
