IMPROVISATION IS MORE of a journey. Why do I say journey? I think of a journey as going from one place to the other where you encounter different things and people. Like an actual journey, sometimes your characters will wander off your plot path and you will have to struggle to bring them back. Improvisation is a way of illustrating the journey and showing it to you so that you can make those choices. Sometimes you can read something multiple times and you don’t understand it and then you see it up on its feet or hear it and it all falls into place. Why? Because you are engaging all of your senses (sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing) and so you experience your work on a totally different level. You are not just playing it all in your brain and imagination – you are up on your feet acting it out. And because you are exploring, things can happen by accident that are good.
Here’s the deal. Ultimately, you can experience the idea, your characters or story off the page utilizing all of your senses. Now I will digress. Not all of our senses are bestowed to us equally. Some of us are “visual” people – meaning they remember and respond to almost all of what they see. Some are “auditory” people – meaning they remember and respond to almost all of what they hear… and touch, taste and smell and so on. Some of us are “touch/feel” people – almost all the Italians in the house.
(Audience laughter)
Some are odor driven… we react mostly to smell. Or there may be a few “tasters” out there.
(Audience laughter)
So, improvisation engages everything and that why we experience our work in a totally way. Now when you write, in front of your computer or legal pad, we engage all of those things through our imagination. However, improvisation is really a hands on method that breaks the preconceived responses that we may harbor in our imaginations. It allows us to look at our work from a totally different perspective. Probably, the perspective that is the closest to the audience way of looking at your work that you will ever get. When you sit and write your books, it is very difficult for you to be, to sound like, and to feel all the things your characters experience. With improvisation, you experience it, just as an audience would. Therefore, you will have a better understanding of your work’s meaning. If the meaning of your work is clear to you, it will be clear to an audience because you are experiencing in a similar way. So that’s one reason to use improvisation.
Now, in my own writing, I have written many plays for theatre, screenplays, animation and of course books. My roots are firmly in the theatre, so I often have a live reading of my work either on stage or a table read. This is something I always do, for almost all of my work. You can do this as well by renting a small theatre for an evening or using your living room. You cast as you would if you were doing it and then at the reading you can just sit back and listen to what you have written. On certain occasions for certain projects, I also do a staged reading which is kind of a combination of reading and stage version. What I’m saying is that a staged reading for me includes movement. I may set the actors up in a semicircle on the stage and have them get up and go to the center of that semicircle when the read their scenes. If you choose a staged reading format, you should probably have at least one-maybe two rehearsals so that everyone knows where they have to be and what they have to do during the reading. I often put actors playing characters that have a lot of scenes together next to one another. They still have to get up to read or sometimes they can do their scene from where they sit. I like this because, getting up, allows the actors to physicalize the reading. In this manner, you get a sense of how the words you have written translate into the physical world. I just like to watch and listen… I rarely take notes. I just want to watch and listen just as if I were sitting in an audience. I don’t want my face buried in the manuscript writing notes. I just want to experience the work as it was meant to be. However, I often ask the actors and audience to make notes and when we discuss the reading afterward, certain elements may come to the surface. I take a lot of notes during the discussion part of the reading. If you do decide to have a reading, listen to what is being said. Don’t be defensive if you are criticized. Just write whatever you feel is important to your characters and story. You will also invariably get comments on typos or grammar you may choose to accept or ignore. So a live reading of your manuscript is another way to get your work up on its feet so that you may experience it with all of your senses. Improvisation is also a great tool to get around writer’s block. How many of you have ever experienced writer’s block?
(Audience reaction – several hands go up in agreement)
Right. Well using improvisation is a great way to break through the creative barriers imposed by writer’s block. Of course when you put your work up on its feet and use actors upon a stage or your living room, you must be open to their interpretation. Often I have found that readings by actors improve the presentation and my understanding of the work… and yes, once in a while, I have had readings where I was not happy with one or two actors interpretation of my characters. But remember, once you put your work on its feet, it becomes a collaborative experience. You are no longer writing in your head, and different creative values of actors and an audience my change the outcome of how your work is presented. My advice is not to take notes on performances, just sit back and experience your work. When it’s over, walk away from it along with an audience with a sense of what you and the audience thought the work was about. So, let’s explore the question a little more. How can the use of improvisation assist a writer (of fiction or screenplays) in the development of character and story? Or What if you have no story? Nothing? How many of you have been to the hairdresser, the barber, a lawyer or the grocery store? We all have and they will tell you… “Why don’t you write a story about a (fill in the blank) a hairdresser, a lawyer, a grocery clerk?” My answer is, there is no story… and they’ll answer, “You know the funny stuff that happens.”
That is still not a story.
(Audience laughter)
The funny stuff that happens is not a story. You can’t write that story because it lacks fully developed characters and a plot. But you could utilize improvisation to develop perhaps an aspect of such a set up. Once someone gave me an idea to do a story about a person’s diary and I said “what about it?” The idea was that someone would find a diary and that contained in that diary was a story… an unanswered mystery. I kept on asking, “What was the story?” They shook their head and said, “I don’t know… it’s in the diary?”
(Audience laughter)
Then I thought, what if I improvise a story around a diary? Do a set up where a New York City detective arrives at a crime scene that contains the skeleton of a little girl buried in a wall. What makes it different is that the remains have been buried there for what looks like twenty years. There isn’t a clue to who the little girl is except for the remnants of the dress she wore and that by her side, the detective also finds a hand written diary. The last faded entry was written just moments before she was murdered. The faded notation partially describes her killer. Now we improvise off of that and now we are starting to get a story. The characters begin to evolve and the story starts to fall into place.
But sometimes and idea is just that. You try to improvise this concept but don’t get any traction. Characters do not reveal themselves and the idea remains just an idea. Despite your writing and improvisation it never matures to the next level. Sometimes that happens, and that is okay. You just take it, put it on the back burner and maybe sometime in the future it will mature or you will link it with another idea and it will start to evolve.
39
IMPROVISATION AS A CREATIVE TOOL
Acting it out
IMPROVISATION CAN BE used as a creative writing tool and not necessarily a thing you have to worry about for performance… and you don’t have to worry about being funny. And you need to give and take… that means letting it flow. Don’t become locked into one specific idea. If we do an improvisation and Bill
(Catalano points to au
dience member)
And… what’s your name?
(Audience member: “Jennifer.”)
Okay, what I am about to describe is an example. Bill and Jennifer. I’m not going to give you anything but a word…
(Audience member Bill: “Cool.”)
And then I’ll say to the class, “Someone give me a word.”
And one of you will say, “Apple!”
Then Bill and Jennifer begin an improvisation… I’m not actually saying you are going to do this… I’m just using you for my fictitious example.
(Audience laughter)
Then Bill gets started and does a whole thing about an apple.
“Look at this apple… this is a special apple… I wonder if it’s sweet?”
And the entire improvisation becomes a literal discussion based upon the word that was given. Apple.
Now the problem with my example is that the entire improvisation is wrapped around the discussion about an apple. Why? Because the first word I provided was “apple.” What’s wrong with this fictional example? By focusing on the just the word “apple,” we close out all other possibilities.
Instead, what I want you to think about is not just doing a literal interpretation of the word or idea but instead taking that idea or word and transforming it into something entirely different. Use “apple” or whatever your idea or word is a springboard into an entirely different meaning. Something like:
“Look at this apple it’s a strange color… it came from that tree over there by the barn. There were strange lights and sounds coming from that barn last night…
Did you see those lights?
No, but I did see a light in the sky… about midnight. The light I saw hovered over the apple tree for about an hour. It was a strange colored glowing light.
We took apple and made it a story about a possible UFO… sighting. We took the concept and went on a journey, not knowing where it would lead us. It becomes something else that can be more interesting than just talking about the apple itself.
Many people, because of television and the Internet tend to literalize everything they encounter. Computers and the Internet facilitate that. You type or say a phrase and you literally get all ramifications of that phrase. They type in “apple” and they get the literal understanding of Apple in our modern culture – a fruit or a computer company. No UFO’s on the horizon here. Remember this, an apple doesn’t just have to be an apple… it can be a reason to start on a journey. Just allow it to crawl out of the pond and be what it wants to be.
(Audience member: “Are we going to have to get up and improvise.”)
Yes, we are.
(Audience member: “I already did some improvisations yesterday.”)
Well, you are going to do a few more today. Just a few.
(Audience laughter)
Nothing too crazy… remember this is a writer’s workshop. I don’t want to frighten anyone.
(Audience laughter)
Catalano cartoon voice: “Oh no! They’re doing improvs! I’m gone!”
(Audience laughter)
So, don’t be literal and we will do an exercise to help us with that. Don’t worry, when we do the exercise I won’t ask you to play a slice of bacon sizzling on the pan. Nothing like that. But I want you to start thinking about starting with a physical activity.
(Audience laughter)
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USING PHYSICALITY TO CREATE CHARACTERS AND TELL YOUR STORY
Acting it out
WHEN WE COMMUNICATE ideas or who we are in life we don’t only use words, we also use physicality to convey our meaning. So, as you write, it’s not only about what your character speaks, it is also about what they physically do within a given space. One of the major barriers to improvisation, is many individuals have a hard time figuring out what to say. What I’m telling you here, is that you don’t have to say anything. You can create a character and place them in an environment and just let them react physically to that environment. Our characters, as in life, react physically in a different way, to each environment they find themselves within. For example, your physicality might be different if you are sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for test results, or walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night or climbing the bleachers at a rodeo show. How a character reacts physically or moves physically within an environment can tell us a lot about who they are and their emotional state.
In a given improvisational situation, don’t worry too much about making up things to say. Instead, you can communicate within an improvisation by just using your body language. Also, there are those instances where the dialogue and the physicality are not in agreement. The script might say one thing with dialogue but mean another with physicality. Here let’s do an improvisation right now.
(Catalano selects an audience member to participate)
Your line is “How are you?” and my line will be “fine.” Okay? Now we will do this for real, and I will say my line but I will use physicality to communicate what is really happening. Ready?
(Audience member: “Yes.”)
Okay…
(Audience member: “How are you doing?”)
(Catalano assumes a negative physicality with his arms tightly folded)
Fine…
All right, so the reality is something quite different than the lines would otherwise indicate. You are asking me if I am fine. I say yes, but really I am not fine. The character I have created is actually angry or at least concerned. Now let’s try it again.
(Audience member: “How are you doing?”)
(Catalano smiles and assumes an open physicality)
Fine! It says, “fine” so I am going to be fine!
(Audience laughter)
Here now we have the exact opposite situation. We can use physicality and without even talking we can convey the meaning of the scene. So within your improvisation, some of your characters may not speak very much or perhaps not speak at all. Let’s say in your novel you have written about a painter… you know a painter that paints on a canvass… not a house painter.
(Audience laughter)
… and in a given scene they are painting but they are also – let’s say angry – so you have an older man (an artist) paint angrily. He splashes paint upon the canvass and maybe uses jabs instead of smooth brush strokes. All of these actions convey the emotion of the character within the scene, but a line has not yet been spoken. On the other part of the stage or shot, a young female sits quietly and content reading a book. Both characters are in the same room, but don’t look at each other. That’s your opening scene as the camera starts to roll or the curtain goes up in the theatre. Immediately the audience watching will understand the emotional content of the scene even if the characters haven’t spoken a word. What would the dialogue add to the scene? Well, maybe we could find out why there is anger? Maybe the male character painting is jealous of the female character because she has been out all night. How would you know this… perhaps through dialogue when they finally start to speak?
Female: Will you paint me today?
Male Painter: Yes… I’m just changing something here.
Female: When?
Male Painter: When I’m ready.
Female: Should I take my robe off and get on the couch?
Male Painter: You’re quick to do that. You like taking off our clothes.
Female: Just trying to help… move it along.
Male Painter: You got back late last night… you thought I was sleeping… I wasn’t.
Female: (flips the magazine page) Interesting article about Spain…
Male Painter: It was very late… you’ve been drinking with Raul again?
Female: They are discouraging bull fighting… did you know that?
(The painter jabs his brush harshly into the canvas she turns the page of the magazine.)
Now as the story unfolds we start to have an idea about what’s going on. However, it’s not just the dialogue that tells us… it’s the physicali
ty of the characters as well. You can convey all of this using improvisation – letting it all take its path and then taking what you have discovered back to the page. Use improvisation as a tool and don’t be literal. Television kills us. They have to tell their story (if it’s an hour long show) in forty-three or forty four minutes and it all has to fit within a very specific format. Not a lot of room for exploration.
(Audience member has a question: “In writing the script, you have already talked about not writing it as if you are the director or including very specific camera angles.”)
Yes…
(Audience member continues: “So the actors should act and the directors direct.”)
Yes…
Audience member: (“So, when you’re writing that script and you have in your mind’s eye how that scene is going to look – how do you get that element of your ideas on the page? Is there a happy medium?”)
Yes, there can be a happy medium. What Bill is talking about we discussed in yesterday’s workshop. The economy of words… using your words to obtain the greatest impact. You want to let the actors and the director know how the scene will look and what’s going on but don’t tell them how to act it or how each camera angle should be set up. Remember, that film and theatre are collaborative arts. Everybody gets to provide creative input. As a writer, you have the challenge of giving them as much as it takes to know what is going on but not so much that you are intrusive. Let’s look at what you have to work with in a script?
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PAGE TO SCREEN - DESCRIPTION ACTION AND DIALOGUE
Acting it out
THE THREE ELEMENTS I’m talking about are description, action and dialogue. Let’s look at them.
DESRIPTION: The depiction of the physical universe that your characters live in.
ACTION: How your characters move within the universe that you have created.
DIALOGUE: What your characters say about themselves, other characters, their situation and the universe the move within.
Book to Screen Page 18