C H A P T E R 7
Putting
It Together
We have taken a look at the following:
• Cause and Effect Storytelling
• Raising the Dramatic Stakes
• The dramatic structure of a full-length play
• The dramatic flow of a Substantial Scene
• Creating characters
• Creating an environment
And, mixed in with our look at characters and environment, we touched on ways to use theatrical symbols and metaphors in order to feed the theme. Let’s take one more walk through the Play by Play Structural Map, and I’ll offer some final thoughts about putting it all together.
A Final Look at The Foundation
Nothing is more important at the top of The Foundation than good, solid improvisation. Be spontaneous! Trust your first idea and act on it. Always make your partner look good. Focus on your partner, discover what she needs to be successful, and provide it. Always say, “Yes!” Gladly embrace your partner’s idea and build upon it.
If the top of the show starts off with a barrage of blocked offers and negative offers, in which the characters are made to look bad, wrong, and stupid, then the play is in trouble. Odds are, the first scene will devolve into an argument and nothing of any substance will be created, no environment, no real characters, and no relationship. Plus, the argument itself will quickly become annoying to the audience, as it will very obviously be two improvisers trying to score points by showing how wittily they can insult the other rather than two characters building The Foundation of a two-hour play. The audience might not be able to articulate the difference, but they will certainly be able to feel it. At the top of the show, stay positive and always, always, always make your partners look good.
The next thing to do is relax. There’s no need to rush. You’ve got plenty of time. Ease into it and allow the improvisation to develop naturally. Connect with your partner. Allow the dialogue to unfold at a natural pace, rather than feeling that “improv anxiety” that prompts us to talk really fast and dump a bunch of offers on the stage before the lights come down on our brilliant scene. Relax. Pace yourself. The lights are staying up.
Spend some time creating the environment. Name it, describe it, and use it. Connect it to the characters on stage through symbolism and metaphor. Be affected by it, and allow it to affect the relationship on stage. Spend some time developing your character and your partner’s character through endowments, monologues, and reminiscences. Five, ten, even fifteen minutes can be spent just inhabiting the environment and introducing the audience to the first three or four characters.
Now, does that mean that fifteen, ten, or even five minutes will go by without any action unfolding? No, because inhabiting the environment and introducing the characters do not take place in a dramatic vacuum. They take place in the context of substantial dramatic scenes. For example, imagine an opening fifteen-minute scene in which a mountain cabin is created, a husband and wife are introduced, and their characters and relationship are developed. Surely if the two improvisers simply call each other “honey” and then go on to describe the cabin for fifteen minutes, we’re in for a hell of an evening.
However, if the scene is one of Dramatic Conflict in which the husband’s objective is to extend their fabulous weekend for another two days and the wife’s objective is to leave that evening because she has to be at work the very next morning; the cabin is described alternately by the husband and wife, his descriptions pointing out the positive as a tactic to make his wife want to stay, and her descriptions pointing out the inconveniences as a tactic to make her husband want to leave; and the isolated nature of the cabin becomes a metaphor for the husband’s feelings of isolation within the marriage ever since his wife was promoted to senior vice president, until finally the wife reluctantly agrees to stay as long as she can just pop into town for a few hours and check her e-mail, then suddenly, we’d be pretty excited about the rest of the show.
Once you’ve relaxed and your environment, your first couple of characters, and your first Substantial Scene have all been well established and set in motion, it’s time to focus on creating the routine. Lines that reference the past are a good way to do this. For example, to stay with our husband and wife from above, lines from the husband such as:
“Come on, Honey, we haven’t had a vacation in years.”
“Ever since you’ve been promoted, it’s been hard to find time together.”
“We used to be so spontaneous.”
and lines from the wife such as:
“Honey, I’m sorry, but work has been crazy the past couple of months.”
“To be honest, my second quarter wasn’t very good, and I’m under a lot of pressure.”
“I told you that things would be different if I took the promotion.”
are all effective ways of beginning to establish the routine. In this case, the routine has to do with a husband and wife whose individual needs are beginning to cause a strain in their relationship.
Notice how this type of exposition needn’t be clunky if it is incorporated skillfully into the dialogue. The lines above, while expository in nature, are also being used as tactics by the characters to achieve their objectives; the husband is trying to convince the wife to stay, and the wife is trying to convince the husband to leave. By “hiding” your exposition in active dialogue, you avoid the tedium of calling the action to a halt and delivering an “obligatory” monologue of exposition.
In addition to referencing the past, another effective tool for establishing the routine is identifying patterns in the characters’ behavior. Lines from the husband such as:
“Sweetie, you worry too much.”
“You always give more to that company than they ever give you in return.”
“Every time we try to do something, your cell phone rings.”
and lines from the wife such as:
“You tend to think about today, and I tend to think about tomorrow.”
“Nothing ever seems to bother you.”
“You take off work whenever you feel like it; I don’t feel comfortable with that.”
are great ways of identifying the routine. And, as an extra bonus, each line offers a character endowment as well.
So far, we’ve discussed referencing the past and identifying patterns. However, it’s important to remember that the routine of The Foundation does not exist solely in the past. It exists in the present moment. It is where we meet the characters. It is not enough to explain the routine; The Foundation must demonstrate, reinforce, and advance the routine through an active series of Cause and Effect events and dramatic Substantial Scenes. When the characters in The Foundation do nothing but explain the routine, the play begins to stagnate for want of dramatic action. Notice how our husband and wife are not just sitting around discussing their marital problems; rather, they are engaged in a Substantial Scene in which one is trying to leave and the other is trying to convince her to stay.
Now, while that’s the right kind of start, we certainly don’t want to see them wrestle with this single issue for forty-five minutes. This is the part where an improviser might become afraid to make a bold choice for fear of breaking the routine and ending The Foundation prematurely. For example, the wife might be tempted to end the scene by becoming angry with the husband and leaving him behind as she goes home. However, the improviser might shrink from that choice because she has identified the routine as the debate about staying or leaving. To leave, then, would end the debate and break the routine. But, this is not so, and allow me to illustrate why.
To once again make use of our Story Spine exercise, the routine in this case can be summarized as follows:
Once upon a time, there was a husband and wife who
were experiencing a strain in their relationship because of a conflict between his need to spend more time with her and her need to meet the demands of a challenging career. Every day, they tried to find ways of spending time together, but the demands of her job would inevitably, interfere.
If, at the end of the first scene, the wife went home and the husband remained behind, then, far from breaking the routine of her job interfering with their efforts to spend time together, her choice would significantly strengthen the routine. The drama would take off, the audience would be hooked, and we would still be soundly rooted in The Foundation.
A final idea to think about, regarding Foundations, is a concept that I call “Loading The Foundation.” We know that the main purpose of The Foundation is to create a routine that is going to be broken by The First Significant Event. To load The Foundation is to make offers that will make a potential First Significant Event obvious and easy.
For example, let’s say that our wife decided to stay at the cabin for an extra two days but absolutely had to go to town and check her e-mails. The husband was content but still a bit annoyed that she couldn’t put her work completely out of her mind for a couple of days. So, the wife goes off to town and the husband is left alone. As his boredom causes his annoyance to increase, the door to the cabin opens and in bursts Shelia, a young woman who is staying in another cabin about three miles away. Sheila was out on a hike and got lost. The husband invites her in and, as the two get acquainted, it becomes clear that Sheila is everything he wishes his wife to be: spontaneous, carefree, and blissfully in the present moment at all times. There is an obvious attraction between the husband and Sheila.
The character of Sheila, of course, is a foil for the character of the wife. By entering the play, she is loading The Foundation by making a potential First Significant Event involving the husband’s attraction for her obvious and easy. Perhaps he can have an affair with her. Perhaps the contrast with his wife will inspire him to tell his wife that he wants a divorce. Those things don’t have to happen, but by continuously loading The Foundation, you present a number of options for things that can happen. Then, when it’s time for The First Significant Event, it’s a simple matter of acting upon the easiest and most obvious of the choices.
To further load The Foundation, in this case, the wife can return after Shelia exits and tell her husband that an e-mail from her boss has instructed her to attend an important client meeting on Monday, and she can’t extend the weekend after all. This, piled on top of the husband’s attraction for Sheila, brings us even closer to a point of critical mass and to an imminent and obvious First Significant Event. It’s like adding playing cards, one by one, to a house of cards. The tension mounts as the house becomes increasingly unstable and, at last, collapses.
Exercise #30: Loading The Foundation
By using the first two lines of the Story Spine, we can practice loading The Foundation. The first offer introduces The Foundation, and the second offer loads it:
A Final Look at The First Significant Event
The First Significant Event is that final playing card that causes the card house to collapse. It should spring with ease from a wellloaded Foundation. Sometimes it will be introduced deliberately. An improviser will feel that The Foundation has fulfilled its purpose and will choose to end it by boldly identifying a character #2 and committing The First Significant Event. More often than not, that’s the way it should be.
However, this is improvisation, and such things are not always in our control. Sometimes, The First Significant Event will happen and the play will move into The Foundation Focus before the improvisers are fully aware of it. The task, then, is to realize what has happened and shift accordingly.
The tricky thing is making sure that everyone in the play has identified the same First Significant Event. If offstage communication is possible, there is nothing wrong with grabbing another cast member and confirming your suspicions with each other. Another way to give the cast the best odds of clearly identifying The First Significant Event is to simply decide that it will not take place before a certain number of minutes have passed. When Freestyle Repertory Theater first started performing Play by Play, we had one of those black, glowin-the-dark photographer’s clocks at the foot of the stage. We agreed that The First Significant Event would take place between twenty and twenty-five minutes into the first act. Anything that happened before that, regardless of how shockingly routine breaking it was, simply didn’t qualify. Another option is to set in advance who will be character #1 and who will be character #2. That way, everyone will know that if #1 didn’t do it to #2, it wasn’t The First Significant Event.
A Final Look at The Foundation Focus
It’s all about raising the stakes of The First Significant Event. So, character #1 proposes marriage to character #2. The Foundation Focus is all about the trouble character #1 has caused by making the proposal, the danger character #2 risks by either accepting or rejecting the proposal, and the dire consequences for all should the couple ever wed.
Character #1 confides a deeply personal secret to character #2. The Foundation Focus is all about the risk character #1 faces should character #2 disclose the secret, the danger character #1 encounters after character #2 does disclose the secret, and the dire consequences to all now that the secret has been revealed.
Character #1 loans a significant amount of money to character #2. The Foundation Focus is all about the trouble character #1 is in when his wife finds out about the loan, the sudden need for the money that arises within character #1’s family, and the dire consequences to all once character #2 admits that he gambled it all away and can never pay it back.
Be sure that The Foundation Focus is active and does not get caught in a state of potentiality. If character #2 faces danger by accepting the marriage proposal, don’t allow the play to dwell in that state of potential danger. Have character #2 accept the marriage proposal and get herself into danger. Notice how in “The Personal Secret,” character #2 raises the stakes by actually disclosing the secret, and in “The Significant Loan,” character #2 raises the stakes by actually losing the money.
In addition to raising the stakes of The First Significant Event, The Foundation Focus must give birth to The First Significant Repercussion in the same way that The Foundation gives birth to The First Significant Event. It should arrange events so that The First Significant Repercussion is easy, obvious, and natural. It’s important, now, to understand your role in the play. If you are not character #1 or character #2, then your job in The Foundation Focus is to help draw attention to the people who are. It takes a certain maturity, here, to step back and realize that the play is not about you. Rather than make offers that focus on your own character, you need to make offers that focus on the main characters. Every offer made in The Foundation Focus should serve to raise the stakes of The First Significant Event and bring character #1 and character #2 closer to The First Significant Repercussion. Remember, only the two central characters can bring about The First Significant Repercussion. Don’t try to help by thinking, “What can I do?” Try to help by thinking, “How can I get them on stage together at the right time?”
A Final Look at The First Significant Repercussion
In a two-act play, The First Significant Repercussion should end act one. If anything, a few more minutes of action or dialogue might be necessary to bring the act to a close and allow the full weight of the repercussion to resonate with the audience before the lights come down; but that’s about it. By raising The Question of the Play, The First Significant Repercussion provides the perfect moment of drama and suspense to pause the action and to send the audience into intermission.
The trick, of course, is making sure that everybody knows it when it happens. Again, you can go by the clock and decide that it simply has to happen within a certain ten-minute window of time, approximately fifty to sixty minutes into the show. Another way to help, if you find it makes things easier, is to let characters #1 and #2 have the stage to themselves during the last five minutes of the act. That will serve as a signal to everybody, indicating that the Repercussion is about to take place.
While it is everybody’s job in The Foundation Focus to make offers that set the stage for The First Significant Repercussion, it is up to character #2 to close the deal. Ultimately it is #2’s responsibility to find #1, get them both on stage together, and clearly and decisively do the deed.
A Final Look at The Question of the Play
Since The Question of the Play is not necessarily said out loud, it is important that everyone in the cast agrees on the same question. If everyone in the cast has a different interpretation of the events in act one, and a different articulation of The Question of the Play, then everyone will be working at cross purposes throughout all of act two.
With Freestyle Repertory Theater, we spent the intermission identifying the important facts: Who’s character #1, who’s character #2, what was The First Significant Event, what was The First Significant Repercussion, and what was The Question of the Play. I strongly recommend this, as it is very easy for five different improvisers to have five different answers to all of those questions. If there is more than one valid interpretation and the group is having trouble achieving consensus, then the director of the show needs to make the decision and the rest of the cast needs to get on board.
I also strongly recommend that you avoid the temptation to suggest what might happen in act two. It’s important to approach act two with all of the spontaneity and freedom with which you approached act one. Too many ideas about what might happen tend to stifle and burden the cast.
A Final Look at The Foundation Funnel
Once The Question of the Play has been raised, it’s time for the characters to decide whether they want the answer to be yes or no. The Foundation Funnel is spent in pursuit of the desired outcome. While The Question of the Play concerns itself solely with characters #1 and #2, it is important that the answer to The Question be of vital importance to every single character in the play. The stakes must be incredibly high for everyone involved. That way, when a “yes” and a “no” meet, their passionate, urgent, and mutually exclusive needs will necessarily result in a compelling Dramatic Conflict. This is where strong objectives and a knack for tactics are essential. Also, any character that is not deeply invested in the out-come of The Question will have no dramatic connection to the story and, consequently, be of little interest to the audience.
As I’ve mentioned before, the exceptions to this are those characters that are not aware that The Question exists. Obviously they can’t be invested in the answer if they don’t even know there’s a question. However, they can affect the answer, nonetheless, and that is where the fun comes in. Characters that are oblivious to The Question can profoundly affect the answer by coincidence, by unknowingly affecting the sequence of events in the pursuit of something entirely unrelated.
For example, let’s imagine that The Question of the Play is, “Will the master thief succeed in stealing the diamonds from the lady of the house?” Ten minutes into The Foundation Funnel, the master thief arrives at the mansion disguised as a famous art dealer. Alone in the drawing room, he cracks the safe and removes the diamonds. (He pushes the answer toward yes.) However, the lady of the house is heard approaching, and he quickly stashes the diamonds in a nearby vase. (He reluctantly nudges the answer toward no.) At that moment, the housekeeper enters and, muttering something about that old vase being ready for the trash, picks the vase up and carries it away. The housekeeper has pushed the answer precariously close to no, although she doesn’t even know about The Question. These types of characters are a delight to the audience and a great deal of fun for the improviser as they can bumble and blunder their way through the plot, while having the most devastating of effects on the hapless main characters.
It’s very helpful in The Foundation Funnel for character #1 to interact with as much of the cast as possible. This is because The Foundation Funnel must result in The Climax, and The Climax must take place between character #1 and character #3. Each time character #1 interacts with someone other than character #2, a potential Climax opportunity is created. While character #1 has to commit The Climax, the improviser who plays character #1 need not be unduly burdened with the weight of the entire task. If the improviser is overly concerned with discovering a character #3 and creating an effective Climax, it can cause an intellectual preoccupation that can impede spontaneity. To avoid this, everyone is responsible for making character #1 look good by creating as many potential Climax opportunities as possible.
This is one portion of the show where it is easy to become too caught up in the structure. By concerning yourself too much with trying to “figure out” a great Climax, you are almost guaranteed to start planning the future and to lose your spontaneity. Instead, just concern yourself with achieving your immediate objective, answering The Question either yes or no. If everybody focuses on achieving that objective, then, sooner or later, character #1 will do something to somebody that will prove to be The Climax.
Remember, again, that it isn’t really the burden of the improviser portraying character #1 to make a Climax. It is everybody’s burden to ensure that a Climax happens. For example, player 1, as an indigent character #1, might sit on a bench next to a stranger with no intention of making that The Climax. However, player 2, as the stranger, might make it The Climax by “overaccepting” the offer, perhaps by recognizing character #1 as his long lost, elder brother and informing him that he is really the heir to a family fortune, thus allowing character #1 to marry character #2. The stranger becomes character #3, and it was player 2 who made it happen. Again, it all boils down to good, old-fashioned improvisation; focus on your partner and overaccept her offers.
Extremely important in The Foundation Funnel is allowing your character to change. That is, allow your character to switch sides from yes to no or from no to yes. Allow your character to be convinced, or fooled, or persuaded, or bullied, or blinded by love, or brought into the light, or anything that allows her to shift allegiances and alter the balance of power between the yes’s and the no’s. Of course, not everybody has to do this, but unless somebody does it, the drama will hit an impasse and not be able to move forward. Besides, it is just this type of change, after playing a scene with character #1, that creates a character #3.
A Final Look at The Climax
Once The Question of the Play has been raised and The Foundation Funnel is under way, The Climax can occur at almost anytime. In some plays, The Foundation Funnel is remarkably short. The Climax occurs shortly after the Funnel begins, and the rest of the play is spent in The Foundation Finale as the consequences of The Climax slowly take their toll upon the characters. In other plays, The Foundation Funnel is remarkably long, lasting up until moments before the final curtain, layering plot twist upon plot twist upon plot twist, only to slam The Climax in at the last conceivable minute and bring the play to a screeching halt.
As Bernard Grebanier astutely observes in his book, Playwriting: How to Write for the Theater, plays that tend to use one-dimensional characters in order to focus on the complexities of the plot, such as farces and melodramas, tend to have Climaxes very close to the end of the story. The reason for this is that those types of plays can only go on for as long as the plot can continue to twist. As soon as The Climax sets the plot upon a path toward resolution, and all of the confusions and complications are explained away, the fun is over and the play needs to end. On the other hand, plays that use three-dimensional characters and focus less on the inventiveness of the plot, such as dramas and tragedies, tend to demand earlier dramatic Climaxes and longer resolutions, allowing more time for the characters to process the emotional impact of the ending and experience a more believable emotional journey. In classical tragedies, the dramatic irony is often the result of an early Climax, which allows the main character to struggle vainly on in the pursuit of success, while piteously blind to the fact that he has already, and long ago, cemented his doom.
A Final Look at The Foundation Finale
This is where it all comes together, and the play is brought to a close. Obviously, the most important requirement of The Foundation Finale is that The Question of the Play is finally answered, in no uncertain terms, either yes or no. Also important, is that any loose ends, regarding any other characters, are resolved. You just don’t want the audience leaving with the thought, “But, what about the daughter? Didn’t she say something about eloping?”
Keep in mind that The Foundation Finale can be fairly long, and there is still a lot of room for improvisation. It’s a trap to think that your beautifully executed Climax has made the outcome so perfectly obvious to you, the cast, the audience, and the world, that you may now engage your autopilot and catch a few winks as you cruise into the curtain call. For one thing, remember that The Climax needn’t answer The Question as your character expects. It’s perfectly legitimate, and often quite wonderful, when The Climax backfires and achieves the opposite of its intended result. This can throw the improviser who has very neatly written the last fifteen minutes of the play. It’s also quite possible that your beautifully executed Climax turns out not to be The Climax at all, beautiful or otherwise. Stay spontaneous. Stay open. Keep alert. See what’s really happening, and stay in the game. Even now, at the very end, it’s all about improvisation: Be spontaneous, always make your partner look good, and always say, “Yes!”