![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.immersology.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/zRvaPf0.gif?resize=245%2C213&ssl=1\")
Note how audiences of comedy-improv are not the same folks wandering into your local professional blackbox. One does not get from a play what one gets at an improv show, and vice versa. Can immersive theatre\u2014devoted to designed storytelling and<\/em> live response\u2014capture both audiences? I hope so. (Granted, there aren\u2019t a lot of comedy immersives being done right now, and people want comedy. Thoughts for another day).<\/p>\n Giving audiences a sense of \u201cspecialness\u201d is key to improv\u2019s success\u2014and immersive theatre takes that to the next level. The more room we allow for response and relation, the more audiences will go away feeling special. That\u2019s a serious gift.<\/p>\n The generation brought up with \u201cspecial snowflake\u201d sydrome is all grown-up and looking for entertainment. We want to brag to friends about the once-in-a-lifetime thing we witnessed last weekend. We want the celebrity experience. When an actor chooses us for a scene or incorporates our presence or, better yet, actions into the show, we feel HUGE and will undoubtedly brag about it at the watercooler that is Facebook.<\/p>\n But immersive acting is not improv. I’m an utter dunce at improv and was intimidated at the prospect of being cast in my own show (a choice we made for financial reasons. Okay, and I’m not terrible at it). To my delight, I discovered I could handle immersives just fine. My goal isn’t to be imaginative or funny; it’s to be honest to my character in that moment. Improvising within those parameters comes naturally to me. It’s more like when something goes wrong on stage, and you address it…except that happens about 20 times a performance instead of once a production.<\/p>\n At a recent show I attended of True West<\/em>, an actor struggled to hang up a phone on the wall. Once he finally got it to stay, he flipped it off\u2014the realest and funniest moment in the performance. That’s improv. That\u2019s the wondrous \u201clive\u201d part of \u201clive theatre,\u201d that we trumpet so proudly to get butts in the seats, but so rarely actually occurs. Ask any actor or avid-theatre-goer for a favorite\u00a0 moment in a play: my bet’s they’ll recall some wonderfully wild improvised moment.<\/p>\n Immersive theatre guarantees that improvisation happens every show. Instead of waiting for a prop to go rogue, immersive theatre introduces the wild card of the active audience. Everything and everyone is in play\u2014electricity pervades the air. And people love the hell out of it. \u201cEvery show\u2019s different\u201d is a promise that immersive theatre actually makes good on.<\/p>\n But here’s the rub: in a play or otherwise rehearsed piece, audiences can always tell the difference between improvisation and the script. The voice shifts, the body changes. (Which says something about how far actors are from being convincing humans. Oh, well. It\u2019s hard<\/em>.)<\/p>\n Immersive actors should learn to shift seamlessly between the two modes: script-improvised response-script. We don’t want the improvisations to stand out as “of a different kind”\u2014the more improvised the entire show feels, the more special the audience feels. In The Man From Beyond<\/em>, we made a deep commitment to pass off the fantastical as actual. If we did our job right, you should find yourself asking “Is this real<\/em>? Or part of the game?” Everything, from my props to my actors, needs to feel real in The Man From Beyond<\/em> (well\u2026with one major exception\u2026and that\u2019s specifically designed to feel fake).<\/p>\n \u201cStop acting\u201d is my go-to note as a director.<\/p>\n Acting schools approach improv and scripted acting as separate disciplines\u2014you will rarely encounter a true master of both. With immersive theatre, we now have a third style of acting, somewhere in-between the two pillars. It\u2019s not all fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants like improv: there\u2019s a story (or at least a very specific scenario) that doesn\u2019t change night to night. But it also lacks the rigidity of scripted acting: there\u2019s an audience around you that you cannot ignore.<\/p>\n Should we open a special school? As a holder of a useless master\u2019s degree, I\u2019m not clamoring for it, but I\u2019m positive we\u2019ll get there eventually. Right now all immersive actors are learning on the job, and probably each show will always have a learning period, as the available real estate for response depends greatly on the immersive\u2019s structure.<\/p>\n At Strange Bird Immersive, we keep a living document that we call \u201cl\u2019esprit de l\u2019escalier,\u201d or more simply, \u201canswers to weird responses.\u201d<\/p>\n In improvisational theatre\u2014or even in staged acting, when something goes wrong\u2014a performer often thinks of the super-clever response after the moment has passed. But immersive actors, thanks to the genre\u2019s devotion to small audiences and extended runs, will most likely face that moment again.<\/p>\n While there’s a very long tail for audience responses, I can attest that the same sorts of behaviors keep coming up: laughter in this section, jackassery at this question, some guy lies that he did it (when he didn\u2019t) just to see what you\u2019ll do about it, etc. We write down every unusual audience behavior and then set an ideal response to that behavior. This way audiences can get the best response without breaking immersion. More than making me look cool under pressure, the document primarily serves to give new actors in a role a jump-start on the behaviors they are likely to face.<\/p>\n Is anyone else keeping logs like this for their immersives?<\/p>\n I’m sure improv actors are appalled right now: it’s against the spirit of the whole thing! Isn’t scripting improvisations like this taking away the electricity of the moment I’ve been praising this whole time? Maybe. Like all things in acting, it depends on delivery. What I do know is it does<\/em> make the script and the improv feel more of the same kind, and I think I value that more. Plus it saves us from asking every new actor to the fight the wolves anew. It’s the responsible thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to wielding the superpower of response, nothing compares to improv theatre. Improv’s life-blood is being responsive. It\u2019s made-up on-the-spot, more human in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immersive-acting"],"yoast_head":"\nSPECIALNESS<\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.immersology.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/watercooler-01.jpg?resize=525%2C349&ssl=1\")
IMPROVISING INSIDE A SCRIPT<\/h5>\n
A THIRD STYLE OF ACTING<\/h5>\n
Scripted improv?<\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.immersology.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/RH-Ghost-0954-e1497978562818-224x300.jpg?resize=224%2C300&ssl=1\")