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This week - we have a guest blog from Bill Arnett - an incredible improviser, teacher and author of The Complete Improviser: Concepts, Techniques , and Exercises for Long Form Improvisation. Watch this space for a chance to work with Bill soon.

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This post was born during a robust conversations in San Antonio while doing some workshops with Bexar Stage (pronounced ‘bear’, remember your high school Spanish?). I was chatting with the directors, Tina and Dan, about the challenges of bringing new teachers and coaches on board. While the Chicago Improv Studio is just me right now it got me thinking about what I would arm my young teachers with.

Here’s my assumption: every theater has a particular style, whether they are aware of it or not, that is defined and propagated through classes and coaching. Specifically, by exercise selection and the notes that are given, as well as the notes not given. You could look at the exercises and notes, integrate them with a theater’s shows, and come up with a weighted list of identifying characteristics; a theater’s stylistic finger print. I’m calling this finger print the style pyramid.

Each level represents a style choice indicative of a theater’s identity. At the bottom is the never-break stylistic rule. One theater might have Make a personal declarative statement at the bottom. Another theater might have Start your scene with an action at or near the bottom. As you work your way up, the levels are less crucial to the success of the scene but shape and push the scenes toward the theater’s artistic identity. Can a scene still succeed though it violates the highest level? Sure, but it may not fit the style of that theater perfectly, which may not even be a problem.

The benefit as a teacher or coach is that, when presented with a scene to give notes on, the style pyramid helps prioritize the issues you wish to correct and gives focus for notes on each issue. Starting from the bottom you can assess at which point the scene start to fail. If the lowest level wasn’t satisfied notes and side coaching don’t need to go any further. Why discuss object work if the players weren’t even paying attention to each other?

(Grain of salt, people. I get it. This is art. I’m not tattoo-ing this to my players foreheads. It’s about direction and focus, not perfect obedience.)

This is the style pyramid for the Chicago Improv Studio. At the lowest level is my most basic, never-break, stylistic rule: The actors are playing the scene together. If it isn’t happening in a scene my side coach notes are things like, “Tell your partner what you see them doing.”, “How is your partner feeling? Tell them.”, and “This is actually happening, play it as such.”

One level up is Clearly define the scenes context. I really like knowing what I’m watching. I don’t need who, what, and where in the first line or even spoken out loud, this isn’t the lowest level, remember. If the audience is to deeply follow and sympathize they need to understand. Does this mean that absurdity is forbidden? No, but uncommon. Side coaching here are things like, “Is that your sister or mother?”, “Tell me what brought you together in this moment.”, and “I need some exposition.”

The next level is about managing tension. You can have perfectly hilarious relationship scenes by playing the first two levels well but if you want a game-of-the-scene style scene this is where it can begin to exist. Scene games generally rub absurdity with reality to generate frustration. If actors aren’t being emotionally affected and neither understands what’s happening (levels 1 and 2) a frustration game can’t really exist. Notes here might be, “Tell your partner what behavior is upsetting you.”, “Try losing without changing who you are.”, and “You’re pushing your deal very hard. Do you want to be fired/dumped/punched?”

Level four is essentially acting notes. If a scene is satisfying the first three levels then the only way to sharpen it is to make sure it’s presented well. Side coaching might be, “You know that guy. Does he always behave that way? Put your answer on your face.”, “Your next line will just be an emotional noise.”, and “She said yes! Step towards her.”

The top, object work, so rarely come up for me. It says far more about me and my tastes than it does the objective utility of object work. At this point, if the scene has gone so well that object work is its only problem, like a home run with a stutter step as you touch second, players should be praised highly, not raked over the coals. My notes? I dunno, “Do your object work better.”

Thinking back to my experiences as a student I think there are some other, less constructive shapes out there:

Straight-Sided Style Tower: This model assumes all conceivable problems are problems worth addressing fully. This thinking gives 30 minutes of notes after a 3 minute scene.

Large Base/Tiny Top: This takes too narrow a view of improv. As long as you do X, there’s not much else I can say. “You had fun up there? Great! Next scene.”

That’s it. Feel free to send me your style pyramid. I’d love to see it. Hope you can find some use in this, even if it’s just forcing yourself to reflect on your own process.