Take Care of Your Partner.

"What about my partner's function in the scene, how can I support that?"

God bless. What about your partner's creation?

First of all, nobody's function arrives by magic. It is the result of the choices made by all parties on stage. Your partner's function is all that they initiate and all that they respond to in response to your choices.

Both functions are mutually carved through a series of (hope­fully) powerful choices.

Points of view arrive as a result of these choices, and thus form what the scene is about, or the relationship, or the game of the scene, all of which are quite often the same things.

For example, as a result of your choices (or choices you have both made) in the scene, your partner's character is angry at your character (let's say your character is laughing at him). You can support your partner's point of view by making him angrier, thereby adding fuel to the fire of your partner's point of view and helping him to heighten his character. Most of the time though, you are doing this by simultaneously heightening your own point of view (your character laughs at everything your partner's char­acter does).

The more your character laughs at everything his character does, the angrier your partner's character becomes. That is the relationship of this scene. That is what this scene is about. That is the game of this scene. It was arrived at through individual choices recognized in self and partner, and heightened because both parties are aware of what each created. This is improv support.

Listening to Your Partner.

Listen.

(To me now.)

Another one of the many things I've been told that is paramount to good improvisation is listening. Now surely I'm not going to refute that, am I?

"Listening to your partner on stage has got to be important in good improvisation—it just has to be."

Well it is, I guess, but in my opinion merely listening has little value. You have to know how to listen. Why do we listen? Is it to be polite?

When I was told to listen in an improv scene I just had to ask myself why. The answer seems obvious at first, but is it? Why is just listening important? I wasn't sure, but what I was sure about was merely being told to listen wasn't very helpful to me in improvisa­tion. It was very passive and got me in my head. I certainly learned to shut up and listen to my partner, and I guess it was noble, but it rendered me passive and motionless on stage. It was another oppor­tunity to think, to get in my head. Listening didn't help me at first.

After a while, after I learned for myself to create a character or point of view to arm myself in a scene, listening became a different thing.

I listened so that I could respond to operative information my partners supplied for me and filter it through my own character in the scene. 1 listened so it would help shape what I was going to do and say in the scene. Ah, it came back to me again. Listening gave me another tool, allowed me more ammunition to pour into what I had created.

Truly, merely listening is not enough. I listen to gain valuable opportunities to say or do something relevant through my character's voice, when I respond. That's why I listen.

Oh God, so selfish again. Isn't listening an altruistic act and can't it remain as such? Don't you listen because it's nice and it's give-and-take and give-and-take is good in improv and all of that?

Sure, but what does it leave me? Like it or not, improvisation is choices made by individuals, and individuals need to know what to do. Merely listening tells me nothing of what I have to do. Listening as a way to respond to given information through my character is a whole different thing.