just like every light you see might be the one that sets you free

total improv bullshit theory today - I have to warn you that reading anything below might only be of interest to and good for my brain. I can't vouch for yours but hey, it's my blog. Tune in tomorrow and I'm sure I'll have a cute kid story or angry observational rant about the world at large.

still here? you were warned.
While having this same exchange last night it was pointed out that I probably spend way too much time thinking about stuff like this and I can't exactly argue the point, but allow me to nerd-out for a few minutes as a result of way too much thought about things that were meant to just be enjoyed and probably not picked apart.

I have been pushing a bunch of people around me to go and read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (because I love it way too much but also) because the way he uses language is super interesting to me from an improv standpoint. He creates this whole environment...not world, because the world he's talking about is actually this one, only different...but it's not different to the people that inhabit it of course because it's just "the world" so that's how he describes it, the characters interact with it and how it comes across to the reader....as the everyday, even though it couldn't be more unfamiliar in places.

He describes an environment that is essentially very foreign as if you already know about it, and instead of stopping to wedge in explanations of the things in that environment he makes reference to them repeatedly in context so the reader starts to gradually understand not only "what" is being described but also how it fits into the world, how it affects people around it and so on. The whole thing makes the world feel more familiar and comfortable since he doesn't break the idea that it's actually a place you'd recognize. He describes it the same way you would describe something you pass every day on your way to work.

which brings me to full-on theater dorkery.
it's the same set of actions that goes into establishing a really cool improv scene or larger environment. On stage you rarely (unless the form calls for it) just stop and describe the backdrop or environment or people in it ("hello, recently ex-girlfriend and welcome back to the office in which we both work".....no. not unless you're doing that to be meta-funny to other improvisers. You have become Galaxy Quest. Sometimes that can be super funny) to the audience, explain what a new random element "is" or who the people you're seeing "are" in this world you're creating on the fly. You do it by showing how the people on the stage relate to each other given their place and status in it, demonstrating the impact things in the world have on the people you're seeing and vice versa and the audience develops a textured and comfortable, if more or less complete, understanding of what might be a really very altered world that stretches way beyond just what is happening on stage. You create history and action at the same time, and at an alarming speed.

and I think that is unique to both forms of narrative - science fiction being one of the only literary genre's purposely grounded (until it crosses into pure fiction/fantasy) in reality or projections of possible outcomes of reality and creates THIS world with a simple "what if" applied to it, as opposed to a new world (in the case of fantasy) which bears explanation to make sense on some level or (in the case of "regular" fiction) simply uses the world we're in as a backdrop and plays out a scenario inside it.

Whereas, in improvisation, the rules and methods are largely the same - you create a 'world' in which the rules are changed (to steal completely from Tim Uren - you establish rules for the universe and run with it....a world in which all newspapers are missing the Sports section and GO) enough to make it unique and unpredictable but it's still inhabited by humans or things that we understand as 'real'. Of course, in scripted theater you hit the same marks as literature, either the story is one of fantasy or a scenario set "here", which both take some explaining to the audience as something they wouldn't necessarily understand, find familiar or relate to (in the case of fantasy) or they get it and you're not creating anything "new" in terms of the context.

Sure, there are people out there doing super-abstract work that goes to the other extreme for some insane amount of grant money that deal in neither, where the actors don't represent anything that currently exists and the context is removed entirely and can't be understood via normal vocabulary - that's called "contemporary dance" but as theater goes i think we're it.

We are totally the "Science Fiction" of "Theater"
no wonder we attract all the weirdos and can't get taken seriously.




whew. brain is tired.
glad I got that out of the way so I can go back to just digging Sci-fi for being entertaining and improv for just being fun.