Why Questions Kill Your Scene | Second City Improv Week 3

So for week three, what we learned, and every class is going to be different, but our instructor, Tom...

He wrote down on the whiteboard in this classroom just the things that you're going to go over.

He talked about the check-ins, you know, checking in with everyone, how everyone's week was.

We did warm-up exercises like zip, zap, zop.

We talked about the games we might be playing that day.

And I'm going to talk less about the games we played in improv class because there are so many different improv games.

And I mean, truthfully, that's majority of what we did, but I don't remember them, so I'm that I don't remember.

I'm only going to talk about the ones that I do, like Zip Zap Zop, like Woosh.

These are warm-up exercises.

There are specific games that I can talk about if I remember them correctly, but I'm going to talk about what you learn from those games and things to keep at the forefront of your mind.

So when you're doing these improv games, you're like, oh, right, don't ask questions.

Okay, why don't I ask questions? Okay, what's the yes and? How can I improve on that how can i keep that at the forefront of my mind when i'm doing that because truth be told i remember even giving myself this prompt of okay next time i do an improv scene with a partner or a group i'm not gonna ask questions i'm gonna say yes and i'm gonna accept the gifts i'm gonna i'm gonna be specific and as soon as i start an improv scene i'm like what i forgot i'm just gonna listen which that's probably the best thing you can do to fall back on actively listen now going to the games that we played we played a simple yes and game and that's literally what it was it was an improv scene just you and another scene partner and it's almost like three-line scenes.

This is a very common game.

A three-line scene is exactly what it is.

You'd have person A and person B.

Person A just says a suggestion, just starts off a scene.

Person B says yes and they add on top of it.

They add as much specificity as they can.

Of course, don't deliver a whole paragraph.

It's a thing that a lot of improvisers do.

They kind of just give you so much information, but just simple sentence or two is completely enough so you add on top of that and then it goes back to person A and they deliver their last line so it's three line scenes it goes one two and three and you try to make a scene that establishes the relationship between you and your scene partner that establishes the environment and what you're doing so who you are, where you are, and what are you doing? What do you want? What's going on in that scene? Try to establish that in three lines, which is very difficult.

And some three line scenes are very vague and not specific and interesting, but it's an exercise that really does help.

So we played this yes and game that was like three line scenes, but instead of saying yes and, we said hell yes and, meaning that if person A says, Today is a gorgeous day outside.

Person B would be like, hell yeah.

And look at that.