Short-form Improv Takes Centre Stage Online
It's nearly ten months since most live improv shows around the world paused. Some improvisers have taken their short form shows online and adapted them, other improvisers have decided to move from long form to short form as they feel it suits the medium. Is short-form better suited to our new online improv world?
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This episode features:
Kayla Parker from ACT Improv, Dallas, USA
See ACT's online shows here:
https://www.facebook.com/improvACT/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmjbUqvqMFAlRIrTSdU109g
Sean Mason from Comedy Sportz, Manchester, UK
ComedySportz have shows every Wednesday and Saturday at 7pm GMT. You can watch and subscribe at youtube.com/cszuk
They have a foundation improv course starting 21st January. They are working with the Black Improv Alliance to offer 5 free spaces on the course. Visit: https://www.comedysportz.co.uk/foundation-improvisation-online/ to find out more and book a space.
Social Media:
www.twitter.com/comedysportz_uk
www.facebook.com/cszmanchesteruk
www.instagram.com/cszmanchester
Colin Mochrie (Whose Line Is It Anyway / Colin and Brad)
Stream Of Consciousness live shows every weekend https://passportshows.com/portfolio/stream-of-consciousness/
The Improv Chronicle Podcast is produced and hosted by Nottingham improviser Lloydie James Lloyd
Theme music - Sam Plummer
Logo design - Hélène Dollie
Episode transcript:
This… is the Improv Chronicle podcast. I'm Lloydie.
Lloydie: It's Tuesday, 12th January, 2021. And as we get close to the 10-month mark of most live improv shows around the world, pausing, I was interested to explore what was working online. And one thing I found interesting is the amount of short form improv being performed.
Some improvisers have taken their short form shows online and adapted them. Others have decided to move from long form to short form as they feel it suits the online medium better. I've seen people be sniffy in both directions about which form is better or works.
And so, I wondered, is this now breaking down barriers between diehard long formers and short formers?
Kayla Parker: As I am Kayla Parker, I am the marketing director for the Alternative Comedy Theatre in Dallas. I both act in improv and teach improv. I've been doing improv for about 10 years now.
Lloydie: And your musical team has the best name.
Kayla: I take no credit for it, too. It got it was created before I even joined the group. But yeah, Sondheimlich Maneuvre. It's a tough one to say, but we hold it dear to our hearts.
Lloydie: I hope it is worth saying, Sondheimlich Maneuver. I'm super jealous of that improv team though.
So, what advantages do you think short film has when it comes to online performance? Because we're talking kind of short form versus long form online. What do you think short film has got?
Lloydie: Yeah. So, I think the thing with all online performances – especially live performances, because improv is live – I think if you take that away from it, you just become a strange sort of sketch show.
So, we we've been trying to figure out what it means to do improv online. And the thing you have to remember for us or for us to remember would be that when you're online, you're skipping around a lot. So, people don't stick to one website for too long or they don't stick to one like article for too long. They're constantly moving and changing and scrolling and flipping and opening a new tab.
And short form lends itself to that sort of audience better. They can come in 15 minutes into the show and not feel like they've lost the plot somewhere. They can join in at that point.
Engagement is really important. People don't go online to just watch most of the time; they like having that extra interaction, we found. So, stopping the show in intervals to get feedback from the audience or to get asks for us, we found has kept people watching longer.
Lloydie: And keeping people watching longer is something that's been on the mind of Sean Mason from Comedy Sports in Manchester, UK.
Sean Mason: I think really, it's down to attention spans. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I just think the way we engage with online content is different.
I think long form improv is great for a podcast on a commute, but I think when you're watching it on a device, whether it's through an online platform or you're streaming to YouTube so you can cast onto your TV, whatever, it needs to be something that just keeps the audience engaged and is constantly changing; it's not the same thing for too long.
And just the irony of a difference as well, certainly we’ve found with our shows; we've done over 100 short form online shows as Comic Sports at this point. And with each one, what we learned is you've got to keep the chat active; you've got to keep engaged with the chat. And that's been really fun and so different.
We’re wondering what it's going to be like when we go back to live shows; when suddenly, are the audience going to try and chat to us? And I know live, you have to stay quiet.
Back and forth, I think, is the key thing. Whereas long form is, “Hey, we need a suggestion.” “Okay, cool. You just you just watch now.”
Lloydie: Taylor agrees that back and forth is an important aspect, too.
Taylor: Fast pace and interaction; like that's kind of what short form allows you to get. You're allowed to go quicker. So, keeping people engaged that way; like constantly changing up what's happening on the screen, as well as constantly keeping them engaged by asking them for things and asking for feedback and asking for comments. And that tends to be the thing that gets people to want to come back and watch again.
And honestly, it's nice for us. We like talking with our friends that we can't see in person online via improv.
Lloydie: When it comes to short form, there's one person who I grew up watching on TV who I was very keen to talk to. If in doubt, get the opinion of one of your heroes.
Colin Mochrie: This is Colin Mochrie, international comedy icon, best known for Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Lloydie: You are an icon.
Colin: Well, enough people have started believing it.
Lloydie: With improv, having moved, performance wise, almost entirely online now, I'm just wondering what advantages you think short form can bring to online performance that may be long form can't?
Colin: Well, Breacher Wood and I have been touring for 18 years when all this happened. I don't know if you've been reading the papers, but stuff has been going on.
Lloydie: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah. So, we decided we would do our stage show virtually. And then we did a couple of shows for friends and family; poor souls. And we realized fairly quickly that because of the medium, when you put things on a screen, everyone's attention span shrinks almost immediately.
So, we realized, you know, when we're doing our live stage shows, our scenes could go on for 10, 15, 20 minutes. We couldn't do that on Zoom because people's minds start to wonder. Their cats try to get into the room or whatever.
Lloydie: I'm familiar with that one.
Colin: So, we shortened everything and that seems to work out for us best.
Lloydie: With the exception recently, actually on Netflix of mid-edition Schwartz, most TV improv on a screen has been short form as well. What is it that short form has the long form doesn't in that respect? What's the thing?
Colin: Well, I think from the improvisors point of view, a scene can really suck and then you can go on to the next one, everyone forgets about it and you start something new.
In long form, if you're going down a bad avenue, the narration gets a little mixed up. You kind of stuck with that for the next however long, finding a way to sort of get back on track. It's much easier that way, I find.
Having said that, I've done a lot of successful long forms on Zoom. I did one a couple of months ago. That was a Dungeons and Dragons long form, which was a lot of fun and something I absolutely know nothing about. I have no D&D experience. But I think part of the fun was watching me, trying to make my cleric fly or do things that he wasn't allowed to do and getting constantly berated by the Dungeon Master.
Lloydie: There's nothing like a strict dungeon master. But I digress.
What can long form performers learn from short form, both online and more generally? Shaun Mason?
Sean: Well, the interesting thing with Comic Sports; if you've not seen a Comic Sports show, it is two teams competing for laughs and there's a referee. And at the end, a winner is decided.
And it's a short form show, but we kind of think of it, weirdly, as a long form show in that it has a narrative arc; it starts, there's games, there's a winner. So, there is a trajectory to it. And I think the key thing is it's just finding games and being playful.
And I think the hardest thing of long form online is that your connection is different. I think our connection to the audience, like I said, is now a very different thing, but your connection to players is not hampered, but it's strained by “Okay, how can I make eye contact with you with our eye lines being all over the place? Or do I look down the camera? And what's the framing?”
You've got to think of it in terms of not just your normal theatrical sense, but I think there's an element of almost cinematic sense of, “Okay, how do I use this frame?”
And it's game; yes, just fun in the game. And that was a really long-winded answer {indistinct 9:29} ways. But it's just been playful and keeping it engaging; don't forget the audience. I mean, that's the key thing; just don't forget the audience.
Lloydie: And Kayla has a great perspective on what long form performers can get from short form.
Kayla: Well, okay. So, when you get into long form, there's a few things that you start learning about improv that I think most people get started in short form. I don't know if that's universal, but I know I got started in short form. Because you got to learn the rules to break the rules. And I think long form tends to break some of those initial rules that you learn; like don't start conflict too quickly. Things like that.
I think people who kind of live and breathe long form can sometimes look at short form as like, always, the point of the scene is always to get to the joke as opposed to the point of the scene is to explore the characters or explore the conflict or explore the story that you're creating, which can seem a little flippant; like just to get the joke, get to the punchline, make someone laugh.
I think they miss out on the fact that a short form requires a whole different type of set of skills sometimes and can really bridge that gap from people who don't know a lot about theatre to bring them into the community.
I mean, we were talking about whose line is it anyway before we got onto the recording. And I mean, that's how I found out about improv. That's what I thought improv was when I was young. And I loved that show.
Lloydie: Same.
Kayla: And I am now a hardcore fan of long form improv. So, I think it's a great gateway format and I think it does require just a slightly different part of your brain to do. So, I think people who look down on it should take a second glance at short form.
Whenever I do too much long form improv and I feel like I'm in a rut or I've got the yips, I go back to doing short form just to, like, switch up my brain chemistry. And then I come out of it a better improvisor every single time.
Colin: I think in a long form you could actually use the short form format. I mean, of course, you have the longer narrative, you have an arc, but also within every scene you're doing with someone, you can go, “Okay, in this scene, I'm going to do a status thing where I'm going to make my state is higher than this person” and have within the long form, you can have short form games that don't just derail what you're actually trying to do.
I know one Whose Line was happening, especially when it was happening in the States, there was a lot of sort of backlash against it because – And I understood it in a way in that it goes against some of the things you're not supposed to do in improv. You know, it's jokey, it's fast. But we had to do that because of the medium. We couldn't take five minutes setting up our characters and having – Everything had to be quick and fast. I sort of likened it to – It's sort of improv vaudeville. It was a gateway drug to other kinds of improv. And I really enjoyed doing Whose Line; always had fun doing it.
I think what people didn't understand; it's really hard. A lot of people think, “Well, yeah, it's short form. You have to be funny.” It's very hard to do two, three-minute scenes that will end up being on air. And of course, the more we did it, the more we found ways of getting around that or just doing it so it worked.
But I think people really underestimated how difficult it was. We had some amazing improvisers who had trouble with it because the pace was so quick; everything had to be, as opposed to a joke every minute, it was like a joke every 15 seconds and some people couldn't do it.
Lloydie: The idea of snobbery around an art form is something I find a bit weird. I understand preference. I certainly have my own stylistic preferences, but snobbery is something I find destructive.
So, I asked Sean why he thought there was snobbery from long form performers about show for.
Sean: Oh, there's loads of reasons that people give. Like some people will say short form is for an audience on long form is for improvisors. Which I don't think is entirely fair, but I see what they're trying to say in terms of short form is just about that endorphin hit and that quick, “Yaay!” gags games.
Yeah, we're going to do great scene work and we're going to connect and we're going to do all that stuff. But really, it's about hitting the laugh. Whereas long form tends to be inherently funny. I think improv just naturally lends itself towards humour, but there is that, like you say, it's that more theatrical, artistic worthy nature.
Which I mean, personally, I think is nonsense, but to differentiate the two, I think you need both skills to improvise. Because we're always talking about the game and what the game is and the game of a scene or the actual four diverse game or whatever.
We're still looking for those patterns and those things that we can play with. And those skills resonate in both forms. So, Yeah, I think it just comes from a slightly more actorly, I'm-doing-something-of-value position, but it's all the same thing.
Lloydie: Kayla is a long form performer who's moved back into short form for online. And for her, it's been a real joy.
Kayla: I got dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the short form game. And I had like the ups and downs throughout doing this online short form. You get to a point where you feel like you're kind of yelling into a void at some times when you have low numbers or like not a lot of people are watching; you just sort of feel really alone at times. I did, at least in the fall. And then I had to remember why we were doing this.
And I think we've kind of loosened up a bit more in how we do our shows. We're not trying to make them highly produced. We're not trying to make it seem as if we know what we're doing at all times. Technology fails, you know, like dogs bark in the background. We're all at home trying to do this. And I think once we all realize that like all of that is okay, we've really found the joy for it again. And at least I have; I can't speak for everyone in my theatre, but yeah.
So, now we're kind of doing some fascinating short form improv and I think we're having a blast.
Lloydie: Finally, Colin Mochrie, although widely known for his short form improv, performs both short and long form. So, I wondered, does he have a preference of the two?
Colin: I truly have no preference over short form or long form. I mean, I've been very fortunate in that I made my career from short form, but I've been involved in a lot of great long form formats, whether it was D&D, as I mentioned, or there's a group in Toronto, we would do one-act plays. We get to play right from the audience, talk to them for a little while and then do a one-act play.
And what I loved about those particular kinds of improvs was the fact that people would leave scenes, which doesn't happen in short form. It's much {indistinct 17:54}. So, you go, “Oh, I can have this scene with this person. Someone will enter and then, well, my job is done. There's nothing I can add. I can actually leave and everything will be fine.”
So, I mean, there's certainly pros and cons to both types of improv, but it ultimately comes down to the improv. It has to be good. It has to be engaging.
Next time… on the Improv Chronicle podcast.
Adapting the online space: No one expected us to still be sheltering at home and not be back in theatres in 2021, but here we are. And just as our art form adapted by going online, online shows are now adapting with the technology.
The Improv Chronicle podcast is produced and hosted by me Lloydie James Lloyd. You can help the podcast right now. Subscribe and rate on your favorite podcast app. And find out more about previous episodes, including transcripts and our website improvchronicle.com