Bridge to Elsewhere, page 17
One of the main challenges and unseen skills of Storytellers is the need to calibrate this interactivity.
I have had groups where I followed all the approaches for participation, and they didn’t want to do it. Just tell us what you want to tell us, they say. Don’t make us work for it; you’re the one getting paid.
VII. SELF-SUSTENANCE
There is a misconception that storytelling is an easy job. Less stressful than bearing the responsibility for navigation, they believe, or piloting. However, entertaining people takes its own toll. Narratives can unleash emotions, both in the Storyteller and in the audience.
It’s so true. I tell stories all day and then my kid asks me for a story before bed and I can’t come up with anything. I just…can’t push any more ideas out. But I feel terrible about it.
We should do an exchange. You tell stories you already know to my kid, I’ll do the same for yours.
Deal. Maybe someday if we’re both onshore on the same planet at the same time…
Maybe!
VIII. WHY DO YOU ALL DO THIS?
The stories. Not the ones we tell, but the ones we hear from passengers.
So many reasons for traveling.
Shouldn’t this be a sidebar or a morale board or something?
Is this question morale-boosting?
I know it’s weird, but I like the travel, myself.
I like living on the ship and going to new places.
At this point, I figure, we don’t have a choice.
Oh I don’t know, I’ve thought of spacing it all and doing something else for a job.
No, not storytelling. I mean we don’t have a choice about traveling.
Not everyone travels. Not that many people travel interstellarly; percentage-wise it’s really pretty small.
No, they’re right. Some people don’t travel. But most people travel somehow.
It’s a compulsion.
Most of the passengers I meet are traveling because they have to. I mean, not because of some mysterious compulsion, but to visit family, or get a new job, or…
That’s what I mean. Some people are compelled to travel, and that drags other people along. Whether it’s because they want to or they need to. And—yeah, I just think as a species we move. We migrate, we travel. Even when it’s difficult and dangerous and uncomfortable.
And as Storytellers, we’re along to smooth the ride.
THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING.
REMEMBER, ETHICS ARE CONSTRUCTED BY ALL OF US:
— WHOSE SPACESHIP IS IT ANYWAY? —
By John Chu
In improv class, they tell you to stay away from three scenarios: teaching scenes, transaction scenes, and argument scenes. So, you’d think the worst improv scene ever would be one where a manager trains a new salesclerk on the cash register while they argue with a customer trying to buy a mango. Nope. The worst improv scene ever is the one happening on stage right now, and the audition only started a minute ago.
The theater building used to be an Asian grocery. The only way you’d know is if you read about it on the theater’s website. There’s a small lobby that leads into the performance space. The stage is a flat platform about six inches tall that almost spans the room. The house is five ascending rows of folding chairs. All the lights are on. We can see the show’s creative team, seated in a row in the middle of the house, watching us. This feels extremely unfair. Normally, when you look into the audience, you don’t see anyone staring back, assessing your every choice.
After a quick warm up, someone on the creative team suggests “spaceship,” and everybody except me lurches onto the stage. They’re all desperate to demonstrate active agreement with everybody else. “Everybody except me” is a half-dozen improvisers, four of whom I’ve done scenes with before. The other two introduced themselves when we all walked into the space, but I was too nervous to actually remember their names. They both look like they play college hockey. Compared to some of my other auditions, two whole women in the group counts as a surprisingly diverse mix of genders and, if you include me, we’re not all white.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, everyone on stage is way too eager to show off their technique. So, active agreement becomes an over-choreographed, flailing disco number where the music is people shouting the parts of a ship’s bridge at each other. Unless an improv scene is explicitly some sort of group game, any more than two or three people at a time is basically impossible. Any more than that would require literal telepathy.
In theory, a scene is trying to happen. In practice, it’s like watching those videos of a newborn foal figuring out how to stand. For what feels like excruciating days, its legs buckle at the wrong time and its torso keeps flopping over. Unlike the foal, this scene hasn’t managed to stand yet.
I mean, I’m also way too eager. Not to mention desperate to get cast. Because we’re all invariably eager and desperate, improv auditions tend to be a fustercluck, filled with chaotic scenes where everyone is trying to get their two cents in at exactly the same time. Unless the instruction from the creative team is literally “do a Harold” or some other long form improvised structure, there is rarely any overarching structure to speak of, not even one organically evolved over the course of the improv. It’s all rather self-defeating.
Getting into the scrum has never gotten me cast before, and it’s not going to now. Besides, whenever I do that, I always feel like I’m making things worse. That, obviously, is the key to a great improvised scene. Nothing makes for a great scene more than you trying to nail your relationships and showing off your impeccable object work while a half-dozen people dart off in their own directions so that no one has any clue what the fuck is happening.
The spaceship scene occupies most of the stage. I’m off to the side, practically off the stage, by myself making baozi. What does this have to do with the initial suggestion? Beats me. You’re not supposed to be directly inspired by it anyway. Like, “spaceship” is supposed to remind you of, say, watching TV with your mom after school. Then that’s supposed to inspire you into a scene about innocence or guardianship or maybe the inevitable heat death of the universe for all I know.
The instant we moved to the US, my mom stopped watching TV or, really, doing anything else with me. My parents spent all day working at the restaurant. If a plate of sweet and sour chicken cost more than a fast-food burger, no one bought it. They all decided that was too expensive. It’s not like there was the money to hire anyone. Once I was like twelve, I worked there, too. Customers scanned the menu while they told you what they were really in the mood for was a slice of ham, mashed potatoes, and gravy. When they asked whether you’re the “number one son,” you had to laugh like no one had ever made that vaguely racist joke before. It was great. Anyway, I’m hoping the directors work out some ingenious connection for themselves and decide that I’m brilliant.
On one hand, I think me standing there, waiting for dough to rise, could be a comic tour de force. On the other hand, I’d actually like to get cast in this show. Being able to pay the rent is pretty awesome. I highly recommend it.
The act of making baozi happens way more quickly in mime than it would in real life. Before we moved to the US, my mom and I would crank them out together. It’s never gone that quickly since, but you can make pretend baozi as quickly as you want. Start the pot of water boiling and put the bamboo steamer on the pot. Scatter the flour. Knead. Knead. Knead. Tear off and round tiny balls of dough. Flatten and roll out into circles. Put in the filling. It’s what we used when we were making them for ourselves: spinach, tofu, glass noodles, and garlic. (I’m sure the directors have no clue what the filling is made of. I’m not that good at mime.) Pinch. Pinch. Pinch. Steam. Steam. Steam. Plate. Plate. Plate.
Meanwhile, the folks on the spaceship have sorted themselves out, more or less. More characters actually talking to each other one at a time. Less everyone yelling over each other. Hudson has tagged himself as captain of Destiny and the rest of the crew has coalesced in his wake. Not a huge surprise how it’s turning out. Blond and tanned, Hudson’s so much of a golden boy, he practically glows, and his smile is not even at full wattage. He has this way of gliding around the stage with a dexterity so casual, it verges on careless. We can all do all the things at the gym, but only some of us come out of it broad-shouldered, lanky, and superhero-adjacent. Playing a scene with him is like acting opposite the heaven-sent spawn of Chris Hemsworth and Gene Kelly.
The line between envy and lust can be disturbingly thin and I’m pretty sure I straddle the line. He accuses me of checking him out. Hudson is big, strong, and aggressively straight. Staring at him even unintentionally would not go well for me. Whenever we’re thrown into the same improv class, I try very hard not to look at him, unless I have to, lest I inadvertently do anything he could misinterpret as staring. As it is, a mere hello in passing and he’ll bring up his girlfriend, wielding her like a talisman to defend his heterosexuality, as though my mere presence might otherwise turn him gay. Mostly, though, I’m tired of being thought of as the kind of guy who leers when I don’t even have one illicit glance at that slightly unreal body to show for it.
And on the subject of that superhero-adjacent body, the last time we did a scene together, he stepped onto the stage and did that broad-stance fist-on-waist pose where the chest is all puffed out and the midsection is so concave it’s obvious even through a shirt. I pointed at him and shouted, “Oh my god, it’s the Tap Dance Kid.”
Of course, The Tap Dance Kid is actually a 1984 Broadway musical starring Alfonso Ribeiro as the eponymous kid. He starred in a Pepsi commercial with Michael Jackson at about the same time and would later go on to play Carlton in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And, for whatever reason—it’s not like they look anything alike—that was the first thing that came to mind. So, that was the first thing that popped out of my mouth. In response, he tagged me as The Crisco Kid. Clever.
The golden boy ended up defeating villainy through the power of… tap dance. It doesn’t matter how fleet-footed you are, you really can’t fake tap dance. So the casually dexterous seemed almost human for a few minutes. I’ve been in worse scenes, but maybe he hasn’t. Foiling a bank robbery with a combination of sketchy tap dance and shortening-based lubrication superpowers is funny. Even the coach thought so. She laughed and said good things about the scene. Hudson just smirked at me and stalked off in a huff. Whatever.
Scenes can end in lots of ways. Sometimes, they fall apart of their own weight. The folks in the scene flee off the stage, and others rush on to keep the show going. More often, someone not in the scene recognizes it has ended and walks across the stage. This is called a sweep edit. If we’re feeling really energetic, we run across the stage.
I’m in the middle of sweep editing the spaceship when Hudson’s gaze locks onto mine. My feet stop and I almost fall on my face. Maybe I’m just an attentive improviser, open to the offers from my fellow improvisers. More likely, golden boy has gifted me a shaving of his attention and I’m stunned. He smirks and, for a moment, I half-expect him to bring up his girlfriend.
“We have a stowaway.” Golden boy also has a buttery baritone voice that can fill the room with a whisper. “Boy, there’s not enough fuel for an additional passenger. Get rid of you and we lighten the load.”
Now, the thing about improv is that we’re always accepting offers and heightening situations. Whether the situation makes sense in the first place is beside the point. It makes no sense that the ship would have only enough fuel for its anticipated load and not a drop more, but everyone in the scene accepts it and goes on. That’s the whole point of agreeing. Besides, if we don’t, we’re not going to get cast. A refusal is bad technique. It may be funny for a millisecond, but a refusal stops a scene cold. Heaven help us if someone reasserts the offer. A back and forth of “Yes, there is”/“No, there isn’t” is incredibly tedious to watch. No one wants that.
My hands are still outstretched in front of me from carrying the plate of baozi. At this point, though, I could be carrying anything. We’re all supposed to be paying attention to what everyone is doing, but that spaceship scene started so chaotically, I doubt anyone actually has a clue about what I was doing off to the side. Even if they have, it doesn’t matter. If I’m getting pitched out of an airlock for some nonsensical reason, there should at least be some emotional stakes, and I don’t mean weepy cuts of beef. Accept and heighten. That’s the game.
“Happy birthday. I made this cake for you.” I hold out what is now a birthday cake to him. “Dad.”
Having established that we are family, I finish my sweep edit and the scene is over. The cast flies off the stage. It takes Hudson a split second longer than everyone else. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy that.
We run through a series of scenes: father and son mowing the lawn, auto mechanic fixing the relationship between a parent and their estranged child as though it were a Porsche 911, zombie attack in a sub shop. This is an audition and no one is exactly concerned with thematic unity. We’re just trying to show off. If, for example, you can juggle, this is your moment to three-ball cascade for your life. Ever better, your scene partner creates a reason why you have to juggle. For example, if Hudson actually tap danced, he’d have been thrilled for someone to tag him as “the tap dance kid.”
Someone edits a scene. Sarah and I go on stage. Hudson called her out at a Harold class once for being a “scene nurse.” He tossed it off like a neg. There’s nothing wrong, though, with being someone who always gives the scene what it needs. Especially when you, like Sarah, create opportunities to be awesome in the process.
I start dumping ingredients into a bowl. Sarah is all joyous, leaping across the stage shouting, “Whee! It was so musty in that flour container.” She then crumples and murmurs “Ouch, that butter is so cold and clumpy.” In other words, she’s sentient flour and about to become sentient cake batter. The scene becomes a game where oblivious me is in a kitchen making a cake while Sarah is shouting stuff like “No, no, not the stand mixer! Don’t put me in the stand mixer.”
Sentient cake batter obviously doesn’t want to be beaten in a stand mixer. That would hurt. Sarah, however, obviously wants sentient cake batter to be beaten in a stand mixer. In this case, it’s clearly a setup for whatever awesome thing she has in mind. On one hand, it’s not like I have to do what she wants. Agreement and heightening doesn’t mean anyone gets to order anyone else around. On the other hand, it’s not like I have any better ideas, and I’m curious what she has in mind.
I immediately turn on the stand mixer. She spins in circles at center stage, flailing her arms and screaming in agony. Someone in the audience deigns to chuckle. That’s encouraging. This audition hasn’t exactly inspired any sort of reaction so far.
“Don’t drop me into the cake pan!” Sarah hugs herself, appalled. “What kind of sadist are you?”
I dollop her into the cake pan. Or, rather, I tilt the imaginary bowl and spoon imaginary batter into the imaginary pan. Since we’re all about being sadistic to the cake batter, I do it in fast, sharp strokes, really slamming that batter into the pan. Sarah throws herself at the floor. A lot. A different way each time.
“No, don’t put me into the convection oven. Anything but the convection oven.” She shudders in what is, disturbingly, a very batter-like way. “How long must this torture last?”
Naturally, she has to go into the oven. This requires a certain amount gentle, coordinated shoving as I roll her upstage. Someone walks across the stage downstage from me, ending the scene. Their footsteps clatter behind me. No one gets to find out how Sarah was planning on getting baked in a funny way. Still, we probably made each other look good. I’ll take that.
More short bits go by. Something about a sweltering summer night and two men lying together on reclining beach chairs lasts for about three milliseconds before everyone else rushes the stage and turns it into a playground. Eventually, the inevitable bicycle repair scene starts. It’s probably not literally true, but it feels like at some point during an improv show, someone will try to repair a bicycle.
A wife and husband are standing by the side of the road. One of the bike tires has gone flat. Even though they are trying to patch and re-inflate the tire, the scene, of course, is not about that. As an improv coach said in a workshop I took, “No one walks out of the theater thinking, ‘And they fixed the bicycle!’”
Bill, playing the husband, is doing a masterful job of heightening how hot it is on the road. He’s wiping the sweat off his brow. His movements get more and more sluggish. He becomes never quite still, swaying slightly even when he’s just standing. Over the course of the scene, he goes from sipping his water bottle to sloshing it near his mouth. He could keel over from heat exhaustion at any moment.
Carly, playing the wife, is just as expert. A model of precision, she spreads out a tarp and lays out her tools in precise row. Her gestures as she works on the bike are detailed. Every finger is splayed just so. Carly actually works in a bicycle shop in real life. You can practically see the grease on her hands. Every part is placed in another neat row in the order she removes it.
As he gets sloppier, she gets more fastidious, more wary. She asks him to pass a tool and is impatient when he doesn’t know which one, but just a little. Her hand stretches impatiently while he wrecks her neat rows. They get into an argument but it’s not really an argument, of course, because we don’t do argument scenes. It’s really an extended metaphor involving pressure, being bottled up, and escaping.
Intellectually, I get that they are working out their relationship via subtext. The cut, thrust, and parry over how to repair a flat tire is really the two sparring over how controlling he is. Practically, a scene where what they say and do apply to both the flat tire and their relationship is more self-consciously clever than anything else. Sometimes, two improvisers make a series of utterly defensible choices and the scene stubbornly refuses to come to life. This is not great for the audience who has to sit through it and annoying as fuck for the improvisers involved. No one wants to be reminded, especially in the middle of an audition, that you don’t always get there just by doing what you’re supposed to do.
