While it’s important to choose strong characters, I wanted to take a moment to warn you that picking a strong character and picking an outrageous character, are very different things. An outrageous character choice is always a possible way to go in a scene, but if it turns out that character in your head isn’t as funny as you thought it would be on stage, you and your scene partner are going to be stuck with it for the entirety of a scene… possibly for an entire performance.
There’s nothing like a one eyed lisping hunchback with a gimp arm and an audience not laughing, to really bring this point home.
If you do find yourself on stage playing a crazy character and think “Shit! This is a total mistake, no one is laughing,” the last thing you should do is renege on your choice. Completely commit to your character and stay with it. Chances are, the more time you spend in your outrageous character’s shoes, the more material you’ll have to play with. Play it for all it’s worth. If you don’t get huge laughs, at least you can add a solid performance and solid support to the scene.
Now get limping.
In preparation of a practice group I was leading this weekend, focusing on character work, I wanted to be able to define the differences in creating characters. Although I hadn’t thought about it before, improv characters can come in many different flavors. I realized that knowing what character type you typically play, can make a huge difference in your work.
Here are 5 general classifications of characters as interpreted from The Second City Almanac of Improvisation and my own experience. There are many more shades of grey, but this is a good place to start.
Read on…
Today, while standing on the 96th Street train platform, I had an improv eureka moment. I began to really notice how people stand and how I perceived their status. Some slouched, some made eye contact, some crossed their hands across their chests, some walked past me their heads held high, some stuffed their hands into their pockets, and some held books like shields.
Status, in improv, is how your characters hold themselves. These mannerisms are some of the most basic tools used in improvisation as they define characters and situations very quickly without much effort. The effects of status are also very subliminal, and can have profound effects on an improv audience.
I would encourage you all, when you are next in a public place, to enjoy the act of people watching and study real people’s mannerisms.
Link: Status as defined by the Improv Encyclopedia