Scene Starts Don't Matter As Much As You Think

I don’t think the start of any scene is all that important. I’m not sure how controversial that is but my honest opinion is that you are doing enough just by doing something.

Improv classes often stress “establish a who, what, where” or, if you’re doing a scene from source material, sometimes you will be taught “get your premise out in the first couple of lines”. I think that puts a lot of stress on the first few moments on stage.

In our first few moments we are just starting to discover. Firstly we are discovering who we are to each other, which I think is vital. That is a key human element of the scene that helps the audience connect to what is going on. But even in the first few moments, it is going to be hard to pin down exactly what that dynamic is.

Our first few moments are discovery, and discovery is one of the fun things about improv. The more we labour under the assumption that the start of the scene has to be really good, the more we put ourselves into our heads. I find it far more productive to be open to what is happening, to discovering who we are to each other, to bringing whatever I think I have in that given moment and then working out what that means in the context of what my scene partner is bringing.

After an improv show, how many times have you heard someone say “I love the way that scene started”? I don’t hear that so much. People talk about how funny the scene was or how great the characters were, but scene starts are given a lot less attention by audiences than they are by improv training.

So what am I saying? Just do anything? Well, something is certainly better than nothing. We do actually have to start our scenes. It is also a fair argument that the start of the scene is something we build on, so while the audience may not notice or remember everything from the start of the scene, we still need a foundation.

Take the example of TJ and Dave (which I find to be a rather excellent example). At the start of their show, the lights come up, the two of them are just standing there, looking at each other. Then the scene builds from everything they are noticing. The who, what, where emerge naturally but it’s the “who” that they work on first. They have talked about focusing more on what they call “heat and weight”. The weight is the emotional charge underneath what’s being said, the heat being the current state of the relationship between the two characters, rather than a label for it. That’s a more elegant way of saying what I said above: we’re discovering who we are to each other, and that discovery doesn’t arrive fully formed in line one. It’s allowed to still be forming in line four, or ten.

Now, I’ll be fair to the other side of the argument, because I don’t think this is as settled a debate as I’m making it sound. Will Hines (of whom I’m a fan) has written a fair bit about the value of “pulling premise” or starting a scene with a genuinely full moment, where you know who’s talking to who and roughly what situation they’re in, even if you have no idea where it’s going from there. He’s careful to say this isn’t the same as writing the whole scene in advance, just writing a clear starting moment. And I think he’s right that clarity helps. My argument isn’t that the first line doesn’t matter at all, or that vagueness is a virtue. It’s that it doesn’t have to be impressive. There’s a difference between a start that’s specific and a start that’s trying to prove something.

So maybe that’s the real distinction I’ve been circling this whole newsletter: aim for honest, not clever. Bring whatever is true for you in that moment, say it plainly, and trust that the discovery, not the invention, will do the work from there. That’s not a new idea for me, really; it’s the same thing I mean when I say every character I play is just me with different things mattering to me in that moment. The start of a scene doesn’t need to introduce a fully-formed world. It just needs to be honest enough for two people to start building one together, and personally, I find honesty way easier than the pressure of invention.

Do you feel pressure to nail the first line of a scene? Or have you had scenes that were saved entirely by what happened after they started awkwardly? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

I’m in Birmingham tomorrow night (Weds 15th July) as part of the Birmingham Improv night at 1000 Trades. The Secret Show is playing there as a guest of the night and we’ll be on at about the same time as the England football team are playing in the semi-finals of the World Cup, so if you love improv more than you love football, you know where to be if you’re in the Midlands, UK. Details here

The next Secret Show in Nottingham is on Saturday (18th July) and our guests that night are The Newlyweds who are coming all the way from Australia to do their two person show in Nottingham. Our pre-booking on this show is higher than usual so get your tickets sooner rather than later! The Secret Show plus The Newlyweds at Fisher Gate Point, Nottingham. Tickets here

The Robin Hood International Improv Festival is just seven weeks away. Festival passes are selling faster this year than ever before (only a handful of “all shows” passes are left) so if you want to see a bunch of shows, now is definitely the time to get your eyes across the schedule and decide what you want to see. All the details are here

And finally, if you want to hear what future Oscars ceremonies will be like, you need to hear the latest Kornfeld and Andrews podcast, which I produce with the amazing Louis Kornfeld and Rick Andrews. This week’s is truly something!! Listen here

Have a great week,

Lloydie