Breaking No Rules & The Flow Of Information

Let's explore the following improv maxim:

There are no rules.

What does this mean? For the performer, for the audience, for the scene, what does it mean to say there are absolutely no requirements or expectations in an improv performance?

For the performer it means we can do whatever we want. Any choice is valid and acceptable. We can say and do whatever pops into our heads whenever we want. We can go anywhere in space and time. We can be anyone or anything. We can not do anything at all. Everything is fair game.

For the audience it means they have no idea what is about to happen. They don't know what they'll see, hear, feel, like, or dislike. They might witness a performance that makes them think and challenges them or they might get one that is entirely goofy and ridiculous. They might leave the show changed, for good or bad. They might wish it could last forever. They might walk out in the first 5 minutes.

For the scene it means it could move slowly, quickly, or anywhere in between. It could last 20 minutes or 20 seconds. It could have eight characters, or fifteen, or one, or none. It could lead to nonstop laughter or be completely serious. It could take place over 2 minutes or 1000 years. It could move forward in time, then backward, repeating itself in reverse and ending where it started.

It means anything can happen, which is simultaneously freeing and terrifying. But that's the thrill of it. No one in the room knows what's about to transpire and all of us are along for the ride together, for good or bad.

But here's the catch - we do want it to be good. Preferably every single time. And though there are no rules and we can do whatever we want, we also want our scene partners to be on the same page. We want the audience to enjoy the show. We want the scene to be cohesive and easy to follow. In order to have these things, preferably every single time, we can't exactly do whatever we want all the time.

This is the reason we learn general practices that make our improv more successful - because some of the choices we can make are more effective than others. These routes to effectiveness have transformed into general behavioral guidelines. Stray from those guidelines and we risk annoying our fellow performers, alienating our audience, and destroying the scene.

But only if it doesn't work.

If it works, and sometimes it will, the opposite will happen. Your fellow performers will be impressed. The audience will love it. The scene will be taken to places we never thought it could go.

These are the risks we strive to take, because when it works the reward is great. But in order to be able to take these risks, it's important to understand what the routes to effectiveness are, and why they exist.

                                                     That's Mount Effectiveness right there.

The things that are more effective err on the side of acceptance - listening to our scene partners, saying yes to their choices, sharing focus. The things that are less effective err on the side of denial - saying no, arguing, lying. 

We could spend all day unpacking the problems that arise with denial, but let's focus on one specific type (lying) along with its close relative (coyness). 

What is it about these choices that make them not particularly effective? Consider this:

An improv scene, at its core, is information flowing back and forth.

With each line, facial expression, and movement, we reveal information about the characters in the scene and the world they inhabit. At the top, the information is for the purpose of establishing context (or "base reality"). Who are the characters on stage and how do they feel about each other? Where are they in space and time and what are they doing there?

Laughs come when new information fits the established context while still being surprising. We say or do something completely unexpected that adds new meaning but doesn't wreck the scene. John Cleese calls it "the moment of contact between two frames of reference." That's comedy. Unanticipated information that resonates on multiple levels.

Information can travel at different speeds, but one thing is certain - it has to travel. Stop the flow of information and the scene dies. Think of it like blood. New, fresh information has to be consistently circulating in order to keep the scene alive, but it also has to be the right type. Just as the body will reject blood that isn't the right type, the scene (and the audience) will reject information that is too dissonant from what has already been established.

So what does this have to do with lying?

Lying, or labeling our scene partner a liar, serves to halt the flow of information. 

Because it relies entirely on trust and immersion, the improv reality is a fragile one. Everyone in the room has to take what they hear and see at face value. We can't second-guess the information that's been revealed. When someone is labeled a liar, it creates a feedback loop of misinformation that breeds confusion. It creates a scenario in which we are constantly questioning reality.

Let's use the following overly simple example:

Person A - "I saw a dog today."

Person B - "No you didn't. You're lying."

Person A has two options; they can agree that they're lying ("you're right I didn't see a dog today") or they can disagree and double down ("I swear I saw a dog today"). Either way, the response doesn't really matter. The liar label, once applied, means everything Person A says gets called into question. If Person A agrees that they were lying, our assumption is that everything they say for the rest of the scene is a lie. If Person A disagrees that they were lying, we wonder why Person B assumed they were. If Person B is so quick to assume Person A is lying, EITHER Person A has a reputation for not being truthful, which means, once again, we have to question everything else they say for the rest of the scene, OR Person B has trust issues, which means they will constantly be questioning everything Person A says the rest of the scene anyway, even if Person A is telling the truth. Either way Person A responds, once labeled a liar, the veracity of anything they say will always be dubious, either to the audience or Person B, and probably both.

This is the Liar Paradox - the idea that if a liar says "I am lying", it means they are telling the truth, which means they are lying, which means they are telling the truth, which means they are lying, ad infinitum. Conversely, if a liar says "I am telling the truth", it means they are lying, which means they are telling the truth, which means they are lying, which means they are telling the truth, ad infinitum.

Here's a clip from the Star Trek episode I, Mudd where Captain Kirk and crew encounter a planet of strictly logical androids, whom they defeat using a combination of object work and the Liar Paradox.

Trying make sense of the crew reacting to a bomb that isn't there and the infinite feedback loop of the paradox causes the androids to overheat and shut down. When we label someone a liar in a scene, the performer, the audience, and the scene will all respond in a similar way. Because of that loop, with each new line the performer will struggle to figure out what is real and what isn't. The audience will eventually stop trying to keep up and lose interest. The scene will flounder when reality is constantly called into question and the flow of information comes to a screeching halt. It will stop being about the characters and the world they inhabit and instead become about what is fact and what is fiction. Trying to wrangle the logic of a liar in an improv scene is a black hole that is immensely difficult to overcome. For the most part, it's not worth the trouble.

Coyness is a tough characteristic to wrangle for similar reasons:

Being coy slows the flow of information, which causes the scene to drag.

When one character is reluctant to share information with another, the scene moves so slow it struggles to survive. Instead of rapidly establishing context and building from there, a scene with a coy character usually starts lopsided and then stalls out. Instead of building context together, the coy character might sit idle while their scene partner front-loads all the pertinent information in the hopes that will get things moving. Maybe, they might think, the performer playing the coy character is just a little uncertain about who or where they are, so they'll do all the heavy lifting, presuming that will solve the problem. 

The scene might appear to be moving along nicely as the world is being built, but it is quickly approaching a brick wall. Once context is established, the only place the scene partner can go is at the coy character. They'll probably try to coax them out of their shell by attempting to hit them from different angles - asking various questions, making suggestions to justify their behavior (which the coy character might neither confirm or deny), or doing something wacky or shocking to try to stimulate any sort of response. On the surface it may seem like something is happening, but in reality the scene has slowed to a crawl. We usually don't end up learning much about either of our characters because one partner refuses to engage. An experienced and talented performer may very well manage to turn this into an interesting scene, but it's still only information flowing in one direction. It is essentially a solo scene, but one in which the person we could be learning about is probably too distracted trying to interact with the other person onstage to reveal anything about themselves. The end result is usually a scene with a rapidly fading heartbeat.

Recognize when information has stopped flowing.

Add some.

In general, it's probably in our best interest to avoid lying and being coy. If we notice that the reality of the world is being questioned, we should find a way to name it and cement it with our scene partner. If we notice that new information has stopped coming in, we should create more.

That's not to say there aren't ways to handle both of these scenarios.

If we find ourselves being being labeled a liar or playing a coy character, we should find a way to give our fellow performers and the audience the information they deserve. One way to do this is to step out and give a noir-style monologue. Another is by confiding in an imaginary friend/conscience. Even a character who always lies can reveal truths in an internal monologue or by sharing secrets with representatives of their psyche. A coy character in a monoscene, for example, may choose to only be coy toward a specific character while being completely open and honest with someone else once the object of their coyness is offstage. In this way, we can validate the choice we've made while still letting information flow freely.

Try to remember to separate the character from the performer. Just because we don't want a character to know something doesn't mean we shouldn't let the performer playing that character in on the secret. In fact, if we can manage to do that, they'll probably be able to play that role even better. When they know more than their character does they can find ways to put their character in situations that exploit that lack of knowledge.

But of course, there are no rules. We can do whatever we want.

Thinking Backwards For Good Reason

Why is improv difficult?

If it is a practice that essentially requires us to emulate and heighten human behavior, why does it take years to become competent? We've been people our whole lives with no trouble at all. Why does getting up in class or onstage in front of an audience sometimes make being people seem like an impossible task? Why aren't we immediately and consistently good at it?

The reason is oddly simple.

Improv forces us to think in reverse.

Real life and improv operate at different speeds, which compels us think about them with different temporal orientations. 

Real life moves slow. For the most part, we see our choices coming before we have to make them. We have time to weigh our options and determine each possible outcome. We have time to think before we act.

The real life decision process is oriented toward the future. We start from a place of understanding our motivations and goals. We use these to deliberate our options. Then we make a decision.

Improv moves fast. It forces us to make choices not yet knowing why we are making them. We don't have time to think about all the possibilities. Our scene partner is waiting for us to respond. The audience is waiting for us to do something. We have to do or say the first thing that pops into our heads. We have to act without thinking.

The improv decision process is oriented toward the past. We start by making whatever choice feels right. We study that choice to determine what it means. Then we justify it in a way that fits what we've established.

Real life orients us toward the future: Motivation > Deliberation > Decision             
Improv orients us toward the past: Choice > Analysis > Justification

In order to become competent at improv we have to reorient our minds, which is something that simply takes a lot of practice and patience and time.

“Improvisation is like steering a car by looking through the rear view mirror. You don’t know where you’re going, you can only see where you’ve been.”
-Keith Johnstone

Along that three-step path, justification is by far the most difficult to grasp. Deciding why our character behaves a certain way is one of the hardest things to determine on the spot, especially when there might be other variables in the scene that demand our attention. But if we can manage to find it, justifying our point of view will massively increase our chances of creating a successful scene.

So what makes a good justification?

Let's use the following arbitrary premise as an example:

A parent is trying to convince their child that they should go into a career as a frog breeder.

Here are a few common justification pitfalls that aren't quite effective:

1. No justification whatsoever - If the child chooses not to ask their parent why frog breeding is important and the parent chooses not to offer an explanation, the scene might very well survive by becoming about the weird frogs the family is going to breed or expand to other unusual parental requests, but all of those moves will feel empty because we'll never know what motivates our characters. The audience will spend the whole scene wondering why frog breeding, specifically, was so essential. Why does the parent care? Why does the child agree or disagree? We need to answer these questions.

2. Crazy/on drugs - This is a fairly common justification that is just as insufficient as none at all. The problem with craziness is unpredictability. Our character needs something to hold onto in order to behave consistently. The audience needs to understand how that character operates in order to follow the scene. Being crazy makes behavior too inconsistent, too random. We need some sort of pattern to carry us to the end of the scene. Too much randomness will only raise questions and create confusion. Drugs create a similar scenario because they change behavior. They put our character in an altered state where they aren't thinking clearly and they aren't in control. A sober sane parent who wants their child to breed frogs is inherently more interesting than a high crazy parent. The sober sane parent is thinking clearly, so they must have an interesting point of view.  A high crazy parent isn't thinking clearly, so they might not even mean what they say.

3. History/Tradition - This is probably the most common of the pitfalls. The parent says something like "You have to be a frog breeder because I'm a frog breeder! My parent was a frog breeder and their parent was a frog breeder! This is a frog breeding family! So you're going to be a frog breeder because it's what we do!" The problem with this justification is it's true to life, so it seems like it works. There are plenty of real life parents trying to convince their real life children to carry the torch of their real life family histories and traditions for the sake of keeping those histories and traditions alive. In improv, though, we strive to reach a deeper meaning behind our choices. Blaming history and tradition for our actions simply serves to kick the can down the road. It passes the onus of justification onto characters we'll never know or see. At one point, for some reason, someone in the family decided to become a frog breeder, and it probably wasn't with the intention of creating an everlasting family tradition. What was that reason, and how can we bring that reason to the present moment?

Action for action's sake is not sufficiently satisfying.

A great justification will be all three of these:

1. Personal - People are driven by the pursuit of some sort of individual benefit. Try to find that. Does the parent believe frog breeding is a lucrative career and it would make them happy to see their child to have financial success? They are personally driven by the financial safety of their family. Is the town plagued by mosquitos and the parent is sick of being constantly itchy? They are personally driven by physical comfort. Do they really enjoy frog legs but the local French restaurant went out of business? They are personally driven by enjoying the finer things in life. How does the parent benefit from their child becoming a frog breeder? How does the child benefit from agreeing or disagreeing? What do those benefits mean about their individual values?

2. Actionable - The best justifications are those that are possible to actively pursue. The parent that finds happiness in a financially successful child can pursue that goal by helping their child get a business loan or filling out tax paperwork for their frog breeding business. The parent seeking comfort from mosquitos might attempt to get their child to switch careers once more when they realize all those frogs make a whole lot of noise. The parent who enjoys delicacies might take a cooking class to learn how to make those homemade frog legs. Find a justification that requires active work.

3. Perpetual - The perfect justification will never be able to be fulfilled. It will be something our character is constantly seeking no matter what situation they are in. The parent who wants their family to be financially secure will always be concerned about how they might lose their money and trying to gain more. The parent who desires physical comfort will always be trying to avoid uncomfortable situations and maintain comfortable ones. The parent who seeks the finer things will never want anything cheap or average and will always be looking for the best food, wine, clothing, etc. Find a justification that can never be satisfied and we can live in that character forever.

A personal, actionable, and perpetual justification will allow us to thrive in any situation.

This is especially useful in forms like the Harold where we might see the same character in multiple scenes. Our character will carry that justification into the 2nd beat to be explored in a different/heightened way, or matched up against any other character from the show in the 3rd beat as we explore what happens when all the worlds and point of views we've created collide. These moments suddenly become much easier to live in because we already know what motivates our character. We already know their "thing".

That pre-knowledge will serve to orient our approach less like improv and more like real life, so it should feel much more natural. We've already done all the work. Now all we have to do is play.

Offstage: Auditions, Rejections, & Next Moves

When it comes to improv, auditions are a flawed casting methodology. The nature of auditions devalues everything improv is supposed to be about and promotes everything it isn't. Collaboration becomes competition. Support becomes selfishness. Listening becomes laugh-seeking. It can be a frustratingly unreliable method of identifying ability.

In a perfect world, directors would spend most of their time scouting the talent pool and talking to teachers and coaches about up-and-comers - intimately getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of as many performers as possible and casting by invitation. Unfortunately in many places that's a full time job, and most improv directors just don't have the time. So they hope we're capable of accurately representing our skills in the short, high-pressure window we're given. And we hope they're capable of recognizing our skills in a crowded environment.

Auditions are necessary evil. They're far from perfect, but they're what we've got. If we want improv to be a part of our lives, auditions are going to be a part of it too.

So we put ourselves out there.

We show up to the audition full of excitement, fear, and caffeine and we try to represent our skills to the best of our ability. We support our scene partner. We show a range of choices and emotions. We do our best to have fun in spite of our nerves.

Then, almost as soon as it starts, it's over.

So we wait.

And we wait.

And results go out.

And we get rejected.

We go through the audition over and over in our heads. Where did we go wrong? We thought we did pretty well. We felt good about our choices and we did some good scenes. We weren't perfect, certainly, but no one else was either. How could they not recognize the skills we know we have? Why don't they want us in their show? Why don't they want us at their theater?

Here's the bad news:

Improv has never been more popular than it is right now. Getting cast at a major theater is the hardest its ever been. The gap between interested performers and available spots on resident casts has never been larger. There just simply isn't enough room for all of us, and that means a lot of us are going to be rejected.

Here's the good news:

We do not need permission to do improv.

If this is something we love, if this is something we want to do, we do not need approval from any individual or institution to continue to do it. 

Of course we want those "official" opportunities. Of course we want the support of an established theater. Of course we want the credibility that comes with being put on a premier stage. All these things are great. None of them are necessities.

A theater is just a big shiny box.

It might have a big stage in a big room and a bar in the lobby. It might have fancy lights and a sound system and cool posters in the window. This is all just packaging - stuff intended to attract audiences and improve their experience. Strip away all the packaging and what's left is a group of people making stuff up. And we can do that anywhere.

Here's more good news:

Because improv is more popular than it has ever been, the indie scene is thriving. There are indie nights happening in apartments, bars, breweries, cafes, hotels, rehearsal spaces, and anywhere else at least twenty people can fit in a room. There is a massive amount of stage time available to us if we are willing to seek it out. These might not be the best opportunities in terms of atmosphere and audience size, but they are chances to hone our skills and continue to do what we love.

Recognize the value of those opportunities. Take advantage of them.

I am no stranger to rejection.

It took me 6 auditions to get a callback at ImprovBoston. I spent a full three years of my life being told I wasn't good enough do to improv and I wasn't even close to making the cut.

Each failed audition crushed me harder than the last. All of my friends got on casts before I did. People with a lot less experience than I had were getting picked over me. It didn't make any sense. I was doing everything right and it still wasn't enough.

Somewhere in the midst of all that rejection I decided I wasn't going to let it beat me. I wasn't going to let people tell me that I couldn't do improv. I wasn't going to let people tell me I couldn't have what I wanted.

I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to become one of the best improvisers in the city. I would outwork, outstudy, and outrep everyone. I would push myself harder than anyone else pushed themselves. I would be tougher on myself than any coach or director possibly could be.

I wanted to become undeniable. I wanted to prove them wrong.

I still approach every day with that mindset. I'm still driven by those goals.

Here's a hard truth about improv and life in general:

Some people have to work harder for the same opportunities.

They will tell us we aren't good enough. They will tell us no one wants to work with us. They will tell us we aren't worth the effort to train. 

Become undeniable. Prove them wrong.

Here are some things I did in those three years that directly contributed to my improvement:

1. Understand that you are constantly auditioning. You never know who is going to be a future director or producer. Give a full effort every time you perform because they could be in the audience, even if that audience is only 3 people. Be reliable - sometimes all you need to do is show up when you say you will. Be nice to everyone because no one wants to work with assholes.
2. Invest in the community. Go to Jams. Stick around at the bar after shows. Talk shop with other performers. Make some new friends. Directors and producers are more likely to take chances on people they know. New shows and teams are constantly being born over burgers and beers. 
3. Study your heroes. What makes them good at what they do? What about them do audiences respond to (mannerisms, characters, etc)? Steal all of it and add your own spin. Ask your local heroes to coach your team or at least run a workshop.
4. Study yourself. Coaches and directors aren't going to give you notes on everything. Their responsibility lies with the development of the group as a whole. Record your shows and analyze your scenes. Try to notice when you're making the same choices frequently and force yourself to mix it up.
5. Tell people what you want. Directors want people who are invested and excited. Find ways to let them know you want to work with them. Ask them what you can work on to put yourself in a better position to do that. Listen to them. Do those things.
6. Learn from other places. Take classes at other theaters in your city or intensives out of town. Take workshops even if you're not interested in the subject or know who the instructor is. Read. TJ & Dave's book is great. Mick Napier's book is great. Will Hines' book is great. Take an acting class. 
7. Do stuff without permission. Make a video. Put a practice team together. Write. Create your own show and put it up somewhere. There are tons of ways to get better that don't require anyone's approval. It doesn't have to be for any reason other than your own personal growth. The work that no one will see will be some of the best work you ever do. The opportunities you create for yourself will be the ones you're most proud of.
8. Do other things. Improv has a tendency to suck people in and burn them out. Take breaks from time to time. Check out other art forms. Study other subjects that interest you. Travel. Not every show is a can't-miss show. Improv is about reflecting life. When too much of your life is centered on improv, it will start to get stale. Take some time to live. Improv will still be here when you get back.
9. Love yourself. When you decide to unconditionally value your own abilities, you become invincible. When you know without a doubt that you are good at this, no amount of rejection can hurt you. It might be frustrating. It might not make sense. You might feel like you don't fit anywhere. You might have to create all your own opportunities. But as long as you honestly value yourself, rejection will never be able to beat you.

I'll finish with this quote from the film The Imitation Game:

"Sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine."

And this video about someone great who was initially overlooked: 

Memento & Finding Meaning in Nothing

A common piece of advice for initiating an improv scene is "start in the middle". The idea is that if you want to do a scene about an unusual dog at a pet store, the initiation of "I'm afraid the dog is still full price even though half of it is stuffed" is much more effective than "Hi, welcome to the pet store". The former gets to the meat of your premise right away, while the latter requires a good amount of meandering and patience from your scene partner (who might try to move the scene in a completely different direction altogether). "Start in the middle", in short, means "get to the point". 

This is great advice for scenes where we have a full or even partial premise in mind, but what happens when we find ourselves at the top of a scene without an idea ready to go? We look up expectantly at our scene partner only to see them looking expectantly back at us.

"Uh oh", we think. "We've got nothing." 

This can be a terrifying moment. Uncertainty is scary, especially when we feel we don't have anything to hold onto. We might start to panic; going into our heads to think of a weird thing to say, or reaching out for some indeterminate object in the hopes that some sort of activity might give us more time to think. What we often don't realize is this - 

The simple act of being onstage with another person is all we need to start a scene.

In the film Memento, Guy Pearce's character suffers from a condition that prevents him from forming new memories. Every time he "comes to" he has forgotten everything about the events leading up to that moment. He has no idea how he got to where he is, or if he has ever met the person he is talking to before. Even the people he sees every day are completely forgotten when his memory resets. His condition forces him to constantly rely on context clues; to become an expert in finding meaning in the smallest details.

Here's an example where his memory resets in the middle of a chase:

Notice that Pearce starts with self-examination - "Okay, so what am I doing?" He finds himself running but doesn't know why. Also notice that despite not knowing why he's running, he doesn't stop. That's the key. He knows his memory is faulty but he still inherently trusts himself.

So instead of "Why am I running? I'll stop and figure it out."

He thinks "I'm running. It must be for a good reason. I will keep running and that reason will reveal itself to me shortly."

And it does.

                                      Wish I remembered to bring marshmallows...

If we approach our "nothing" scenes with this mindset - that we're where we are doing what we're doing for a reason -they suddenly become a lot less terrifying. We know we're supposed to be there, we just haven't quite uncovered the specifics. And just like in Memento, we can do that using context clues. 

If we take a moment to observe closely we can find meaning in the smallest details.

How are we standing and what does that mean about our attitude or emotional state? Do we have our hand in our pocket because we're nervous or because we're grabbing some change for a vending machine? Are we squinting slightly because it's bright or because we're suspicious of something? What does the distance between ourselves and our scene partner mean about the space we're in or the intensity of our relationship? Is their smile one of sincerity or politeness? What can we infer from the smallest movement or subtlest posture?

When we have nothing, everything is a gift.

Try to be comfortable with the idea that these types of scenes can start a little slow as we dedicate those first few moments to observation, so resist the urge to panic. 

It's also not the time to be polite or coy. If the context clues tell us we're on a beach, say it and make it real. Don't wait and hope our scene partner reads the clues the same way.

Conversely, it's also not the time to be stubborn. If we think we're on a beach but our scene partner cements us at a bank, they're right. Understand that our first instincts only carry us as far as reality permits. Guy Pearce thought for sure he was the one doing the chasing until his scene partner pulled a gun on him.

Be adaptable.

An interesting thing about this approach is that it almost always forces us to "start in the middle" even if we weren't intending to do so. When we're looking for meaning in the smallest details, our mind frames things differently. The first few moments aren't about looking forward to try to figure out what the scene could be, they're about looking backward to see what the scene already has been. What did we say to make our scene partner look at us in this specific way? What did we do that got us to this specific position in space and time?

Finding meaning in nothing allows us to step into the middle a scene that had already begun before we even found ourselves onstage. Our job from there is simply to play the rest of it out.

Into the Pensieve: Going Meta

One of the things that makes human beings special is our ability to get emotionally invested in completely imaginary circumstances. It's why we cry when Wilson floats away in Cast Away, or why your partner gets mad about something you did in their dream. Our imaginations are powerful things.

In improv we push this immersive ability to its limits. We (usually) have no costumes, no set, no objects, no music - none of the advantages that movies and traditional theater have to help the audience immerse themselves in the world we're presenting. We hit the stage with nothing but our bodies, minds, emotions, and the hope that if we commit hard enough to our choices the audience will fill in all the blanks. Luckily, they usually do.

But what happens when they don't?

What happens when, 5-8 minutes into our set, all the "good will" laughs have died off and the audience stops responding vocally? We find ourselves doing several scenes in a row with maybe one or two light laughs each. "Uh oh..." we think. "This is going poorly." And we're right.

And we panic.

And we need to do something - anything - to get a BIG laugh.

And we notice our scene partner's object work isn't quite as precise as it could be when we hand them a can of beer and they drink it without opening it.

And that's our chance.

"How are you even drinking that beer? You didn't even open it!"

And the audience laughs. And we relax.

We saved the show.

Or did we?

This is "going meta"  - commenting on the scene you're currently inside of in a way that reminds the audience that they're a bunch of people in a room watching people make stuff up.

We do it because it works. We needed a big laugh and we got one. But at what expense? Now the audience remembers who they are. They remember they're watching a show. They remember they paid $12 to watch adults make funny faces and they're trying to decide if it was worth it. We've destroyed the immersion. We've torn down everything we spent the last 5-8 minutes building. With one line. Because we panicked. And because WE needed that laugh.

Going meta is a selfish act.

It doesn't serve the scene because it destroys the immersion. It doesn't serve the audience because it makes them self-aware. It doesn't serve your scene partner because (in this example) you're calling them out for sloppy object work. Going meta only serves the needs of the person who panics and needs the instant positive feedback of a big laugh.

This one's for metaphor fans:

Immersion functions like the Pensieve in Harry Potter.

In the Harry Potter universe, the Pensieve is an object where you can store and review memories. Here's a clip from The Goblet of Fire where Harry discovers the Pensieve for the first time:

There are two main takeaways here. 1 - David Tennant has a very active tongue. 2 - When Harry is viewing memories in the Pensieve, he's not just watching them on the surface of the water. He is literally in the room. He is experiencing the memory as if he was there himself. Though he can't interact with them, the people seem real. Though he can't influence the events of the memory, he feels involved. Look at his face as the trial unfolds. He is concerned, uncertain, and most importantly, fully invested.

A fully immersed improv audience will feel the same way. They are literally in the room, and though they can't (or shouldn't) interact directly with the performers, they will feel involved and invested as long as long as we continue to fully commit to the worlds and characters we are building.

But how would Harry's experience change if Dumbledore suddenly turned to him and reminded him that he wasn't actually in the courtroom? That he was actually face down in a bowl of magic water.

          Harry...you alive? I fell asleep.

He would feel self-conscious and probably a little silly. He would be distracted, and he wouldn't be able to focus his full attention on the memory. He'd probably miss something. Going meta has the same effect on an audience. It reminds them that what they're watching isn't real, and when things aren't real they stop being important.

Now here's the part where I say "but":

It is entirely possible to comment on a scene in a way that does not destroy the immersion.

But it's tricky. When something is a little off or we blatantly break the reality of the world, the audience will recognize that. It's important for us to acknowledge that we see what they saw. They need to know that we're in total control of what's happening - or at least more than they are. 

So how do we acknowledge a "mistake" without going meta?

Justify from within.

Find a way to make it work by making it a part of the reality of the scene. Pointing at it and saying "that's weird" is simply not enough and usually, for the reasons I explained above, counterproductive.

In the Pensieve scene, when Harry plops down next to Dumbledore, he is confused why his professor is ignoring him. It is not until someone passes a hand through him that he understands the rules of the memory world - he can watch but he can't interact. The Pensieve justifies from within.

In a recent Oregon Fail show I played a federal detective who was attempting to arrest someone for murder. As I did, I found myself saying the line "I'm going to place you under arrest under the order of our current President..." In that moment I recognized that I was in trouble. Oregon Fail takes place in the year 1848 and at the time I had no idea who was President in 1848 (it's James K Polk). Recognizing that my character would have to know the name of the current President, and recognizing that the audience would expect that too, I justified from within. I finished with "...whose name I will not mention out of respect." It fit my character, it fit the world, and it was a subtle wink to the audience that let them know that I saw what they saw without ruining the immersion.

The beer can example is no different. If, instead of calling out our scene partner for sloppy object work, we had made it fit the scene by saying something like "you really have to teach me how you're able to open these with your teeth", we have acknowledged the "mistake" without breaking the immersion. We've also given our scene partner the gift of a character ability instead of making them look bad. It clears all hurdles. Justify from within.

So what do we do if we find ourselves struggling at the 5-8 minute mark? We've done several scenes in a row and the audience just isn't responding. What do we do when that urge to go meta starts creeping in? Don't pull back. Don't rip Harry from the Pensieve. Push him deeper in. Commit harder. Make what's happening matter more. Believe it more. If it matters to you it will matter to the audience. If you believe it, so will they.