Many improv scenes begin with a player asking an audience member for a suggestion. This “ask-for” serves several useful functions. It helps make it clear to an audience – particularly an audience unfamiliar with improv – that the scene that follows is spontaneous. It can also provide an initial dash of randomness that helps players start as they mean to go on – responding in the moment to each new idea.
Improv promises a collaboration and interaction between audience and players. “We will take your suggestions and turn them into scenes.”
But in reality, players often don’t give audiences much latitude in what they suggest, fearing (with some justification) that some smartass will give a suggestion that is impossible to work with. Improvisers keep their ask-fors safe – “Can we have a room in the house?” “A number between one and five?”)Audiences respond by trying to break the constraints placed on them, offering answers like “Torture chamber!” or “Pi”.
These ask-fors are insincere. The players say they want audience input, but clearly don’t need it. Why bother asking for such uninspiring suggestions?
Limp ask-fors are poor “proof” that a scene was improvised, and can have the opposite effect. Years ago, one group of friends received a brutal newspaper review after asking the audience for a woman’s first name. The suggestion was something like “Betty.” The performers then announced that the scene would take places in Betty’s Diner. The reviewer was incensed, sure that the suggestion was simply to hide the fact that the scene had been scripted. It was obvious to me that the improv was real, but in that case, a first name certainly wasn’t an inspiring ask-for.
When audience members are asked more interesting questions – questions that dangle the promise an interesting and unusual scene – they usually give helpful and creative responses. Try asking an audience member for their favourite movie, and follow up by asking for a scene that sticks in their mind from that movie. You can use it as the inspiration for a scene. The range of possible scenes is wide and interesting, and audiences feel (legitimately) that they have had a strong influence on the scene’s content.
Movie-based suggestions don’t have to mean a slavish re-enactment of a scene. We recently received a suggestion of the scene from Pulp Fiction where John Travolta’s character has to save the life of Uma Thurman’s character by stabbing her in the heart with a hypodermic needle. In that case, we said, “It was a great scene. We’re not going to repeat it, but we’re going to go to another situation where someone’s heart has stopped. We take you to an operating room in the middle of heart surgery.” The audience seemed satisfied with the way the suggestion was used.
Improv scenes can go absolutely anywhere, but it sometimes feels as if improvisers compensate for that by making a point of asking for the dullest possible suggestions. Perhaps setting the bar low avoids the risk of disappointment – although it also eliminates any anticipation of excitement.
One ask-for that has become popular in recent years is “What’s a location that could fit on this stage?” It strikes me as a defiantly unimaginative question, and we can hardly blame audiences if they give sabotage answers like “A stage!” But you will get better suggestions if you ask a question that sincerely invites audience creativity. Asking for “a location that’s much too big to fit on this stage” fires the imagination, and may get suggestions like “the Hindenburg” or “the surface of Mars” or “the Sahara Desert”. It’s no harder to improvise a scene set in the Sahara Desert than in a stage-sized garage.
There’s no reason that players have to ask the audience for suggestions at all, but if you’re going to ask, be sincere about it – come up with questions that give the audience room to contribute interesting ideas.