Hey all,

Here it is - a BONUS Coaches Corner for this month! Well, not really, I just thought this article was exceptional, and I wanted to include it on our forum of things to read on this gorilla called improv… a trick to help you wrestle it to the ground…

It is on how one should handle a "bad" suggestion in a show… everyone has gotten one at some point… so let me know what you think of this article, written by Bob Kennedy from www.YESand.com, a fantastic Improv website full of articles, games, and generally lists ALL Improv festivals throughout the country! Hmmmm, when will the first inaugural Oklahoma Improv Fest will be… time will tell…

Enjoy!

Niigon

>Surviving bad suggestions

available at:http://www.yesand.com/articles/index.php?ArticleID=63
By Bob Kennedy
www.YESand.com

"It's okay to say no to a bad suggestion. For a really bad one, it is more like a moral imperative."

Some groups, after soliciting a suggestion from the crowd, take the first one that they clearly hear (unless it's something obviously inappropriate, like "sex with puppies!" or some other perennial favorite). Every group I've ever been in took this approach. Increasingly, I'm seeing new groups that pick and choose from multiple suggestions. They'll even say "No, no..." to a string of offerings from the crowd, waiting for one they like. Are these groups waiting for a specific answer? I sometimes get that impression. Personally, I feel the second approach is almost a cheat, but I'm at a loss to explain why (Personal preferences can be like that).

It's okay to say no to a bad suggestion. For a really bad one, it's more like a moral imperative. By "bad suggestion" I mean one that doesn't, as intended, move the show forward, one that's obviously inappropriate to the kind of show you're trying to perform. Usually, this is in the form of something sexual or scatological, but some improv groups are comfortable with "blue" material. My old group would filter offers with some wack political agenda (like the young black guy in gleeful agreement with the authors of "The Bell Curve," for instance; It just looked like something we shouldn't touch). Undoubtedly, no suggestion is so awful that some improv comic somewhere can't turn it into a winning scene, but the other 99% of us need to spot unusable, dead-end suggestions and discard them immediately. A "bad" suggestion is one that you personally can't use.

A few years ago, I was playing "Coffeehouse" in front of a paying crowd. In Coffeehouse, a fey folkie moderator introduced a string of increasingly effete acts that performed beat poetry, bongo drum solos and other talents associated with the black-turtleneck-and-beret set. I geared up to do an "interpretive dance" to a theme not yet selected. Some helpful soul in the audience gave me "Russian Plane Crash." (A few days earlier, there'd been a heart-wrenching plane crash in Russia. The last entry on the flight data recorder was the pilot and his young daughter, both in the cockpit, talking). I thought, "Screw tradition, I'm waiting for another suggestion." None was forthcoming. This suggestion was ingeniously awful: Not bad enough to be summarily thrown out, but not good enough to use well. I gritted my teeth,"danced" a bunch of flying motions and a crash, got booed off the stage, and the show promptly continued.

If I had it to do again, I'd just say "Did I mention that we're a COMEDY show?" Perhaps I could have just said "I'm sorry, I can't use that one." Looking like a wimp is better than going through the motions of an awful scene. One can, in good conscience, reject an unusable audience suggestion. Just not too often in one show. An established format is no substitute for personal judgment; format exists to enable performers to make good choices, not to make those decisions for them.