Heightening - Part 1

Brendan Martin

Brendan Martin

— 2 min read
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A photo in black and white. A young African-American boy's weight and height are recorded by a twenty-something African-American nurse. The boy is shoeless aThe era appears to be the 1940s.
Photo by National Library of Medicine / Unsplash

Using the excuse of my laptop being blown up and off at a repair site to continue my series on the building blocks of improv.

Start > Base Reality + Yes, And > First Unusual Thing > Game (If, Then)
UCB Improv Manual (Besser et al., 2013) Illustration by Dyna Moe https://ucbcomedy.com/store/ucb-manual/

I have been fortunate to be able to take some classes online and in person with Will Hines. During my first class, I asked a question about how WGIS, the improv school he founded with Jim Woods and Sarah Claspell, evaluates talent for their teams. It was an in-depth answer and I wrote notes with fury to keep up. I don't feel comfortable at the moment reproducing those thoughts in their entirety, but I do want to reflect on something I don't feel like I am currently doing well with my improv. It's a single line he said, referencing a pattern and a comedy trio.

"Larry and Moe before Curly"

People are pattern matching machines. The magic of improv is performers and audiences discovering things at the same time. The skills we employ as performers are to promote and improve those discoveries. So Will says one of the skills they look for is the ability to order comedy as Larry, then Moe, and then Curley. To put it another way, work on selecting the right A, to leave enough space to get to the B, and then C. The pattern of heightening to grow in size: A < B < C. If A is comedically too big, then B and C can't grow. If B is bigger than C it weakens the overall pattern.

I have no cheat code for doing this other than to offer more Will Hines and the framework of heightening both vertically and horizontally. For me, I think the answer is more reps and working on groupmind with the teams I play with.

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