Justification - Part 1

As I write this, I just got back from a 201 showcase, which is where the game is introduced in my theatre, and it was so much fun. It was off-the-wall bananas. One of the scenes was basically two rappers treating the Little Mermaid as a documentary, so they could use it to find Ursula to steal the voices of their competition. I miss doing this kind of improv.

So often in my real life, a dumb, simple, or simply dumb justification is all that I need, but I get tripped up in improv scenes sometimes because I'm trying to tie everything up into a neat bow. That's not how people work. People make emotional decisions all the time and then backfill for them. Curing cancer isn't cool, but making people into dinosaurs is. Many of the scenes I do would be improved by knowing what my character's deal is in the scene, and I don't need to overcomplicate that. This reminds me of something from my 201 era training. C.R.O.W.

• C - Character: Who are you, specifically? Your name, your age, how you carry yourself, what your deal is.
• R - Relationship: What's the history between you and the other person? Are you coworkers, old friends, or strangers who just met? The Elana-Fishbein juicy vulnerability stuff.
• O - Objective: What does your character actually want? What are they trying to get done?
• W - Where: Where does this scene take place? Ground yourself in the space.