Gun Play
by jorinAfter a rehearsal for the Movie at iO this weekend, in which I wound up playing a Bonnie & Clyde/Natural Born Killers-style rampaging psychopath-in-love character, I was thinking about the old trope in improv about how drawing a gun in a scene is a bad idea. And whereas I generally agree, I think it’s one of those things where it’s how you handle it … but it does make you have to be sharp, for sure. Let’s talk about it?
October 2nd, 2006 at 8:31 am
Here’s my understanding:
In general, the idea advising against use of an improv gun is that it puts you in a situation where one character is going to have status that’s pretty immutable, and kind of takes away the interactivity of two people playing together. It’s sort of saying “I’m more important, and nothing you can do or say can change that”. I think.
But it also traps whoever draws the gun — all they can do is shoot, and then everything is over.
So, if a gun gets drawn, there’s a tendency for everyone to become paralyzed by this object that can’t be used and can’t not be used. And, everybody knows it, so I think it tends to put improvisors in a trapped mind state, where the feeling is: “This scene is already over, how do we get out of this”.
Having said all that, I think it’s one of those things where you can probably work around anything. Because recently I’ve been in some gun-incorporating scenes that really feel like they’ve worked.
Now, in both cases, the gun play was in a more narrative situation — in the Movie where a brutal body count was just part of the genre, and in a Revolver rehearsal where we had a series of scenes that were essentially a Sci Fi action movie with radioactive creatures trying to stop my scene partner (and I) from accomplishing a specific task.
So I think that’s a big part of it — a gun makes a much better narrative device than something that informs a relationship scene well. It can propel a narrative, but flattens out a “how do we feel about each other” scene.
At the same time, I think what I’ve found in those circumstances for me, even though they were more narrative things, what was the most freeing choice was to actually just go ahead and use the gun instead of being trapped by the potential and implications of what it meant to have it there.
Because I think I’ve been in scenes either has the possessor of a gun or the person being threatened by one where everyone is just waiting because nobody wants to go as far as actually firing it off — it feels bad and like you’re improvising poorly, and nobody wants to commit to being the person that draws a big red X over a scene partner.
BUT, what I’ve come to decide is that I think a viable way to go is stop thinking about it on such a meta level, and if it’s time to use a gun in a scene, do it. It can be shocking and unexpected, but I also think it moves you on to having to deal with it. Instead of being trapped in the static realm of Bad Choice-ville, it moves you into a scenario where you have to deal with the repercussions of a very serious action. And that could potentially be rather powerful.
… of course, the flip side is that with these two recent situations, my characters were mostly shooting Mike Carr’s characters, and Rob White’s, and they responded by being shot and dying. If you’re playing a scene with someone that shrugs off a bullet in order to keep saying lines, well, then things will probably get worse, but if you’re able to play with people that are good enough to be willing to sacrifice to move things along … well, I think it’s something that, despite the stereotypes, does not have to suck.
Right — what do you guys think?
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:38 pm
I think that the two examples that you gave, Jorin, were instances where the gun was not only a good decision but one that furthered the scene. The gun was called for and you used it.
I think the problem, or maybe where the trope (I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before) comes from, is when a player just pulls a gun for no reason. That move is a very strong one and it will certainly take precedence over anything else that has been going on in the scene. It will force your scene partner to drop whatever the scene was about and now deal with not getting killed. That type of move bulldozes a scene.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:29 pm
I just wanted to let you guys know that I actually improvise with a real gun in my pocket.
I think it’s like the NPR adage: Guns don’t kill scenes; bad improvisers do.
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:13 am
I know of a guy that has a knife. You could be in the most actually dangerous freeze scene ever in one of our shows this schedule … but I’ll let you wonder which one …