A Scene Is a Stew of Ideas
Consider this scene:
Alice: Hey honey, I made you some beef stew.
Bob: It’s a little chunky, don’t you think?
Where do Alice and Bob go next?
A good coach would say it’s not about the stew, it’s about the relationship. To argue about the qualities of the soup for 3 minutes would create an insufferably boring scene. No one really cares if Alice used enough or not enough butter, or if it’s over-salted or under-salted.
So maybe they continue:
Alice: I feel like you don’t appreciate me anymore.
Bob: I just have really high standards. Maybe if you won an olympic medal or something…
And now they have a strong point of view from Bob, which lets them play an straight-absurd dynamic. The soup was a way to discover this game.
This is fine… but it renders the stew unimportant. They’ve quickly dropped the stew to play the general game: Bob has standards that are too high. The stew was a disposable detail. But this is kind of a shame. If we want our improv to feel scripted, then every detail must be significant. Of all the things we could write into the scene, why stew? So, what if the scene is about the stew and the relationship? To do this, they can make the stew into a metaphor:
Alice: Hey honey, I made you some beef stew.
Bob: It’s a little chunky, don’t you think?
Alice: I think it’s great that the beef and potatoes can complement each other while still having their separate identities.
Bob: I think that if the beef and potatoes are going to cohabitate in the same bowl, that they should be blended together. Like tomato soup.
Alice: But if you blend them, they lose the attributes that make them special.
Bob: And they generate an entirely new flavor, the flavor of unity.
Alice: The flavor of codependence.
Bob: You mean transcendental bondedness.
Alice: You mean desparate clinginess.
At the object level, the scene is about the stew. At the meta level, it’s very clearly about boundaries in the relationship between Alice and Bob. This gives us the best of both worlds: exploring the stew is exploring the relationship.
Objects, Object Work, and Environments
Any object, object work, or environment can be used as a starting point for an extended metaphor. Examples:
- I like fossils = I like the past and dislike change.
- I dislike flowers = I dislike people who grow and reach their full potential because I’m trapped and jealous.
- I’m washing dishes = I’m imposing moral order on a chaotic and messy world.
- I’m raking leaves = I’m getting my life in order.
- I’m changing a lightbulb = I’m changing my perspective on life by illuminating parts of myself that I’ve been ignoring.
- I’m snowboarding = I’m largely not in control of my life and just trying to stay upright as unstoppable momentum propels me forward.
- I’m trapped on a submarine with a friend = I’m feeling stifled in this friendship
- I’m in a room full of mirrors = I’m obsessively introspecting and ignoring the outside world