Overview
The UCB Manual is an epic exploration of the concept of game in improv. Game, which has nothing to do with short form games, is basically the pattern in the social dynamic between people that makes a scene funny. The premise of the UCB manual is that every scene
has game, and we can more intentionally recognize, create, and exploit patterns in our scenes to make them funnier.
Forms vs Grammars
In improv we have forms like The Harold, Larond, Pretty Flower, Deconstruction, etc. that give us a way to structure our sets. People talk a lot about forms, but people don’t talk about grammars as much. A grammar is a template or formula for an individual scene. I use the word “grammar” because grammars have two properties:
- They let us parse, analyze, and understand a scene by fitting into a simple structure (the grammar). This then gives us a shared and precise language that we can use to discuss a single scene or make comparisons between different scenes.
- They let us generate new scenes and ideas in an easy and somewhat mechanical or algebraic fashion. (This doesn’t mean uncreative; the creativity comes from adding personal touches each step of the way. Almost every novel ever written (with the exception of really avante garde stuff) follows the grammar of the natural language it was written in, but we still consider them creative and occasionally profound.)
The UCB manual gives us a grammar for scenes that are built around game.
B.U.R.P.Y. (The UCB Game Grammar)
UCB game scenes follow a grammar that can be expressed with the acronym BURPY, which is an adaptation of Robin Kap’s acronym BURP. I owe much of this article to him. Thanks, Robin!
- Base Reality
- Goal: create a backdrop against which a funny thing can stand out and be explored.
- The scene takes place in a situation with Assumed Behavior (i.e., everyone’s actions/behavior follow a pretty standard script).
- Unusual Thing
- Goal: Identify and Frame the funny thing.
- Someone makes a choice that violates the assumed behavior of the interaction.
- Their scene partner frames the choice, establishing the game and an Unusual and Voice of Reason character dynamic.
- Repeat the Unusual Thing
- Goal: Legitimize and heighten the funny the thing.
- Repeat the unusual thing 3 times, each time making it more severe, unusual, inappropriate, or surreal.
- After each repetition, return to the assumed behavior. The tug and pull of assumed behavior ↔ unusual thing creates tension.
- Pull Back from the Unusual Thing
- Goal: Take a break from the funny thing to resensitize the audience to it (while the repetition in step 3 legitimizes the funny thing, it also desensitizes the audience to it).
- The Voice of Reason and Unusual character try to reach common ground.
- Yank Back to Unusual Thing
- Goal: End on a funny note.
- Repeat the unusual thing one more time.
We’ll go over these in detail using an example from Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave that perfectly conforms to the B.U.R.P.Y. grammar.
Base Reality
0:00-0:33 establishes the base reality. The first few seconds are an establishing shot of an old mansion, which quickly conveys the location. (In improv, we don’t have the luxury of establishing shots, and need to use object work and scene painting instead.) The host then provides context that frames the scene:
Host: Welcome to the Larboard Oaks Mansion Ghost Tour… [more background]… It’s just after 10pm, this is the adult tour, which means you can drink if you want, and we can say whatever the hell we want.
A ghost tour is an effective base reality because it carries with it assumed behavior (coined by Adam Cawley). This means that all guided tours follow a similar script, and we know our role in the script and the role of everyone else. There is nothing about the structure of a guided tour that would surprise us. In fact, it’s rather mundane. A base reality needs to be built on top of a shared social script with assumed behavior in order for the unusual thing to stand out.
Other examples of situations with assumed behaviors:
- Doctor’s office visit
- Parent-teacher conference
- High school graduation ceremony
- First date
- Wedding
Unusual Thing
From 0:33-0:53, Robinson offers the unusual thing and the host frames it.
Host: … and we can say whatever the hell we want.
Robinson: Jizz.
Host: Sorry?
Robinson: Jizz, like cumshot. You can say that because you said we can say whatever the hell we want.
Host: Sure…
Robinson: Or horse cock.
Host: Yeah, I guess… you know, there are no rules about swearing -
Robinson: Awesome.
Host: But let’s do try and keep the comments and questions related to the ghost tour. Now, if you’ll follow me…
Let’s break this down:
The Host sets up Robinson to say something off-base and wildly inappropriate by saying that people can say whatever the hell they want. Robinson says “jizz”, which is an effective unusual thing because it builds directly upon everything that came before. A less effective unusual thing would be “my mom only eats Tacos on Wednesdays even though Tuesday is Taco Tuesday” because it has nothing to do with the base reality that’s been established. While it violates the assumed behavior of a guided tour, it does so as a non-sequitur. I’m usually a fan of non-sequiturs, but I think they’re less effective in this context.
Immediately after someone makes the unusual choice, their scene partner should frame it. Framing is a technique used to highlight the unusual thing, which communicates to both the improvisers and the audience what the scene is going to be about. After Robinson says “jizz”, the host says “Sorry?”, which begins a multi-line framing. “Sorry?” is both an honest, startled reaction and a gentle/non-intrusive way to call attention to Robinson’s unusual choice.
Robinson continues saying inappropriate things and the host does a wonderful job toeing the line between being generous/curious and also uncomfortable. Framing concludes when the host says “But let’s do try and keep the comments and questions related to the ghost tour.” This tells the audience and the players what the game of the scene is: saying inappropriate things that follow the literal rules of the tour but not the spirit of them.
Now that we’ve found the unusual thing and framed it, we go back to following the assumed behavior and continue the tour like normal (“Now, if you’ll follow me…"). For now.
Like many BURPY scenes, this scene is really between two parties (a party is a collection of characters with the same point of view): the Unusual character (Tim Robinson) and the Voice of Reason (the Host and the rest of the people in the tour).
The Unusual character breaks the assumed behavior of the base reality. Social conventions dictate that you just don’t say “jizz” even when the tour guide says it’s the adult tour and you can say whatever the hell you want.
The Voice of Reason (VoR) needs to the toe the line between speaking for the audience (who’s thinking “this is weird, wtf”) and being curious and generous. If the VoR is too rigid and strict, then they fail to “yes-and” and shut down the scene because it can’t go anywhere. If the VoR is too curious and generous, they become unusual themselves. The Host does an excellent job finding the Goldilocks Zone between these two things by being professional and trying to gently redirect Robinson (“let’s do try and keep the comments and questions related to the ghost tour”) while also making facial expressions indicating profound discomfort and confusion.
Repeat
From 0:53-1:55 we repeat the unusual thing three times.
Here’s the high level overview of what’s happening:
Host: [guided tour base reality]
Robinson: [inappropriate remark #1]
Host: [acknowledges inappropriate remark, redirects back to base reality’s assumed behavior]
Robinson: [inappropriate remark #2]
Host: [acknowledges inappropriate remark]
Other guest: [redirects back to base reality’s assumed behavior]
Host: [guided tour]
Robinson: [inappropriate remark #3]
Host: Hey, can I talk to you for a second please?
Each time Robinson repeats the unusual thing (an inappropriate remark), the host acknowledges it with a pained expression then redirects back to the base reality’s assumed behavior, which is a standard guided tour.
The tug and pull between the VoR and Unusual characters creates tension. The VoR is trying to honor the assumed behavior of the base reality while the Unusual is trying to tear it to pieces. Notice that a guest of the tour also acts as a VoR here; it’s not just the Host. So it’s really Robinson against the world.
Usually we want to heighten the unusual thing here to make it more pronounced, however it’s not clear to me if Robinson is heightening or just repeating. He might be subtly heightening by getting more aggressive and impatient with his questions, and slightly changing his tone of voice, but it’s not heightening that’s as strong as we’d usually expect.
Pull Back
From 2:00-2:25, Robinson (the Unusual) and the Host (the VoR) take a break from the game of the scene and try to reconcile and find common ground.
Why pull back? After three repeats, we’ve built up the most tension we can without things getting boring or overly repetitive. While repetition legitimizes and reinforces, it also desensitizes. In practice, three repeats seems to strike the optimal balance. So if we wish to continue playing the game, we need to take a break and reset.
The Host is vulnerable – “I work really hard at what I do, and you’re totally insulting it” – and Robinson is emotionally impacted and tries his best to understand why his actions offended the Host. It’s crucial that both the VoR and Unusual characters seem like real, multidimensional people. The Unusual character needs to be earnest in trying to understand why they’ve offended the VoR, and the VoR needs to be generous with their tolerance of the Unusual character. Ultimately game is rooted in the relationship dynamics between two people (or two parties), and the more the characters seem like real people, the harder the game hits.
Yank Back to Game
From 2:27 on, we recapitulate the game one last time.
We start by returning to the base reality – the host says a standard tour line then sets up Robinson by asking “Does anybody have any questions?”
At 2:45, Robinson raises his hand and we all know what’s about to happen: he’s going to say something wildly inappropriate one last time.
However, note that while he asks his question, which takes almost thirty seconds, he shows that he truly cares about what the Host said during the Pull Back section. This humanizes his character and makes us sympathize with him – haven’t we all been in a social situation where our impulses have been derided by our peers as “weird” and we have to choose whether to be ourselves and be ostracized by a group or pretend to be someone we’re not in order to fit in? Robinson’s inability to understand why his questions are inappropriate makes him simultaneously more unusual and more relatable.
After the Host chastises him at 3:33 – “I’m just asking you to use a little more judgment when you talk” – Robinson doubles down on earnestly not understanding why he’s Unusual: “I don’t know what’s going on, but somewhere our wires got crossed. You’re saying we’re allowed to swear. I’m saying ‘big fat load of cum’ and ‘horse cock’ and you’re getting mad. Do you see where I’m like uhgmmahaaah …”
This brilliantly and seamlessly blends together the Pull Back and Yank Back stages. If the Unusual Character doesn’t truly believe that who they are or what they’re doing is totally normal, then they lose their punch. No one wants to listen to a speaker who doesn’t believe what they’re saying. But when someone truly believes what they’re saying and is fully committed to it, we can’t help but be drawn in, even when it’s absurd.
At 3:53 the other tour guests kick Robinson out and the sketch ends with his mom picking him up and asking him if he made any friends. “Not really”, he replies. And, even though he’s absolutely and totally ridiculous, we can’t help but feel for him, which makes him the perfect Unusual character.
Summary
B.U.R.P.Y is a grammar you can use to both parse/analyze/understand scenes that conform to the UCB game style and generate new scenes.
We start by creating a base reality, a situation that has assumed behavior, then discover and frame an unusual thing. Ideally, the unusual thing is built on top of what’s come before instead of a total non-sequitur. The characters on stage are divided into two parties: the Voice of Reason, a defender of the assumed behavior and social norms, and the Unusual, an antagonist who tears apart all social expectations we have. From there, we legitimize the unusual thing by repeating it three times, heightening with each repetition. In order to resensitize the audience to the unusual thing, we pull back and humanize the VoR and Unusual. We end by yanking back to the game one last time.
There are some things I didn’t cover here. I didn’t talk about heightening with much detail, and the UCB manual also mentions exploring as a complement to heightening. Despite that, the simple version of B.U.R.P.Y. is still quite effective at generating interesting and funny scenes, and it’s a useful tool for understanding a lot of comedy.