Amateur Improv
The stage of an amateur dramatic society. The DIRECTOR, a poseur, takes a group of bolshie amateur actors through an improvisation session. They are MIKE, CHAS and MARGE
DIRECTOR: Okay, could we all gather round a second? Fine. Now, people, I’ve never directed amateur actors before, right? I mean, we established that in our free expression exercises just before yogurt and coffee, yar?
MARGE: What free expression exercises?
CHAS: When we were all standing round shouting at each other.
MIKE: And you were sick on the radiator.
DIRECTOR: Loved the spontaneity on that one, Chas. Anyway, I thought what we could do now was we could maybe develop that a little, you know, take it one step further?
MIKE: You mean shit ourselves as well?
DIRECTOR: No no, I was going to suggest we all do a bit of improv, yar?
ALL: (ad lib) Oh no, not improv, oh bloody hell.
DIRECTOR: No, it’ll be great, just feel our way into our characters as it were, yar?
ALL: (ad lib) Oh, all right, get on with it then, bo-oring. (etc)
DIRECTOR: Great. Good. Now, Marge, what are you, what is it you do for a living, what’s your work situation exactly?
MARGE: DHSS, work on the counter.
DIRECTOR: Really? Okay, hold on to that for a minute. Mike, how about you?
MIKE: (mutter)
DIRECTOR: What? Projection, Mike. From the bowels.
MIKE: Sign on.
DIRECTOR: Wow. Really? You’re not just saying that to please me? Wow. Coincidence, people. Okay, look, listen, what I’d like to do is set up a little scene in a dole office and I’d like you, Marge, to be the, what is it, clerk?
MARGE: Client liaison executive.
DIRECTOR: Whatever, and Mike, you can be the –
MARGE: Victim of circumstance and decades of economic mismanagement by the –
DIRECTOR: – claimant, and I’d like you both to really just play it through, okay? Just see what happens.
CHAS : What about me?
DIRECTOR: Ah, Chas, yes, I’d like to hold you in reserve for a minute if I may, yar? Sort of infiltrate you into the action at a high spot, okay? Let’s just see what develops first. Right, now, you two ready? Wonderful. Okay, take it.
(MIKE sheepishly approaches MARGE. She gives him a slip of paper. MIKE signs it and walks away. They turn to DIR for the verdict)
DIRECTOR: Okay. And relax. Fine. And that’s it?
MIKE: Yar. I mean, yes.
DIRECTOR: So, what exactly were you doing there, Mike?
MIKE: Signing me chit.
MARGE: For his giro.
DIRECTOR: Yar. Well, okay. Fine. Loved the movement there, Mike. Lovely turn. Great expressive – sort of – lack of – er – from Marge there. Could we just run it through again and this time do you think you could, I don’t know, instigate some kind of verbal interaction of some kind?
MIKE: Do what?
MARGE: He means talk.
DIRECTOR: Yar, this time let me hear the mental processes, via language if that’s the corporeal medium you feel most comfortable with, okay? Right, and go, Mike.
(MIKE approaches MARGE)
MIKE: Morning.
MARGE: Morning.
MIKE: Got my chit?
MARGE: Yes, I’ve got your chit here.
MIKE: (signs it) See you next week then.
MARGE: Bye.
(He walks away. Pause)
DIRECTOR: Fine…
CHAS: Can I do something now please?
DIRECTOR: Okay, right, listen, we’ll run it again – keep that sense of excitement, loved the laconic dialogue there, pure Pinter really – but this time we’ll introduce Chas, and Chas darling when you come on I want you to… (whispers to her)
CHAS: Do what?
(DIR whsipers again)
DIRECTOR: Yar? Okay?
CHAS: If you say so.
DIRECTOR: Okay then. Bags of enthusiasm, people, performance pitch and – go, Mike.
(MIKE approaches MARGE)
MIKE: Hello.
MARGE: Hello. Are you here for your chit?
MIKE: That was my line. I was going to say that.
MARGE: Oh go on then.
MIKE: Got my chit?
MARGE: Yes, here’s your chit here.
(GAIL approaches on all fours)
CHAS: Woof.
(they stare at her, then at DIR)
DIRECTOR: Relate to the beagle.
MARGE: Do what to the what?
DIRECTOR: The beagle, interact with the beagle.
CHAS: Woof.
(pause)
MIKE: Oh look, it’s a beagle.
MARGE: Don’t get many of those in here.
(pause)
MIKE: See you next week then.
MARGE: Yep.
(MIKE walks away. They all turn to DIRECTOR, by now a little weary)
DIRECTOR: Look, I’m going to ask you to run it just once more, and Chas, this time I want you to… (whispers)
CHAS: Joking, squire.
DIRECTOR: No, it’ll be terrific, okay? Trust me. Okay, Mike? Could we go from your entrance again?
MIKE: (sniggers) Entrance!
DIRECTOR: Yar, just walk on as you’ve been doing, it’s terrific, I’m really very excited by this work.
(MIKE approaches)
MIKE: Hello.
MARGE: Oh, it’s you again.
MIKE: Got my chit?
MARGE: Here you are.
(GAIL walks on and spits on him)
MIKE: What the fu—?
CHAS: (points at DIRECTOR) It was him, he told me to do it.
MIKE: What the bloody hell are you playing at?
DIRECTOR: Go with it, Mike. What would you do in this situation?
MIKE: Know what I’d like to do to you, mate.
DIRECTOR: Come on then, let yourself go.
(MIKE knocks DIR down)
DIRECTOR: Brilliant! Okay, Marge, follow it up. A girl comes in and spits all over your nice clean office. What do you do?
MARGE: Get you to wipe it up.
DIRECTOR: Is that all?
MARGE: Look, I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing this stage for two hours this evening.
DIRECTOR: Okay, get her to wipe it up.
MARGE: You wipe it up.
DIRECTOR: Shan’t. How about that then?
MARGE: Bloody wipe it up.
DIRECTOR: Make me.
MARGE: I will.
(she rolls him around on the floor, using his hair as a cloth)
DIRECTOR: Oh excellent, this is so real. Now, Chas, how do you feel?
CHAS: Apart from nauseated?
DIRECTOR: Yar, apart from that. You’re a bitch, what do you do?
CHAS: Who are you calling a bitch, you coiffured prat?
(she starts kicking him)
DIRECTOR: Mike, now you have to – aargh! – make a decision, yar? Whose side – ow! – are you on? Crumbs, ouch…
(MIKE joins in beating up the DIRECTOR, who has a mild orgasm of enthusiasm. Eventually they tire and fall back)
That’s more like it, you know? I felt I was really involved that time. Okay, now this time … er, could you help me up a second? (they do) Okay, let’s run the play, and really keep that level of excitement, yar? In the moment, people. Okay, act one, scene one, enter Marge.
MARGE: Hello, children, I’m Mother Goose. Oh yes I am … Oh yes I – I’ve lost my motivation now.
PS
Not based on a true story, but when you’ve done as much amateur acting as I have, it’s easy to imagine how this kind of situation might play itself out. Some directors are certainly more method than others. In Steptoe and Son, for instance, in that episode where Harold has the amateur acting crowd round to his place, he dresses up the way he thinks amateur actors in the early 1960s dressed – cravat, dark glasses, floral shirt (all probably painfully put together from the last couple of skips he plundered) – this is like that, a case of a naff director playing the role, not the part.
Some gimmicks work better than others. One director I knew in Oxford liked to murmur her notes into a little hand-held tape recorder during rehearsals as it was easier than scribbling things down by hand. When she played it back afterwards it simply sounded like a herd of cows munching through a silo of popcorn, and not a word could she nor anyone else discern from the static. Another director thought it would be a good idea to rehearse King Lear in a cupboard “to really get that sense of feeling trapped in a downward spiral of madness and authoritarianism run rampant.” Goneril got claustrophobia and the Fool was scared of the dark, and no one could read their scripts, so that didn’t really help anyone.
As for who plays what, I myself am not fully on board with the current trend – under the umbrella term of wokery – which dictates that only gays should play gays, for instance, or only performers of the right ethnic or racial group should play certain roles. Surely it’s all pretend isn’t it? So your Hamlet isn’t really Danish, so your Shylock isn’t really a Jew, so your Juliet isn’t really a thirteen-year-old virgin, so what? What happened to the willing suspension of disbelief? If casting these days is colour-blind in order to level a playing field that has been tipped too long out of true, then it needs to work in every direction. What next, no men allowed on stage at all and all the male parts to be played by women in trousers and sporting fake beards? How regressive is that?