This performance frame can easily adjust to suit your long-form or short-form needs as it essentially consists of a malleable conceit for housing a veritable smorgasbord of improv handles and dynamics.
The Basics
The team or troupe obtains an item, historical figure, or important event (real or fictitious) that inspires a documentary treatment, often narrated by an omnipresent figure who moves the action forward by connecting various vignettes and games.
Example
“Indoor plumbing” serves as the inspiration. After the lights fade, a narrator’s voice over begins...
The Focus
Explore non-linearity or storytelling that incorporates a wide variety of devices and styles. Many documentaries are defined by a scrapbook approach to recreating and contextualizing history, so mirroring this quality fuels much of the creative spark.
Traps and Tips
1.) Consider experts. A mainstay of most documentaries consists of interviews with witnesses, pundits, and historians. These may serve as discrete units with their own well-crafted arcs or as a collage of quick hits (with a cast of characters that might sporadically reappear throughout the rising action). Interviews could occur in a studio or on-site, with the interviewer fully present or as an unseen producer feeding questions only when necessary. Regardless of the packaging, experts should concentrate on one smaller facet of the proffered subject at a time rather than strive to fully summarize the issue or answer the foundational question. In this way, the documentary can continue into new tangential pastures.
Player A: (as a voice over) “As the popular children’s book so clearly articulates, Everyone Poops! Author, Taro Gomi, discusses this age-old fascination…”
Player B: (sitting in a comfy chair and assuming the guise of an expert) “Detritus, excrement, poop… no matter what you call it, humanity has always needed to deal with it…”
2.) Consider archival footage. Depending on the time period involved, documentaries frequently deploy footage to tell their story which opens up all kinds of fun for the ensemble. Whether you utilize a series of rediscovered photographs or painted pottery fragments that are embodied as tableaux with narrated descriptions (Freeze Frame style), incorporate early soundless choppy film stock with lush musical accompaniment (Soundtrack style), or cut to more recent edited footage featuring the key historical players themselves (Chapters or Typewriter style), there’s ample room for playfully contextualizing and narrating carefully chosen – or completely random – excerpts. It can be helpful for these calls to at least initially originate from a host or producer (Demonstration Video style), but ideally the next scenic idea could come from anyone, including the indispensable musician, technician, or perhaps even audience.
Player A: (as a voice over) “Early Mediterranean mosaics illustrate archaic attempts to dispose of human refuse, many of which were creative but woefully inadequate. Here, we see an image initially lost to history in the eruption of Vesuvius…”
Teammates assume various books poses that are described by a series of guest experts.
3.) Consider reenactments. Another fun possibility consists of all manner of staged recreations of unrecorded events. Essentially, these can operate as traditional improv scenes in their own right, perhaps with an inspiring throw from a prior vignette or the head documentarian. If you’re looking to present a bite-sized game (rather than a more expansive one act), it’s important to keep these short and sweet with clear and distinct gifts and discoveries. In longer explorations, you could easily insert short-form structures wholesale into the mix (such as Creation Myth Scene, Famous Last Words, or Expert Double Figures). Consider using the same improvisers in key positions (the inventor or historical protagonist, for example) to add another playful level of finesse.
Player A: (as a voice over) “Though the exact date remains uncertain, recently unearthed papyrus belonging to the lesser known Roman philosopher, Excretus the Younger, recalls a heated exchange between the gluttonous man and his servant…”
Player C and D assume the offered roles and begin performing the aforementioned heated exchange.
Player C: “Master, I beg of you, consume no more…”
4.) Consider artworks. Obviously virtually anything can serve as an historical artifact that could be worthy of inclusion, but if you’re looking to make a full meal out of the format, utilizing an art product or two can level up the whole affair and provide a strong performative climax. Again, the library of well-loved short-form overlays provides countless potentials, and it’s a relatively simple matter to engineer a suitable lead in (or suitably bad and thinly veiled justification!) Perhaps archivists tracked down a Radio Play episode from the 1920s that used the titular prop in pop culture for the first time, or a popular song broke into the top 20 that featured a particularly notable and pertinent lyric, or a grand Russian ballet found inspiration from the current topic.
Player A: (as a voice over) “Indoor plumbing soon became an esteemed sign of status and wealth. For those living in Elizabethan England, this pressure was immortalized in an oft-excised scene from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona…”
Player E and F strike theatrical poses and begin.
Player E: “I would not live in such a filthy state: To smell all you have done makes me irate…”
In Performance
I tend to assume the conceit of one directorial hand at the wheel of this format as empowering a singular and confident player to facilitate at least the majority of the edits tends to keep the action moving and allow for some more aerial design – such as the use of a recurring expert, motif, or game. There’s no reason that this function can’t be shared across the whole company (or a smaller subset inclined to this playwriting skill set), especially if you’re aiming for a lengthier offering. Just be careful that there’s some clear method in place for claiming the next segue as it’s easy for the documentary to flail if no one accepts the responsibility for crafting the next element.
Most of the games mentioned above can be found in the ImprovDr Game Library for your convenience. You can find the ever-expanding collection of games, exercises, and warm-ups here.
Cheers, David Charles.
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Photo Credit: Tony Firriolo
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