This used to be a regular feature of my college Improv I course until a teaching time crunch forced an edit. It’s a lesser played (known) narrative game that creatively explores how we may not all remember a common experience in quite the same way. The basic staging practices resemble other mainstays like Subtitles and Conscience, but the central conceit will enable very different results.
The Basics
An event or occasion involving two central characters serves as the inspiring impetus for a team of generally four players. Two improvisers (A and B) become the provided characters in the present day and sit on chairs on either side of the playing space where they alternate narrating their recollections of the scene. The remaining players (C and D) provide the physical embodiment of the provided characters, providing a real-time reenactment of the story, warts and all. Play alternates between the narrators and their (usually silent) doppelgangers.
Example
Players A and B, an elderly married couple, recollect the fortuitous day they met for the first time at the local public library and occupy chairs on each side of the stage.
Player A: (with charm and confidence) “I remember it like it was yesterday, the moment that would forever change my life. I was a graduate student in Louisiana, working on my dissertation. I just had a few citations to track down before my submission deadline, and that’s what brought me into the library that day…
As Player A narrates, Player C (their double) enters the playing space. While A has exuded suave surety, C honors the named facts but creates an extremely anxious and overwhelmed portrayal of a student rustling through their notes on a panic.
Player B: (narrating as their double – D – establishes themselves in the space) “It had been just another typical sleepy day in late April staffing the circulation desk on the ground floor. My supervisor didn’t like us eating around the books, so I was keen to get to my lunch break…”
Player D pantomimes eating an incredibly messy sandwich at their desk and getting dropping mayonnaise all over their hands and, subsequently, everything they touched including a large stack of books waiting to be re-shelved.
Player A: (continuing their narrative) “I just had one source left to track down as my boss were unclear on its origin. There was a particularly helpful-looking librarian on duty who I’d seen around campus a few times below and had been checking me out…”
Player D has fallen asleep on their desk in the meantime with complete disinterest, causing the extremely anxious C to very awkwardly tap them on the shoulder.
Player B: “I prided myself for knowing the shelves and our regular patrons like the back of my hand…”
Player D absently swats away C with the back of their hand, sending them reeling and scattering the grasped notes all over the library foyer…
The Focus
You can certainly just focus on crafting a well-made story (a good focus for essentially every improv game), but there’s particularly rich material to be mined from considering the nuances of relationships and the tension between how we see (or remember) ourselves as opposed to how others experience our actions.
Traps and Tips
1.) Explore rhythms. One of the advantages of leaning into a mimed reenactment (hopefully with a lush soundtrack) is that it reduces the likelihood of overtalking. The narrators will still want to allow sufficient time for the scene to play out, but as the scene finds its footing, look for opportunities for reducing the time between narrative contributions. Ideally, the spoken and embodied elements should become largely simultaneous, with improvisers effortlessly justifying and incorporating each other’s ideas in fluid real time.
2.) Explore contradictions. I find it helpful to view the two narrative elements as artfully spliced pre-recordings that a gifted editor or producer has curated. So, while the two actors (A and B) should certainly hear each other and adjust their trajectory accordingly (in addition to incorporating physical and emotional offers from C and D), the narrating characters should avoid directly addressing each other. In this way, if A remembers themselves as being charming and well put together, and that isn’t B’s recollection, the resulting scene can explore that fruitful tension. Overtly correcting a misperception in this context is tantamount to naming – and therefore exploding – the game. After all, of the two narrators recall the event in exactly the same way (and the actors perform it with similar unified fidelity), then the scene will just feel like any other.
3.) Explore heightening. I’ve provided an example where the characters have pursued rather oppositional energies from those stated by their narrating comrades, and this dynamic will likely serve as a rich source of whimsy and entertainment, but don’t overlook the inherent potentials of exaggeration as well. Player A’s stated confidence could be heightened into the domain of arrogance: Player B’s studious work ethic could become manifest as complete indifference towards the human occupants of the library. Memories can tend to block out inconsistencies or moments where we may not have presented ourselves at our finest. This format thrives when we lean into these ruptures.
4.) Explore inverting. And it’s okay to play with stark opposites as well, especially as you’re taking your first steps with the format, as there’s undeniably a need for some of this tension. Perhaps, as illustrated, A is charming while their double C is bumbling, or B is professional, while D is the epitome of adolescent infatuation. And don’t overlook the gift of some contrasts between both narrators (and characters for that matter) as well. I’d warn against only exploring negative or cynical energies, as some love goes a long way and helps to balance the grander affair. But perhaps A is still completely enamored with B, and this infuses their narrative, while B’s present-day feelings are positive but more measured. If C note plays a muted attraction while D is head over heels, this delightfully deepens and complicates the core relationship even further!
In Performance
And now I want to bring this game back to my campus!
If you’d like to learn a little more about me and my path as an improviser, check out this lovely article from a Winter Park Margarine here, and you can order my new book, The Improv Dictionary here.
Cheers, David Charles.
www.improvdr.com
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Photo Credit: James Berkley
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