CommediaDellImprovGenres

Commedia Dell'Improv:

Genres

Theory

So, we want to do Commedia, but we don't really care about sending Tristano off to war so that Pantalone has a heart attack and Harlequin can collect the inheritance. How do we get around these dated, irrelevant references?

Dan Goldstein had the brilliant idea of transplanting the commedia setup into different genres. You go with a genre, figure out the basic plot outlines of that genre, figure out the basic character types of that genre, and -- presto -- instant long-form genre work, just add improvisors.

Good Genre Traits

So, what genres might we want to take on?

What makes a good genre? Well, ideally...

• It's a genre we all like

• It's something with strong, clearly definable conventions

  • It has a standard set of strongly defined characters

    • ... and those correspond to characters we can play well
  • It has a typical set of plot devices

• It is intensely familiar to the audience

  • It can take place in Austin
  • It's something everybody has seen
  • It takes place in modern day OR its conventions are so well-understood that its time period is irrelevant
• Research can bring something to the show -- c. f. Riverboat Lawyer
• (For meta-long form) It could have soap-opera like aspects of continuity across a sequence of shows.

A Big List (tm) of Possibilities

1. Shakesepare

   • Everybody learn iambic pentameter, yo
   • Get some songs in there, yo
   • Go through the Bard's work and figure out a good set of stock characters and plots

2. Sports Night

   • Okay, this is probably impossible because of how fast the characters talk on that show
   • Still, I love the prospect of a show about people making a TV show
   • Also, I love the fluidity & inventiveness of language in that show

3. Slobs in Space

   • This is the genre I put Red Dwarf or Starship Regulars into -- space travel and high adventure, as lived by the dudes who'd rather be playing pool and drinking lager.

4. Star Trek

   • Was the Hideout planning to do this at one point?
   • For the geek in all of us

5. Gilligan's Island

   • Would anyone want to do this more than once? Once even?

6. Scooby Doo

   • This can turn into a big multiplayer game of Interrogation.
   • You have five fixed characters, two monsters/villians, and one or two red herrings (the creepy old guy who's actually WorkingUndercoverForTheMan)
   • Don't forget that about half of the villians are improbable puppets or other effects - these must be played with conviction throughout the show. (Bob) One of my pet peeves with the show is how they made the monsters so believable and yet revealed them to be puppets or projections later. As an 8-year-old, I could suspend my disbelief and enjoy the monsters but I felt ripped off later when they showed a puppet or projector that simply couldn't have produced an effect that would've convincingly have chased Shag and Scoob around. I bought the monsters, just not the feeble explanation at the end.

   • We can do improv comedy - can we do improv mystery? See ImprovCommittmentShowdown

     • (Peter): I argue that it's impossible in the "Stories With Secrets" section of The Limits of Improv, but I'm keen to be contradicted.
7. Commedia dell'Anime! Magical girls, rival mecha pilots, scarfaced space pirates with hearts of gold, evil upper-class women and girls with psychotic laughs, tentacled demons bent on molesting schoolgirls, samurai gone ronin, sorceresses and priestesses, vampires and vampire hunters, letchers of all stripes, combat robots with the brains of cats diguised as teenage schoolgirls, girl-next door goddesses and angels, whining farmboys, atomic robots and giant monsters controlled by eight-wear-old boys, cutesy mascots, and all manner of sailor-suit clad schoolgirl1 combine in endless plots of teenage love, sword and sorcery, space opera, blood-drenched martial epics, sex farces, and of course, the ubiquitous Clash of The Giant Robots. Probably inaccessible except to all but a few otaku, it could be fun to play with. The conventions, characters, and forms are there waiting to be used.

8. Commedia dell'Space Opera

   • Bob's Examples: Space Opera (Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, War of the Worlds, V, Alien Nation?)
   • Example that Bob left out: Star Wars!!!
   • First and foremost, this gives improvisors who watched Episode I and/or II and thought, "Good Christ, I could even do better than that a chance to prove their assertion.
   • Gibberish alien conversations are common in Space Opera -- lets us incorporate typical improv schtick.

   • Types of heroes:

     • brave
     • reluctant/whiny

   • Typical situations:

     • meeting new species
     • galaxy-wide intrigue/warfare

   • Common themes

     • Logic vs Emotion
     • Progress vs Old Beliefs
9. Commedia Dell'Bond; Commedia Dell'James Bond.

10. Misc TV Genres (do any of these spark interest?)

    • Westerns
    • Cop Shows (Commedia Dell'Dragnet!!!)
    • Medical Dramas (Commedia Dell'St. Elsewhere)
    • Weird Environment Show: Lost In Space, Green Acres (an underrated and very, very twisted show), Sealab
    • Spy Show
    • Behind the Music
    • Lawyers in Love
    • Animal Show (Flipper, BJ and the Bear, Gentle Ben, Manimal)
    • Insulin Shock Theatre (Little House on the Prarie, Touched by an Angel, Full House, The Waltons)
    • Technothrillers (Blue Thunder, Airwolf, Salvage One, Knight Rider
    • Richard Dean Anderson! Richard Dean Anderson! Ok, maybe Commedia Dell'MacGyver isn't such a great idea...
    • Baywatch! We can have a jewel thief! With an eye patch! 2

Footnotes

1 Detecting a theme yet? N.B.: The sailor suit is more properly known as a "Sailor Fuku", pronounced foo-koo. Pervert.

2 The 'jewel thief with an eye patch' is the sine-qua-non convention of all truly great Baywatch episodes.