This is my provocative statement of why algorave doesn’t deliver on its promise. It’s also the sequel to my drama club post.

Recap: I went to a lot of different drama clubs as a kid, then a teenager, then a young adult. I did a lot of improv, both comedy and not. My favourite experiences were performing “in the round”, with everyone sitting in a circle, where anyone and everyone could join in. It’s not a performance: It’s a game / It’s a jam. Those were my favourites.

I hated how shows created this artificial divide: The 4th wall, in between us and the audience. It felt boring and… self-indulgent? It creates an “us and them” split. All the attention and credit and praise goes to the people on stage.

In between improv games, the 4th wall switches off, and— wait no I’m jumping ahead.

Spinoff

My friend Jake held similar views to me, and we wanted to experiment with other types of show format - to try to capture what we liked about those mass participation games. Unfortunately, other people in drama club didn’t want to do that. They wanted to stick to the status quo.

So… to do our explorations, we created a spinoff drama club called Spinoff. At that point, it was only me and Jake.

We didn’t want to cause trouble at the main drama club. We didn’t want them to think we were competing with them or anything. Both of us still took part in drama club, the same as before. Spinoff wasn’t a replacement: We were trying to make space for something different. However, at one point, the head of drama club got me to join them at a pub, where they sat me down and did the “cmon man, you need to stop this spinoff thing” thing.

Anyway, we came up with a stupid backronym for SPINOFF: Sudden Poverty In Nasty Orange Factory Fires, which was total nonsense. It didn’t mean anything, but it let us keep talking about spinoff without getting in trouble!

Spinoff principles

We met a couple times a week and we started by talking through our views and feelings around shows. I will now do my best to briefly explain the principles we decided upon.

Everyone is part of the game

In typical improv shows, the host typically starts a game by listing out which members of the cast are part of it. They say something like “Okay for this next game we’ve got Alice and Bob” and this implicitly excludes EVERYONE ELSE in the room, including all the other cast members and the audience.

In spinoff shows, we want everyone to be part of the same game, including the audience.

Fun not funny

Our shows don’t need to be funny. It’s okay if they have no laughs in them at all. Instead, we want them to be fun.

This is a huge contrast to most improv shows, but “fun” was the main reason we liked doing improv sessions themselves, and we wanted to bring that to the audience.

Move the 4th wall

In normal improv shows, the 4th wall gets broken and rebuilt repeatedly. Before an improv game starts, the host breaks the 4th wall to ask for suggestions from the audience, asking questions like “Can I have a suggestion for a location?”

Then, the game starts and the 4th wall goes back up. The characters of the scene are seemingly unaware that the audience is there. The cast members do feed off the energy of the audience, and they may sometimes break the fourth wall (for example: by corpsing), but still, the characters themselves are separated from the people watching. To interact with the audience, a cast member has to leave the game, which means that the audience has no way of entering the game.

In spinoff shows, we keep the 4th wall up at all times. We never break character. Instead, the audience is inside the 4th wall / inside the game with us. To do this, we put the 4th wall behind the audience. In practice, we usually made the whole venue “part of the game”. When you walked through the door, you walked through the 4th wall.

This principle has some pretty heavy implications. It means that the context of the game needs to be some sort of scenario where you would realistically have lots of people sitting around and watching you. A few real world examples of this are:

Jake was doing a drama degree at the time. He decided to do some imaginary coursework about spinoff. He imagined he had been asked to write an essay defining and pitching spinoff. This is what he wrote. It uses pretty over-embellished language, but you have to understand that that’s part of the genre with drama degree coursework.

Overall Premise

An improvisation group, with the aim of bringing the audience into a believable world created through their suggestions using simple and transferable game structures.

Creating the World and Movement of the 4th Wall

With many improvisation groups, the objective of the performers is to create an existence for their characters to inhabit on-stage, without venturing across the audience and out into the wider world. This does not rule out certain moments of audience participation. However, it does rule out any meaningful world creation, a world in which the audience feel not only that they are spectators to the action, but also a part of the universe of the characters performing in front of them. This idea of believable world creation is one that Spinoff stride towards. As a primarily comedy-centered group, it may seem odd to focus on the creation of a believable world as opposed to ensuring the audience laugh. It must be understood that being drawn outside of our normal universe and into one of fiction is as important to our performances as the actual comedy, as the end goal is audience enjoyment, not laughs. In truth, Spinoff is as about storytelling as it is about comedy, and this idea should be reflected in our shows.

The idea of the 4th Wall is interesting one, in that its placement steers the entire atmosphere of our performance. In standard productions, the 4th Wall is immediately between the audience and the performers, with no exchange of ideas between the two. The standard improvisation shows, the 4th wall is moveable. During Whose Line Is It Anyway?, for example, the fourth wall is moved behind the audience between games to allow suggestions to be put into game structures. However, it is basically moved back between the audience and performers during games, as to allow the game to play its course with little alteration from the audience. A good analogy for this would be thinking about the 4th Wall as a gated fence. At the start of games, the gate is pushed open, allowing the audience to offer ideas. The gate is then shut to stop the ideas and to allow the game to start, however they can still watch over the fence. At Spinoff, we aim to move the 4th wall behind the audience for the entirety of the show, or as much as possible. This means that not only suggestions are permitted during shows, but also additions at any point which would alter our performance on stage. This relates back to the premise of creating believable worlds for not only our characters to inhabit, but also those of the audience.

The creation of the believable world’s comes down to certain key areas; Atmosphere, Character Building and Participation

Atmosphere not only applies for the audience, but also for the performers. This is obviously dependant on the type of show we are producing, however there are a number of ways we can produce the desired atmosphere. The first is through the use of setting, props and costume. The overall look of the performance area will affect how the audience feels. If we’re trying to create a chat show inspired space, does it look and feel like a chat show? It’s important to remember that we as the performers will have a different idea of the space to the audience.

The second way in which atmosphere relates to the idea of Character Building. A key part of allowing an audience into the created world is having believable characters who can allow them to do it. As in many cases in improvised comedy, there is a definite focus with character building of creating huge persona’s as to make any situation laugh-out-loud. In Spinoff, the key is BELIEVABLE character building. It is true that due to the medium and situation of our performances, our character’s should be over-the-top in order to fill the space. However, the audience must be able to place those characters into the real world, or they will not be able to connect to the imagined world the performers are inhabiting. An example of this is if you are given the part of a musician, for example, you wouldn’t straight away go for a huge, smash-the-place-up character. Although possibly amusing, it will not allow the audience to connect with the world put in front of them. When character building, THINK LIKE THE AUDIENCE.

The third way is through Participation. This can come in two forms; Structured and Unstructured. Structured Participation involves the compere or character offering the audience a chance to add to the scene through suggestion or action. An example of this is during Life Story, where a discussion is held between the compere and an audience member to get stimuli for a game structure. This type of participation is particularly useful in progressing a scene, as new stimuli can bring new opportunities for the performers. Unstructured Participation is stimuli posed by the audience outside of a pre-determined game structure. Heckling is an example, where an audience member feels it necessary during a performance to make their ideas heard. In standard productions, and even during most improvisation shows, the atmosphere does not really allow the audience to contribute to a scene outside of their structured, allotted time. However, in Spinoff we aim to give the audience an atmosphere in which they would feel comfortable to contribute towards a scene. This does not mean we condone it, but feel our character building should be strong enough to react to a situation in a believable and sensible manner.

Key Areas to Remember during Game/Show Development

Is the world believable?
What atmosphere are we creating?
Is the use of set/prop/costume appropriate?
What structures are in place to encompass unstructured participation into the performance?
Is the 4th wall behind the audience, or acting as a fence gate?
Are we centering on comedy or storytelling?

Reading this essay back now, I can see how conservative and timid we were at these early stages.

Our whole goal was participation: We wanted the audience to participate in the game, during the game. However, the examples of participation given at the end are really lackluster. As an example, “heckling” fails to give a taste of the vast opportunity you gain from opening yourself up to live participation.

I think we were both afraid of dreaming too big. It seemed like a crazy idea to explicitly allow any audience member to come up on stage and perform as part of the show. Maybe it would be chaos, or maybe no one would feel brave enough to do it.

It turns out: it’s fine and people love it. I spent the following three years performing as part of spinoff, and I learned so much more about live performance. It still strongly influences the stuff I do today.

Sudden Poverty In Nasty Orange Factory Fires