Jam.
I stopped playing this game.
Cabbage.
It’s a two player game with two players. One person repeatedly asks “What’s in the box?” repeatedly. Each time, the other person has to answer with something new, each time.
It doesn’t matter what the answers are. They can be anything, as long as they’re new. Other than that, they can be anything, as long as they’re new.
It’s an exercise for practising saying whatever comes to your head first. It helps you to speak more freely and loosely when it comes to performing comedy.
And it makes you laugh. It’s hard to stop yourself laughing when you do it. That’s part of the practice. To stop yourself laughing when you do it.
A toilet.
When you play the game, you’re not supposed to try to be funny. You’re supposed to be spontaneous, and you’re not supposed to think about making it funny. The idea is that it naturally becomes funny, without you trying to be funny, and this teaches you a valuable lesson about performing.
However, this isn’t how it actually works, actually. The experienced performers who play it play it very deliberately. They try to pick out the words they think are funniest. Maybe the ones that seem the most “random” (lol so random XD) or the ones that indulge in toilet humour (lol so random XD).
So the game doesn’t work. It doesn’t teach you to think less. It actually teaches you to think more. Not less, but more.
Uhhh-
The game is funny to watch. But why? Why is it funny to watch?
Some people have told me that it’s the spontaneity of the words spoken. They say the lack of connectedness creates some absurdist humour, but I disagree.
I think it’s funny because of the repetition, ie: the exact opposite thing. The relentless repetition of “What’s in the box?” ends up being the antagonist of the scene. And we enjoy seeing the other person struggle. They’re so hung up on trying to think of funny things to say, and we watch them as they fail. It’s a status game, with the answerer on the bottom. It’s a tragedy! They’re putting in so much effort to be high status, just to have someone waltz past them by saying the same stupid thing again and again and again.
Jam.
In my time at festivals, I watched a lot of clowny comedy, and I saw how repetition can be used for good.
This made me double down on my opinion. When you’re performing off the cuff, don’t try to avoid repetition. Because if you do that, you’ll try to avoid repetition, and you’ll think too much about avoiding repetition, when repetition can often be the most compelling thing.
Instead, go for a surrealist automatism approach. Let your inner thoughts and feelings bubble out, without any judgement! You might repeat yourself, and people probably won’t understand what you’re talking about, and you might repeat yourself. And the top comment on your youtube video might be “Can anyone explain what this is?”
But at least it’s you.
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