So, Tony, I was thinking about this on my way home from rehearsal yesterday, I hope you don't mind me posting it here, I figured if it's an issue you can just remove it but I think it's an interesting question and nice insight into our group so, here it goes.

During our scene you started out looking into a fridge, I came up to you and said something like, "out of sushi?" You replied (forget what you said) but then you kept acting all uncomfortable and gittery. Now, in my mind, I had to acknowledge that, which I did by saying, "you didn't forget again, did you?" That's how our scene started and turned into the "Tim loves structure" game, which worked fine I thought.

But, later when we talked about the scene you said something like, "Did you come in with a game?"
I said, "No, I saw you acting like that I had to call you on it."
You then said, "Right, what I wanted you to do was ask me what was wrong because I had this idea for a concept that I was uncomfortable being in other peoples lives."

Of course, I was always taught to never ask questions, espcially one like "what's the matter?" because it's a stalling tactic. My thought will always be to name what you're doing if I'm not told right away by you (or your actions, for example, if you were standing there with your legs crossed jumping up and down I'd know that offer was "I need to go to the bathroom" and I can name it easily. Another example of me naming something was our show from Saturday where you looked, to me, like you were tossing cards but I'm sure you had another thought as to what you were doing.) I'm sure there are people who will wait for you to name what you're doing, I find that if you don't right away I'll do it for you.

I guess my point, and question, was this. If you had this idea for a concept of "I'm uncomfortable in other peoples lives" why didn't you just make that your first verbal offer, even before I had a chance to say "Out of Sushi?" or, it might have even been funnier if I said, "out of sushi?" and you replied, "No, I'm just uncomfortable being in other people's lives." Then, we could explore that together, I'm game for any game, even if we establish it within the first few lines.

Well, again, there's no right or wrong answer to this. From a player's stand point, that the game went into a direction I didn't want or predict is irrelevant. I played off of you, you played off of me and the end result was the structure game.

From a director's stand point, I'm looking at it like this. I think recently you've been coming into scenes a little anxious. That anxiousness seems to stem from a desire to quickly identify the game and therefore identify everything in the scene. So, yes, I was looking in the fridge. And by saying, "Out of sushi?" you're helping me clarify the environment. That's good.

However, when you say "You didn't forget again, did you?" You're justifying MY offer of being gittery. Again, that's not necessarily wrong. However, you have to understand once you did that, you started to define my offer. Since I came into the scene with a specific offer right off the bat, you could probably assume I already had a justification for it.

(More to come. I have to leave in the middle of this post! Sorry!)

You seem to assume I, or anyone who does improv, is good at assuming. My point was, if you had an idea for an offer why didn't you make it your first verbal offer?

I normally enter a scene without much on my mind and I was always taught, both by you and other instructors, to get as much information out within the first two or three lines. In fact, David said that during my Comedy Sportz class Sunday night and I've heard it said lots of times. I know we have more room and time to explore in long form but even you've said, more than once, that within the first two minutes we should have a platform, a relationship, an environment and a game, with my first line I was trying to establish and environment, in the second our relationship started to come out (you're my roommate for forgot something.) the game didn't really start until maybe the fifth or sixth line, which would make it at about two minute mark.

Yeah, I could come out and lay out the game in a more direct way. That's fine for some scenes, some of the time. And I think earlier on in our rehearsals and shows I tended to encourage that because our group mind was just developing. And when you improv with strangers or new people, it's hard to pick up on their nuances.

I felt the "structure game" started at a pretty intense level. It was so intense, in fact, that I think that came out before the relationship was really clear to me.

So, to continue, your second response was "You didn't forget again, did you?" plus your delivery, which I perceived as pretty worried. As if I forgot something very important. So at this point in the scene I know that we may be out of sushi and I forgot something very important. My thought is, we're not roommates, we're a couple. Because the relationship is already kinda intense. And guy roommates aren't usually that intense over what may or may not be in the fridge. And, even though you provided information in the first question, I'm forced to answer two questions in a row. I have less control of my responses because I'm forced to answer you. To me, that's Tim the actor probing for an answer. Whereas you should be making assumptions on my offer, because assumptions will provide me with more information and I won't be cornered in my response. Your first question provided some information. But the second question provides me with very little. I don't know what I forgot. And since its a yes or no question and we're in improv, my answer is going to be "Yes". So asking me "You didn't forget again, did you?" should be something more like, "You forgot again." Because then I can respond with something other than "Yes".

But none of this exchange really addresses my offer, which is I'm jittery. I can assume I'm jittery "because I forgot". And I can make another offer to bridge that gap and establish it for the audience. But you're my scene partner. You should be supporting my offer. How does it support my offer by asking me questions? It doesn't help justify why I'm jittery. So what am I to do with my offer? I have to continue to do it until you address it or until I can justify it in the context of the scene. Now I'm justifying my offers and yours.

Now, I said in rehearsal that I wanted you to ask "What's wrong?" That's not totally true. What I wanted was to have my offer acknowledged in some way. So it didn't have to be "What's wrong?" It probably should've been something like, "You've been jittery recently" or "You're shaking a lot" or "You're jittery because you forgot" or whatever. But starting with "Out of sushi?" only acknowledges the fridge, which isn't as important as what your scene partner is doing. You acknowledge now that I was distraught, but your first offer doesn't really register that thought process. It sounds like the jittery part has passed you. So in my second response, which was something like "Yeah, we're out" or something. I got more distraught and jittery and I tried NOT to provide you with any more information to signal to you, "Wait. Don't go on. I'm offering something here. See what I'm doing?" Now when you asked your second question, it became clear to me that you're weren't getting my offer just yet.

Beyond that, I don't recall exactly what was said. But by that time, we begin to go into the structure game. It started with something like, "But this is Sushi Saturday". So at that point, I'm on board with the game. That line is too weird to ignore. In my view, it wasn't totally organic. Because you had mentioned the sushi earlier and I was the distraught one, but by the time we're on "Sushi Saturday", you're distraught too. We're probably roommates, but we don't know where. We have a fridge. We're out of sushi, but I don't know the where or the why.

But we're already into this game of "structure" and you're justifying it with "Sushi Saturday", "Chaos Thursday", etc. Now maybe, in front of an audience, that would've brought the house down. The clever days would've gotten big laughs, we would've fed off the energy and come up with even funnier ones. However, I think the game would've been much more effective coming from a more formed relationship. All I know from our relationship is that you're way too intense, you crave structure and we were friends earlier in life. These are all salient points, but WHY are you so intense? Why do you crave structure? I can't get to that information because in the beginning you're asking me questions and then when the game starts, most of your responses are, "But this is _________ day!" So I'm left in the scene to respond as best I can, while justifying my own jittery offer.

I'm not saying you ignored me, but I think the scene would be more effective if you had built on my offer more. If that takes you three minutes instead of two, so be it. The time is not all that important. Yes, you want to get the scene going. Four or five sentences or less is ideal, but if it doesn't happen, you don't necessarily need to pull the emergency chute and go for the most opportune game. (Sometimes you do, but not in rehearsal.)

I'm also not saying that whenever you get into a scene with me, you should just drop what you're doing and only go with my offers. But I think in that particular scene I felt I laid down a strong non-verbal offer which wasn't acknowledged in your first offer. Because if my character HAD forgot something desperately important, the first offer would've been, "You didn't forget again, did you?" Because in retrospect, the sushi question, while providing info, was the true stall. Your character wasn't concerned with sushi, he was concerned with structure. And even though you didn't know that when you made the offer, if the scene is going to be a "proper" improv scene and you build upon all offers that come before it should build on everything that's gone before. That's my fault too for dropping the sushi.

I hope this is helpful. But overall, I think you could stand to relax a little more on stage and let things happen a little more. Be willing to let your scene partner take the reigns, even if he or she drives you into a ditch. It still might be fun!