Getting Suggestions from an Audience in Improv
Advice in Taking and Utilizing Ask-Fors to Make the Most of Scenes
Feb 9, 2009
For something as beautiful and inspirational (often hilariously truthful and comical as well) as improvisation to take place, all it takes is something as simple as a suggestion. Improvisation troupes tend to vary on the "rules" regarding taking and using suggestions from ask-fors. These are just some rough, general guidelines (compiled from both audience members and performers of the art) that have proven repeatedly to not only be extremely entertaining to spectators but also garner the most respect and authenticity in proving whether “these guys are really making it up or not”.
Getting Suggestions
From the get-go, the ask-for is the key. It needs to be short and concise, one sentence or less. An improv show over the course of an hour and a half will require something between 20 - 40 suggestions, meaning 20 - 40 ask-fors. Doing ask-fors longer than one sentence is asking for trouble.
As there are numerous improv troupes doing numerous improv shows all over the country asking for numerous suggestions, audiences are bound to hear the same ones over and over: "Can I get a relationship between two people?" "I walk into my closet and pick up something I haven't seen in a while, what is it?" and the dreaded "Can I get a non-geographical location?" Audiences will tire of this repetition and you will get the same tired answers that will generate the same improv scenes.
The solution to this is to come up with original, unique ask-fors of your own. Several players of the National Comedy Theatre's College Team favor the ask-for: "What is the opposite of ____" where the blank is not something that inherently has an opposite (ie., a Rubik's Cube).
Some troupes have specific rules that they relay to the audience about getting suggestion. Again, at the National Comedy Theatre, the rule is that, "We will take the first thing we hear clearly as our suggestion..." If there are rules about suggestions, you must follow them. Audiences will catch on to "funny business" if you outline a rule like that and then, as you are getting suggestions, you stand and look around for about thirty seconds until you hear something you like.
As a general guideline, it is best to take the first thing you hear anyway; this goes along with the first suggestion, to keep ask-fors short. If you keep the entire suggestion portion of the show short, it will be to everyone's benefit.
Something that happens often is that suggestions will sometimes be combined because they come at the performers simulatenously or the performers simply do not want to choose between them. Be weary of this, as it can be a form of limiting the potential of the scene. If baby and possum are suggested at the same time and they are simply combined into "baby possum" that has limited the number of things the scene can be about.
Modifying the suggestion is another form of limitation. One audience member interviewed said they once suggested panda at a show and the host (the person charged with taking suggestions) stated, "Let's make that endangered species," and the audience member relented, "I really would've wanted to see a scene about Kung-Fu Panda or something. I just saw that movie." Modifying suggestions changes or reduces audience expectations.
One last form of limitation that is difficult to avoid is ruining jokes before the players begin their scene. Often, the host is an improviser as well, and they will think of something funny about the suggestion taken as well or they will think to clarify in some way the suggestion given. The former is self-explanatory, it is simply making a joke about the suggestion that the performers could have made in their scene but the host essentially stole the laugh from them. The latter has a prime example at SDSU's I Eta Pi team. A common suggestion of a place in fiction is "Neverland." The host often clarifies that the audience obviously meant Neverland where Peter Pan lives, not Neverland Ranch. This spoils a potential joke that could have been made within the reality of the scene.
Using Suggestions
Players should never believe a suggestion to be inferior. There is no reason for a suggestion to be “wasted”. Throwing away, “wasting,” a suggestion implies that that a player is afraid of making the suggestion into a viable scene. Being an improviser means being able to adapt, not ignore or edit.
Performers should try not mentioning a suggestion in the scene within maybe the first three or four lines into the scene. If the suggestion is an object, that object should not be the first object mimed onstage (ie., the suggestion is banana, a player begins the scene eating a banana.) Also, discover what other meanings, what other thoughts come to mind when you take a suggestion. This is "thinking outside of the box," what else comes to mind when an audience member says "banana"?
In more advanced scenes, emphasize the affects this suggestion has on a relationship. Depending on how it is employed for a scene, understand the conflicts that could arise not from the suggestion itself but instead the strain on the relationship of two people involved. As with all improv, the humor does not come from the absurdity of the suggestion but from the realism of dealing, and the burdens of the people involved.
Suggestions are nothing more than that: they are suggestions, they are springboards from which a scene can launch. They can be powerful tools when utilized in the correct way and can serve the scene when improvisers know how to handle getting them and treat them seriously when taking them into their scenes.
