THOUGHTS ABOUT THE GAME OF THE SCENE.
-Look for the first thing that seems odd or out of place. It could be a legitimate accident like a mispronunciation. Or a weird character trait where someone laughs when they get burned, for example. This is something that should be explored. It's the players job to find ways to repeat and heighten that odd moment.
- (from an interview with Ian Roberts)
"I feel that the game is the heart of all comedy: patterns, narrowing the behavior of people. The same why caricature kind of exaggerates certain physical characteristics of a person, the game sort of takes life and exaggerates certain aspects. Instead of something being one awkward, unusual behavior, it becomes a dependable pattern."
- (from an interview with Ian Roberts)
"I kind of divide finding your scene into two aspects. The beginning is the yesand part, where you're kind of fleshing out the world of the scene. The game part is the if-then part. You're not just agreeing with the person and adding more information. You stop adding information and narrow it down. You start playing a pattern. If this happens, then this would happen. That's the game part of the scene."
- (from an interview with Ian Roberts)
JR: "With (...) student's (...) have you found it more important to focus on acting skills or playing the game skills?"
IR: "It changes. I think at the beginning you focus a lot on the game. When I teach (...) I work a lot on the acting aspect of it, the playing it real. What would you do? That can kill a game [if you're not playing it real]. A lot of times I compare it to handball. You need to be a wall for somebody, a solid wall. If someone hit's the ball and you don't come back with what you would do, the ball just kind of trickles off and the other person is left hanging.
It's stuff like that. The person who's driving the game, they have a pattern of behavior that's unusual. It might be required that you just respond the way that you would respond. This is somebody that you are in a relationship with [in the scene] and they're doing this. What would you say to that? What would you do? And the degree to which you do it is the degree to which you're helping your scene partner. When someone's kind of driving the game, they've got some sort of unusual behavior, they believe in that. If you respond to it, if you resist it, if you are shocked by it, if you challenge them on it, you give them something to do. They believe in that. They're going to continure pursuing it. But if you don't give them what realistically they need back, the scene dies."