Is there such a thing as a bad suggestion?
Improv troupes rely on the audience for a word or a phrase for inspiration. It kickstarts the show and gives the performers something to think about. It can create a theme, a game, a story. The possibilities are endless.
Especially during short-form shows, an audience tends to regurgitate the same suggestions…light bulb, Hitler and gynecologist, to name a few. It’s a strange recurrence, and TSF is forced to be particularly careful by not accepting repeats. If we accept the same suggestions that we had received in our last show, where’s the fun in that? Where’s the whimsy?
I have heard performers blame mediocre shows and what some would call “downright bad” shows on bad suggestions. First of all, a good improv troupe doesn’t blame a bad show on the audience. A troupe isn’t there to filter the audience. OK, so we may not accept the constant screaming of “Male phallus! Male phallus!”, but we are looking for something else that is saucy AND creative.
Some audience members shout out weird things to perplex. To stump. How can one stump an improv troupe? In my opinion, it isn’t possible if the troupe can actively think together and grow together as a team.
On Bill Arnett’s blog, he explores the idea of a bad suggestion. Bill Arnett teaches improv and performs it at iO. Here is what’s going on in his noggin’:
I’d go so far as to say that there are no bad suggestion. For one thing we shouldn’t be giving the suggestion that much power. What kind of players are we if the success or failure of our show teeters on the suggestion? We can be so fast to blame a suggestion for a bad show. So if it has enough power to ruin our shows shouldn’t we be giving it all the credit for our good shows? Secondly, if we want improv to be more than players jumping through the audience’s hoops we’ve got to break their expectations. We have to transcend the suggestion.
During a conversation with a summer intensive student from Winnipeg I conceded that bad suggestions actually do exist. A bad suggestion is one that makes the players second guess themselves. A suggestion like racism would only be bad if it made the players afraid to play with it.
So improv players can make a suggestion a bad one. Only they can bring forth doubt and scene fright within themselves.
That suggestion was so good, we're going to scream with joy! Photo courtesy of Mike Jenkins.
In the article “Getting Suggestions from an Audience in Improv“, the author states:
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.
The suggestions themselves shouldn’t be the joke. They are the catalysts FOR the jokes.
Bottom line: Shake off any weird suggestion vibes and roll with it. A lot can come from a suggestion, whether it be physicality, characterization or feelings, and a lot of these decisions are good ones. Just pick one.
