Intro to Improv Week 4 - Relationships
Character Dynamics
Whatever character you play, try to embody the voice, physically and, most importantly, perspective of the person they are playing. Being great at voices and accents is great if you are good at it, but it isn’t necessary to create a solid character. Tom Hanks has made an entire excellent career playing versions of himself mostly (and a Forrest Gump or Col. Tom Parker every so often).
Looking at life from that character’s point of view is the most important element.
Emotions in Scenes
Characters should have a strong opinion and/or a strong emotion towards each other. On a scale of 1 to 10, we recommend starting at a 6 or 7 so it’s super clear to your scene mate and to the audience. Strong emotions also play better on an improv stage because they tend to project more. Playing a low emotion or indifferent to another character isn’t going to spark a scene very well, but having a clear and strong emotion will set you up for a great scene.
Relationships
While it is possible to have decent scenes between strangers, it’s much easier and more efficient for the characters to already know each other and have strong opinions about each other. That way you can start in the middle of the scene.
Try to not only name the other character near the top of the scene – to establish clearly that you already know each other – but also try to set in stone how these characters know each other.
Are they co-workers? Spouses? Roommates? Neighbors? Bitter rivals? Getting that out at the start of the scene will help make the scene pop easily.
The Ladder Show Format
The Ladder is a simple show format, created by Brian James O’Connell that generates great scenes with strong characters and an overall storytelling arc.
It generally involves 4 improvisers, and consists of a series of two person scenes where everyone in the group has a scene with everyone else.
Whatever character you establish in your first scene, that is your character for the entire show. If you are the mayor of the town, you are the mayor of the town in every scene during the show.
We’ll use tag-outs to cycle through everyone in the troupe for a total of 7 scenes. The final scene will return to the initial two characters.
The first two scenes will mention other characters for the others to possibly take on.
Example:
Scene 1: Alice and Ben are a couple worried about their teenage son.
Scene 2: Carl and Ben, his dad, talk about the trouble he is getting into in 10th grade. Carl complains that he can’t live up to his older sister’s example.
Scene 3: Carl and Dana, his sister, get into an argument over their parents’ affection.
Scene 4: Dana and Alice have a scene. Dana is upset at her brother.
Scene 5: Alice and Carl, her son, have a heart to heart.
Scene 6: Ben and Dana have a father daughter bonding moment.
Scene 7: Alice and Ben wrap the show run up, talking about how complicated a family is, but they love their kids.
Improv Video of the Week
Yes-Also Podcast with Suzi Barrett
Suzi Barrett, who ran a series of workshops with Reflex in October of 2025 has an excellent podcast where she interviews improvisers from all over the world to get their insights. This episode is with Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation, Middleditch & Schwartz). More details about her podcast can be found here.
Improv Exercises
Two Word at a Time Letter
Circle game. The group will write a letter together (complaint letter, job reference, love letter, etc) using two words at a time – no more and no less.
Punctuation doesn’t count as a word, so put a comma, period, or question mark wherever you need it to go.
When the letter comes to an end, someone can give a closing (“Sincerely yours…”) and the last person gives this letter a fictional first and last name for its author.