A Rant About Chairs
Our stage furniture is more than just a necessity to stop us from performing squats when our characters sit
Latest Podcast - Choosing To Know
At the end of last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Craig Cackowski about the central tenet of his improv philosophy; choosing to know. After we chatted, I wanted to try out the difference between “Yes And” and “I know” with a group of improvisers. Hear Craig talk through his theory, and me trying it out with some improvisers in a practice session in the latest Improv Chronicle.
A Rant About Chairs
I’m talking about the chairs? Damn right I am. It’s *the* important subject in improv - ok, I exaggerate, but not perhaps as much as you might think I do. Chairs are usually the only staging we have - the beginning and end of our set for the majority (although not all) improvised shows.
I’ve long had a bit of an obsession with the stage furniture. Over ten years ago, I was teaching a workshop in Birmingham, UK and had a bit of a rant about how we need to use them well. From that day forth, for many improvisers in Birmingham, chairs have been known as “Lloydies”. On Wednesday last week, I was taking part in a show in Birmingham and was sent a link to their regular briefing document. Sure enough, even in that, the staging was described as thus: “Two Lloydies will be available for use”. Also, a few years ago, I had a regular two person improv show with my friend Jenny Rowe called “Two Seats, Four Cheeks”. Oh, and while I remember chair-based incidents, during a workshop I once stole Annoyance teacher Rich Sohn’s chair and when he demanded it back I told him to fuck off. This led to an ongoing joke about chairs between the two of us, which has included me having some miniature chairs delivered to his home.
I don’t know how I feel about this as any sort of improv legacy.
So why do I think it’s important to talk about how we use chairs in improv? Let me elaborate on my first point. They are the only set we usually have (with apologies to those who have a set for their shows). If the only things that the audience can see are the improvisers and some chairs, does it not make sense to tend to these objects with care? If the audience can see them, are they well set out on the stage at the beginning of the show or are they carelessly placed? If they are the only inanimate object, would it not make sense to make sure they are placed back to their original position when a scene ends, rather than left as remnants of what went before, suddenly ignored as a totally new scene starts?
Being purposeful with chairs doesn’t begin and end with them being well placed before and after use, of course. Giving purpose to them when we use them is vital. If you take a chair out and put it at a slight angle, and sit on it, me just grabbing a chair and placing it anywhere and sitting on it simply isn’t enough (for me at least). Where I place my chair in relation to yours is significant. It can help inform environment; are we at a restaurant or on a bus? It can help inform relationship; my proximity to you and how I react to it tells us something.
However, it can only help to inform the above things if I’m actually paying attention to where I place the chair. If I am too busy thinking about my words and the next smart, funny thing I’m going to say, pulling out a chair just becomes a way for me to get to sit down while improvising. I feel like I owe the chair more than that.
Physicality and chairs is also something really important. How many workshops have you been to where you’ve had a teacher make you walk around the room and try leading with different body parts or trying to walk like someone you know from your real life. How many workshops have you attended where how you stand was experimented with in order to help understand the emotion of the character. So how about how you sit?
Think about it, you would sit differently in a work meeting to how you would drinking a glass of wine on a Friday evening in your living room. You probably sit differently in an Uber than you do in a doctor’s waiting room. And I’ll bet you that those four different sitting positions I last described involve different emotions as well, right?
Where you sit, who are sitting with, how you are sitting and the dynamic that all brings into play are important.
When you reach for a chair, you are helping to set a scene. You are making a choice about proximity to others. And when you sit on it, how you do it will tell you, your scene partner and your audience something about your character.
The chairs are not there for improvisers to sit in; they are there to help you tell a story.
Improvised Radio Plays Coming Soon
A new podcast of improvised radio plays is coming soon!
As I mentioned last week, I was approached at the end of last year by Rick Andrews and Louis Kornfeld who said they would like to do a series of improvised radio plays and have them released as podcasts. They asked if I’d produce them, and given they are two of my favourite improvisers, I said yes like an excited kid. The first three radio plays are due to be released on Thursday 25th April. I can’t wait for you to hear them as they are something really special.
Shows
I’m making up an entire musical again with Rhymes Against Humanity in Nottingham
Come To Nottingham In September
The Robin Hood International Improv Festival is now taking team and individual submissions to perform. Want to come visit the city of legends? See amazing improv and meet Robin Hood as well. The festival is now in its third year and runs 4th - 8th September this year.
Have a great week,
Lloydie
Brilliant! This is exactly how I've always felt about the chairs, but only scratched the surface in my thinking. Chairs are like the FREE space on a bingo card, the one thing on your stage (apart from the players) that the audience can see. So why not use them intentionally?
One way we used to get a suggestion from the audience was to drop a chair in the middle of the stage and say: "This is not a chair. It's a..." and then use it as that object in the next scene. At Second City, there's a classic photo of an actor playing the Pope, holding a bentwood chair on his head as a giant hat.
Here's Lloydie, making me a chair offering. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=572625272831848&set=pb.100066374624463.-2207520000