Scripting happens when a player tries to steer the outcome of a scene according to the narrative he or she has ‘written ahead of time’. A weak player (like the one in the video below) gets lost immediately when the way he has envisioned the scene goes poof with the first thing that comes out of his scene partner’s mouth. A player who scripts will try to control or dominate the narrative, dictating (and therefore diminishing) the roles and contributions of the other players. This seriously hampers a scene’s potential. It’s like trying to fly without wings. All thrust, no lift or direction.

Pimping, Judging and Fantasizing are other types of behaviors that curb a scene’s productivity. Pimps, judges and fantasizers are just as in need of adjustments as scripters are.

Pimping happens when one player sets up another to look bad in a scene by presenting them with a direction or expectation that can’t be met. “Derek here will stand on his head!” you announce to the crowd, knowing full well that Derek cannot stand on his head. Pimp. Interestingly, pimping is something experienced players will sometimes do just to keep one another on their toes. I was once at a Second City performance in Chicago where the upstage performer kept whispering “You suck!” and “You’re boring!” to his downstage scene partner, just out of sight and earshot of most of the audience. It was a game within a game, a meta-game they played to add edge to their familiarity with one another, to add focus to their performance. Generally speaking, though, pimping is bad for business.

Judging takes place in your head. If you think the scene is going bad while you’re in it, you are helping to fulfill that judgment. The scene will be bad, and you’ll be one of the problems with it. Judging causes hesitation, uncertainty, detachment — all corrosive to a scene’s potential. Good judgment is in fact a complete emancipation from judgment while the scene is happening. You can always evaluate it later. By freeing yourself from any subjectivity about the scene, you become free to make each move productive, positive and supportive of its objective.

Fantasizing is a fine line. It’s good to stretch the boundaries of what’s expected or thought possible. But when a player stops dealing in the reality of a scene and takes the scene into a patch of pure imagination, that’s not good. (My teacher, Michael Bertrando, calls this ‘Going to Crazy Town’.) Skilled improvisers deal only in the realities and the group-imposed limitations of the scene. Keep it real. The breakthroughs happen step by step, conjured up by the necessities of the scene, not with extravagant flights of fancy that sever connections to the reality of one’s scene and one’s fellow players.

Yesterday I had coffee with a friend Andrew, 27 years old, of multi-cultural descent, finishing up his MBA while working full-time as the Director of Marketing for a health care company, engaged to be married this year and on top of all of that, just formed a new band. (He’s a brilliant guitarist.) He told me that his company’s CEO recently invited him and two co-workers to his office, sat them down across from his desk and said to them, “I am like the Dad and you three are like the Children.”

“Do you realize how many things are wrong with that statement?” asked my friend.

Umm, yes, yes I do. There are exactly four things wrong with that statement: Scripting, Pimping, Judging and Fantasizing. The CEO has pretty much tied up all four of the improvisational no-nos listed above into one awful initiation. (If the scene had had comedy as its objective, I’d say it was genius, because it is bursting with conflict, hence comedic potential.)

The CEO scripted by presenting the group with a ‘we are family’ narrative he expected them to follow. He pimped his scene partners by assigning them roles, ‘children’, that he should have known they did not want to play, upon which Andrew began judging the scene as sucking bigtime. The notion that this was going to be a productive, team-building scene was pure fantasizing on the CEO’s part. With one line of dialogue, the CEO demolished any chance for the scene to be productive.

If the CEO wanted to think of himself as a Dad, that’s his thing, and there’s every possibility it can be a good thing. It is his prerogative how he wants to play his role. But any CEO who’s half-awake in the world should know that employees do not think of themselves as Children. In assigning them that role, the CEO lowers their status and discounts the value of their education, experience, and their understanding of the Networked World. He is basically telling them they’re going to sit at a different table from the adults, and that he wants them to keep quiet, do what they are told, not make a mess, and not cause trouble.

In this era of network natives and baby billionaires, it would have been much better for the CEO to have initiated with, “You three are like the Parents, and I am like the Child.” That would have been a scene worth playing.