Hello! Please, take a seat…on me!
I’m a chair…the most versatile resource in an improv show. You don’t have props, so I’m your car, a park bench, a waiting room, a rollercoaster, a restaurant, a classroom, a job interview, a toilet (if you must).
With a permissive venue manager, you can even stand on me. Please do NOT throw me around, I will break - plus it’s quite funny when a character flies into a rage then politely lays a chair softly on the ground.
Short of climbing the walls or lying on the floor (both great options by the way), I am your best chance of avoiding yet another scene with two improvisers stood politely 6 feet apart.
I’ve seen countless awkward first dates, church confessionals, long drives, job interviews, or good-cop-bad-cop police interrogations. There’s very little you can do to surprise a chair.
As much fun as it is the first 20 times you see it, I’m actually quite tired of the ‘prison visit through the glass speaking on a phone handset scene’. I yearn for some new roles, something a bit less typical. I’d love a part in a restaurant but with a giant long table, a car but I’m facing backwards, a prison with a confessional booth!
You’re very comfortable on me. So comfortable it’s hard to make your scene very dynamic. Settled in a seat, you’ve got to work hard to overcome the lack of natural movement to say something about your characters and their emotional connection. You can’t easily adopt a different position on the stage to suggest status or move around the space calmly, frantically or however you wish. Of course, you could just stand up, but that’s a faff.
You’re sat down and you’re playing that same old character again - the one who wafts their arm around while the other character fetches a drink. Consider the various different ways a character can move while they get into their chair, out of it, or while they’re in it: Why is that guy so twitchy?! Ohhh, that improviser is melting into their chair like a Dali painting!
Without anywhere to move, you’re also narrowing a whole bunch of helpful options from your teammates on the backline. If you’re in a moving car, unless everyone piles in at the start of the scene or someone is brave enough to emerge from the boot, you either have to pick up a hitchhiker or get stopped by a traffic cop to receive any help. And then we’re back in a police interrogation.
Moving me around at the top of a scene is a bit of a time hole, but it could be worth the effort. Careful clattering me against my chair friends, or sitting down when your scene partner has initiated something that clearly needs both of you standing. Worst of all, a scene can quickly and easily become about me being moved, rather than anything interesting between the characters.
I should be your best pal, the most supportive player in the show. But, be sure to move me back to the backline when a scene is swept or tagged. I need a breather and I’ll only get in the way otherwise.
At the end of the show, you don’t have to give me a round of applause. I’ll just assume it’s all for me anyway. All my chair buddies in the venue know exactly how hard and impressive my job is, and now you do too.