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Beware the Wacky Card!

One of the problems I see with a lot of improv is that it's just too wacky. Mind you, this is a matter of taste, but when words like "wacky," "zany," and "madcap" are applied to my or my company's work, I get the urge to end my life. I don't mind being funny and I hope I don't come off as one of those comedians who desperately wants to be taken seriously as an artist, although I guess that's what I am. My point is that I try not to be wacky because I feel improvisers limit themselves by being immediately and by default manic or antic.

The decision to take a scene in a manic direction is what I call "playing the wacky card." I imagine most readers are familiar with card-playing metaphors such as "playing the guilt card." The idea is that you're making a choice to go in a certain direction. What's important about playing the wacky card though is that, just as in real cards, once you've played it you can't take it back. You can always keep that card in your hand and play it later, if at all. However if you go wacky you'll have a very, very hard time salvaging any meaning from the scene unless the manic bit goes over really, really well.

In Transactors Improv we refer to wackiness as "exploding Polish money" or "monkeys flying out of your butt." This terminology comes from having actually observed improvisers make wild choices that not only weren't funny but that also didn't make any sense at all.

In the first instance, former member Dan and I were leading a workshop at a festival in Austin. Some novice players were doing a scene that somehow had a bathtub full of Polish money in it. The scene wasn’t going anywhere, mainly because of the players' inexperience and inability to get outside of their own heads. One of the players suddenly shouted that the money was exploding and both players dove for cover. Dan and I just turned to each other and shared a "What the..." look. The wacky card had been played and if there had been anywhere to go in the scene before that point there definitely wasn't afterward.

There might be any number of reasons why a person might be storing eastern European currency in one's lavatory and experienced improvisers might get themselves into and out of that situation with little problem. To have the money explode, however, destroys any plausibility in the scene. With no plausibility you're hard-pressed to find meaning. Oh yeah, and it’s not funny.

By the way, the "monkeys flying out of your butt" notion is more of an amalgamation of zany choices made by improvisers rather than a specific example. Monkeys seem to be the face on many wacky cards for some reason. It's almost as though monkeys are imbedded in our collective subconscious as a kooky icon. Flying without apparent means is another madcap notion. And usually when players are stuck in zany mode they'll wind up orbiting the anus at some point or another.

Playing the wacky card is the decision to aim exclusively for funny via an outrageous construct. Improv scenes don’t have to be funny. If they are, that’s great, but I feel the humor should arise organically within the scene. I think being wacky runs counter to the notion of exploring the scene as it develops, as opposed to trying to control it with invention. Playing the wacky card early in a scene is especially troublesome because that’s when the foundation of a scene is generally formed and thus the scene is built upon an essentially empty premise.

For years we in Transactors Improv have dealt with audiences forcing the wacky card upon us through their suggestions. It’s their right but we usually tell our audiences at the start of our shows, "The simplest suggestions tend to make for the best scenes." We're not afraid to do anything that the audience suggests—with some notable exceptions such as the September 11 attacks or Rodney King's beating—but rather we're looking for grist for good scenes.

If we ask for an object, a clock creates more opportunities for exploration than, say, Richard Nixon's nose-hair trimmer. A parent-teacher conference has more potential than a pet-rock obedience class held on Jupiter. Why? The nose-hair trimmer is the joke, the pet rock class is the joke; there's not much to do with the scene and little tension and nowhere to go once the joke is revealed. If we're starting with a zany premise it will be difficult to explore anything more substantial than wackiness.

What's more, the audience knows that the players are trying to be funny. Trying too hard at anything usually doesn’t work too well but nothing's less funny than somebody trying to be funny. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps we're just so competitive that we want to challenge the person trying to make us laugh and 'win' the encounter by not laughing. Maybe we resist being manipulated by other people. Or it could be that trying to be funny is more about pitiful desperation than it is about comedy or entertainment.

Wacky should not be confused with absurd. There's no meter out there that can measure exactly when one becomes the other. Perhaps the big difference between the two hinges on the intent of the improviser. If the player is trying to be funny, the result will probably be wacky. If the player simply takes a weird path in exploring a scene, the result will probably be absurd.

Or maybe we can just say that there is a long and illustrious history of absurdist artists—in the 20th Century just think of the Dadaists, Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, Samuel Beckett, Sun Ra, Jonathan Winters, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey—whereas the wacky artists—David Arquette, Ray Stevens, Carrot Top, the guy who painted the pictures of the dogs playing poker—tend not to be as highly regarded.

Certainly there's an audience for wacky and the French think Jerry Lewis is a genius but it doesn't really suit my taste. I prefer exploring the bizarre or otherworldly to going for the laugh with nutty high jinks. Taste aside though, I encourage improvisers not to play that wacky card too soon lest they make a joke and find themselves mired in a meaningless and ultimately not funny scene.

-Greg Hohn, Director