How to Avoid Adding Conflict In an Improv Scene

There is one common improv habit that keeps coming up in my online and in-person improv classes and workshops. It usually happens in a very simple agreement scene.

Let’s say the scene is about two teenagers sitting outside the principal’s office, laughing at the prank they pulled that got them in trouble. The players are having a ball "yes and…"-ing each other’s ideas about the prank. The scene is going really well.

Then, out of nowhere, one of the players introduces a "manufactured" conflict. Something along the lines of, "Now I am going to lose my college scholarship, and it's all your fault and we can't be friends anymore."

The tone shifts — not organically, but mechanically. You can hear someone slamming on the improv brakes. The scene comes to a screeching halt.

Since I work with some of the most brilliant improvisers in the world, they will say afterwards: "I threw out the thing about losing the scholarship, because I thought we needed more conflict, but I felt the energy die when I said it."

At least they realized this in an improv class instead of in a show.

I totally get why players introduce conflict into a scene (especially one that is going just fine) when they don’t need to, because I can still do it.

I do it for various reasons:

1. I panic and don’t know what else to say.
2. I am not trusting the moment.
3. I don't know how to have fun.
4. I think I am heightening the scene. (Note: In a different scene, it may)
5. The negative choice feels like a safer choice.
6. I think conflict = more comedy.
   It doesn't matter what the reason is, but whenever you introduce conflict into a scene, it usually stops the action, unless it's part of the game-of-the-scene or is coming from the character's point of view.

Personally, I don't like the word using the word "conflict" for improv. I like the word "tension" a lot better. All comedy — whether it’s stand up, sketch, or comedic tv or movies — need tension, but they don’t all necessarily need conflict.

I believe all improv scenes have tension in them, and if we are doing more slow, relationship-based improv, our goal is to increase or heighten that tension to keep the scene going forward. Sometimes, you need to drop a bomb of information in a scene, but I’ve found if you focus on the emotion or status in the scene instead of creating unnecessary conflict between the characters, you can get even better results.

Take the teenager scene. If the characters are laughing and are proud of what the prank they did, you can heighten the laughter so much that a player from the backline would have to come out as the principal. Or what if one of the characters says that they did the prank to be popular? Then all the other character has to do is agree to that and let them know how popular they are going to be now.

If we want to use the status in that scene, one character could be a senior and the other person could be a freshman who was doing the prank to gain acceptance. Or one person good be a "goody two shoes" who never thought they would ever do something like this, while the other person gets in trouble all the time.

I hope these are good alternatives that you can use in a scene to increase tension without creating conflict when you don't need it. Now I hope I can take my own advice.

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