Fieldwork: What can improv teach us about sitcom stakes?
Fieldwork: What can improv teach us about sitcom stakes?
Does your protagonist have to have something huge at stake in order for a sitcom to be compelling?
It’s been a few weeks since I successfully finished my sitcom course. I now have a complete script on its second draft and whilst there are, of course, many drafts still to come, I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made.
But as I get feedback on the script, I’m finding that there’s a tension building in the back of my head between what I’ve learnt from doing improv and what I’ve learnt about sitcom. Perhaps this is just a function of my inexperience as a comedy writer, but what I do when standing in front of 20 people and making them laugh is very different to the notes I’ve received about my sitcom and the advice I’ve had on how to write sitcoms in general.
Improv is very much about getting out of your head and into the moment. The harder you try to be clever, the worse your performance is going to be — I’ve written before about how trying to be original, not fear, is the mind-killer.
The aim, instead, is to be natural, to let your subconscious do all the work. From coming up with what to say next, to understanding what the scene is about, to spotting an opportunity for a callback or twist, your subconscious has to be in charge.
You have to allow yourself to respond instinctively to what your scene partner is saying and doing. You can’t plan ahead, you can’t think up clever lines to use later because you’ll end up trying shoehorn them in to places they don’t fit. Rather, you have to spend a lot of time playing with the mundane in order to create space for the hilarious to emerge.
Actor and improvisor Jason Mantzoukas talks about how important it is to be able to sit with silence onstage and how delving into deeper and potentially unfunny emotions can result in some of the best improv.
As Mantzoukas demonstrates, you do what is right for the scene, even if it means a detour into something uncomfortable or serious.
Every improvisor is pulling from their own personal wellspring, their own knowledge and circumstances, their own hopes and fears. Being themselves and talking about their own quotidian experiences leads to a connection with each other and the audience that results in the creation of a space where humour can bloom.
Much of the dialogue in improv is chit chat, it’s often a bit random, a bit fuzzy. And it has to be, because you need that space to work out what’s going on and how you’re going to respond. Repetition and callbacks are great when you can squeeze them in, but sometimes, just making a simple connection will do the trick.
Now TV is a different medium and expectations are different. So on TV, we’re expected to be tighter. Less waffle. Get in late, get out early. All that. I get it.
But I can’t help wondering if we are spending too much time thinking about the ‘rules’ of sitcom and not enough time learning about what’s actually funny. I’m particularly frustrated with the emphasis on big stakes. Do we really need to make everything primal? Are death, sex and survival the only things that people care about?
Obviously fucking not.
In an improv scene, stakes are often low, if they exist at all. Maybe there’s the risk of a broken finger, or a character’s trying not to vomit whilst frying eggs, or there’s a disagreement over gardening.
Sometimes a scene will go big, as one character faces losing their job, or meets an estranged parent, or stares down death. But those scenes are not inherently funnier than the scenes with low or no stakes. It’s not about what’s at risk, it’s about how characters react and respond to one another, ie what they say and what they do.
And, as Michael Cook suggested on BlueSky:
Aren't the stakes in improv transferred to the cast? Can they create an amusing scene/narrative in real time? Will they land this? We forgive the lack of an involving invented story because we're more interested in the real life story of the show. It's like sport!
I think that might be true to an extent, but even then, stakes are incredibly low. No one’s going to lose their life if a scene bombs (and bomb they do!).
I’m thinking about this because the feedback I’ve had on my script is that the stakes aren’t high enough. My gut says that’s not true, but I hadn’t been able to figure out what the problem really is.
Then last week, after I’d written the first 700 words of this article, I posed the question on Bluesky and got some great responses (including the video of Jason Mantzoukas above, from Matthew Oliphant).
Joel Morris, comedy writer and author of Be Funny Or Die, made the observation that:
It’s not about high stakes - that’s drama - but clear stakes. As long as the audience knows what the characters want, and what’s the worst thing that could happen to them, that clarity is enough.
Because clarity is the engine in comedy, and obscured motive is the engine in drama, you need high stakes in drama (death, crime, bombs) because characters might not state their values and aims. In comedy someone will say “if my mum sees me eating from tins, I’m dead” and those are your stakes.
And suddenly, I can see where things have gone wrong with my script. And a lack of clarity is a much easier fix than having to ramp up the stakes in a way that feels artificial and forced.
So if you’re struggling with feeling like your character’s stakes aren’t quite high enough, maybe look at them instead through a lens of clarity. And don’t be scared to be a bit on the nose.
In S1E1 of Episodes, Beverly states the stakes on page 1 with her second line of dialogue, talking to her husband and TV co-writer, Sean:
No. I’ve had it. I’m going home. You stay. Clearly, you’re flourishing here.
Their marriage and writing partnership is at stake.
In S1E1 on of Community, it’s there on page 7, when Jeff confesses to Duncan that his law degree is fake:
DUNCAN
I thought you had a bachelor’s from Columbia.JEFF
And now I have to get one from America. They must have noticed that the eagle in the seal was holding coffee branches. I’m dead in the water until I replace that degree.
And in S1E1 of Never Have I Ever, John McEnroe (yes, that John McEnroe) explicitly lays out the stakes for protagonist Devi on page 8:
Can she [Devi] walk through the front door of her high school with enough confidence that no one will remember her as “the paralyzed Indian girl whose dad dropped dead at a school function”? It’s not likely, those things are pretty unforgettable. But with working legs comes a whole host of new possibilities. So, go get ‘em Devi.
Most of my past writing has been in the drama category, so I’m more used to withholding information and dribbling it out bit by bit, hint by hint, than coming straight out and saying, “This is what’s going on and this is why our protagonist is going to act the way she does”. The latter feels alien, but now I know that’s what I need to do, it shouldn’t be too hard to adapt.
All I have to do is find the right nose and then boop it. Hard.