Using status to build a character
Posted on November 23, 2018 by me - UCB Manual
- Using status to build a character
- Your entire group should get onstage. Start walking around the room and acknowledge each other without speaking.
- As you pass each other, you should try to act as if you are a bit higher in status than everyone else you interact with. Each interaction should also serve to increase your status.
- Try to find different ways to express your status (e.g., not making eye contact, walking with a swagger, walking with good posture, etc.). After a few minutes, someone will announce that everyone in the group born in the months of January through June should reverse and become lower in status with each interaction, so that about half the group will be going for high status and halflow. After a few more minutes, everyone should go for low status, trying to be the lowest status of every interaction. When you have finished acting low in status, have everyone take a seat and discuss the exercise. Talk about how people with higher status look and behave compared to someone with low status.
- Now, only two improvisers get up onstage.
- Someone else in the group should assign one improviser to be high-status and the other low status.
- Someone else in the group should give these two improvisers a one-word suggestion to inspire a scene. Tell them that in addition to the Who, What, and Where, they should make their status toward each other clear in their first three lines. These are quick scenes. Someone else watching the scene should stop the scene after about a minute. It is not necessary for the improvisers to find the Game in these quick scenes.
- Next, have the same two improvisers rewind the scene, repeating the same lines again but with the status reversed. Replaying the exact same scene with different status helps to highlight that your role in the scene is not the same as your status (e.g., a boss can be high status one time and low-status the second but still be trying to talk to his employee about doing overtime).
- Notice the distinction between the assumed status in life and status in the scene. You can be a very high status butler and a low-status president. When we talk about status, we are referring to the behavior of the characters, not their assumed status in life. You should also notice that high status does not necessary equal “mean” or “evil” or “loud.” You can be a quiet, serene, magnanimous high-status character.