The kindness behind giving context
Keeping the audience in the loop is good, no matter how clunky or contrived the explanation is
If you really need to break any medium down, be it theatre, stand-up, film, spoken word, it’s really all comes down to communication. How exactly are you getting your idea across to an audience.
Improv is pretty different to all those mediums mentioned earlier as you start off with a blank slate. As things progress, you gain more material to work with and develop the show further.
It tends to be the case where we focus on the context of scenes. For the most part, it makes sense - you can’t really build a show if you don’t have the basics in place - but it’s not the only thing that requires it.
As performers, it’s good to know what the aim of the show is or what you’re trying to set out to achieve. Not just for yourselves, but to communicate to the audience so they can follow along.
It’s easy to forget that improv can be abstract at times, requiring audiences to recognise mechanics like sweep edits and tag-ins, whose purpose isn’t immediately obvious.
(I’d argue it’s why you see a lot of shows based on a particular film/TV property like Star Wars or Harry Potter. While the quality of these type of shows can vary wildly, it’s something an audience can latch onto as it gives them a shared frame of reference)
If there’s a place that may be worth looking at for inspiration, it’s short-form. Granted, some people are reluctant to perform it or watch it for a variety of reasons but one advantage it has is short-form is easy to follow.
The host explains the game up front so the audience understands what’s going on. So if they’re playing something like the Alphabet Game, the audience enjoys it more because they know the context. There’s no confusion or figuring out what’s going on, just them enjoying the scene.
This isn’t to say you should start the show by bluntly listing out everything you’re going to do, but knowing your aims can help you set up the expectations for an audience.
Some obvious situations where this happens can be in your show intro, with your marketing materials, how you chat about it to other people and more.
It’s a more considered and kind approach as the worst thing you can do is leave audiences confused as to what exactly is going on.
So even if you’re going to do a bunch of random, unrelated scenes, it’s good to clue audiences into what they’re going to see and what the theme is. It might be clunky to start off with but at least they will have a better chance of following what’s happening.