🐫Caravan

Setup and Launch

The Caravan has one strict creative constraint: tag-outs are not allowed. A tag-out is when a player from the backline taps a player on stage and takes their place. The backline is the players who wait at the back wall for their entrance.

Flow

The Caravan aims to display as large a variety of scene types and stage pictures as possible.

1. Opening

No opening type is set. Play any opening.

2. A series of scenes

Scenes then follow one after another.

When the Caravan is taught as a class, the team goes through five group-game templates. A group game is a scene where the whole ensemble builds one pattern at once. A pattern is a repeated move that everyone picks up.

1. Hey everybody, get in here.
2. Help Desk.
3. Pile On.
4. Peel Off.
5. Sound and Movement.

Still, initiate a scene with no particular structure in mind. Instead of structure, hold three principles:

• The number of people in a scene is not necessarily the number of points of view. A point of view is a character's position on what is happening. A three-person scene often runs on two points of view.
• A scene requires one thing: the whole ensemble invests in what has already happened.
• Every character and every comedic idea belongs to the whole ensemble.

3. Walk-ons instead of tag-outs

With tag-outs banned, the walk-on becomes the ensemble's essential tool. A walk-on is when a player from the backline enters a running scene as a new character.

• A tag-out gave a clear way to end a scene. A walk-on does not, so the ensemble manages sharing focus on its own.
• A good walk-on has a walk-off.
• A walk-on can do three things:
  • clarify the base reality of the scene;
  • point out unusual or funny behaviour;
  • heighten an established pattern.
• This focus on walk-ons reinforces that a scene belongs equally to the players in it and to the players on the backline.

4. Two-person scenes

Ensemble work comes first in the Caravan, but two-person scenes are part of the form. The ensemble supports them in two ways:

• scenic backline support — a soundscape, for example;
• direct support — a walk-on as a new character.

The ensemble also learns to recognise when the best help for a two-person scene is simply to end it. The tool for that is the sweep edit: the team walks across the stage and ends the scene that way.