🌀Scramble

Flow

The Scramble is a longform improvisational format that features overlapping scenes and chaos on stage. It is confusing and chaotic. Stir up disorder on stage. Embrace the confusion. Understand that you cannot understand everything that is happening on stage. The Scramble is up for the audience to interpret and absorb.

The show may or may not start with an opening — a shared start before the first scene — and typically begins with a solo start. From there players may use several techniques to create a world of overlapping scenes. There are at least six of them.

Solo start

Make a big physical and emotional choice on stage. Interact with an invisible character that is in the scene. Leave some space for lines to land with that character. React to what it says in response.

Overlap edit

Initiate a solo start on top of the scene, or scenes, already inhabited and taking place on stage. Overlap edits lead to stacked scenes.

Stacked scenes

Stacked scenes are when more than one scene takes place on stage at the same time: several scenes on top of each other, using the same space on stage. Stacked scenes are a great way to playfully violate the location and object work reality of other scenes. While the scenes are stacked, it really helps to give each one its own vibe, energy and tone. Contrasts between the scenes then appear, and they add texture to what is going on.

Bolt

To bolt means to definitively leave a scene as the performer: break eye contact and leave with intent. The character you inhabited is still in that scene. This is a great way to leave a scene in the hands of the other performers. It helps most when the emotion has gotten so high that, in the reality of that scene, bolting out lets the remaining performer take things into a big physical interaction with the invisible character — fighting, sex and the like.

Swinging gate

A swinging gate is when someone uses bolts to swing between one scene and another and eventually switches back. You end up in several scenes, yet be in and fully commit to the scene you are in right now, instead of keeping track of what is going on in any other scene. Trust that when you jump into a scene, your reaction to the next thing done or said by the other person will light your way.

Chair pimp

A player places a chair, or two, or three, or more, somewhere on stage. That means that at some point in the future there will be a scene that incorporates that chair.