🌟True Hollywood Stories

Setup and Launch

Find a random audience member. The only requirement is that they are willing to talk about their life on stage. Make sure they are aware of that before they take the stage.

Cast one player as the main character. They play nobody else for the whole show.

Talking heads are the short interviews with people from the hero's life. At the UCB Theatre the chairs for them stood in front of each door, and a spot was focused on each one. A player sat in a chair, the tech Pat Baer dropped the stage lights and brought up the spot. That is how all the talking head segments were played.

A microphone on stage helps. Whoever speaks into it is the narrator.

DC Pierson provided the music for the show. The rule of thumb is that the scenes should inform the musical choice. Keep the music very low so it accents the scene instead of stealing focus from it. An experienced tech or a DJ should handle the music, but music is not necessary. The DJ improvises with you, so it is great to have an improviser in this position.

Lights, a microphone and music make the show better for the audience, but they are by no means necessary. This form does take a lot of practice, though: you are recreating a specific TV show.

Flow

The show starts with an interview of a random audience member. Then the cast explodes that person's life into the classic sensationalized rise and fall story, the kind told on The E True Hollywood Story or on VH1's Behind The Music.

The basic celebrity tale on television goes like this: humble beginnings, a meteoric rise to fame, and a tragic scandalous crash and burn. That is the basic form here. The players take what they got from the audience member and play scenes from those three periods of that person's life. The three segments are broken up by commercial breaks. A few devices make the stage show feel like the TV show: talking heads, the narrator, and a more intensive use of lighting and sound.

Here is the basic form:

1. Interview — 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Opening of talking heads and dramatic narration — 1 to 2 minutes.
3. Humble beginnings segment — 5 to 7 minutes.
4. Commercial break — 1 minute.
5. Rise to fame segment — 7 minutes.
6. Commercial break — 1 minute.
7. Tragic downfall segment — 7 minutes.

The plot is built into the form and never changes. Only the specifics and the games change — a game is a repeating pattern of behaviour in a scene. That is all you need, it does not need to be more complicated than that. Plots can be confusing and troublesome in improv, and since this is a storytelling show it could be easy to get stuck in a complicated plot — but you do not have to. You are just showing the audience what it would be like if one of them lived the life of a celebrity. What is fun is that it will not always be the story of an entertainer: you may see what happens when someone gets famous for being a fireman, a doctor or a zookeeper, but still lives it up like a Britney Spears and crashes like a Britney Spears or a Mama Cass or whoever.

99% of scenes will feature the main character.

1. The Interview

Keep the interview brief. Too much information can lead you all over the place. There are only a few basic pieces of info you are looking for.

1. A basic picture of their childhood and family life. When something interesting comes up, explore it.
2. A childhood dream: what did they want to be when they grew up. Be sure to get this, because this is what you will make them famous for. Probe the answer and get the why: what was attractive about the career, did they have a role model for it.
3. One thing they got into trouble for. Anything, from getting detention to going to jail. It does not matter how big a thing it was, because you are going to make it big. You will turn the principle behind how and why they got into trouble into a fatal flaw that takes them down. You can mine great character games from this question.

These are the basic pieces of info you need. If you have not gone too long already, you can ask about celebrities they have met, shows they like, or products they use. This is not necessary, but you can use this info for your commercial break scenes: they can get involved with these celebrities when they make it big, or they can end up appearing on their favorite shows.

Remember, the show revolves around this one character, so all the players should pay close attention during the interview. There are plenty of games to be found in the way the interviewee answers the questions.

If you are going to ask about dreams, do not ask about what they are doing now. These can be very far apart, and it may come off as a depressing point. You do not need that information anyway, it will only give you more to juggle. The only way you should know what your subject is doing now is if they bring up that they are living their dream. Do not ask questions that will point out to them that they have not achieved any of their dreams.

2. The Opening

The interviewee leaves the stage. The group can say together: we now present the True Hollywood Story of so-and-so. Immediately one of the players sits in a chair in a spotlight and begins to talk as a character that knows the interviewee. This is similar to the Documentary opening: there the cast plays a documentary film about a place or an event. The difference is that here the characters are alone in their interviews.

The characters speak to the audience and know they are being filmed for a TV show. They identify themselves and their relation to the main character immediately. If they do not, a player standing at the back of the stage identifies them in the narrator voice.

The opening is a flurry of talking heads. The players cut each other off aggressively and tag each other out of the chair. A tag-out is a tap that replaces the player in the chair. This fills out the world of the celebrity. Between the heads all players take turns as the narrator, opening the show in typical dramatic fashion. For example: narrator — John Doe's ambition was too big for his small town of a thousand; talking head — in kindergarten John was always trying to trade his juice boxes for the other kids' gold stars; narrator — but his entrepreneurial spirit would not go unnoticed in New York; and back to a talking head. The opening ends with an intro to the first scenic block.

By the end of the opening the audience should have seen family members, pundits, experts, kindergarten teachers, co-workers, friends and former bosses — anyone that a person would know — commenting on the hero's life. These characters can all find games in their talking head segments, and the games can continue throughout the show.

After the opening, the talking heads and the narration serve as edits: they cut a scene short and start the next one. This goes on for the rest of the show.

3. Humble Beginnings

During the first block just do fun game based scenes that take place before the character gets famous. Edit them with talking heads: let the talking heads inform forthcoming scenes, let the scenes inform the talking heads. Pepper it all with the overly dramatic narrator's voice. Before the commercial break the narrator leaves you with a cliffhanger — a cut at the most interesting moment.

4. Commercial Break

Go to commercial and do a group game commercial. Have fun with it and work it into the theme of the show.

5. Rise to Fame

The next segment is the fame section. Show the main character living it up. Give famous and infamous clips of them on talk shows, late-night shows, the news, or public appearances. Show them partying, show their episode of Cribs, show their sex tape or their interactions with paparazzi. Be creative and you will find endless possibilities. Talking heads and narration provide the edits. End with a cliffhanger.

6. Tragic Downfall

The last segment is the downfall. Show them making big mistakes and getting in trouble. You will probably morph the thing your subject said they got into trouble for into something much more serious. Show the misery, play with it, have fun.

End with a flurry of talking heads if you have got time, clips from the subject's funeral, and anything else in that spirit. Have fun with the ending, but let the narrator take over so it feels like a proper ending. Sometimes the character withers away, sometimes they die, sometimes they redeem themselves. Do not let your show die: gather the callbacks — returns to early details — and bring the show to a crescendo if you can.

Just proceed to do fun scenes and they will all add up to a full show at the end. The audience is delighted every time you use something from the interview, so try to make sure you have hit all of it during this last beat.