Some of my favorite improv shows have been with USS Improvise, an improvised Star Trek show. Early on, we knew we didn’t want to focus on the sorts of stories a traditional Star Trek show did. We didn’t want to do a show that used tropes and referential comedy as the sole grist for its mill, a “funny Star Trek” show. We wanted to do a funny show that just happened to be about Star Trek.

At the same time, we wanted to make the Star Trek theme meaningful to the show. The audience had expectations, and we wanted to be true to those expectations- we wanted it to feel like Star Trek. We didn’t want to ignore the tropes, any more than we wanted to be slaves to them.

Using those constraints, we built a simple form that lends itself to a full hour show. We have two “threads”. The show is anchored someplace in the bowels of the ship, often named “Deck 6”. Here, we have “regular” people, with regular concerns, and it plays out as a relationship-driven monoscene. When it “feels right”, someone calls out, “Cut to the bridge, where the captain receives a communication!”, or similar. Here, we drop into a scene that might come from a real Star Trek episode, already in progress. We bounce back and forth between these two core threads, building up energy, exploring relationships, and exploring our weird version of the Final Frontier.

It works really well, in part because we have a great group of performers who have great instincts about what to do when. We’re all close, and we all work great together, and that certainly is the foundation of what makes the show work. I’ve always felt that there was more to it though- that some of the decisions we made in building the show played a huge role in making it work. A recent installment of Every Frame a Painting made it all come together in my head.

Tony Zhou’s latest video was about Orson Welles’ video essay, F is for Fake. In it, he played a clip of John Hughes quoting Hitchcock: “The essence of film-making is, ‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch.’”. He went on, to say, “You want to have two things going, you reach the peak of one, you go to the other. You pick the other up just where you want it.”

And that’s it- that is, in words, what we’ve been doing on instinct. It’s the same thing that you learn when starting the Harold: edit the scene before it peaks. Cut to something else. It gives us incredible momentum- an hour long set flies by.

That’s why I love it, but what are the actual mechanics.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Opening: This is flexible. For our show, we like an opening that allows us to introduce a few key ideas and character concepts, and since we’re playing with Star Trek, we do a few character monologues in the form of “logs”.

A-Thread: This should be a grounded, focused scene, built out of character relationships. This is where you’re going to spend most of your time, so it should be comfortable.

Cut Tos: Ideally, the back-line will call the cuts, and they should simply declare where the cut is going: “Cut to the bridge, where the captain faces a moral dilemma.” Note that a good cut gives us a where, a who and a what, but doesn’t get so specific that you’re “writing the show”.

B-Thread: This thread should be, in terms of energy, as far away from the A-Thread as possible. For USS Improvise, the schlub/episode dichotomy gives us a natural way to vary these scenes. Unlike your A-Thread, it’s not as important to keep this grounded. The emotional core of the show is always in the A-Thread, which frees this thread up to go wild- if you want.

Continue Cuts: Once you’ve established both threads, the rest of the show is really about jumping around between them and focusing on the fun bits of each thread. Because the cuts are narrated, the performers have the ability to tell the audience (and their partners) exactly what they think is fun.

Running the Rest of the Show: Like a Harold, it’s good for these worlds to eventually collide. Unlike a Harold, it’s okay and even desirable for information to leak between the two threads. In the case of USS Improvise, if the ship’s under attack in our B-Thread, then that should have an impact on the characters in our A-Thread. What’s important is that it’s details that slip through. What we emphatically don’t want is the characters from the A-Thread running up to the bridge and dramatically saving the ship, Wesley Crusher-style. In the Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch form, the two threads should share a world, but should avoid sharing characters, plot elements, etc.- until you’re building the show to a climax.

Closing: For USS Improvise, we do a closing, mirroring the logs we did at the top of the show. It’s an attempt to sum up the show, to tie the themes back in to our audience prompt, and generally provide a denouement. Since we’re imitating a TV show, it feels right to release the last bits of the show’s energy. You may or may not want a closing, depending on how your show feels.

What The Form’s Good For

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch was originally devised as a way of imitating a TV show, and I think it’s a strong form for that. TV shows nearly universally carry an A-plot and a B-plot (even reality shows!). It would work well for parodies of films, imitating novel styles, or generally leveraging any sort of genre fiction.

During our first rehearsal, we brainstormed tropes and ideas we might want to incorporate

The real power of the form is that it lets you explore to tonally different scenes, but it also allows you to connect their worlds. Instead of the “worlds collide” nature of the Harold, MBatR gives us a way to gradually draw two threads together. I would argue that it’s another relationship game- instead of a relationship between characters, it’s between scenes.