Improvised TED Talks

Introduction #

TEDxRFT is an improvised TED talk show by Rapid Fire Theatre’s Kory Mathewson and Julian Faid (@jfaid, aka Edmonton’s Best View AND Hidden Gem).

Many say that presenting a TED talk for hundreds of keen intellectual minds takes years of research, hundreds of hours of rehearsal time and a fancy post-secondary education. We disagree.

In improvised TED talks, you prepare by making a slide deck for another improviser while they make slides for you. Then, you both extemporaneously make these presentations about a topic suggested by the audience.

If the format is unclear, here is a full show so that you might see what all the fuss is about:

History #

The show was born out of a mutual desire (between Julian and myself) to improvise alone, together. The world of solo theatrical performance is something that I have been in awe of for a long time (it also makes me reflect back on Duo Improv).

Our improvised TED Talks were born out of a show that Amy Shostak and I had collaborated on previously, Cunning Linguists, performed first in April of 2012 at the cozy Varscona Theatre.

The Cunning Linguists was a debate-style show wherein two performers would argue opposing sides of an issue, with notes and slides for reference. This show has a place in my heard as it contained one of my favorite lines ever improvised: “you can toast a bagel but you can not bagel toast.”

A few years later, on February 10, 2014, I described the nugget of inspiration to Amy, then Artistic Director of Rapid Fire Theatre (who has a rock solid improv blog if you are interested). I said, “It is multimedia-based… using power point to make improvised presentations. Far less narrative and structure.” I had no idea. I knew that I wanted to use the fantastic projector (and PowerPanel) at the Citadel Theatre, which was conveniently shaped like a movie theatre (thanks to its past life as a movie theatre).

In 2014, Julian and I were looking to creatively challenge ourselves. We also had it in the back of our minds that we wanted to tour together, and build a show that was both: 1) tourable, and 2) unique from what was currently performing at festivals. We quickly came up with Powerplay, the first working name for the show, and almost as quickly realized that there was a much better name hiding right in the pitch for the show. As Julian was telling a friend about Powerplay, he said “it’s like improvised TED talks, like a TED x Rapid Fire”, TEDxRFT was born.

I hastily photoshopped together a promotional image, which would be run before shows as a short teaser commercial for TEDxRFT.

I was nervous while preparing for our first show on March 8, 2014. Julian and I decided we should prepare 25 slides each for the other, that would be enough for a 45-minute show.

I was used to making slides for talks, given my academic career to that point, so I got to work. I enlisted the help of the best designers (@jaykayking, @mattopacity) I knew to help make me some slides. I sent them some instructions:

• I want you to make a slide in powerpoint that I can use in a larger presentation.
• The slide can use any image, text, or graphics but should be focused on the theme of danger… so it may include anything that is dangerous to humans.
• Any of the stats used can be totally made up, as Julian is going to have to justify it all in front of an audience.
• The slide has no visual requirements, as it will be a single element in a larger presentation of mismatched slides.
• I will then compile this slide, along with 24 others into a presentation that he will see for the first time on Saturday in front of an audience.
• Where he will need to justify what is on the screen with a title of the talk that he will get from the audience.
• For example, the title he may get would be “The Long Way Out: Exploring Tunnels in the Spanish Hills.”
• Then he would need to justify your slide of a fiery sandcastle with a graph that shows the average number of legs mammals have…

Building the Show #

The process of making a slideshow is rather involved. Julian and I have gone back and forth on how to best make this happen. We have discussed at length, over pints, and in pools, about how the slides are like another improviser on stage, how the slides should offer up equal proportions of offers, set-ups, and blindsides, how in crafting them we are trying to write jokes for an improv show happening in the future. We were building gifts for each other to open, on-stage, in front of an audience. These gifts should be inspiring, challenging, dynamic, and help progress the scene (much like another improviser).

Here is a short time-lapse of the complete process so that you might appreciate the madness:

By the ninth performance, September 18, 2015, we had developed a more solid template for the show. We knew that we wanted to introduce the idea of the slides and the justification early, with us both on stage, as that sets the expectation for the audience. This template included a stellar promotional video which was produced by the talented Scott Townend.

It played before the show even started, and allowed for the tension of the screen to be broken. The audience knew that they would be in for something visually amazing.

We started the show by poking fun at TED itself. The TED catchphrase is “ideas worth spreading”, so we would say things like: “here are some other things worth spreading: peanut butter, jam … rumors.”

The audience got it and enjoyed it. They had been watching TED talks for a few years, finding inspiration in the half-preaching, half-performing creatives and scientists presenting new and not-so-novel ideas. We were taking a bite out of something that could be taken down a peg due to its implied social status.

By framing a show with a clean video off the top, we started to polish the rough edges common in improvised theatre. We were committed to making a show that felt well produced, and adding a high production value to an improv show is not a common goal. After each show, we would talk about how the show went, but we would also talk about how to further refine the structure of the format so that we might frame the entire production better next time.

One of the dangerous traps of the format is that we might build similar slides, and then present with a similar energy, leading to a classic “ice cream after ice cream” situation. Who wants an ice cream after they just ate an ice cream?

How do we make sure that we will be diverse enough and compliment each other’s styles? We have, in the past, checked in with each other on the ‘style’ of slides we are building. Julian might message me a few days before we perform and say something like “I am making one that centers around nature”, and then I would say “mine will work best if you think of yourself as a Silicon Valley startup founder.” It also helps that Julian’s slides are always beautifully designed, and my slides are often a ‘curated crazy’. This diversity is key to a show that might start looking like an all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet.

The talented Julian Faid seamlessly connecting ‘curated crazy’ with coherent catchphrases.

Performing #

TEDxRFT is an improvised TED talk format. The show must be improvised, but so much preparation must also go into the show before we even hit the stage. We decided the best way to challenge ourselves to connect ideas to the energy of the room would be to get a title of a TED talk that has never been given from the audience. Some of our favorite suggestions we have had for talks include:

• The Power of No
• Everything you know about sleep is wrong.
• Looking Forward to Looking Back
• The Dwindling Middle Class
• The Little You Inside You
• The Upside Of Being Down
• The Reproductive Tendencies of Reptilian Invertebrates
• When Income Is The Only Outcome

When we get a suggestion of a talk title from the audience, the other will sit off to the side, plugging their ears. We show the audience clearly the universe that we will be playing together in by both of us starting the show on stage together presenting a few introductory slides. This helps to build a trust in both us as the improvisers and the screen as an improviser.

As Liz Nicholls, former reviewer for the Edmonton Journal puts it “…not only do Faid and Mathewson have to improvise an erudite talk on the chosen subject, but they have to improvise a connection with a set of slides they have never seen before.”

We perform while both on stage. We improvise alone, together.

We have had several technical difficulties over the course of the shows we’ve done. They include projector issues, clicker issues, and lighting issues. With a show that is reliant on technical connections and seamless switches, we must expect that something is going to fail. This failure, in improv, is always a gift. A gift from the improv gods. An opportunity for Julian and I to really improvise.

It was during one of these (not-so) brief tech delays that we developed a good number of the jokes which became the introduction of the show, including the Julian classic: “Please join us in a bit of a pre-show tradition. Take a deep breath in, and then lower your expectations…”

We have made sure to record several of the improvised TED talk performances. This is extremely helpful because improv is a dissolving artform. It assumes that what is done once will never, and can never, be done again. These artifacts allow us to reflect on the shows we have done, apply to festivals, and for our loving audience to see and understand the show if they couldn’t make it to the performance.

Over the years we have received some great reviews:

• In TEDxRFT, their latest invention, the two brainiac Rapid Fire Theatre stars take on the most formatted, manufactured, strategically planned-out, research-based, rehearsed and polished presentational form of them all: the TED Talk. — Liz Nicholls, Edmonton Journal
• Outstanding improvisers performing one of the funniest and intelligent shows I’ve seen in a long time. A true crowd pleaser.  — Alistair Cook, Instant Theatre
• Their energetic style is adaptable to any subject area and can make even the most mundane-sounding theme hysterically funny. — Deb Eerkes, University of Alberta
• It was one of our most popular keynotes ever. It spoke to the benefits of not knowing where we’re heading but taking a chance and finding out what can happen. — Teddi Fishman, International Center for Academic Integrity

We believe that we are now at peak TED, it has become a worldwide phenomenon and a genre unto itself. TEDxRFT, and improvised TED talks as a whole embraces the genre and turns it on its head. We have done 37 shows in cities all around the world.

We were voted Best of the Fest at the Vancouver International Improv Festival. We performed at the Out of Bounds festival in Austin, Texas, the Stumptown improv festival in Portland, Oregon, the Seattle Festival of Improvised Theatre, the Combustion Festival in Toronto, Canada.

Julian was invited to present the format in Oslo, Norway. This added another layer to the preparation and presentation of the improvised TED talk as he had to build the presentation in Norwegian. As Julian so aptly puts it, “I made a slide presentation completely in Norwegian for two Norwegian improvisers. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying but it brought the house down.”

It is a show that appeals to those who have sat through scientific communication, design speaking, keynotes, motivational speakers, conferences and office Powerpoint presentations. It also embraces technology on the stage in a way that most other improvised shows do not.

As you might know, I am a strong proponent of putting humans interacting with technology front and center on the stage. For more details on another project I continue to work on with humans and robots with artificial intelligence improvising together, check out this great write-up by Rachel Rosenthal (talented performer, comedian, and instructor from NY, USA).

We are putting the excitement and discovery in front of the audience. It is a nightmare for most people, to start a presentation without having seen the slides, we revel in it.

We even got invited to do an actual TEDx event:

Future Directions #

There are many innovations which may be possible given the success of the improvised TED talk. We have dabbled, but not fully dove into: playing with sound effects and audio clips/cues, using short video which require an introduction (or an overdubbed voice from the presenter), timed presentations (ala Pecha Kucha where each of 20 slides is shown for 20 seconds), invited others to build presentations for the two of us, and adding detail and depth to the characters that we play in the show.

We want people around the world to do continue to innovate and challenge basic improvisation. Improvisation is innovation. We have shared the structure and fundamentals of the show with many folks, and we always include a clause: take it/break it/make something new. Because that is what improv is all about.

Improvised TED Talks will be coming to the Edmonton Fringe in 2018. Stay tuned for more details.

ps. If this is your kind of jam, you should also check out “BattleDecks",“Powerpoint Karaoke”, “Speechless” from SF, California. We heard about these after starting TEDx. As well, we now know that the People’s Improv Theatre (PIT) did something similar in NYC, and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB) did it, and Theatre Arlo (with friend Joe Bozic) was doing a similar show in 2012.

pps. Thomas Winters (@thomas_wint), a brilliant computing science engineer working on computation comedy, has prepared a scene study on TEDxRFT (through conversation, research, and testing) and it serves as a guide for those interested in working the format. I present it below slightly modified for this medium.

ppps. Congratulations Julian Faid.

Studies in Improvised TED Talks #

Slide Content #

It is beneficial to have half of the slides be setups, and the other half be punchlines. Possibly alternating with each other. As Julian Faid says, “the slides are just another improviser, they can’t just stand there and make jokes.”

Setup: Explain what’s on the slide, build towards a punchline that explains the link to your topic.

Punchline: This slide is very odd. You say something right before showing this slide and have to explain why your statement was true. See section below for possible punchline buildups.

Content for Setups, Punchlines, and Blindsides #

• stock photos;
• a fun but vague gif;
• a general question that makes you think, like “Where would you like to be tomorrow?” or “What consequences does this have for our children?”;
• graphs with abstract words on the axes;
• random/interesting pictures of the presenters.

Getting Good Suggestions #

Use a suggestion to create a real sounding title for a TED talk

• An insecurity (e.g. sex life, acne) + explaining element (feet/dreams/childhood/music taste): “What your [explaining element] says about your [insecurity]”;
• A subject of the future, something dangerous: “How to get rid of X”;
• A certain characteristic of a person: “The strange habits of [characteristic] people”;
• Activity: “How to stop an [activity] addiction” or “How [activity] leads to [emotion]”; and
• Any subject: “The biggest risk concerning [subject]” or “Why [subject] will ruin your life”.

Format Details #

• Ask for a suggestion for the other person’s presentation.
• Before the presentation: Introduce the other as if it were a real TED talk, say something about how amazing the other is. Use their real name!

Tropes of the Format #

• Introduction: Do something interesting to present yourself and your topic in a creative way;
• Sound smart: Sound as if you know what you’re talking about: you’re an expert in your field!;
• Present dynamically: Make a lot of hand gestures to make your points, emphasize points with your glasses or watch;
• Ask rhetorical questions to the audience;
• True stories: Present a personal anecdote, possibly about something shameful (be truthful: see Truth in Comedy by Charna Halpern);
• Explain people portrayed in images: Who are they? What’s their story?
• Inspire people to change their life in a certain way;
• Change tone and speed in the way you speak to capture attention and to build up to larger moments; and
• End: Give people one last, concluding life lesson or moral.

Punchline slide tropes #

There are several types of sentences that you can use right before going to the next slide to turn it into a punchline:

• (about the previous slide) “This was the bad news, the good news is…”
• “I’m looking to when this becomes a reality:”
• “I’ve got the solution for this problem, being:” (explain the relation to the theme of the presentation afterward)
• “This is what X looks like nowadays:”
• “X and Y are so [adjective, e.g. different] like:” (explain metaphor on next slide)
• “At first we thought [something], but then it turned out to be this:”
• …[click] … “I think, this slide… explains itself.”

Setup slide tropes #

• Explain why the slide fits your given subject. Exploration! Every reason is a good reason, just believe in it!
• Make it trivial: “Well, everyone knows that this and that is true”
• Use an anecdote to make the subject really personal. Bonus points if it’s a real anecdote from your life!
• Use a statement that gets some audience interaction (Make them do a certain action that “proves your research”).