Remote Control

How to Explain It

"Someone has a remote control. The performers play a scene, but the remote controls them: pause, rewind, fast forward, slow motion, volume up, channel change. Performers adjust immediately to whatever the remote does. There is no arguing with the remote."

Objectives

Remote Control develops genre versatility, scene memory, and physical discipline. The snap back into a channel requires the performer to hold the physical and emotional state of their scene across interruptions of unknown length, a skill that transfers directly to long-form scene editing.

Briefing Performers

Before the game, have each channel group discuss their show's specific register: not "soap opera" in the abstract but a specific pace, a specific physical energy, a specific kind of dialogue. The more specific each channel's style, the more distinct the contrast when switching.

Common Coaching Notes

• "When the channel returns, you pick up from where you left. Not from a reset."
• "Your channel has a style. Know what it is before the game starts."
• "Host: switch away when the scene is the most interesting, not the least."

Channel Discipline

The game fails when performers cannot maintain their channel's state across cuts. A soap opera ensemble that starts from a different beat each time the channel returns has broken the fundamental mechanic. The audience's pleasure is partly in the resumption: they remember where the scene was and they want to return to it exactly there.

Each channel should have a distinctly different performance register: not just a different setting but a different pace, volume, physical scale, and emotional quality. A soap opera runs at a different temperature than a nature documentary. If all channels look the same, the channel-switching produces no contrast.

The Host's Role

The host is the game's director and should make deliberate choices, not random ones. Returning to a scene at the worst possible moment for the characters (mid-crisis, mid-revelation) generates the best comedy. Staying on a channel too long flatlines it; leaving too quickly prevents any scene from developing.

Remote Control belongs to the family of television-parody games that emerged as television became a dominant shared cultural experience in the late twentieth century. The channel-surfing mechanic uses the remote control as a structural device that mirrors the actual behavior of channel-flipping, transforming the audience's passive media habit into an active participation role.

Rich Goteri documents the game in Something from Nothing, specifying the three-cast-plus-host format and the use of a current affairs topic alongside genre suggestions to provide thematic material that appears across channels.

Amy Seham reflects on the cultural resonance of the remote control mechanic in Whose Improv Is It Anyway?, noting that audiences raised on channel-surfing are accustomed to "multiple realities" and the constant switching of context, making the game a literalization of a widely shared experience.

The VCR variant, documented by Linda Newton in Improvisation 2nd Edition, uses the same prop but applies playback commands rather than channel selection.