Who, what, where... the first three lines
I think that this whole thing about getting the who, what, where out in the first few lines is a scene killer. It may be this necessary building block for newbies, but when two moderately experienced improvisors are worrying about that stuff at the opening moments of a scene, it can be dreadful to watch and dreadful to do.
I’d absolutely agree here, especially since most “who/what/where” exposition is done so unrealistically. If the action or conversation is already interesting, it doesn’t matter if you have the three w’s early on. It’s something taught to new improvisers to help eliminate stuttered, non-informative conversation, but as long as you can commit, there’s no need to worry about those details. I took a workshop with Jeff Michalski a few months back, and if I recall correctly, we actively avoided getting those details out early. And it produced some of the funniest, most interesting scenework I’ve seen in a long time. (That’s not all we were doing, so the great scenework wasn’t just from lack of specifics early on, but it definitely played a part.)
