Metaphor Madness, or, Love and Dandruff

The whole metaphor thing is really exciting for audiences, and fun to do. It's like a hidden trick: a way to bring poetry and mysteriously profound dialogue into your improv. Or songs. Or daily life.

The premise: Pick something (could be an emotion, could be a person, could be a verb?) and something else for it to be like (probably a noun). Boldly state that Thing 1 is (or is like) Thing 2. Then, let the justification for it fall out of your mouth. The bolder you are, the better. Don't matter if it don't make no sense. If you mean it, it must have meaning.

Doing this exercise with my casts always creates really exciting and fun results.

And when we accidentally (and then on purpose) played it with audiences during Un-Scripted: unscripted, it was always a major crowdpleaser. In any genre. Worked for Shakespeare, worked for film noir, worked for beat poetry . . .

My favorite metaphor of the rehearsal process so far (and yes, I know, it's a simile) has to be the following (quoted as accurately as I remember):

"Love is like dandruff . . . it starts at my head, and then slowly moves down my body." --Pepper Jobe