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In my workshops, we do an experiment: “The Classic Problem of the Three Lawyers.” For this experiment, I try to select only people who have no performing experience; I’ll ask people who have some performing experience to raise their hands, and then I’ll pick three people who didn’t raise their hands. I’ll bring them to the front of the room and explain the set-up to them: They’re three lawyers — junior associates — sitting in their conference room at their law firm, and the most important case of their careers just started five minutes ago in a courthouse four blocks away. That’s all the information they’re given.

How would you solve this problem? Seems obvious, right? Get up and leave, since you’re already late and you’re only four blocks away. In fact, you should rush right over, as fast as you possibly can, right?

Not if you’re an actor, apparently, in many of my experiments. When I conduct this experiment in acting workshops, most actors just stand up and immediately start to . . . act. They stand around and talk about it.

Oh, when the scene starts, one or two might head for the exit — after all, they’re late — but one invariably will stick around, making up dialogue, talking on the phone, and when the others see that, they’ll come back and start to . . . also act. Actors are wonderfully resourceful. They invent imaginary phones and faxes, they rifle through their imaginary briefcases to find the imaginary folder that would explain their tardiness. They call for imaginary cabs and write imaginary emails to imaginary bosses on response, if you’re an associate in a law firm, is to GET THERE! Many actors will say, “But if I’m a lawyer, I would be more composed, I should have a briefcase, I should do this, I would do that.” (This is have run through the door, I click my stopwatch. Sometimes, especially if the actors have been deeply trained in the Method or Meisner technique, this can take several minutes, even if I’m side-coaching,

“You’re five minutes late! You’re now six minutes late! Now seven minutes late!” I will wait until all three of them go through the door. There are times we’ve had to wait up to twenty minutes before the actors realize that all they have to do is leave the room.

No matter how long it takes, I’ll welcome the actors back into the room saying, “Congratulations! That was a perfectly acceptable solution to the Classic Problem of the Three Lawyers.” Let’s say it took them seven minutes to leave. I’ll then announce, “I now want you to solve the Classic Problem of the Three Lawyers, but this time, I’d simply like you to solve it in less than seven minutes.” And we’ll keep doing

away) and then explain how sometimes actors don’t “get” it. I’ll tell them that for muscle memory’s sake, I’d like them to run out the door as fast as they can when I say “Start.” Even then, we might have to practice it a few times for them to understand that in order to solve the problem, they really have to race out the door.

Then the experiment really gets interesting. So we add more complications. After all, in life, nothing is simple. You’re rarely trying to do just one thing. Most of the time, you’re constantly juggling X number of balls in the air. Comedy tells the truth about life, and life is complicated.

Take me, for example: I cannot physically leave the house if there’s a dish in the sink. I don’t know what law of physics this contravenes or how it upsets the natural order of things, but I’m not allowed to leave my house if there’s a dish in the sink! I could be late. I could have to catch a plane to Australia, but if there are dishes in the sink, I must stop at the door, turn around, march to the sink, pick up the dish, rinse it, and place it in the dish rack. Then, and only then, am I allowed to leave.² No matter how late I am, the

“dish in sink rule” must be obeyed. Don’t ask me why, it just does.

The point is that we often have to accomplish a number of different things, at the same time, in order to

“win.”

So I’ll now tell our three “lawyers” that they’re still five minutes late for a courthouse four blocks away for the most important case of their careers, but now I’m going to add something else — a complication — to their agenda.

I’ll give each person his or her own “task,” one at a time, and tell them to keep it secret from the other two. In my writers seminar, I’ll tell two of them to leave the room. Then I’ll tell the third in a conspiratorial voice, “OK, Carl, what the studio audience is now learning is that, I don’t know why, but for some crazy reason, you don’t want to be the first person out the door, because that guy will probably get fired. And you don’t want to be the last one out of the door either, because then you might get fired for being lazy. You want to be the second person out the door!

“OK, that’s your secret agenda. It’s a secret, so don’t tell the other two. Now go outside and have Debra come in — BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE YOUR SECRET!! It’s a secret, OK?”

When Debra walks in the door, I put my arm around her and say, “OK, now you’re a Libra, and Libras like to be balanced. So you don’t want to be the first person out of the room, because that just tilts everything too far forward. And you don’t want to be the last person out. You want to be the second person out the door!

“OK, now go out and have Elliot come in — BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE YOUR SECRET!! It’s a secret, OK?”

The seminar audience now starts to see where we’re headed. When Elliot comes in I say, “OK, now I want to give you something really good.” I turn to the room and ask, “Uh, does anyone in the audience have a good idea?” Someone will volunteer, “How about if he’s the second person to leave the room?”

“That’s a great idea!” I respond. “OK, Elliot, for some crazy reason, you’re nuts over the number two.

You have two cars, two cats, two kids. You live on 222 Second Street, with your second wife. You love the number two. So, you don’t want to be the first person out the door, you don’t want to be the last person. What number do you want to be out the door?”

“Number two?”

“Right! OK.” (I point to the row of three chairs.) “Take a seat.”

Having been primed to love the number two, Elliot will take a quick glance at the row of seats and inevitably will sit in the middle chair. That always gets a laugh from the audience. Already, the comedy is coming from our understanding of a character’s wants and limitations, and watching them try to maneuver through the world given those limitations.

I’ll then bring in the remaining two players. “OK, now remember, each of you has a secret, and all of

you are trying to solve the classic problem of the three lawyers. When I say ‘start,’ the most important case of your careers began in a courthouse four blocks away five minutes ago.

“Start!”

This is an experiment, and like all experiments, it doesn’t succeed every time. Sometimes I’ve unwittingly included a ham, a would-be comedian, in the group, who immediately starts talking instead of doing; i.e., solving the problem. Remember, the solution is simply to leave the room as quickly as is humanly possible. Sometimes the three “lawyers” sit still, waiting for someone else to start moving so that they can be the second person out of the room. I’ll often have to sidecoach them to not forget the other important given³ in the situation: that they’re five minutes late for the most important event of their lives.

Sometimes someone gets the bright idea to simply say, “I quit.” They think that’s a clever way to sidestep the problem, but again, they’re not solving it. One time in New Zealand, I had just finished giving the instructions to the first person. As I opened the door to let the next “lawyer” in, the first one turned to me and said in a loud voice, “Hey, you’re not just going to ask all of us to be the second one to leave, are you?” As you might imagine, the experiment was not a great success that day.

But most times, the three of them will rush toward the exit, pulling up abruptly just as they get to the door — this prompts the first big laugh from the audience. This is followed by a three-part dance as they try to jockey for second place. Some groups will juke in and out, trying to head-fake one of the other players to go first. Some will become verbal, trying to convince one or the other to go through first.

Meanwhile, I’m constantly side-coaching, “Comedy gives you the permission to win . . . I give you the permission to win. Do what you need to do in order to solve the problem.” Usually, one of the players gets the idea: I can do whatever I need to do in order to win! And when he (or she) realizes that, what they’ll do is pick someone up and bodily throw them through the door, following them as the second person out the door, thus winning. Also thus looking like an idiot, also thus creating comedy.

One of the best examples of this was when I was doing a workshop at DreamWorks Animation.

Animators are often the performers and sometimes even the directors for each tiny sequence of animation they’re responsible for. And even though they’re amazing artists or computer programmers, these animators rarely have any comedy training, let alone any acting training. One of the animators who I picked for the Classic Problem was a very tall, lanky guy. When I said, “Start,” all of them started for the their best to throw him out the door, but the more they try, the more horizontal Toothpick becomes. No training. No carefully choreographed business. Just a character — a human being wanting to win but not having the skills with which to win — creates comedy all by itself. The act of accepting the givens and trying to win led the three of them to an intricate display of lazzi⁴ without the benefit, or distraction, of a director or playwright.

Comedy gives your character in the narrative the permission to win. Comedy gives them the permission to do what they need to do in a moment of crisis, even if it makes them look like a bad guy or an idiot. And once they have that permission, you can stop trying to be “funny.” Funny stops being the sole reason for any action, reaction, or line of dialogue, and the comic nature of the character and situation takes preeminence. If given the permission to win, but not necessarily the guarantee of winning and not the skills to win, a character’s actions will be comedic.

In fact, trying to be funny often results in the opposite. Think of every bad comedy you’ve ever seen — those people were desperately trying to make it funny. Think of every good comedy you’ve ever seen;

there were characters there who were doing stupid, silly things because that’s what they thought they that human beings are involved, conflict is inevitable. Living is conflict. You don’t need to stage an argument, or have somebody pick a fight with another, or have someone have a heart attack (ALL of which have occurred in actors workshops doing the Classic Problem). Conflict comes about because any task given to a group of people is going to reveal the strains, crevices, and fault lines in the individuals and their relationships with each other. If you gave three people the same task and asked them to work in perfect harmony with each other, they couldn’t do it. At least not well. There’d be differences of opinion, misunderstandings, arguments, efforts at cross-purposes. Because conflict is inherent to the human condition. You don’t need to create problems, because a human being is going to have enough trouble doing even the simplest thing. And two human beings make it even worse. You don’t need to invent a conflict in comedy. Comedy IS conflict, because people are conflicted.

And importantly, the experiment reveals the truth. Even though the action may be ridiculous (like throwing a small woman out through a doorway), even though it’s probably something we would never attempt in reality, it reveals what we would want to do if we allowed ourselves the permission to throw approach to acting in improvisations was not to act, but simply for each person in an improv to be engaged in problem solving. Simply accepting the premise, ridiculous as it may be, and attempting to solve an unsolvable, insane problem, creates comic energy, creates a comic moment. When the three

“lawyers” first get to the door and begin their choreographed dance of “Who’s going to be first?” that’s usually a comic moment. Afterwards, I’ll turn to the crowd and ask them, “So who choreographed that?

Who directed it? Who wrote it?” One of the things that the Classic Problem of the Three Lawyers exercise reveals is that, in a way, you don’t need directors; you don’t even need writers. All you really need are characters who want something and are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want, given the limitations of who they are. No matter how nutty it is, no matter how stupid it makes them look, comedy gives them the permission to win!