Improv is actually very easy. Everyone has the talent to do great improv. The only reason most people wouldn't do great improv if they got on a stage is that improv calls upon you to do the exact opposite of most of your instinctive responses from everyday life.
Here are five of those instincts.
Someone says something or proposes an idea. What's your instinctive response?
Most people's instinct is to oppose anything that anyone else initiates. Someone says an idea, you think of something wrong with it. Point out circumstances where it won't work. Someone proposes doing something, you think of a reason not to do it, or you suggest thinking about it before doing something ill-considered.
To be good at improv, you need to rewire yourself to have the exact opposite reaction. During a scene, whatever someone else does, your immediate, no-thought reaction must be to continue what has been started. Someone says an idea, you provide circumstances where it makes total sense (no matter how stupid or impractical the idea). Someone proposes doing something, you just do it immediately. Action right now, not later. Yes And, not "I need to think about it" or "But..."
No doubt the everyday instincts are useful sometimes in everyday life. They protect you from getting into trouble and getting bulldozed by pushy people with agendas that serve them and not you. But in improv, those instincts are not useful. Quite the opposite.
In everyday life, you are bombarded by so much stimulation, you need to constantly tune it out so you can focus on your own agenda. You need to filter stuff out and look inward to find your own course, or you'd never focus on anything long enough to get anywhere.
In improv, you need to do the exact opposite: look outward, try to see and notice everything, take as much in as you possibly can. When a scene begins, you have nothing except a suggestion. What makes a scene interesting is the way you deal with what is given to you. You need something to fuel your personal search engine, and that fuel is anything and everything that's happening in the scene outside of you.
It's ok to not speak right away. It's ok to have no agenda, no plan, no inner sense of direction. You can take your time to absorb what has just been said. That will fuel you to have interesting responses.
In everyday life, you constantly judge what you and others are doing. Is it good enough? Was this a success or a failure? What are the proper criteria? Am I doing better or worse than this other person? Am I meeting the standards? Am I reaching my goal? Am I getting closer to it? Let me measure my progress at every step.
In improv, judgement is death. If you are stopping to check if your line got a laugh, judging it a failure if it didn't, you'll suck. You'll suck because you'll drown out your imagination. Your spontaneous imagination is the source of all the amazing stuff that happens in improv, and it doesn't work by meeting defined criteria of quality. If you stop to judge, you'll limit yourself to things that you currently understand. Improv gets its amazingness by exploring beyond what you currently understand.
Exception: if a scene is not going anywhere, or lacks a platform, or has too much or not enough stuff to make connections (see Expand Or Contract Exercise), you can notice that and direct your imagination to add what's missing. This is very different from judging the funniness or goodness of the scene, of course. See Paradox Of Improv.
In everyday life, you usually try to know where something is heading before getting into it. You want a plan. The more an action threatens to open up the unknown, the more you want to stop and do research before committing yourself. Stop and consider the implications before acting. Think before speaking.
In improv, the more an action threatens to open things up, the more you need to do it. In improv, you must commit yourself before you understand the implications. Go out on a limb at every opportunity. The less you know about where a scene is heading, the more spontaneous and naturally imaginative you'll be. And the more the audience will enjoy the experience and admire your courage.
Improvising is acting without a plan. The word itself comes from Latin roots that mean "without looking ahead".
No doubt the everyday instinct to plan ahead is useful in a great many circumstances. It protects you from all sorts of risks, like bad investments. But in improv, there are no risks. Well, there's the risk of boring the audience, but looking ahead is how to ensure that, not protect against it.
Why are you tempted by all those other instincts? All of them are instincts to protect yourself. But when these instincts rear up so powerfully on stage, what are you protecting yourself from? You're protecting yourself from being seen.
When the magic of improv is in full flow, you are completely self-revealing. You trust your imagination without doubt or question, and nothing is more uniquely you than your imagination. If people see that, they see everything. The real reason that we block action, engage in gagging and cuing and a thousand other temptations, is because we want to control how we are perceived. We want people to perceive us in a positive way of our conscious choosing, not as the full and unique human beings that we really are.
In everyday life, maybe it's wise to keep people from seeing the inner you. If people knew how different you really are, if people knew what fascinates you and what frightens you and what obsesses you, they might use that information against you. So we all develop extraordinary skill at putting up a self-protective social façade that no one can see through.
Here are a few common façades people display in order to hide themselves in public:
| • | Playing dominant: push-push-pushing your own agenda, demanding, controlling, having a goal and an articulated reason for everything you do at all times, so everyone else is off balance and nothing unpredictable can happen--at least, not without The Rules telling exactly who gets blamed. Strike first, keep everyone in crisis, motivate by fear, and neither you nor anyone else will ever know what's really in your mind. |
| • | Feigning incompetence: pretending to be stupid, publicly fouling up everything you do, so that no one can judge what's really going on in your mind. Aha, you've cleverly deduced that people can't judge what they can't see. Improv players who "go blank" whenever put on the spot are feigning incompetence lest anyone see inside their imaginations. "Oh, I can't do that, I don't know anything about _____." |
| • | Playing the mute brute: (common in the rap-music world) Suggesting by your manner that you're an animal, who just might become irrationally violent if bothered in the slightest. Saying little, and when you open your mouth, speaking repetitiously, inarticulately, and vaguely threateningly: "Yaw know what I sayin'? Yaw know what I sayin'? Yaw know what I sayin'?" (Yes, we know what you're saying: that you want to stay protected within that shell because you're afraid of what people might do if they saw inside.) |
| • | Playing the smartass: (or playing the class clown) Being "funny" by resorting to memorized, repeatable tricks--especially, being "funny" by saying things that get a laugh, not because they momentarily move people into the world of genuine perception, but because they fear that if they don't laugh, they'll be seen as taking a side--the losing side. Smartass humor turns every moment of life into a competition, where everyone's self-respect (including the smartass's) is always on the line. In such a dangerous world, there's no room for anything but calculated imagination. A person playing the smartass is making sure that everyone else feels as vulnerable as he does, ensuring that everyone else plays the same self-protective game. (Yucch!) |
To do really great improv, you need to recognize that whatever character you play in everyday life, it's not you. It's just a character that you play--for real reasons of self-protection, growing out of real perceptions and real inventiveness--but it's no more you than any other character you could play. Improv lets you explore all the other ways you can be, completely without social cost or consequence!
People crave the freedom of exposing their true, spontaneous imaginations so much, they're willing to pay good money to see other people do it. Just seeing someone on stage, responding with their real imagination, without self-censoring or controlling or making damn sure they come off looking a certain way, is exhilarating. It's magic. No, it's better than magic because it's real. The audience gets a taste of the astounding flexibility and inventiveness of the human mind when presented with the unpredictable.
The instinct to hide is probably the hardest to give up, but giving it up is probably the most valuable thing you can do in improv. That, more than anything else, releases your unique talent--which includes more than you can ever know. When you are on stage, you accept that other people will see inside you and even judge you, and you have no control over their judgement. All you can do is listen, reveal whatever your imagination gives you, and let people make of it what they will. Most people wouldn't do that. Most people would either try to "be funny" or clam up and block action. That's why they're not on stage.
Version 24 2009-Jul-21 06:05 UTC
Last edit by 114.74.134.55
