Starting something new is always exciting. And a new improv team creates the possibilities for lots of newness - new people to play with, new formats to explore, new stories to tell.
I’ve started many an improv team in my time and I love the sense of excitement that comes with that step into the unknown. It’s a wonderful feeling.
In the past, I’ve written, somewhat glibly, about #3 The life-cycle of an improv group and more recently about what to do #108 After the improv honeymoon but I’ve never actually given advice on taking that very first step.
Here are my top tips:
- Cast your net wide We often get hung up on recruiting the very best people for our team. But the truth is there is no objective standard for improv. There are people who play the same way you do - and the temptation is to assign more value to those players - but actually that isn’t a great way to build a team. It reminds me of being back at school, and how so much weight was given to numeracy and literacy, almost to the exclusion of everything else. In improv, great storytellers and comedians are often lauded and the talents of exceptional support players can be overlooked. Don’t fall into this trap, improv thrives on diversity, ask a range of performers to join. People can surprise you. Give them a chance to do so.
- Stay loose Don’t nail down your format immediately. Just get into the room and play together. Improv doesn’t require everything to be worked out in advance. Almost every show I’ve ever created has changed dramatically between inception and execution. Sure, it helps to have a broad idea of the kind of thing you want to make, but there’s a limit to what you can do over WhatsApp - the magic happens when you start making each other laugh. The one defining quality of a writer is that they write. They don’t talk about writing. And so it is with improvisers…
- Share the admin I’ve said this one before, but it bears repeating. Don’t let one person organise everything. It isn’t good for them (they burn out quickly) and it isn’t good for the group (horrible things happen when one or two people start to think of it as their team). From the beginning make a commitment that a number of people are going to arrange rooms, manage the finances, lead sessions, recruit coaches and any and all of the other tiny multitudinous tasks that make up running and sustaining an improv team. It’s amazing how quickly habits form, if you put the admin on one person for too long, the expectation is that they’ll just keep doing it. And that, my friends, is a thankless task, that almost always ends in recriminations and resentment. Not fun!
- Be sociable Easy one, this. Don’t just do improv. Make the time to get to know each other and hang out as friends. I struggle to think of an activity that is more helpful to an ensemble than this - spend time together, share your lives, dare to a dream a little. Improv rewards moments spent not improvising but simply existing in each others’ orbits.
- Enjoy the moment I remember being at school and realising everyone was in a rush to grow up. Tweens desperate to go to secondary school, teenagers sneaking into pubs brandishing fake IDs. I don’t credit myself with much wisdom as a child but this one thing I saw clearly - children have their whole lives to be adults. And in the same way, you have all the time in the world to become improv veterans, with all the wonder and disappointments that brings. I still smile whenever I think of my first improv teams - they feel like endless summers. So my last tip is enjoy it. You’ve stumbled down the rabbit hole of endless possibility with a gang of kind, thoughtful, hilarious people at your side. Don’t make it more complicated that it needs to be. Tomorrow can be for world domination, today is for board games and Bunny bunny in the back garden.
<aside>
💡 Hey, my name’s Chris Mead. I write an article about improv almost every week. You can get the latest in your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter. Or check out the archive.
</aside>