What does good improv look like?

I’ve been asking myself that question for many years. I know what good improv feels like, from the inside, on the occasions where it’s happening whilst I’m on stage, but I’d love to have a visual, you know? Something to keep in my head and aim for.

For a while I thought good improv might be getting to a point where it was indistinguishable from scripted work. That if you rehearsed hard enough, and read all the books, and visited the guru on the mountain top, and were fortunate enough to be bitten by a radioactive TJ & Dave that one day you would be able to produce something that was on a par with your local AmDram group’s production of Death of a Salesman.

But the goal isn’t to imitate another art form - an improv show is never going to be as slick as a well-rehearsed scripted show. The plot will undoubtably be less cohesive, there’ll be numerous inconsistencies in how the characters are portrayed … also the entire production design will often consist of four chairs.

So if we’re not trying to dupe our audience into thinking they’re watching something that they’re not, what are we trying to do? What has improv got to offer that other kinds of theatre do not?

For me the answer is its liveness. Nothing can touch improv in terms of how in the moment it is. The audience is literally watching the show be created in front of them. So good improv looks like a team of performers receiving and honouring each other’s ideas with care and compassion.

It was the brilliant instructor Liz Joynt Sanberg that first articulated this to me. Consider a big West End-style musical dance number. In a scripted show, the best version of that dance will have all the performers with their faces to the audiences doing their best Chorusline T&A routine. They don’t have to look at each other because they’ve done the exact same dance number a hundred times in rehearsal. That is what defines excellence in a rehearsed medium.

But for improv, excellence looks very different. The same dance break would have improvisers looking at each other, checking in, creating moves that were simple and easy to follow but visually striking. Not everyone would move at the same time, there would be evidence of some dancers being slow to pick up ensemble movements and scrambling to get into position. The wow factor in improv doesn’t come from perfection but in an ensemble’s ability to communicate and respond to each whilst performing their little socks off in real time. You’re watching an act of co-creation unfold before your very eyes.

I am often reminded of the idea that an improv scene is actually two scenes superimposed on top of each other. There’s the overt theatrical scene that you are presenting and the scene of the real-life improvisers creating that other scene. And the audience sees both. Indeed a skilled group of improvisers can actually play with that disparity, emphasising the story one moment and the process the next.

The joy of improv, the thing that audiences gets to experience that no other live medium can offer - is that you can see the creative process as it happens. You can observe the decisions being made and watch the results play out in front of you. It’s this essential liveness, with all the messiness and contradictions it entails, that makes our art form unique.

So I’m no longer reaching to make a show that appears indistinguishable from scripted work. I’m trying to build an ensemble who will allow a show to be joyfully alive in the moment - whose top priority is the absolute support of their scene partners -whether that journey leads to a scene of heartfelt vulnerability or barely contained hysteria. That’s the improv that I adore.

To be beautifully alive in the moment, with all our flaws and strengths proudly on display, that’s what good improv looks like to me.

<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.

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