There’s a guy called Jozef Frucek that I find really interesting.

He isn’t an improviser. It’s hard to explain what he is really. He’s done so many different things - basketball player, physical theatre practitioner, artist, hunter, athletic physiotherapist, natural movement facilitator.

I like him because he’s so unlike me. He’s really embraced the manly man’s man thing. There’s one mad story where he talks about how he used to hunt animals with his father. And then his dad would get him to hold the animals internal organs to feel the different textures so he could work out if the deer was healthy.

And who hasn’t had a lovely afternoon feeling the organs of wild animals with their parental figure/ guardian?

(My dad and I went more down the 99 ice-cream with a flake route.)

But that’s what I mean, his experiences are different. It makes his ideas so fascinating to me.

One of the things Jozef did as an artist was play around with these giant logs of wood or slabs of clay. He’d slam them around the room live, in the art gallery - creating an infinite series of evolving compositions. It was a thrilling display of physical prowess, something that has come to define his work over the years.

He’s an artist but he also has an 8-pack. You get the idea.

Here’s what he said about the process:

When we sculpt the environment, the environment sculpts us in return. So the materials you embrace, the materials you work with, there's kind of reciprocal relationship there. And so I know if I spend a considerable amount of time with wrestlers, my body will be re-sculpted in a certain way. My brain will be re-sculpted in a certain way. If I work with wood and I understand the quality of wood, I will be capable of understanding something about life, about … [traditional] medicines, I will probably be able to understand something about fascia, about ecology too.

Now this, I LOVE.

The materials we choose to sculpt with, sculpt us the hell back.

That’s really brilliant.

And it makes sense, right? If you spend eight hours a day, rehearsing musical improv - it’s going to change you in specific, profound ways. Your brain will be rewired to rhyme effortlessly. You’ll unconsciously look for opportunities to synchronise dance movements. Even the way you want to tell stories, the characters you tend to play, how close to the surface your emotions are - that will be changed by the the material you’re working with - in this case SHOW TUNES.

Whatever kind of improv you choose to focus on, do it knowing it’ll change the kind of performer you are and, probably, the kind of person you are. Short form will make you faster, wittier, capable of a thousand ideas per minute. Harolds will (depending on where you learn them) make you adept at group dynamics, idea generation, thematic connections, hard premise.

I used to be so comfortable being fast and funny off the back line. Now, after a decade exploring relationship-led improv, I’m like a deer in the headlights in a game of World’s Worst. Jozef’s process is all the explanation I need as to why that is.

There’s a popular idea that surfaces on social media every few years that you become the dead average of the five people you spend the most time with. I think that’s an extension of the same idea.

Choose the people you collaborate with. Be specific about the kind of improv you want to do.

Because as you learn to shape improv, improv is shaping you.