<aside> 💡 Please note this post is part of the Seven habits of highly effective improvisers series. Please click here for an overview.

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There’s a style of play that demands that you throw yourself into a scene with wild abandon. You just let yourself go and become lost in the worlds you create. We support this philosophy a lot in beginners courses because we want to get students out of their heads and find that sense of play.

And so we say:

“Be unafraid of failing. Make friends with it. Failure is just another step on the way to success. In improv we’re not necessarily trying to fail but we don’t fear it.

“Go in with a blank mind and just see what happens. The best scenes are ones you discover, not ones you create.”

“Jump off the side of the building and work out what to do on the way down. Jason, I meant that metaphorically, come away from the window.”

All of this supports the notion that you have to leave your inner critic at the door of an improv class. That thinking about the scene ahead of time will only lead to stilted, unplayful scenes.

Sometimes we label this style of play as heart improvising. As opposed to head improvising which is far more about crafting great dialogue, having a birds-eye view of show structure or telling a compelling story.

Personally, I think we lean towards teaching heart improv to new students because naturally most people will have a tendency to overthink at first - and without experience, thinking means you’re never going to get in the arena, much less join the wild dance. It’s a rare student indeed that can fling themselves into scenes immediately without a shred of self-consciousness.

And when you’ve been adulting all day, there’s something beautiful in that momentum and release. It feels like running towards the horizon, arms flung back, unafraid of falling.

That sense of freedom can carry a student far - in fact many short form games work best when a performer goes all in on the format for the brief duration of the scene. It’s also undeniable that watching people have fun is fun. If you’re watching a team that is having a great time and making each other laugh, often thats 70% of the battle - playfulness begets playfulness and everyone has a great time.

But mathematical readers will have noticed that 70% is not 100%. If generous, selfless play is the main ingredient - what special sauce constitutes the remaining 30%?

I would argue it’s reintroducing thinking into the equation. It’s being so confident in your sense of play that you can let a bit of thoughtfulness back into your improv.

ENGAGE VIDEO GAME SIMILE!

Thinking is like using your brakes in Mario Kart. If you apply them before you start the race, you’re never going to get off the starting grid. You’ll just wheel-spin in place however much you pump that accelerator. Once you’re moving at top speed, you’ll find you don’t need your brakes at all in the 50cc (beginner) and 100cc (intermediate) game modes. A sense of playfulness will see you racking up Gold Cups throughout the mushroom kingdom. But once you hit 150cc or most importantly the super-advanced 200cc mode - braking becomes essential to stop you spinning off the track. You actively need to brake to finish the course. Furthermore, braking allows you to pull off exciting drift manoeuvres at high speed, leading to some breathtaking stunts.

DISENGAGE VIDEO GAME SIMILE!

You can probably tell I’m pretty pleased with that improv/ video game analogy but even if you don’t play Nintendo, I hope you can grasp my meaning? At slower speeds, especially when we’re at a standstill, braking is inconsequential and even actively unhelpful at times. But once you start going really fast, it becomes your best friend.

We teach beginner students not to think so they can have fun at slower speeds whilst learning how to improvise - even when we start going faster, that maxim holds true much of the time. But to be truly great you need to be thoughtful and playful at the same time.

And that means playing intentionally. It means having that sense of play so firmly rooted in your improv that you are able to apply a layer of critical thought without slowing down your improv kart.