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There are five pillars of movement practice that I think translate quite neatly into improv practice.
They are:
**Stillness Joint Articulation Coordination Improvisation Voice**
Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at each one in turn. This week …
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It obviously delighted me when I found out that the fourth pillar of movement practice was called improvisation. In a movement context the sequence is: you learn what your body feels like at rest, you strengthen your individual joints and range of movement, then you coordinate several sets of these to do something complex like throwing a ball or swinging a bat. Improvisation is the culmination of all of that - stepping out onto the pitch and playing a game.
Once you get to this stage, you’re testing all your preparation in a live practice where you don’t know exactly what will happen. You’re not throwing a ball in perfect circumstances - you’re doing it with your weight on one foot, in a half turn, as another player thunders towards you.
(I have no idea exactly what sport I’m describing here, by the way)
You prepare as well as you possibly can and then you surrender to the thrill of the game.
It’s like when people say to me:
Wait a minute, you’re rehearsing for an improv show. I thought you made it up as you went along? AHA!
And then they point at me accusingly and chuckle to themselves as if they’ve caught me in some masterful logic trap that exposes me for the fraud I am.
But this is normal in sport. You don’t know exactly what will happen on the field - so all you can do is train up individual skills and then put them together on the fly. You don’t know exactly what will happen in a game of football - but you know you’ll have to take corners, pass the ball, make space and deliver shots accurately on target. A thousand other things will happen that you can’t control but getting comfortable with having the ball at your feet is invaluable.
And it’s the same for improv. You just have to get out there and see how your individual skills come together in practice. Can you create a new character, that moves the story forward and endears themselves to the audience, all whilst accurately miming preparing a full Sunday roast dinner and ideally, saying something funny or memorable at the same time? And can you do all this when you have no idea what your scene partner will do or say along the way?
There’s no way to intellectualise that process in the moment, we can’t brute force think our way through it. Just as the raw maths of where to move your hand to catch a ball that’s barreling towards your head would be impossible for the average human to write out longhand. And yet, most of us still catch the ball.
It comes down to trust - in the process, in the ensemble and in ourselves. And knowing that we get better every single time we leave the comfort of the rehearsal room for the wild adventure of a live performance.
Because every time we do, we drive the theory a little deeper into our joints, sinews and bones, where next time it’s available to us at an instinctual level.
<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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