My brilliant team mate Aih Mendoza recently posted this poem on social media.

Layli Long Soldier is an Oglala Lakota poet who uses her art to advocate against the continued systemic oppression of indigenous populations. I think her work is quite, quite brilliant and I encourage you to seek her out and read further on the important causes she champions.

As beautiful and unblinking as the message of the poem is, I want to concentrate on its structure for a moment.

As we read down the page, we are presented with multiple ideas. Each one is distinct and separate from the other options presented beside it. We can read the poem over and over again and have a different experience each time.

The poem starts with a single choice, expands into many choices and then ends with a sole, inevitable ending. There’s also a line where every alternative is the same - an idea so important that the author overrides our ability to choose for a moment.

Reading this poem makes me feel like I’m in an improv show.

Craig Cackowski once presented this beautiful thought experiment to me.

An improv stage. Two performers prepare to enter. Between them, an infinite number of worlds collapse and reform. Possibilities beyond comprehension. Now, they step onto the stage and look at each other. And that great roiling infinity of choices collapse into the merely trillions. One performer sighs. The other inclines their head. The number of possible scenes shrink still further into the billions. Each passing moment translates more of the show from the potential into the real. Until finally it ends. And now there’s only one possibility remaining.

The show you did.

What the structure of the poem teaches me is that as you’re improvising, you’re aware of the other choices you could have made. Read Obligations 2 again - as you follow any given path, you’re still able to take in the roads not taken. Your awareness of what you didn’t choose has an impact too. I feel that keenly when I’m improvising. It’s exciting to acknowledge the rush of potentiality cascading around you but then to reach out and make a choice.

There’s such power in that.

The first half of an improv show should have the same structure as the poem, spinning out of a single idea, creating new characters, new ideas, new locations. But then ideally there’s a moment around halfway through where instead of continuing to create MORE of everything, you begin to do the opposite. Where you braid together the strands of what you’ve already made and dedicate your remaining choices to creating a cohesive climax. Sure, you could do anything, but where does the choices you’ve already made authentically lead you?

It’s a diamond. You start with a single suggestion, from it you make choices that create a multitude of ideas and then all you have to do is craft a conclusion that feels earned from what came before.

And to end where I began, wouldn’t it be wonderful if improv shows also had something to say about the world around us?

Art has the ability to affect real change.

After all, we shouldn’t be scared of our own potential.

<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>