A few weeks ago, in a Truth in Comedy improv class, I was watching some of my brilliant students perform when inspiration stuck and I started scribbling down some notes on my iPad. I was trying to define the kind of improv that I personally love - the sort of improv I want to perform, watch and ultimately teach. To do that, I also had to define the opposing behaviour.
Here is the original note, dashed out in a couple of minutes in class. The green column indicates my preferred mode of play (and no, I don’t know why the arrows are going FROM green TO red).
Reading it back, I think I caught something valuable in that moment. But I want to unpack it further in this essay. What holds up? What needs more thought? And what did I miss?
This is pretty fertile ground for me, so I’ll present the first three this week and continue in next week’s essay.
To define my terms here - I’m talking about scene initiation. You could enter a scene with an idea already percolating in your brain (pulled from an audience suggestion or group game that unpacked that suggestion - monologue, discussion, invocation etc). If you do then your task is to try to communicate that premise to your team mates, heightening it to its logical conclusion. Or you could come in with a blank mind, trusting that the suggestion (and all its network of connotations) is hanging in the air waiting to be grasped at the right moment. You might even take an emotional cue from the suggestion - a spark to ignite the scene. Ultimately though, you find the scene in the other person.
Premise improv is incredibly popular. Famously, it is taught to great acclaim by the UCB theatres in the US and by our own Free Association here in London. It sets students up for success and allows them to create credible and funny sketches very quickly indeed.
Organic improv, by contrast, can take years (decades?) to master and will ensure its practitioners many moments of complete cringe along the way.
But OH MY when you see a group that’s truly mastered it, for me the difference is like night and day. Organic improv allows for real discovery. It allows improvisers to create things in the moment that neither could have imagined before they stepped on stage. That kind of theatre is like catnip to me. It’s why I want to make theatre in the first place and it’s the reason I think improv has so much to teach the wider theatrical community.
I love watching good premise-based improv and it’s often notably better than students of the same level doing organic scenes. But for me, there comes a level of mastery where the truly spontaneous stuff takes flight and leaves everything else in the dust - lyrical, authentic, funny and kind. True collaborative story-telling.
Bill Arnett has a simple exercise that teaches this concept extremely clearly.
This is a nuanced differentiation for me. I see a lot of improvisers think that they are doing grounded emotional scenes because they say things like “I love you - you drive me to distraction” as if saying it out loud makes it so. But that is simply telling an audience that something is true. It is nowhere near as effective as showing it.
On a simple level, that means having our characters demonstrate the depth of their love, rather than merely stating it. What acts of service might communicate love? How can we see you being driven to distraction in front of our eyes?
That’s the basic idea, and implementing that alone will do wonders for your scene work. But there is also a deeper level that begins by acknowledging that we are all world-class experts on body language. We know when there’s an imbalance between what someone says with their mouth and what someone says with their body. It’s a survival mechanism that we wield mostly unconsciously. But it’s a real problem for actors who often need to sell emotional content, even as their body language betrays them.
The more we can actually couch our scenes in truth, the easier that dance becomes. As improvisers we are lucky that the spontaneous nature of our art form gives us several advantages over traditional scripted performers. In a play, you are required to act surprised night after night on a specific cue. In improv, the performer is as surprised as the character by the events of the scene. No additional acting required.
I firmly believe we should glory in this quirk of our art form and use it to our advantage.
Try this exercise from Joe Bill intended to focus your attention on your emotions as the scene starts.