6 Ways Improv Transformed Me

Everybody has their improv story, how they found it, what they learned. This is a part of mine.

I became more confident in my creative process

When I started writing I would always be questioning what I wrote, worrying if I was going anywhere with a piece.

Doing hundreds of scenes and messing them up, sometimes finding gold, and watching others do the same made me less precious about the creative process. I don’t have to judge myself by every single line I write or every line I speak. I don’t have to judge myself by a scene that I do, or even a show. I get lost and find my way back into a scene.

I am learning. When I am creating something I am learning what it is as I create it, so its normal to question and doubt, they don’t have to be art destroying shadows. Getting better doesn’t mean being perfect, it means getting back on track faster. Or getting better means something else, it’s up to me what that means to me.

 

I saw that a mistake can be an opportunity

Sometimes in a scene an improviser makes a mistake and that turns into what the scene is about. I saw a great scene set in an office where a character was named Frank or Francine and it was hilarious seeing that inform the reality of the scene. Seeing one co-worker justify why they thought Francine looked like a Frank was funny, and could have happened in real-life.

Art reflects reality, and reality has mistakes.

 

I am learning to enjoy surprises more

I always had an idea of what a scene was about and got frustrated by people bringing in completely different ideas, but I did get that is the point. I want my fellow improvisers to surprise me.

This is still a learning point for me as I like to look ahead and know what is going on. But I am keeping alive the joy of surprises in my mind, and jumping on them more.

Photo by mohamed Abdelgaffar on Pexels.com

I found friends

I meet theatre-makers, clowns, circus artists, musicians, weirdos, accountants, teachers, and other sorts doing improv. Some of them are my friends.

Getting used to meeting new people and creating random scenes helped me socialise more. Having a conversation with a stranger is just not as taxing as pretending you are their brother and you are both carving a canoe.

I also like meeting people that I would never have met, except they turned up to the same improv class as me.

 

I work with others differently

After improvising a while it changed how I approach any kind of work with other people. First I try to understand where they are coming from, then work out where we agree. Before I saw it as win-lose, one person has an idea or opinion that will be the best and win out over the others. Now I can see that ideas are shaped by a group, whether you know it or not.

 

I think about what I want to say

Improv is fun, and its also treated as kind of disposable. You do a scene, its gone, be ready for the next one. I think that’s fine and partially true. But a show is still a show, you are getting up in front of people and presenting something. You have an opportunity to show whatever you want, your kind of comedy, your kind of drama, whatever you choose.

After a while of playing different characters you might find some of them boring, and get tired of playing certain scenes. It’s worth thinking about why that is and what you are looking to get out of making art.

Excuses for Intimacy

I was in a conversation and I heard a nice phrase about how certain social activities are an excuse for intimacy. I started thinking about art and how a lot of it is an excuse for intimacy.

I think theatre is a chance for the audience to explore their emotions and see parts of their lives reflected on stage. The actors working together are also exploring that, but it’s the performance that allows that out into the audience for everybody to share.

Improv is similar. A lot of people enjoy improv classes because they are a chance to play. Play is a vital part of connecting to others and experimenting with new ideas, and also recharging ourselves.

When I started improvising on some level I suspected that there were ideas or techniques that I could learn that would open new doors in getting better. And that is true, you can learn tools to help you create scenes. But what makes me really feel more confident about improvising is getting to know my fellow performers better, and learning how to see the person behind the play.

On a fundamental level the joy of performing is being around other people, making a crew, hanging out after shows, making friends and enjoying the process of learning about others. That joy is the fuel that propels everything.

Life is one long excuse for intimacy.

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Need an excuse for intimacy? I am running Storytelling workshops near Waterloo on Tuesday evenings. Come down for £5 and tell some stories.

Check here for more details.

Chat with Beings

Beings create strange worlds and even stranger fun.  Susan Harrison and Andrew Gentilli improvise unusual characters alongside Dylan Buckle on music, creating a uniquely atmospheric show.

I sat down with Susan and Andrew to have a chat about how they work together, and why it’s so fun to do Beings for them.

Emotional Attention and Play

I went to a taster session in Meisner Technique from the London Meisner Company last Sunday, and took loads of really good ideas away from it.

One that resonated with me, especially related to improvising, is how children are quite free and how we learn to close that up as we grow up into a society. It reminded me of one of my favourite clips.

 

Children are quite free improvisers partially because they don’t have the same worries as adults. Kermit is thinking about making a show, and maybe how much its costing, and probably much more. He is still improvising and working really well with the kid but I think it’s Joey who is the star of the show here.

Joey is just playing around with her friend the frog. She has all of her attention on him when she’s playing. When she says ‘Cookie Monster’ she’s watching him to see his response, and she knows exactly what to say when he leaves. That’s what makes it so funny, and her performance so adorable.

Though I haven’t fully studied Meisner Technique, I could see how closely the teacher Robyn paid attention to details and how the technique brought out the same kind of attention between students practising it. It’s palpable, you can feel when a performer is tuned into the other person.

This kind of attention is something that I have seen in  improvisers and clown performers that I love, sometimes its attention on the other performers, sometimes its attention on the audience.

I also saw it in my elementary students when I taught in South Korea. They could have short attention spans, but when they played a game they liked or had an argument then suddenly their attention was like a laser beam drilling into what was going on. Every flip of a card or roll of a dice had their full attention. Victories were exulted over like Olympic wins, defeats were mourned with agonised wails and waving of arms. It was great drama. Then they immediately forgot the losers and winners and moved onto the next part of the lesson or school day.

This is the dynamic I love to see in performing. Full investment and openness from the performers.

 

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Come and play at storytelling. I am running £5 workshops near Waterloo on Tuesday evenings. Open yourself up to your impulses, and learn how to weave them into stories.

Check here for more details.

Finding Your Voice: The Quest

“Finding Your Voice” -people talk about it in writing classes and improvising classes, in standup as well. In pretty much every kind of creative lecture or class I have seen.

How do you find your voice though? Here are my thoughts, with some exercises you might find useful.

My Voice – Preparations

When I started improvising the excitement of making live comedy shows and learning how to improvise was enough to keep me occupied. The rush of getting up in front of an audience and making a show was an overwhelming buzz and most of my early shows were me just enjoying the ride.

But after about 3 or 4 years of improvising I started thinking about my skills and what I needed to do to get better at improvising. I went to more physical theatre workshops and musical ones to see what it was like using those skills. I had never used those skills and it was a big challenge to go to one of those classes for the first time (my first more physical class was with Kate Hilder, who I strongly recommend for anybody wanting to experiment with that. It was a supportive and excellently led workshop).

After doing ‘things I am not good at’  I started to realise more about the ‘things I am good at’. Things I didn’t need to work on, that I had been doing since childhood and took for granted. If new skills are like parties across town with new and exciting people I have never met before then old skills are the parks and woods near my house where I know the shortcuts and hidden glades.

In Chicago after I suggested a school debate scene was between the characters of Life and Death a classmate said they loved my epic and mythical impulses. To me that kind of offer seems like an obvious way to spice up proceedings, but I realised that not everybody is into mythology as much as me. I’ve been reading myths and comics and novels that are retellings of myths since I was a kid. All of that stuff is within arms reach of my impulses.

My fellow classmates all had their own offers that I could never have come up with. We’ve all been training since we were born, without knowing it. Learning secrets about ourselves and the world. I thought I had no skills, I didn’t do drama or learn an instrument. But I have ancient stories living in my veins. My heart beats with the sound of the deep dark woods. I wrote hundreds of stories and ideas, and read thousands of books as a kid. I was preparing to be a storyteller without even knowing it.

Learning these things helped me realise what I had that I was taking for granted, but it didn’t completely answer my question about what my voice is. I still wondered what kind of shows I wanted to do, where my performance career would lead me.

© lilivanili (CC BY 2.0)

Your Voice – Motivation

The other part of your voice is your motivation as a human performer. If your unique skills are your voice quality, then your motivation must be the topics you choose to write songs about.

Here are some things you can do to reflect on your work and see what areas work for you:

1. Ask a fellow performer what surprises them about your performance, or what they enjoy that only you do.
2. Make a list of 10 things you enjoyed doing in shows/performances. Are any of them connected? Have you done some of those things since childhood?
3. Make a list of 10 things from projects that were unsatisfying to you. Translate each negative into a positive. Something was missing, what was the ingredient you wanted to add to make it satisfying? Then go one step further, why is that ingredient important to you. Then go another step, what actions could you take to sprinkle in that ingredient?

Here is my example of number 3.

• I did a run of experimental shows which were based on myth, but we didn’t get a lot of audience for them.
• Missing ingredient – audience (seems obvious I know).
• Why is that important? Because I wanted people to see what we were working on, and also get feedback.
• Actions: We could advertise the next shows even more, network with storytelling nights and try to perform there, hire a director to give us feedback on the show.

 

We did advertise the shows more, and got gigs from doing that. Apart from that practical benefit I found a deeper message underneath this questioning. I realised I had avoided advertising the shows I was doing, or just done the minimum.

When I was younger I made funny sketches and plays, and couldn’t wait to show it off to my adults in the family. “Come and look at this!” was easy for me to say. But coming into making shows as an adult I was shy about it, and never realised how much I had lost that spirit of wanting to share things from the joy of sharing.

The message I heard was that people sharing their voice is important to me. When I see that in a show it sticks with me, the teachers I respect have a way of encouraging that sharing from their students.

It frustrates me when I see beginning performers telling themselves they will be bad before they even try something, because I think the most important thing is for them to know that they have something amazing to offer, and they are in the enviable position of not knowing what it is yet. They are at the start of their adventure. They don’t know how much they are going to grow.

Conclusion – Your Quest

You have a voice, even if you don’t know what it is yet. You can get hints about that by reflecting on your specific skills and also what inspires/annoys you. If you turn a missing ingredient into an action then you may find a deeper insight underneath.

You made preparations when you were younger for the quest you are on now. You have a compass to show you which way to go. Maybe you don’t know how to read it just yet, maybe it’s recently been spinning wildly and you need to re-calibrate, but it’s trying to show you someplace.

Current Workshops

I will be using my passion for sharing your creative process in a series of workshops in London. Tuesdays from 12th March to 21st May. Check out this link for more details. Come down and let’s quest together.