Humans love to be creative. Storytelling, music, and drawing have been our cosmic pastimes for hundreds of thousands of years—and yet! There is this prevailing idea that unless you’re really good at something creative you shouldn’t even bother doing it. I find this eternally frustrating. I can’t draw well at all, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stop doodling. I can sing pretty well, but I absolutely adore hearing my wonderfully tone-deaf friends sing because it’s not about the skill, it’s about the action of expression—it’s about the joy of making noise! Improv is very much the same.
Now, when I talk about improv, I don’t just mean the kind of thing you see on shows like Who’s Line is it Anyway?. Improv isn’t always about comedy. You already improvise every day (unless you’re some kind of megalomaniac who scripts every conversation they have, in which case you’ve got an entirely different set of problems). Improvising at its basest state is simply about agreeing to a premise and building on it without preparation (“Yes, And” as it’s better known). It’s not as foreign of a concept as it might seem. Making things up as we go is part of the human experience!
A friend of mine did a project that required interviewing people on the street. He decided to interview people on his campus, giving them the simple prompt of “You’re from an odd small town in Idaho. A local rich man was found dead, face down in a bird bath. How do you think he died?” That’s all it took for these random students from all different backgrounds to go absolutely wild, coming up with increasingly ridiculous ways a man could die in a bird bath. But improv isn’t always that elaborate! I often hear from friends raising kids that in playing with the kids they get to relearn how fun and important play is. Kids are fantastic excuses and great collaborators for playing. They have unbridled joy and creativity and WILL give you the wildest possible prompts you could’ve ever asked for. As long as you engage in any way, they will have a blast. But! Improv can be even simpler!! I’ve gotten to emcee pre-shows for rowdy movie viewings at theaters, and every time I am delighted at how willing the audience is to play with us. They will happily highfive us when we walk by, answer the random questions we ask, or just gasp in fake shock when an obvious twist happens. This too is improv! It’s agreeing on the premise and building on it. In this case the premise was “These lunatics in costumes should be treated like serious performers telling a serious story.” In engaging with us, they become part of the fun! It can be just that easy!
It’s delightful what happens when you give people the space and permission to play.
Of course, like drawing or singing, improv is a skill that you can develop! There are specific classes people offer for improv comedy to develop that kind of performance style. I honestly would recommend them! Not even just to get good on stage, but as a way to shake some of those built in barriers that keep folks from engaging with that instinct to play. It’s awkward and terrifying to get on stage for the first time and not know what you’re doing, let alone to do it in front of other people, but it is so damn rewarding to come out the other side, I promise.
Comedy classes aren’t the only thing you can do, though! Any game that has an element of thinking on your feet can help. This can be anywhere from as complicated as a tabletop role playing game like Dungeons & Dragons or as simple as something as prompt games like Quiplash. At the most basic, keep your ears open and listen to those around you and think about how you can build on their ideas. Anything that gets you in that mindset of play helps!
I think the big killer that gets in the way is cynicism and embarrassment. To accept a premise often means having to accept things that are knowingly ridiculous, and to build off of it is to (in a sense) lower yourself to that level of ridiculousness. It risks making you look foolish. What if you make a choice and it’s the wrong one? Everyone’s gonna laugh at you and in a bad way this time! And I won’t lie, sometimes in improv you get it wrong, and it can be embarrassing. But! That’s a part of play! No one will get everything right 100% of the time and that’s okay! The trick is to laugh at yourself, lean into it, and don’t give up on playing.
I didn’t say it’s easy; I said you can do it.
I haven’t done improv comedy since I was in school, but I use the skills I learned from it all the time. I think it genuinely helps my day-to-day life! It makes me better at listening to the people around me, better at leaning into that instinct to play, and it gets me to view the people around me as collaborators to build with.
Life is so much better when you let yourself play. So ‘yes and’ and see what happens. You won’t regret it.
Sam is unsure what exact words describe them best: Lunatic has been used, Gothic Romantic is apt, and Big ol’ Nerd is reductive but true. Mostly they just like stories in whatever form stories can be found. Sam specializes in Frankenstein, running “The Uncanny Productions” on YouTube, but they also dabble with podcasts, singing, and theatre as well. They have a DVD collection that’s long outgrown its shelf, a coffin they use as a desk, and an unrelenting joy for things that are spooky, ridiculous, or magical.
