Improv As an Act of Love

A dear friend and improv teacher of mine, Cliff Ash, passed away in May of this year. He loved improv in a way I admired and that still try to emulate. At the end of the first classes I ever took from him, he said, “Improv is an act of love.” He repeated this sentiment to me many times, and we spoke about it often. Now that he is gone, I’m left to contemplate the phrase.

I think being someone on stage and listening and supporting is a very loving thing to do. But, I also think our best scenes come from a place of love. Our best scenes happen when we are approaching comedy, finding unusual things, justifying our character, and heightening our games with love.

Being in love can be compared, and often is in music and poetry and stories, to being in a trance. I mean that it brings us beyond reason. It takes a portion of control from our personhood and leaves at the whim of love.

When a person does something unreasonable, we look at it, and we say, “well, hey, what the heck, Derek! Why are you doin that? You know better than to rip up the tile floor in the kitchen, bud!” But if Derek turns and says, “Well, you see, I’m in love.” We think that’s wonderful, we understand, and we are happy for Derek and whatever he might be doing with the kitchen floor. We may still want the kitchen floor to go back to the way it was, but we empathize with Derek.

When we find a comedic premise, or “unusual thing,” in improv, or sketch, or any kind of comedy, we are looking for an attribute that someone pursues past the point of reason. We look for something our character believes so wholeheartedly that they relinquish their otherwise good and reliable sense of reason and give in to their desire to chase this belief.

Good comedic characters are in the same kind of trance that love creates in us. They follow something to an extreme, past reason and blindly act on that desire.

So, when we ask a comedic character why they are doing that thing, it makes sense that they are overcome with the feeling, the way that we are when we feel love. Naturally, they would know exactly why they are doing this; and probably feel that it fully justifies whatever behavior they are doing.

Have you ever had a friend that kept going back to the same terrible relationship again and again, even though they knew it would end badly? Time after time, you watch them return to a person they knew would make them miserable? But because you know they return for love, you can’t help but think, “Well, I just really hope it works out for them this time.” That’s the energy, passion, and closed-eyed stupidity with which a comedic character returns to their game. A character may know the thing they desire will make them suffer or destroy them, but they are in love with it, entranced by it.

Hate is often similarly described in this way. It’s a feeling strong enough that it pushes us past reason and into a realm where we can justify acting on pure emotion. So why not let our comedic characters follow hate? Huh? Why not? Well, ok, I hear your demands for me to offer a rebuttal to the above argument based on this statement I just made about loves opposite, and I’m going to do it, alright.

There are a few reasons “follow your game like you hate it,” is ultimately just a worse way to look at it; the most critical and least useful reason being that an audience does not connect as well with a character that chases hate. If love is to give someone or something an infinity of credit, to always accept that someone is still good despite their actions, then hate is to offer someone an infinity of discredit. For this reason, we give credit to those who we see offer love. Protagonists love, antagonists hate. That’s how it works.

For example, if you good ol’ Derek is ripping up the tile in the kitchen again, and you say, “Yo, Big D, why you doing this?” And Derek replies, “because I want Cameron to fall through the floor and land in the basement where I have a cage waiting to trap them because I hate them.” Sure, we’ll give whoever is playing Derek some points for coming up with imaginative specifics on the fly, but we are not going to root for that character, and therefore we will not laugh when they encounter obstacles, we will cheer.

Now yes, if you are doing narrative improv, or the most common forms of musical improv, which are narratively structured, and you are in the second scene of the show, and you’re justifying, you may want to follow the hate. In that particular circumstance, you are very likely going to be the antagonist of this story that you’re all writing, so by all means, be the heel. Even this, though, is advice I give so that you may contrast the loving protagonist.

Following your game like you follow hate is worse because we follow hate to destructive ends, but we follow love to the promise of a future we desire. We want our character to work toward something, return to it and never stop chasing it because they can see a better future for themselves and the ones around them if they do it. If they are doing It to hurt something, even if they hurt themselves, that also isn’t funny; it’s sad.

Ok. I’m done talking about hate.

There are other, arguably more important but also more cliched reasons why improv is an act of love. We’re in a moment with someone, respecting them, listening to them, supporting them, that’s all very loving.

There is also the idea that love isn’t just a feeling but a series of acts, and like life and improv scenes, those acts exist between people in moments, then they disappear. Acts of love reverberate through time and our existence, affecting the choices we make and who we become. Though the acts themselves do not continue on forever, no matter how much we may want them to. The act of love finishes and is left behind, so we may continue to live our lives, though it is not forgotten.

I like to think of my improv scenes now as a friend I love, to whom I will one day have to say goodbye. I will approach them with love, try to approach them with empathy when they are struggling, and do my best to remember them fondly, even if I know I could have done better.