How to improv(e)
15 things I learnt from a brilliant improv class
I went on a course run by actress and comedian Pippa Evans called ‘Improv your life’. Two days of making it up as you go along in front of a bunch of people I’d never met before — a prospect I found quite daunting. It was something that had been recommended to me by a few people, so I was prepared to find it useful but I was really surprised at how much it chimed with me. It’s been buzzing round my head since.
Here are 15 things I took from it and how I’m starting to apply them to my life and the way I work.
1. ‘Yes and…’
The fundamental building block of improv, this game frames every response as a positive build on the last person’s idea. It makes you listen, but also get’s you out of planning ahead because you need to react to what’s just gone before. It was fun seeing where things would go. It’s also very interesting to observe how much you want to stay in control, but you can’t, it doesn’t work like that. Most attempts to control result in the flow of the game being blocked, often these come in the form of ‘Yes, but’.
I’ve played this a few times with my eight year old boy and in a workshop (the latter was a bit of a curve ball for those involved!) but it’s a great way to build something unexpected together and it’s a lot of fun.
The two days were made up of dozens of games like this, they are such a powerful way to frame things, please see point 12 for more on this.
2. Everything is an offer
Everything is an opportunity to build something. I think it’s about showing yourself to be receptive to what’s out there, being open to what people might be willing to give you. Part of that is really listening, but it’s also communicating that you are willing to listen and take on what that person has to say.
This has been such a useful phrase to have in my head as it helps me reframe things that previously might have blocked or discouraged me—it reframes everything as an opportunity to build something.
3. Stay positive
There’s a temptation in improv is to go dark, to try and crack a gag that bursts the bubble. It’s a nervous thing and something I kept lapsing into during the class. It’s an easy place to go to because it’s distancing—it’s like saying “I’ve not really bought into all this and here’s the proof”. The problem is that it makes it difficult for others to build on top of — it blocks things.
This is something I’m trying to be mindful of, that I consciously curb my natural leaning to nervous negativity with the aim of connecting better to people.
Body language can be very eloquent in communicating positivity and negativity. One of the games we played involved inhabiting the body language of your positive self, your neutral self and your negative self. It was amazing how much it affected your mood, and how hard it was to dispel the feeling after playing my negative self.
I’m still constantly lapsing into being a bit hunched and defensive in my body language, but now I recognise it more. It’s also good to know that I can meaningfully change my outlook by simply pulling my shoulders back. This change in body language also helps demonstrate that I’m open to what people have to offer.
4. Go with it
This is about fully committing to something as you’re doing it. In the games we played during the course this meant being brave enough to really follow through on the idea at hand and also to let that idea take you somewhere unplanned and unexpected. To do this you need to trust yourself, but also place your trust in those around you. You need to have faith that they will go with you and that they have fuel to add to the fire.
I’ve found this is a very useful mindset to have going into workshops as a participant or a facilitator—by trusting people and giving them the space to come up with great stuff, they will.
5. Let go
I had real trouble with this aspect. I found it really difficult to let go of control and particularly of wanting to say something funny or clever. You might think the whole point of improv is to be able to be funny or clever on demand, but I began to see that funniness and cleverness can emerge organically from the group and the situation—and these ‘organic’ moments were better, fresher and funnier for that.
So I guess letting go is about putting your ego to one side. I’m trying.
6. Breathe…
That’s better… Giving yourself space to breathe makes a huge difference, it gives you an opportunity to think, to gain a bit of calm, and to vary the pace of what your doing. It’s also a space for your audience to take a breather too. Done right it can really help convey a confidence. Like a great piece of art or design the bits where nothing are happening are just as important as the active bits in creating meaning and impact.
7. ‘Eyebrows up’
This is all about communicating your receptivity and it actually makes you more receptive. Try it… you’ll find it just switches you on to looking and being more engaged.
I’m saying this to myself when going into meetings to make sure I’m truly present. And I’ve also tried this when out and about as it makes it more likely that I’ll notice things. It’s a great way to snap out of passivity.
‘Eyebrows up’ is a quote from Alan Marriott, Pippa’s first improv teacher.
8. Listen with your eyes
Listening well in improv is key. If you tune out you won’t know what you need to build on top of. We learned a few techniques to help us listen better, one was to internally vocalise what the other person is saying as they’re saying it. You probably look like a bit of a maniac while doing this as it takes a lot of concentration, but it has the wonderful effect of squeezing out your own internal voice—the one that judges or is constantly trying to plan things. This means that when it’s your turn to respond you just have to respond, which in turn really helps with the letting go thing.
But what seemed to make the biggest difference to the quality of listening was eye contact. Pippa talked about how we don’t need to be feverishly thinking of what to say, the answer’s in that person’s eyes, just look.
9. Make your intentions clear
We played a game called sound ball where you throw a sound to your left, right or across the circle. You make a sound as you throw the imaginary ball, the catcher makes that sound as they catch it. They then throw a new sound, and so on. The critical thing as a thrower is to be very clear who you’re throwing the ball to. You do this through body language and eye contact. Once you’ve made the connection you know the ball will be caught and by the right person — but all this comes from clearly communicating your intention.
This is an awesome principle for life always, it takes so much doubt out of any situation.
10. Make it personal
We played a game called ‘That reminds me’ where in a group of three we’d present to everyone else. Each speaker would build on something from the previous person starting with ‘That reminds me’. The moments that were shared varied hugely but the most memorable were the ones that were most personal. Sharing something of yourself is an amazing shortcut to real connection, not just with an individual but it seems to work for whole groups of people too.
The information you share doesn’t need to be hugely revealing but there seemed to be something in being open and vulnerable that deepened the sense of connection. Strangely, sharing a sense of vulnerability also seemed to convey confidence.
11. Be obvious
I love this as a piece of advice. It’s really freeing. Part of being obvious goes back to the point of clearly communicating your intentions, but more importantly it gets you off the hook of having to deliver a killer line or insight. It also helps remove the desire to control things. Your job is to just put the next brick in place, the structure will take care of itself. Being obvious enables you to make a clear offer that the people around you can interpret and build on.
12. Make it fun
One of the loveliest surprises about the course was just how much fun it was — I was expecting it to be really difficult and it did challenge me in all sorts of different ways—but it was always very playful. Making things fun enables people to engage in a much more meaningful way—you’re more open, more communicative and better able to connect.
How did Pippa achieve this? Part of it is her charisma, selling every idea and setting a positive, energetic example for us to follow. But deeper than that, every exercise is framed as a game, something that’s inherently fun to work within. The rules of each game shrink the number of possibilities — this sounds like it might make things less creative but the opposite is true. A small pool of ideas is swim-able, too big and all that potential is just overwhelming. It’s something you get to learn at art school, the best stuff is shaped by its constraints.
13. Use everything
Like the thought that everything is an offer, the idea of using everything is about being receptive and looking for opportunities. It’s about taking someone’s offer, building on it and being aware that you can use anything at hand to do so. This can be your body, your voice, the space, a prop, the people around you.
I have been trying to build this into the way I work on visual projects, looking to see what’s at hand and then how I can use it to say something. Here are a couple of examples:
How many people are in a peg?
Where can a red dot take you?
14. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
It’s not easy getting up in front of people and then talking or performing or presenting. I find it deeply uncomfortable… but not actually actively painful. The course was a great way to make that distinction and get used to living with that degree of discomfort. We got to see what we were all capable of while feeling like we wanted to run a mile. That shared experience, the openness we all demonstrated seems to have forged a deep connection. I hope it’s something we continue to build on individually and as a group.
15. Move forwards by looking backwards
It’s a bit like throwing a ball way up in the air…
As the games we played became longer and more expansive we learned that we can always look to the person talking for the answer of where to go next, but we can also find it by looking backwards. Pippa talked about improv legend Keith Johnstone’s advice to walk backwards through a scene, meaning that the way forward can be built on any of the previous steps. In a conversation between Keith Johnstone and Geoff Colman they refer to the phrase “the improviser has to be like a man walking backwards”.
We talked about how satisfying this can be when you are in the audience, when discarded thoughts are picked up later and circles are completed — it repays your attention. This is something I’m looking to build into what I write and I think it could be very powerful in presentations.
…and then catching it again five minutes later.
‘Improv your life’ is an experience I’d recommend to anyone, but particularly if you can see the potential value in it but aren’t brave enough to go for it. As a group many of us were all in that same boat, but fortunately we made it along. Surprisingly it’s a great boat to be in.
