Improv “Rules”, Teaching, and How They Change Over Time

Most of you were probably taught a series of rules when you started improv; monolithic statements never to be questioned, that if ever contravened would ruin a scene immediately. Then one day you did contravene them, and nothing bad happened. Hell, the scene in which you did it was probably pretty damn good. My first rules where:

• No questions
• No denials
• Establish a platform (who, what, where)
• No guns
• Don’t be drunk, high, or dead on stage.

There are a lot of problems with these rules in particular: they’re largely negative (don’t do things); some are flat out wrong; and they were given with little context as to why.

Mick Napier points out in his book Improvise that the “rules” were originally conceived not as absolutes but rather the coalescence of observations about what, more often than not, lead to a bad scene. Keith et al noticed that scenes with massive power dynamics, often caused by guns, hampered the autonomy of the other character. Ultimately improv is always chance whether we get it good or bad, and certain things hampered our chances.

I’ve been thinking about these rules because I’m teaching a taster session for the first time in a while shortly, and not sure where I stand on the idea of rules. On the one hand I can’t just tell people to get on stage and talk without some basics, and on the other I don’t want to continue an idea I’m not comfortable with.

So I thought I’d come up with my own. I’m sure many people have done it before, but hopefully this will also serve also as an insight into my improv philosophy, what I consider important and how I improvise. Experienced improvisers might get something from this too.

And in breaking with everything I just said, let’s start with an actual, unbreakable, rule.

Listen to your partner

A member of my troupe got me a tshirt as a Christmas present that simply has “LISTENING SKILLS” printed across it after it became, basically, a catchphrase in our workshops.

It’s a startlingly simple concept that lots of beginners do forget while thinking of the funny thing to say. So let’s start there, but also be more specific. Listening skills, in my workshops, covers a few things:

• Listen to what your partner is saying
• Listen to how they are saying it
• Look at what they’re doing.

You may think that the first is obvious, but consider the following line:

“Father, I don’t want to join the raf” (where “raf” is pronounced as rhymes with “chaff”)

That’s a pretty odd way of talking about the RAF, or Royal Air Force for non-British readers. Now I didn’t know at the time, but assumed correctly that “raf” is how people in the Force pronounced it. This tells me that our family have people in it, and as father I am likely one of them. So on top of the basic “I want my son to join the air force” I now know why and a bunch of my backstory. All from the pronunciation of a single word.

After that, how they say something gives emotional context for your relationship, and what they’re doing tells you a bit about them.

So let’s move onto the “probably best to do most of the time” things. Things I would teach beginners to follow to make those first few scenes easier, and a bit about why they aren’t truly “rules”.

Accept the reality established

This is basically what everyone knows as “yes, and…” but when expressed in a different way stops your people starting every single reply with “yes…. And….” It means that if someone looks up at says “this rain sure came out of nowhere. It’ll ruin our picnic” you have to accept that you are outside and it is raining.

What it doesn’t mean is that you have to agree with their opinion of the situation, merely the facts as stated. You could enjoy picnicing in the rain, and maybe you knew it was going to rain and didn’t tell them. Go nuts, it’s improv.

There is an exception to this, but one that I think every improviser would avoid — what if one of the characters is wrong about the world? In the worst scenario, this is because one of the characters is high and is seeing things. This is generally avoided because it’s then very difficult for the improvisers to agree on the reality of the scene (“Jimmy, you’re a lion!” “No Mary, you’ve been smoking again”) and if the audience also don’t know what is real it’s difficult to invest. Very good improvisers can get around this, but it’s hard.

A similar thing happens when you play children, in fact I’ve seen other teachers who include “don’t be children” in their list of rules. But at the same time a line like “Mummy, you’re a dinosaur so you have to run” is a pretty clear offer of what is and isn’t reality in this world. Easier to make a good scene but the same ideas apply: be very clear about what is and is not reality.

Make offers

A simpler one here, it just means add to the scene. It’s the “and” bit of “yes, and”. If the rain will ruin the picnic, don’t just respond with “yeah, you’re right” and look despondently at the ground.

The exception? Perform on your own.

Establish a platform

Probably the only rule I hold onto from those original ones I was taught is to get the “who what and where” out there early. It helps ground what’s happening, gives you something to do physically when floundering and gives you something to return to if a train of thought doesn’t go somewhere.

We’ve all done scenes that didn’t have all of these and went perfectly, thanks to a strong game (or what) or a strong characters relationship. You would probably get the feedback of “it wouldn’t hurt to have mentioned where you were” and that’s right, but in the moment it didn’t detract.

And that’s pretty much it. Would I completely ignore everything else? The no guns, the no teaching scenes? Probably not. I tend to mention those after a scene as feedback — something along the lines of “your partner didn’t get to offer a lot in that scene because you were teaching them…” and explain why that is normally a bad idea. But I’m not going to ban teaching scenes. Mainly because (pro tip) nothing throws an improviser off more than when they start teaching, and you start flirting.

Bobby Anderson runs the Improv arm of Stürike Comedy and the Sheffield Improv Jam with Alex Keen.