Why You Should Improvise Like Mary Poppins

How space work brings your scene to life

There are lots of good reasons to emulate Mary Poppins. Who doesn’t want to float away with a flying umbrella? Flirt with a chimney sweep? Walk in and out of children’s lives and gaslight them in ways that will permanently damage their ability to discern reality and fantasy?

But beyond all these rewards, acting like Mary Poppins can also benefit your improv scenes. And you don’t have to tap dance or sing beautifully or turn the world into an animated, anthropomorphized wonderland. All you have to do is live in your environment.

Don’t Be a Talking Head

When performing improv, we tend to think a lot about what we’re saying. Typically, that’s how we engage with our scene partners and move the story along. We all want to find the right thing to say. But it’s not enough to just stand onstage and talk.

Recently, my improv team was rehearsing and found ourselves turning into talking heads (and not the kind that are burning down the house). We were so focused on what was coming out of our mouths that we weren’t doing much with the rest of our bodies. That’s when San Diego improv teacher Tommy Galan (yep, I’m stealing from him again) told us we needed to be a bit more like a certain British…