Acting on Impulse
By Adam Gentry
Growing up, we try on many hats: architect, artist, scientist, and actor. A great deal of our childhood is spent acting: in the games we play, the costumes we wear on Halloween, plays and musicals we perform at school. Acting can be a lot of fun, but time passes, other things come up, and we forget about all the fun we had as actors, until something reminds us. For Lily that moment came while watching an improv comedy show.
The performance began with a familiar scene, a couple struggling through airport security. Then a new performer stepped in and, suddenly they were struggling to pick the lock of an airplane scheduled to depart. Next came a grumbling pair of tourists, followed by a boy and his talking dog. On and on they went, sometimes so fast Lily could barely keep up. This was improv? It seemed too easy, almost…effortless. “I could do that,” she told herself.
After the show Lily and her friends headed over to a local bar for a late supper and to trade jokes and favorite moments from the show. But even as Lily laughed with the others, an idea was brewing. “Why don’t we start an improv group?” she said.
For a moment no one said a word, but then the idea started to sink in, and the answer was a unanimous yes. Some even wanted to start immediately, but cooler heads pointed out there was a big difference between watching a performance and putting on a show themselves.
Searching online, classes were easy to find. “We were lucky to take Intro to Improv with Claire Zick first, “Lily says. “She was a hard, straight-forward teacher that didn’t let us get away with anything.” Under her guidance Lily and the others learned how to think and react quickly. They learned the importance of embracing what their performing partners said, building on what they added to the scene, extending and complicating conflicts instead of reaching for quick resolutions or relying on questions to avoid the challenge. Lily learned to maintain audience interest by seeking out the more difficult plot possibilities. This is sometimes called the “yes and” rule, which encourages performers to actively listen to their partners, accept their assertions as part of the scene, and build on the details.
Another important lesson, and general rule of thumb, was to just do it. “She would explain how a game worked, and if I got neurotic or asked too many questions she’d just have me go ahead and try to do it, then work from there.” Sometimes when confronted with too many possible choices people can become overwhelmed and freeze up. Lily’s instructors knew exactly how to handle it. They encouraged, and often pushed their students to dive into the exercise, jumping on the first idea they could think of and saving the questions and self-criticism for later.
Soon Lily was attending more classes, where she met new friends, some of whom were also interested in joining the budding improv group. With over half a dozen members and a wealth of games and exercises, the group held their first practice. “It was chaos,” Lily says.
Some were meeting for the first time, and even old friends quickly realized they had a lot to learn before they could work together on stage. Over time, practices shifted from a structured rehearsal to a series of confidence- and team-building activities. Entire sessions might be dedicated to casual conversation, breathing exercises, or yoga. “No one person ran practice,” Lily notes.
Eventually people learned to react quickly and intuitively, whether it was to a word or phrase from audience, or the dialogue of another performer. The group settled into a routine of meeting once a week, beginning each practice with some simple warm-up exercises, then moving on to a mixture of short- and long-form games (see sidebar).
In their spare time members began calling anyone they could think of: cafés and coffee shops, colleges and universities, local community organizations. They asked, and often begged for the chance to perform, until someone said yes.
It was a small coffee shop; the audience, perhaps thirty people, many of them friends and family, waiting patiently. Meanwhile, in a back room, Lily and her friends were warming up with a game called Zip Zap Zop.
Everyone stood in a circle. Lily turned to her left, clapped her hands and said, “Zip.” The next person did the same, and so on, until one person turned right and said, “Zap.” Now the order was reversed. When Lily’s turn came again, she didn’t look left or right. She looked straight ahead and said, “Zop.” And so it went, left, and right, and sometimes down the middle, they kept playing until everyone had at least one turn. Then came a little yoga before trotting out onto the stage as the announcer introduced them.
Looking out at the crowd, Lily couldn’t help but feel a twinge of fear, but then she reminded herself that the worst thing that could happen was for everyone to laugh at them. And that was also the best.
Now, a year later, the group is still going strong, with over a dozen shows under their belt, including three consecutive wins at a statewide improv cage match. Members have come and gone, but new people are always eager to jump in and act silly.
For more information on improv training & classes visit Playhouse on the Park, http://playhouseonpark.org/.
Sidebar
Short form involve games such as dating, puppet people, story book, press conference, etc. Short form games usually only last a few minutes and offer a lot of guidance to help build the scene.
Sidebar
Long form is much less structured than short form. The audience provides a central subject and the performers create a series of scenes or vignettes built around that topic. These scenes can all involve the same characters, like a TV show, or each scene can begin with a whole new set of characters.
