On last Friday night, I invited a group of friends to watch an Improv show. Everybody laughed a lot throughout the show. I was happy to show them what improv is and made it an landmark for Improv class 201 completion in Google. Yes, I did it. It was my first “serious” performing relevant class and I couldn’t imagine myself doing so much hilarious things on the stage before. Hence, I want to share with you my journey and learning in Improv.
Unexpected decision. When I took my first 101 class two months ago, I thought the class is about standup comedy, specifically crowd work. Crowd work means interacting with the audience by asking them questions and making fun directly out of their answers. But after I got into the class, I was wrong, though not too off. Improv has interaction with the audience, but mostly is about ourselves performing on the stage. We act according to audience’s suggestion: sci-fi, break up, tennis and etc. Whatever audience suggest, we perform accordingly, so there is no plan ahead. Even though I didn’t expect this form, I already paid the tuition and I want to see how it goes.
Think fast, trust our instinct. We have 6 - 8 person per class and usually our class starts with a warm up exercise — “5 things”: 5 things you like to eat, 5 reasons about being late to work and etc. We stand in a circle, last person will ask me a question about “5 things”, then I need to speak immediately to answer that question. I will come up with another question for the next person. I remember one time I was asked “Name 5 TV shows you like to watch” and my immediate thought was “oh no, I don’t like to watch TV shows and I don’t know how to say those in English”. Everybody is waiting for my answer. “It is okay to make up things”, our teacher Sam says. So I continue to say “Wonderful night.. Morning Brew. Chill Jazz… hmm Crazy Silicon Valley… Back to the moon..” I squeeze word after word and when I finish those 5 shows, I am relieved. We later increase the number of things from 5 to 10 and expect everyone to speak fast. I often find myself thinking too much “hmm, this doesn’t make sense”, “hmm, I need to make a good one”… Later I realize, we first need to be willing to make mistakes and overtime we will learn to trust and utilize our first-instinct better.
Following instead of arguing. During the class, we often need to perform a theme with another person on the stage. We are given a key word, and we come to the stage without any discussion ahead of time. We have a plan about how this theme will go but the other side often won’t play the card as we expect. So we constantly make decisions. In the beginning, I often decide to argue with the other side — imagine a conversation between A and B like this:
A: “Look at what you did!”
B: “No, I didn’t do anything”
A: “You are the only person here with such a mess”
B: “No, I just got here”
vs like this:
A: “Look at what you did!”
B: “Oh, you also like them?! I love my masterpiece.”
A: “They are such a mess.”
B: “I can’t focus on cleaning them when I think about you.”
You likely will like the latter better because they are more unusual and more “friendly”. You might say we can make argument fun as well, but that’s harder. We hear argument too much in real life, and in the show, we like to hear something different.
Augmentation. It is a performing game, so we augment it on top of real life. When I was a child, I was often told to be composed and calm. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in Improv. So I am glad to learn an opposite side of acting — be exaggerated and stormy. Throughout the class, I learnt to use the following tools during performing:
Heightening emotions
Body languages
More details in speaking
Stage-property
and etc
They can often help the audience to understand the theme better and make it more fun.
In retrospect, I had a lot of fun in the class and probably I was laughing about 70% of the time. It was tiring though, thinking fast on the spot is challenging. For good side-benefits, it helps me think faster, be more humorous and react to daily conversation more naturally. I hope this gives you a bit more motivation to try something new and fun. Maybe consider watching an improv show live? :)