Improvisers, how do you prepare?

March 1, 2013 4:02 PM

At first I thought good improv meant walking onstage with absolutely no plan and just reacting to whatever happened - the cue word or whatever. After lots of very awkward scenes, I heard someone mention going onstage with an emotion in mind and I was like WAIT A MINUTE - you can have a strategy? So I've gone up for exercises with a couple of concrete ideas, such as an activity to start with and it definitely helped a lot. And then I started wondering if I could practice improv by myself.

So, improvers of ask.me, how do you prepare for improv? Do you practice? alone? What helps you most?

What's "legal" or a best practice as far as how much you should have in your head when you walk onstage? (I mean obviously if I walk onstage with "we're on the moon!" in my head and my partner is all "So hear we are at the beach, I have to adjust.)

NOTE: I am already taking classes, going to jams, and trying to find a practice group.

posted by bunderful to sports, hobbies, & recreation (17 answers total)

Have you read Impro? Honestly, it's one of the most meaningful books I've ever read, and I'd recommend it even as a general life-improvement read for people with no interest in improv. I don't recall how explicitly it addresses the specific question of pre-scene preparation, but I bet it does in some way.
posted by threeants at 4:21 PM on March 1 [3 favorites]

I'm far from a professional, nor am I amazing at improv. But I have taken a lot of classes over the years and improvised with some incredible people. I don't like walking on stage with an idea in my head, except the framework of whatever format we're doing. Having to come up with it in that moment is the most interesting and exhilarating part of improv to me.

That said, I do believe it's possible to practice some stuff by yourself. I think the form of that is going to be pretty individual, based on how you learn and what you need to work on. But one of my favorite things to do is to come up with monologues and songs, neither of which need another person. Sometimes I do it in the car, or in my head when I'm working out (though I find it works better if I actually say it out loud, so places where I can do that are preferable). The storytelling aspect is something that doesn't really come naturally to me, and it's helpful even in normal scenes, so I think that practice has helped me a ton. And when I started I was TERRIBLE at songs, so doing a lot of them really boosted my skills and confidence, to where I'm now just kinda bad at them.

The other thing is that I have learned to think about and reflect more on my personal experience as I go through life. I took a class one time about using "truth" in improv - drawing from your life experience to bring in real emotions to your scenes. And through that, I learned that I tend to not reflect a whole lot on things that happen in my life. Consciously doing more of that helped me make my scenes more "real" in a roundabout way. (Maybe a little bit deeper than what you are looking for, but there it is...)
posted by primethyme at 4:22 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Heck yes, you can practice improv. Challenge yourself with your own "improv assignments," and don't forget that practicing the basics will still keep the improv muscles strong (by allowing you to focus on improv-ing at performance time, rather than on improv-ing AND covering the basics). You'll be surprised how much more quickly and cleverly you can improv by staying in practice-- you'll get to that part of your brain so much more easily.
posted by Rykey at 4:31 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

In the minutes/seconds before going on stage, I concentrate on being in a relaxed "action" posture: at attention, weight on my toes, slight bend to my knees, mouth slightly open. It keeps me focused and present with what is going on.

For general practice, I have found working on physicality the most helpful, especially everyday tasks. A good "homework" assignment is to pay attention to how you, say, hold a cell phone or open a door and then practice doing them without the objects.
posted by susanvance at 4:43 PM on March 1 [2 favorites]

Challenge yourself with your own "improv assignments," and don't forget that practicing the basics will still keep the improv muscles strong

Do you mean practicing the basics alone - and if so, how?

Ideas for improv assignments are also very welcome :)
posted by bunderful at 5:04 PM on March 1

I took only one improv class, but because I found characterization hard, I'd spend my time in line at coffee shops or walking to the train trying to copy other people's posture, stride, or (silently in my head) words.
posted by salvia at 5:34 PM on March 1 [2 favorites]

This AskMe question contains a game that I do to practice improv with my friends, as well as being a good teaching tool. When I go onstage, I do pretty much the same thing as the game describes - I have a relationship firmly in mind, and I find a way to make it mesh somehow with whatever relationship the other person imbues us with.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 9:31 PM on March 1

Besides the other good suggestions here, you want Mick Napier's book, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out. It's a good and useful read, plus has solo practice games in the back. I've also found poking around the Austin Improv Forum helpful for general improv questions.

Besides that, practice, practice, practice. The more improv you do, the better and faster you get. It's advice I need to remind myself of more often.

Having an emotion in mind can be very helpful in instantly creating a character. You start out as Angry Person, and build from there. Oh, my scene partner endowed me as their grandchild, and I went with angry. If I'm an angry grandchild, what else is true? Jill Bernard has some remarkably useful stuff to say about creating characters in her book Jill Bernard's Small Cute Book of Improv. I highly recommend it as well.

Good luck!
posted by booksherpa at 10:05 PM on March 1

Outside of reading, there are quite a few improv discussion podcasts. Not like, people doing improv in podcast form, but improvisers just chatting away about their techniques and tips and stuff like that.

I've had one solid instructor explain it as being really helpful to do all that sort of thinking offstage so you're not stuck in it when you're onstage in front of an audience.

Anyways, couple podcasts to check out are Improv Nerd and Improv Obsession. The UCB had one each for the NY and LA schools.
posted by dogwalker at 12:02 AM on March 2

Love these suggestions - I purchased Impro and am downloading podcasts.

Dogwalker: when you say: "really helpful to do all that sort of thinking offstage so you're not stuck in it when you're onstage"

Do you mean things like - Who am I? How do I feel? What is my relationship to the other person onstage? What am I doing?

Is there anything you *don't* think through before getting onstage? What things are especially important to think about before getting onstage?

I'm really a n00b ... trying to understand.
posted by bunderful at 7:37 AM on March 2

[Note: I do short form, so my advice/experience comes from that improv background. Starting a long form project's rehearsals on Tuesday, though. Woo!]

Forgot podcasts! I like the Improv Resource Center podcast. Good interviews with many good teachers of improv - lots of useful tidbits in there.

Bunderful, I suspect dogwalker means all the "in your head" thinking. Onstage, you want to be as in the moment as possible - in character, listening to your partner, responding to their offers, heightening the scene - yes anding, basically.

"In your head" means you're thinking at more of a meta level: "I should be establishing the platform now. Crap, I haven't said where we are. Oh geez, why did I say Starbucks? I always say Starbucks! Should I be the barista or a customer? That was too long a pause. I should say something." - like that.

In scenes that flow and are good, it feels like there's not much thinking at all - there's a lot of reacting, and a lot of energy. Don't overthink everything. One of the best pieces of advice I've seen says something like "There are no mistakes in improv - just justify what happened and it looks like it was meant to be."

A good way to think about everything offstage is to practice all the character generation and basic scene work over and over (and over and over and...) until it becomes mental muscle memory. Until you don't have to think "now I will generate a character" or "don't ask questions" or "I need to establish the platform" - it will just come automatically.

Honestly, a lot of this stuff is just experience. I've been at this about a year and half now, and still feel like (hell, still AM) a n00b myself. Stick with it, it gets easier and it's a whole lot of fun!

Oh, and planning right before a scene? Sometimes saying to yourself "I will be an angry southern belle" right before the scene can make for a fun scene - just stay committed to your character and also accept what your partner throws at you. Be the angry southern belle astronaut on the moon. Be the angry southern belle who is also the male history professor. Be the angry southern belle who is on her honeymoon in Jamaica. In games where I'm weak (Gibberish-English Switch comes to mind...) I've found having a strong emotion going in helps me a lot.

I could really go on all day about improv and improv theory and my opinions and... yeah.
posted by booksherpa at 10:25 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]

"At first I thought good improv meant walking onstage with absolutely no plan and just reacting to whatever happened"

Yes. 10000%.

Anything you plan in advance is just a burden on the scene. Like let's say per above you chose to be angry before you went out on stage (for some reason everyone loves to be angry and negative and hate everything on stage). Your scene partner comes out and is holding a baby, they say something like "Do you wanna hold him?" Now because you've decided that you've got to be angry, you say "No! I HATE babies!" Maybe you spit at the baby or something. Real angry.

Well now this simple emotion you brought into the scene is going to consume it. Because you are now this guy who HATES babies, which needs to be addressed. The problem is that this is not something (I hope) that comes from you, your life experience, your opinions, or from an honest reaction to the way your partner acted in the scene. It's arbitrary. And because it comes from an arbitrary place, you're going to have to work real hard to make this scene something other than a bunch of weird, angry (or if you chose another emotion, insert that here) unrealistic behaviors.

It might seem counterintuitive but pre-planning is SO MUCH harder.

A better reaction might still be over the top and emotional, but it needs to come from a genuine place inside you, otherwise it's just b.s. and we're not seeing your personal comedic point of view, just arbitrary ideas.

You can initiate the scene with an activity or location or premise that comes up, but once your partner responds you must react to them and erase everything else, otherwise the audience won't buy it.
posted by hamsterdam at 10:55 AM on March 2

Yeah, booksherpa has a good handle on what I was trying to convey (and also came up with the resource center podcast which is the really good one that I couldn't remember the name of).

Do you mean things like - Who am I? How do I feel? What is my relationship to the other person onstage? What am I doing?

I mean things like the "Do you mean things like..." part of that question. If you're going to get into an analytical mindset of what makes good/bad/true improv, probably best to do that when you're not onstage.

But let's take the "Do you mean things like What is my relationship to the other person on stage?" idea as an example. Take some time to think about scenes you've been in or seen and how quick the relationship was revealed or not. How much that helped or not. How important it ended up being. If it changed anything depending on what the relationship was. think about the relationships in your real life and how they affect your actions and interactions. If you like how that works in scenes, just the fact that you've been focusing on it outside of scenes will probably make it come up more naturally in your scenes, without having to think to yourself "what is my relationship to this person?" while you're onstage in the middle of a show. I would advise against predetermining a relationship before a scene (e.g. In this scene we will be married...), unless the opening sets it up and your scene partner will pull that too. The idea would be more towards one person saying something, and you instinctually feel like the person talking to you is your spouse, so you respond in a way that let's everyone (in the scene and the audience) know that you are married.

Basically, I mean that this is the time to think about the questions you're asking. Onstage, you shouldn't be asking yourself "Should I be figuring out who I am?" or even "Who am I?" you should be jumping right to the answer. If your scene partner does/says something at the top of the scene, you already have enough to know who you are.

You don't need to pre-plan anything, you'll be able to find it.
posted by dogwalker at 11:30 AM on March 2

Do you mean practicing the basics alone - and if so, how?

I mean practicing the basics of acting period, not the basics of improvising. You want to be confident in your performing abilities in general, so that you can relax to the point of trusting your improv impulses when it's time.
posted by Rykey at 12:43 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]

Your scene partner comes out and is holding a baby, they say something like "Do you wanna hold him?" Now because you've decided that you've got to be angry, you say "No! I HATE babies!" Maybe you spit at the baby or something. Real angry.

Well, that's one (extreme) angry response. You could also be angry that your "spouse" (scene partner) spends all their time with the baby, or that work sucked today and you're quivering with unspoken anger while holding your precious child, or you're still pissed at the guy who cut you off but holding your child mellows you completely and the game of the scene is that you bounce between extreme emotions. Also, these are all reactions to a scene partner's initiation. You may have decided to be angry in that second after the call-for and before the scene starts and do the initiating yourself.

But even your example could work. What if the scene partner responded with "You shouldn't be working at a day care center then!" or "You need to hold the baby if this exposure therapy is going to work." or "He's your little brother and you may not treat him that way!" Now there's a relationship to work with.

A strong emotion is a pretty good base to build a character on, as long as it doesn't become one-dimensional Angry Man. Let me mention again Jill Bernard's book where she talks about how to "quickly create a strong, compelling character". Emotion is just one tool in the box.

A quote from the Jill Bernard book for you, bunderful:

What if I don't do what [my scene partner] wanted me to?

You will probably break improv. It will be unable to continue. A tradition spanning back 400 years will come screeching to a halt because you did not do what your scene partner wanted you to. Wait. No it won't. It will be okay. You will work it out and it will be fun.

Just listen to your scene partner, yes and, and HAVE FUN. You will be fine.
posted by booksherpa at 4:49 PM on March 2

There's already good advice here about practicing improv alone, though I would add that if you are working on "game" as used in the UCB/iO universe (i.e. long form), you can also work on identifying what is funny in sketches, TV shows and situations in real life and thinking about "if this is true, what else would be true." In short form, you typically have a game set up already.

Whether you pre-plan anything before entering a scene depends largely on the type of improv you're doing. If you are doing a Harold/long-form, there might be information from an opening that you ignore at your peril.

I would worry less about what's "legal" and work on what's "helpful." Many people break all the "rules" and do amazing scenes. Being present and reactive is more important than any rule you set up.
posted by moedym at 6:11 AM on March 12

I now have a new answer to help with solo practice: read my MeTa post for the explanation and link to the app, and this comment explaining what I do with it.
posted by booksherpa at 4:04 PM on March 12