How I see improv

Last night my improv program had an informal performance. Foxy alludes to it in the prior post.

After the show, I was talking to one of the performers, who is a software engineer, who has presumably never performed onstage before, and who has never done improv for an audience before. He told me, "I think I'm addicted to improv."

I ended up sharing with him how I saw improv. This was an old view of mine that I rediscovered in talking to him. It basically is this:

Improv is unscripted drama. Pretty much the only difference between improv and plays is that plays have a script and improv does not. That means, in improv, the actors don't know what to say, but in plays, the actors do know what to say.

What that means in an improv class is that you are learning the structure of plays so that you can act them out in the moment without the aid of a script. You learn about the crafting of scenes and the crafting of plays. When you improvise, you basically become a playwriting collective: You use the structure of plays and follow that structure as your group performs.

Audiences unfamiliar with improv tend to see improv as saying funny lines. They think that when performers are onstage, they say funny line after funny line after funny line, and they have some mysterious gift or raging talent for saying funny lines.

But as you tend to learn in improv classes, your "lines" are really just behavior--behavioral reactions in the moment as you follow the structure of plays. You are doing something else other than saying funny lines. You are following playwriting techniques, and the result of following them sometimes is audience laughter.

When you analyze the laugh lines in an improvisation, abstracting them from the context of an improvised scene, you usually find there is nothing particularly funny about them. Instead, it is something about the moment that makes the audience laugh. In truth, it is usually what the improviser did that makes the audience laugh, rather than what the improviser said. The word "toaster" is not by itself very funny, but said in a particular context, at a particular moment, given the prior information in the improvised piece, and given the understanding of what the improviser's character may be trying to do, saying it may provoke an uproar in laughter to burn into an audience member's memory for a lifetime.

When you take an improv class, you realize improv doesn't have anything to do with saying funny lines. It is more about the interaction between characters, their conflict, and the movement toward a decision in that conflict. Granted, talk is definitely an element of the improvised scene, but it's not the focus. If you focus on the speech in great improvised scenes, you will usually find that it doesn't explain why they were so great. Instead, if you focus on the choices of the improvisers and the context in which those choices occur, you will have a better understanding of what made great improvised scenes so great.

So you learn about choices in an improv class, not about saying funny lines.

Granted, the focus is obviously going to depend on the beliefs of the improv teacher. Indeed, there are improv teachers out there who do care about saying funny things, and they may even denigrate you for your failure to say funny things. (I'm definitely not one of those teachers!) In rough, the approach may be a little bit different if you're talking a short-form improv class or a long-form improv class. In a short-form class, you may learn techniques that will make the audience laugh. In a long-form class, you don't really do that. Instead, you learn techniques to perpetuate improvised scenes. Essentially, in a long-form class, you learn about the creation of unscripted drama, while in a short-form class, you learn about the creation of audience laughter.

As a side note, though: To date, I've never really taken a short-form improv class, only listening to what others have said about it and about classes, coupled with what I've seen of short-form improv.

... So that's how I see improv. I come from the long-form perspective, so that's probably why I emphasize the dramatic elements of it (i.e., its play(writing) elements) rather than its comedic elements (i.e., its laugh-inducing elements). There is no right or wrong way to see improv, unless perhaps you set a way as right or wrong or subscribe to a particular mindset that sets a right or wrong way to see improv.