But Improv Is Scary: Ten Reasons to Take the Class Anyway

Improvisers are out of their minds. They’ve got some kind of confidence the rest of us didn’t get issued. They’re probably just better actors. Improv is weird anyway. I’ve heard every version of this from serious, trained, scripted actors, and for a few years early on I said most of them myself. So let me ask the question underneath all of them: what’s your excuse for not training in improvisation? Whatever it is, it doesn’t outweigh what the work does for you. You might fall in love with it. You might hate it exactly as much as you feared. Either way, you’ll be glad the muscle is there.

Ten things improv does for an actor

1. Confidence. You take risks with nothing to hide behind, you discover how many dimensions you actually have, and you’re forced to make a bold choice and stand on it. Nothing builds a performer faster.
2. Trust. In your own instincts and training, and in your scene partners, at a level scripted work never demands. Both kinds carry into everything else you do on a stage.
3. Characters. The improv stage is where you get to build people you’d never be cast as, and find out which of them live in you.
4. Your strengths. You’ll start to notice what you reach for: the characters, the relationships, the kind of conflict, the brand of humor. Those tendencies are your strengths, and improv is how you find them fast.
5. Your weaknesses. Improv demands that you listen, build a space, affect and be affected, and stay in a character with no script to lean on. Whatever you’re weak at, it shows within a week, which is exactly why the rehearsal room is so valuable. You can’t fix what you can’t see.
6. The analytical brain. Do you script, edit and control everything, including scenes? Improv will work on you. You have to be in the moment and choose instantly; your brain will fight it, and over time improv strips out the inhibitions and helps you get over yourself. Ask any engineer in our adult class.
7. Listening. In improv, if you don’t listen, you look like a jerk, and then you look ridiculous. There’s no faster teacher.
8. Failing big. You can’t call cut and you can’t blame a writer. Make the bold choice, fall on your face now and then, and get up. It’s how people learn anything, and the gold that comes out of it is worth more than the comfort you gave up.
9. Fun. It’s fun. You make people laugh, which is the point of the whole business, and you laugh harder than you have since you were nine.
10. The audition. In commercials and independent film, a growing share of auditions include improv. Be ready for it, or be caught flat in front of the people you most wanted to impress.

Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Jason Sudeikis, Steve Carell, Mike Myers, Chris Farley: the improv stage was where they trained before anyone knew their names. Not because improv makes you famous; it doesn’t, and we don’t promise it. Because it makes you brave, and brave people are the ones worth watching.

Scared? Good. A healthy fear of the process is fine. The scary part is the parking lot, and the fear drops the second you’re in a scene. Get out of the car.