I’m Bad at Improv

I had a singing coach who insisted the reason she was a good teacher was that she’d had to work so hard to be good. Her voice was not intuitive. She found her technique through pure grind, carved it out of a marble slab with painter’s tape, a straight edge and a hand chisel. She wasn’t born singing like Snow White into a well. She worked at it very, very hard for a very, very long time. And now she’s excellent.

I feel like this about improv. I’m not good at it. I’m not naturally good at it. There are players on our troupe who do it with such ease; they find the game effortlessly, and even when they do a terrible accent they come across as endearing and brave. I’ve always felt like the artist in front of the giant slab with the little chisel. Chip. Chip. Chip.

Why? A few things. I’m a naturally nervous person; a good therapist could probably tell me why, but for now I’m content knowing it tends to be an obstacle for me in a lot of areas of life. And the truth is, I want to be funny. Oh, I want to. That’s why I like improv so much. I love comedy almost more than anything I can think of. There is nothing that feels as good as laughing incredibly hard. Steve Carell said that, or something like it, and so did Charles Dickens, and probably your grandma. Cliche, and true.

There have been a handful of lessons I’ve learned by doing improv, often badly, and some of those mistakes eventually turned into good habits. I’d love for you to learn from mine.

Get your hands dirty

Here’s something I catch myself doing. An improviser enters the scene and starts looking for something in an undefined space. Another enters and starts doing the same thing. A third joins the increasingly frantic search. What do I do? I squat on the floor at the sideline. That’s my non-verbal way of saying “you don’t need me,” or really, “I’m not comfortable joining without some kind of platform.” Weak sauce. Get off the floor. Go start looking for something. Have an idea, and hold it loosely.

Play tennis

Or: see it land. When you play tennis you don’t keep firing balls at your partner. You hit one, you watch it land, you watch the return, you react. Don’t turn into a punch-line ball machine on rapid fire. Send your idea out and wait to see what it does.

Look for love

Conflict is going to happen, and it should. Nothing is bad; everything is useful. But some of my most memorable, beautiful improv experiences are the ones where I was looking for love. Looking for a real connection with my partner. Looking for the affection inside the argument, the camaraderie inside the combat. When I walk into a scene looking for a fight, a fight is exactly what I get.

Do what you would do

Improv rules are just rules for being an excellent human being. If you’re reading this, I’m certain you’re an excellent person. So do what you’d do. React the way you’d react, especially at the beginning of your training. I used to do way too much in my scenes. Now the times I feel best are usually the times I’m doing less, or what counts as less for me.

I hope this helps. And if it doesn’t help, I hope it makes you feel less alone if you struggle with improvisation. Chip, chip, chip.

Leeann