YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE is now the emotional state of your character. Discover their truth as you reveal it to the audience!

I start every workshop with my three guiding principals, or my Three #1s.

• HAVE FUN but NEVER at another’s expense! (Our #1 Rule). Focus on great story telling and theater. Never bad comedy.
• YES AND… (The #1 Rule in Improv) always accept your team.mates and their offers. Follow up with words and actions in support, setting up our team mates for success. (No worries, they got our back)
• LISTEN! (#1 Skill in Comedy) Listen with your eyes. Listen with the willingness to change!

But when I quiz my regular students, WHAT’S MY NUMBER ONE RULE? They inevitably say NEVER THINK.

In truth, I do say STOP THINKING a lot.

Early on I learned the axiom SHOW DON’T TELL. As an actor, don’t tell the director what you want to do. Just do it. If it doesn’t work, change it. Never waste time trying to tell us what you were trying to do.

The sooner we just DO the sooner we learn if that idea was great, good, bad or HORRIBLE. The sooner we can improve upon it. We play, mold, pivot, break apart, reassemble, rinse and repeat. It is the complete opposite of rocket science.

Too often, TELLING US your great idea amounts to a writer falling in love with the first draft. “Cerebral” actors fall in love with their “genius”. The result is a technically mechanical mess by which they are way to impressed.

With improv I learned to take this one step further.

LISTEN, DON’T THINK!

For years I believed, any choice made by my character is never wrong. Any choice made by me, the actor, is potentially flawed. It is a constant balance of instinct versus intellect. With rare, VERY RARE, exception, when it comes to anything creative, our instinct far exceeding the other.

Our brains are a vast warehouse storing a life time of experiences, observations and things we have learned.

When most stop to think, there is an anxiety involved. There is a pressure to succeed. There is an expectation to be smart or good. In comedy, or social circles, there is an expectation to be funny. This ego and insecurity driven method of thinking create a narrow alleyway for information to pass. Or as I say in workshops, this thinking is more likely to create writer’s block. This form of thinking leads perfectionist to mediocrity. It is not good for divergent or convergent thinking.

When we actively listen and focus, or what I call listening with our eyes, we do so without judgement. This opens up the two-way boulevard of information flowing in and out.

The secret to truly getting great at improv is this deeper dive into your library. I truly believe this is also the secret to being a better student, teacher, actor, sales person, and leader. It applies to many other roles as well.

Here are a few games I use to teach this in my workshops.

EIGHT THINGS

In a circle, give a player a category. This player will.now say EIGHT THINGS relating to that category. That player assigns a category to the next player. And so on… Classic game. But now when you play, i want you keep a couple things in mind.

1. Don’t stop to think. Stay present. Don’t disappear inwards to “think”. Make eye contact with other players.
2. I would rather you say the wrong answer than worry about the right answer. The secret is simple choices.
3. Don’t fear silence! Catch yourself stopping to think. Catch yourself saying um, like, aaaaaaa, etc. Be deliberate. Your mind will work better. These things, these delay tactics, they distract us and our audience. Instead, practice poise. Those moments of silence, filled with intent, smiling, etc lure the audience in. Silence creates rhythm. Everything else loses out focus. And when we lose focus, we lose our audience.

5 LINE YES AND… scenes

In the same circle…. player one starts a scene with player two. Player two responses YES AND… continue with three more YES AND… statements. Then player two starts a five line scene with player three.

1. NO QUESTIONS! Instead always leads with: I WANT SOMETHING, I NEED SOMETHING, LET’S GO DO SOMETHING. Questions delay choice and waste time while.making your scene partner do all the work.
2. OUTLAW THE WORD NO! It is true a character can say the word NO in improv and still YES AND… the scene. But too often NO is not a YES AND… choices. Lately I keep hearing professional actors BS a claim justifying NO or YES, BUT… statements. In rehearsals and classes, completely outlaw the words in order to train the better habit.
3. MAKE WHO/WHERE choices. Don’t talk about stuff. Even improv PROS bore me to tears talking about stuff. Instead WHO are you? How do you know each other? (RELATIONSHIP) WHY are you talking to this person? WHERE are you? The first chapter of any book, the exposition, we learn about the main characters. Authors go deep into describing he setting. With love theater, we can eliminate a chapter with a few words, simple choices and then by embodying those choices. SHOWING the CHARACTERS we create and SEEING/ REACTING TO imagined things in our SETTING fills in a lot of pages.

EMOTIONAL CHOICE

Form two lines. Person from line one starts a scene: WANT SOMETHING, I NEED SOMETHING, LET’S GO DO SOMETHING…. Person from line two responds with a level TEN emotional reaction. Player one simply listens without reaction. Player two monologues until cut off by the teacher.

1. NO QUESTIONS! NO BLOCKS!!! As above commit to the scene and double down on YES AND…
2. Don’t think, make big choices. The words don’t matter. Steven King, in his book on writing, talks about the paragraph. Worrying about being funny, good, saying the perfect words, locks us up. Double down on the emotional choice. When that is not enough, start making WHO and WHERE choices. WHO is this person you are screaming at. WHERE are you. By the way you started the scene with a WHO choice. YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE is now the emotional state of your character. Discover their truth as you reveal it to the audience.
3. LISTEN, DON’T THINK!!! Don’t worry about the words. Make those big bold WHO & WHERE choices. Then LISTEN FOR GIFTS.
4. LISTEN AND JUSTIFY!!! Don’t try to be clever or funny. Instead let yourself go and listen for happy accidents. When we try to be funny or clever, we end up celebrating mediocrity. When we make big bold choices, we stumble past the limits of a judgmental edited mind. We trip across new and interesting. THEN WE GET CLEVER! We start to justify these perceived mistakes. We embody choices about age, injury etc. We react to our environments in real time.
5. WHY ARE YOU AT A LEVEL TEN? The reason I LOVE this game? Our improv scenes are new to us and the audience. But these characters were not born yesterday. At a LEVEL TEN emotional choice you are forced to deal with a character with whom you have history. To simply justify THIS LEVEL OF EMOTION, something happened previously. They always do this thing. This is the third time this week. Last time you did this you… By starting the scene at the braking point, you force yourself to WHO make choices. OR you are coming from a place and now taking your anger out on this person.

PARK BENCH

Park bench is a long form game. Establish an order. Player one and two will do a scene sitting on a bench. Start a scene using everything we’ve learned above. WHO are you? WHERE are you? WHAT is going on? After s minute or two tops, player one makes an excuse to leave. Player three enters. Player two is the same character on the same bench. Continue until players of cycled through and Player One comes back for a final.scene.

1. Play characters that know each other. RANDOM is boring.
2. Raise the stakes. Make us care about these character. WHY are you here? Go deep into WHO choices. How do you feel? What do you need/want?
3. NO QUESTIONS NO BLOCKS. Answer questions you want to ask. ACCEPT all with strong YES AND… responses.
4. LISTEN to every scene that precedes yours. Immediately start considering who you will play in this story. Enter as a character that knows the character on the bench. Establish the connection immediately.
5. DRAMATIC IRONY: As you sit waiting your turn, think about your big entrance. Consider what your character knows. Compare this to what you and the audience know. Your character knows the two characters you directly interact with, but do they know the other characters. Your character most likely will not have heard the previous conversations, but do they know about what was discussed.
6. After the first few rounds, put the bench somewhere else. Put the bench at an airport, hotel, bank, school etc

USING IMPROV TO WRITE GREAT STORIES

With all of the above, listen for great stories. If you do a scene of any merit, write down some notes in your actor’s journal. I have seen beginning students play the EMOTIONAL CHOICE GAME. They create a scenario that could be a movie, TV show, play, or novel. WRITE THAT DOWN.

I tell my students. I WANT TO SEE THAT SKETCH COMEDY ON TIKTOK OR YOUTUBE NEXT WEEK.

When we trust ourselves, we surpass all expectations. With all of the above, we make very simple preparations before starting a scene then we just play. When we get off stage, analyze the work. Without ego or insecurity, identify the good, the bad and the ugly. Then simply repeat successes and learn from mistakes.

Improv, and life, can be THAT simple!

Bring the joy and laughter of improv comedy to your community. My mission is to know stage fright and social anxiety off the phobia list top of the list, one show/workshop at a time. We also have murder mystery events, game nights and more. BUT while.it mightseem scary to far too many, the improv workshop is the most fun and the most valuable experience for all.

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