Silver and Gold

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One of the basics I was always taught when choosing people you want to improvise with is to choose people “you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with”. This is to say that because improv is such a personal art form, and also one that is so reliant on your teammates for success, that the mixture of different people is the show – it's what drives the engine. By that logic, the key to a good improv group is to have a mix of people that can enjoy playing with each other – however, I've noticed that just having a good group of people means nothing if you can't get them into the elevator, and is not the only indicator of a “successful group”. What's equally as important to having good group chemistry is having complementary levels of ambition (which, come to think of it, is a facet of the elevator theory).

This is a tricky artform that we do, and its mutability, ease of doing, low cost, and even worse, it's capacity to be just picked up and dropped just as easily makes it very easy to treat it with a certain degree of flippancy, especially for the 90% or so of improvisers that do it as a hobby. The life things that can eventually derail a group altogether are at work everyday; it's just that most of the time, they don't mount up to the point where they mess with your schedule. You have to work late, miss a week so you can go to a family reunion, meet a new boy/girl that you want to spend every moment with – all these things happen all the time. The mastery of improv is a long, grinding process, one that is less a product of talent and more of temperament, which is why having a group of people you can enjoy slogging through it with is important.

The big lesson I teach now to everyone is that “the most important person on stage is the other person”, but this concept doesn't (or shouldn't, at least) start and stop when you are on stage – it should extend to off stage as well. Jimmy Carrane wrote in his book (and has covered additionally in podcasts) that overextending yourself to a bunch of projects is a less powerful use of your time than committing to one or two projects. This is something that has taken me a while to fully appreciate, since one of my goals is to do improv every night for a week. I've realized in the last year though the added value of having people you can rely on. We all have a finite amount of improv scenes in us – we should endeavour to make the few we have the very best.

But what makes the difference, is your commitment to your team mates. No one can decide for you how much you want to play with your team – only you can. Every time one of these life “things” happens, you decide how much you want to keep doing it. You're having a lousy day; do you go to practice anyway, or just stay home, watching T.V. instead? Finding people who want something valuable and are dedicated and are fun to play with is all the more rarer, but that is the special sauce that makes great groups. The ones that stand out to people are ones with long records of constant support. Not every fun improviser will be a good fit dedication wise – some just want to do a practice a week and perform occasionally, and that 's OK. But if you're someone who wants to go further than that, it's important to find the people that match your eagerness. Being in a group with people who are far more ambitious than you will only lead to resentment, and being with people are less interested will always leave you feeling dragged down.

Short term shows or groups probably don't have to worry about this sort of thing, and neither do more casual players. But more invested individuals (which probably includes you, if you're reading this) and definitely those that are interested in creating long term artistic adventures must at least consider the appetite facet (which again, it should be emphasized that this is only a part of the elevator theory) when looking at the people that are fun to play with. Don't just find someone you wouldn't mind being stuck in an elevator with – find people who would agree to join you in a stuck elevator.

Opinions and Facts

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One of the founding principles of improvisational theater (improv) is the idea of “yes and”. It's such a basic building block for everything an improviser does, and you can find its DNA in practically every higher level concept and idea, sort of the binary machine code all improv is programmed under. It indicates both a positive, supportive good nature that improvisers have towards each other as well as a much more technical agreement – as elements are established in a scene (e.g. people, places, things) they become gospel. To disagree with these elements has the effect of confusing observers and performers alike and halting a scene. The “yes” symbolizes and acknowledgement of facts and the “and” indicates an adding to or heightening of established elements. (“I am a doctor.” “Yes, and you are the finest heart surgeon in the world” - or - “Yes, and the drunkest, most incompetent anesthesiologist in the world.”)

In scenes, responding to offers (i.e. facts) in a mechanical way will allow scenes to proceed, but also has the effect of making scenes feel fairly stilted or robotic, which is why a better response is “I know, and” which stands in for the agreement of “yes and” while allowing for responses that can have more nuance, or at least more humanity. So an improv scene is constantly built around agreement, which must mean that actors can never say the word “no”, right? This was a misconception of improvisers for quite awhile, but the Arnett Axiom says that anything we say in real life we can say in an improv scene, and most scenes would be rather strange (and brief) if players agreed to be shot when prompted: “May I kill you?” (unless the character has a death wish, which is the exception rather than the rule). Instead, agreement must be thought of as being based around facts. “We are on the moon” - and now we are. To cast doubt on these facts unravels the world we're in.

This is important, because facts cannot be disputed, but opinions can. Two actors who are playing doctors in a hospital are facts. That one is the best and the other worst are also facts. That one loves the other is an opinion. (Opinions being any fact that is not shared by all individuals.) People are often not descripted in a vacuum, they exist relative to other descriptors. The best heart surgeon in the world at an All-Star Heart Surgeon Convention is fairly unimpressive. That same surgeon at a convention of witch doctors is in a different predicament. Both facts and opinions have to be respected as valid, and treated with the same reverence – one doctor who loves another doctor has a factual component and an opinion component: the other doctor can disagree with that assessment. Often facts can contribute to opinions and vice versa and give us great comedy as a result. Take for example one of my favorite Woody Allen jokes (from “Annie Hall”):

There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Having opinions provides the stopgap that is not accounted for in “yes, and”, which can make for detail rich ideas; but also makes for scenes that can meander aimlessly or be talked about in a listless, apathetic monotone. Opinion indicates emotional investment and tension as a result. That Duncan is King of Scotland is fact – that Macbeth should kill him and how far he is willing to go are matters of opinion, and that drives the “Scottish Play”. These make for great conflict (which is often present in narrative, but I would argue about it's absolute necessity) since facts cannot be disputed. But with both facts and opinions, we provide improv with the clarity and specificity needed in good writing, and also the humanity and expression found in good acting. Or that's my opinion, at least.