To Err is Improv Part 1

From the very first time we start improv, we are taught that one of the basic rules is that there are no mistakes (or at least I hope you were). The very nature of the craft is that nothing you can possibly do is wrong because, since there is no script, technically nothing can be a mistake. By definition, a mistake is a wrong action, and how can anything necessarily be wrong when there is no “right”? After all, improv is in the interpretive, and what is right to you is correct – there isn't a test proctor who can grade you against what the right answers were. On the flip side however, everyone who's ever gotten notes after a show or class knows that it is possible to make mistakes, but how is this possible? A quick check of scenes that are “right” and ones that are “wrong” shows where the rubric lies: it's not in the individual answers, but in the piece as a whole, and from that perspective, we want something that is entertaining for an audience. But that still doesn't satisfy the dichotomy in mistake making.

“The Buddha said each mistake is a rebirth ... don't you want to get reborn?” - Charlie Crews, Life

Improv is, in a strictly technical sense, a practice that is built for failure. When systems or tools are designed to maximize success and minimize failure, they are built with what are known as constraints – devices meant to block failure. A Phillip's head screwdriver has the familiar plus sign shape that locks into a Phillip's head screw, and as a result it is difficult to use incorrectly because the system doesn't allow for many configurations. This may explain why some people prefer multiple choice tests over essay ones; multiple choice answers effectively constrain the possible answers. Improv has no such constraints – anything is possible, which means there are an infinite number of ways to make mistakes. There are also an infinite number of ways to be correct, and a lot of improv games and forms are actually just a system of constraints meant to block the capacity for making errors, and drive you down a road of success. Because there are no errors in improv, we build the constraint that as information is added to a scene it becomes fact. (The first “Kitchen Rule” - don't deny the established reality.)

Then how is it possible that mistakes can drive a scene off the rails? First, it may be helpful to indicate a few common types of errors: errors of commission and omission and errors of wimping and waffling. An error of commission is one where someone intentionally goes against the scene, for example: calling someone “Dad” when they previously established as “Mom” simply because you didn't like the original decision. Errors of omission are ones where something is forgotten, not seen, or not heard – there is no malicious intent here, just human nature (more on this later). Errors of wimping are ones where a player prefers to keep things vague instead of concrete, for example, compare “Hand me that over there” with “Hand me that rifle next to the zombie head”. This is because when we are going to make a mistake, we would rather make that mistake by failing to do something as opposed to doing the wrong thing. Errors of waffling could also be thought of as errors of committing, where ideas are tossed away because we either don't feel like keeping it in the air or because we want to try another idea. It's also important to look at errors in terms of their significance: minor all the way up to major.