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I've been teaching improv classes for a long time, and over the years, I've seen students do the same things over and over again that get in their way. Here are the top 5 things that improvisers should avoid doing in class and suggestions about how you can do it differently.
1. Don’t apologize after a scene or when you’re given a note
A lot of times, when people finish a scene in improv class or get a note from the teacher, they say “sorry.” You don’t need to say this. I should know -- I was one of those people who said sorry all the time after a scene or an exercise. I was apologizing for not being perfect. I was apologizing for wasting your time. I was apologizing for existing.
“Sorry” means you did something wrong. I am here to tell you, you did nothing wrong. You are improvising – and that means it’s impossible to make a mistake. I understand you think you made a mistake, but you didn’t. So give yourself a break and stop apologizing for learning.
Suggestion: Next time, substitute the word "thank you" or "oh" for “sorry” and see if you feel differently.
2. Don’t be defensive
This is a hard thing to address because if you’re defensive and you’re reading this, you probably don't think this applies to you. Boy, do I wish I had a way to get through to you. I have taken improv classes with defensive people, I have taught improv classes with defensive people, and these people would rather be right than learn. Every note from the teacher to the student becomes some sort of justification why the student did this or that. If you find yourself justifying why you did something, rather than just taking the note, you are being defensive. And when you’re defensive, you’re not learning, you’re just surviving.
Suggestion: If you have an inkling that you might be defensive, get help for it outside of class, because you are wasting your time and money taking improv classes, or, to be honest, any kind of classes.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarity when you get a note you don’t understand
I have a friend who's taking improv classes and he called me up for some advice. He was getting the same note over and over again from different teachers, and he didn’t really understand what they meant. I asked him if he got clarity on the note. "No, I don't want to be one of those students who takes up all the time during improv classes." Here’s the thing: If you don’t understand a note, this is the time to be one of those students because it gives the teacher the opportunity to share their experience with you, or better yet, come up with an exercise that can help you. As a teacher, I love these opportunities. It’s exciting, because now the class and the teacher are improvising together, and the chance that we will learn from each other is pretty good.
Suggestion: If you don't understand a note, ask questions. Be ok with taking up time in your improv classes. It will only help you get more comfortable taking up stage time.
4. Don’t be polite
Most students are super polite and hold back in improv classes, especially in exercises that are quick and designed for the players to go multiply times such as 30-second scene, three-line scenes, etc. These games are designed for you to learn through repetition, and by jumping in as much as you can, you help the group as whole. Don’t be polite and let other people take all the turns. Trust that if you are getting out there too much, the teacher will reign you in. There is old actor/director tip: It’s easier to tell an actor to bring it down if he’s playing it too big than to have an actor who is playing it too small and have him play it bigger.
Suggestion: Keep pushing yourself out there!
5. Don’t hold back, even if you’re feeling insecure
If you feel off or you’re having one of those days where you don’t have any confidence, make sure you don't hide out in class. Instead, be the first one up. Ryan Archibald once gave me the best piece to advice. I was doing a long-form show at Second City called Summer Rental, and I showed up backstage before the show and told some of the cast members that I felt off. Ryan said: "Make sure you are in the first scene." Man, he was right. I did a scene with Joe Canale and we nailed it. I think being scared helped me do some of my best work.
Suggestion: Your mind will want to tell you to hide out. Do the opposite and get out there.
Today more than ever, improvisers are striking out on their own and forming independent groups. Nothing makes me happier than this because this is the way people really grow in improv.
However, just because you can form your own team doesn’t mean it’s going to be a success. Creating a group that really works requires commitment, chemistry and lots of energy.
I was involved in indie improv groups way before they used that name, and the one I was most proud of was the critically acclaimed long-form group Jazz Freddy. Recently, someone asked me what made that long-form group so successful, and I thought I would share with you what I learned from my experience.
1. Start with a vision
A group that doesn’t have a clear vision is going to have trouble sticking together, because it won’t be long before people won’t agree on what direction to take. When you're picking improvisers to be part of your group, get like-minded people together and make sure they all buy into your vision.
With Jazz Freddy, Pete Gardner had a vision to do more patient, theatrical improv, and everyone who joined the group shared that vision. Though the show evolved and changed over time, as long-form shows do, the vision of the type and style of improv never did. When creative differences arose in the group, and they did, it was never about the vision. That was the one thing that was agreed upon from the outset.
2. Get good talent
When you’re forming an improv group, don’t pick your friends or your roommate just because you happen to hang out with them. Pick the very best people you can find, because there is no substitute for good talent. Without it, you have nothing, absolutely nothing. If you’re lucky enough to combine talent with commitment and a little vision, you have the opportunity to create something wonderful that will influence generations of improvisers.
3. Make the team your only focus
In Jazz Freddy, we made the show our #1 priority. We weren't distracted by running across town doing other improv shows and classes because Jazz Freddy was the only thing we were doing. The only thing. It's called singleness of purpose. We treated being part of Jazz Freddy like we had been cast in play at Steppenwolf. We rehearsed three or four times a week and we continued to rehearse once the show was up.
4. Make the hard decisions that are good for the group
I think one of the hardest and best decisions that we had to make as a group happened right before the second run of the show. A couple of cast members had been hired by Second City, and because of their schedules, they couldn’t make the rigorous time commitment to our rehearsals. So as a group, we decided they could not do the run, and with that decision, we were putting the good of the group ahead of the personalities.
5. Take ownership
When some improvisers join a group or a show, they say "I just want to show up and play." That may work for them, but if you are looking to create something lasting and worth doing, you need people who are willing to do more than that. Everyone on the team needs to help out in some way: putting up fliers, doing social media, booking the venue, etc.
In Jazz Freddy, it was understood that cast members would help out with the producing responsibilities, meaning we would hang posters, get people to donate to our fundraiser, and talk it up with family and friends to get butts in the seats.
6. Invest in yourself
I know you’ve been spending a ton of money on classes and workshops, but if you want your group to be successful, you’re going to have to spend a little money – on posters, rehearsal space, Facebook ads and most importantly, a director. With Jazz Freddy, nobody thought that we were "done" or "above" having a coach. We were willing to pay for it because we were making an investment in ourselves, and it turned out to be a huge benefit because we learned from the show, and half the cast eventually worked at Second City.
Anger is funny. Think about all of the great scenes you’ve watched in movies and sitcoms where the character keeps getting more and more frustrated as a situation gets heightened. Ed Helms losing his shit in The Hangover, George Costanza yelling at people in a movie theater, Steve Martin going crazy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
These angry outbursts are not only hilarious but necessary. Comedy is all about tension, and anger can ground the reality of the situation to make it even funnier.
Unfortunately, beginning improvisers are often terrified to get really angry in a scene. Instead, we suppress it, keeping our reactions small and controlled.
It’s hard to learn how to unleash our anger when we’ve been trained our whole lives to reign it in. For me, by the age of two, I was taught to suppress my emotions -- especially anger. In my house, anger was bad, and people who expressed it were even worse. If you expressed anger you would get shame, so you would eat the anger because it was less painful than to feel the shame. So I became afraid to express anger in life, but for some reason, it was easier to do it on stage.
We think keeping our anger in check is necessary in our lives – if we wait tables or work in an office, we can’t go ballistic on our customers or our boss all the time, can we? But the truth is, we need to find constructive ways to let out our anger, or it will kill us. That’s why anger has been linked to stress, heart disease and cancer.
What improvisers don’t understand about suppressing anger is that by suppressing one emotion, we are suppressing all emotions -- the positive ones as well as the negative ones. On stage, we want to have access to all our emotions and be able to go full throttle on a moment’s notice. By holding them back we are holding ourselves back.
Recently, I had a student who was doing a scene in my Art of Slow Comedy Improv Class and it was hilarious. One guy was playing a character who did not take the other guy seriously as he was trying to kill him with his improvised gun. All the student with the gun had to do was to keep getting more and more frustrated that he wasn’t being taken seriously, playing the Ed Helms part. I could see the student get to the brink of getting really frustrated and then back off, instead of heightening the anger.
After the scene, I asked the student with the gun why he resisted getting frustrated.
"I didn’t want to step on my partner’s laughs,” he said. “If I got more and more frustrated no one could hear him."
Since my students can articulate things much better than I can sometimes, I asked his scene partner what he thought. “I wish you would have pushed harder with your emotions,” he said, “because it would have given my character a chance to push harder back.”
I am not going to lie. I still struggle with getting angry, both on stage and in life. I realize it is one of the most intimate of all the emotions, and every time I do not express my anger in my life, on some level it is killing me. In improv, keeping anger down will kill the scene, and by letting it explode, we don’t know how far we can go.
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