Improv to the Rescue!

I just got back from my second of six beginning classes with OKC Improv! How cool is that! I’ve been wanting to do this for years and finally went for it.

Parents, teachers - if you see an opportunity to enroll your kids in improv or theater games, you should definitely encourage them to do it! Beyond developing creativity and confidence, improv is incredible at building teamwork and empathy skills. Allow me to explain…

Improv Is a Team Sport

If you have only a passing familiarity with improv, you could easily get the wrong impression. Why would people get up on stage and goof around trying to illicit laughter from an audience unless they are self-aggrandizing attention seekers? But that’s totally not what improv is about. Improv is a highly collaborative team sport. 

Think about what an improv troop is tasked with! They walk onstage and tell a story together in front of an audience with no prior knowledge of what that story will be. In its most pure form there is no script at all; not even an outline or an inkling. Members of the troop must tune in to the audience and to one another and begin building a story spontaneously together, without the opportunity to discuss. 

The actors are trained to give to one another in order to insure collective success. If one actor gets into trouble the others will bail him out. The audience cheers when this happens! They don’t want to watch someone struggling on stage, but they do love it when mistakes happen. Then they get to see a team of actors cooperating to work those mistakes into a successful story.

So what’s really the point? Is it all that interesting or meaningful to see a bunch of people just making stuff up off the tops of their heads? Sure improv is ephemeral, messy, strange, sometimes awkward, sometimes trivial. It can also be hilarious, amazing, highly entertaining, and even surprisingly touching or meaningful. 

My two instructors are Clint and Buck Vrazel, otherwise known as “Twinprov.” (Warning: adult content! Check them out, but not while your kids are looking!) Their work on stage is incredible! They create entire twenty-minute-long improvised musicals. That’s right, improvised musicals! Words, melodies, verses, choruses, and rhymes expressing complex ideas, arising from the flow of their made-up narrative, pouring spontaneously out of their mouths, live in front of an audience! It’s quite the jaw-dropping feat, which they are able to accomplish time and again through well-practiced teamwork.

Yes, And…

So what’s their secret? How can they collaborate on the spot so amazingly well? I only know the thousandth of it myself; that’s why I’m taking the class! But I can tell you that it all starts with two simple words, which you may have heard before - “Yes, and…”

My daughter rolls her eyes when she hears me talk about “Yes, and…” For one thing she’s heard it many times from many sources. To her it seems like common knowledge that improv involves “Yes, and…” And she figures that knowing the words means she knows the concept, and I can’t possibly tell her anything more about it. Granted, it is deceptively simple. 

For those of you who don’t know, “Yes, and…” is the first skill they teach you in any improv or theater games class, or possibly any acting class or production, if the director uses theater games for warm-up. The idea is that you accept what the other actors put forward (that’s the “Yes” part), and you build from there (that’s the “and…” part). Simple, right?

Simple, yet profoundly deep. I get the sense that after they teach you the concept of “Yes, and…” on your first day of improv, you spend the rest of your training (or indeed career if that’s where it leads) learning how to actually do it. 

The Zen of Yes, And…

The trick, as I understand it, is that you have to drop your ego. You can’t be planning out the scene the way you think it should go. There’s no room for critique, questioning, planning, judging, editing, niggling, denying, blocking. Instead you must listen and react to what others say. Be in the moment, let it happen without trying to control it. Accept what the other actors give you, react to it, give them something useful back, build, allow, adjust, create, go with the flow. 

This is all easier said than done. I’m coaching Odyssey of the Mind (OM) this year (a topic for another time). When working on problems together I see my kids struggling mightily to be heard, yet they don’t seem to have the motivation or skills to really listen to one another. This is to be expected. We are not born with great listening skills; we must learn them, and all too rarely are they taught.

Really truly listening involves more than hearing words. It involves opening yourself up to be changed by those words. Improv allows you to practice that skill in a context where such change is safe and desirable. If I walk onstage thinking I’m an ogre and my teammate says, “Hello, little girl,” then I immediately become a little girl. Maybe I’m dressed as an ogre for Halloween, so I say in a high-pitched voice, “Trick or treat. Do you like my ogre costume?” That’s “Yes, and…” in action.

It seems to me there is no end to the potential in “Yes, and…” Listening, empathy, humility, trust, connection, teamwork, collaboration - these are the skills that allow improv to happen, all flowing from those two little words! See? See how deep? An improvised musical? What an incredible feat of teamwork! Just think what Congress could accomplish with a little improv training! My OM kids will definitely be using it to build collaborative and listening skills. I recommend it for your kids too!

What’s your experience with improv or theater games? Please post a comment!

Next time - a few easy theater games to get you started!