It’s a good question. Some will immediately say there are no rights and wrongs in improv because you can do anything, and anything is arguably a valid choice…but I’d say it doesn’t take more than a moment or two to see that that statement doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.
Need me to justify it? OK…he’s a few examples I’ll rattle off to make my point.
And then she slapped her across the face.
He dropped his trousers for the medical examination scene.
They swore even though there were children in the audience.
Ta-da.
Obvious right? These are all clearly things you shouldn’t do whilst performing improv in almost any imaginable situation, so are clear examples of wrong things to do in improv.
But it could be argued that these examples are so extreme that they go without saying and aren’t within the spirit of what is meant when people say there aren’t any rights and wrongs in improv.
I get it.
But that’s the problem. There are also people that don’t get it. Generalised statements like there aren’t any rights or wrongs in improv are potentially dangerous when in the hands of people who may take advantage of such ideas, or others who will feel genuinely justified in doing things that most would clearly agree are no nos.
The experienced improvisers among us will all have come across the idea spouted that ‘it wasn’t me that was being mean…it was my character.’ And certainly, there can be an argument made that if we’re ever playing an antagonist or villain of some kind, we may have to lean into saying or doing things that the audience would expect from the bad guy characters.
But there is a difference between playing a villainous character is something scripted where all parties involved understand what is being asked of them to perform, and what happens on an improv stage. In an improvised scene, the lines can be blurred where performers or audience members may not know when a performer is playing a bad guy and saying mean things to another character or saying or doing mean things to the performer playing the victim.
This is where safety and trust become two of the most important things that as an improviser you need to establish. Discuss with each other and with your improv team what the boundaries are. Discuss what is off limits generally, and for individuals.
This sounds like it could open a huge can of worms if everyone has different levels, and restrictions can limit creativity. In practice this shouldn’t be too hard. Know what is acceptable in terms of any kind of physical contact during scenes, and know what the policy on any attempts at stage combat. Establish a protocol where if a line is at risk of being crossed how this can be communicated.
Sometimes a risk is that performers end up doing things or taking part in things where others do things that crosses a line for them, but they don’t say at the time because they’re in front of an audience, or may worry that there would be negative repercussions for raising an issue.
My advice is that you should make it very clear that it’s ok to veto involvement in certain things, and that you should establish ways that performers can do it in rehearsal or even in front of an audience where it can be instantly recognised and acted upon. This doesn’t have to mean making a scene, but just a simple way to indicate that a scene or idea needs to be gently pushed in a different direction.
And then sometimes, you may need to make a scene. And sometimes that’s ok, and the right thing to do. If someone crosses a boundary, especially a significant one, just disengage the scene. Hopefully your team will be supportive, and this won’t be necessary, but if it comes to such a moment, just do what you have to do. My advice would be to avoid making a scene if you can, and the first step to doing this is by good communication and established guidelines in rehearsal. But if in a show you need to invoke a veto of some kind, make sure you’re clear on this at the time. Most of the time, any need to veto things can be done without big incident and without derailing the whole show.
But all this is now sounding very heavy and serious. And that isn’t again, what is what most people will be getting at when they say about the idea of you being able to do anything in improv, and that there are no rights and wrongs in improv.
Mostly it’ll be in the realm of:
Players making story decisions in a scene that some players don’t think is a good idea.
Players wanting a scene to be their way vs another player’s way, and perhaps one performer leading the direction of the whole story.
Or players being especially weird and abstract.
Or players making things very mundane and boring.
Stuff like this.
This could be said to be doing the wrong thing in improv.
But the idea is that if there are no rights and wrongs then it wouldn’t be wrong to suddenly turn into a hot air balloon five minutes into what was otherwise a very grounded scene.
Sure, you could do that, but there are reasons why some people would say these are the wrong things to do.
I always teach that whilst you could literally do anything, there are choices you can make which are likely to be more successful or less successful.
But wait…who is to judge what is more successful or less successful?
Good question. Everything is subjective…right?
Well, yeah, but is it though? We can all pretty much agree that with the more extreme examples given earlier, that all would hopefully agree that physical violence or crossing physical boundaries are wrong. But if we can agree on obvious things like that, hopefully we can also agree and gain an understanding of what as scene partners or an improv team, what we may collectively deem to be more or less successful choices to make…generally speaking.
We could all agree that the cliché ending of ‘it was all a dream’ is overdone and collectively avoid making that choice.
That is much less of an extreme example, but shows we can all get on the same page.
It we take it down further notches, I’m sure we could all agree that contradicting established continuity would be a less successful choice too.
How about scenes that would set up that the performers have to do things that they would be physically unable to do on stage? Like saying ‘hey let’s all do backflips right now!’ If the other performer was not able to do such a thing, that would perhaps be an example of the wrong thing to do. Don’t endow your scene partner with things that will intentionally force them to say no. We love the idea of ‘yes, and’ in improv, so pushing a ‘no, but’ situation into existence would be an example of a wrong thing to do.
But now we’ve focussed on the wrongs, lets look at the right things to do. Because the idea that we’ve been exploring is that there are no rights or wrongs. And actually, it’s pretty obvious that there are some things that are right to do.
Listening to your scene partner, respecting the audience, building on ideas and accepting offers…these are all pretty big right things to do. So do them.
Simple right?
Well, actually no. Not always. Improv is a skill that needs to be developed, and it takes a lot of time, and effort and practice to get tuned into spontaneous story creation.
An improviser acts as their own script writer and director, and then has to do this whilst combining their efforts with how ever many other performers are in the same scene as them. All of them also script writing and directing whilst also trying to pay attention to the collective story. None of this is easy, and it can be so easy to ‘do something wrong’…or to put it the way I would, and that is to make some less successful choices.
Ultimately, no improv scene or show will ever be flawless, and improv is so often celebrated for celebrating and embracing ‘mistakes’.
So, next time someone tells you there is no right or wrong in improv, remind them that improv is filled with tons of right and wrong, and the best we can ever do is aim to keep it a fun and positive experience for the cast and audience whilst aiming to make more successful choices along the way.
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Want to learn improv skills? You should check out the range of improv books from David Pustansky, who is the author of the popular Extreme Improv Big Book of Improv Games series of books. Available worldwide on Amazon and Kindle, you can find links to the books here
