One of the great things about doing improv is it’s an activity which people can quickly start to get into. A first time performer can easily stand side by side with a seasoned performer and produce a quality scene. In fact, I’d usually recommend a experienced improviser to work with and perform in scenes with newbies to help ease a less experienced improviser into the craft.
Certainly, you can have two or more first time improvisers work together in scenes and exercises, and if you’re taking a class or a course it is more likely than not that most if not all the students will be inexperienced. A good thing with improv though is that experienced performers can always continue learning and the best way to continue the journey of developing improv skills is to keep practicing it. That often means that experienced improvisers will continue to take classes perhaps because they want to work on certain skills, or maybe they just enjoy doing improv, or want to engage with the social side of the activity.
Whether you are experienced in improvisation or new to it, the combination of adding an experienced improviser into the mix can be most beneficial as a kind of leader or mentor. This doesn’t mean that the experienced improviser will take charge and dominate scenes however. I’d suggest that the role of the experienced improviser shouldn’t be to force the direction of a scene with an inexperienced performer, but rather to help guide the ship to avoid pitfalls.
Many new improvisers will run into common issues such as being too much in their own head, attempting to direct others, or blanking on what the options for them to do next could be. The ironic thing about the latter is that in an improvised scene you can literally do pretty much anything, but so many inexperienced players will find the infinite options too broad to select from and end up choosing nothing.
An idea often expressed in improv is to endow your scene partners. If you make a scene all about yourself and your character you may run into a few issues such as excluding your scene partners or not giving space for their character to develop, or that your scene partner becomes somewhat demoralised as they realise that they’ll have to battle for stage time and feel ignored/undervalued. An easy tip to fix such issues is to endow your scene partner with the qualities that you may otherwise have wanted to give to yourself.
Rather than announce your own character as the King or business owner give these qualities to the person you’re working with. You’ll have helped set up the scenario and in the act of endowing your scene partner with these qualities you will in fact have given yourself some stage time and importance through the dialogue you say to endow them. The true magic comes when your scene partner follows suit and endows you with a character back. You endow them as a King and they respond by confirming that you are their brave knight who will lead the army. In this example both players will have a character and scenario to build off of.
A further tip to note off of this approach is that it is always easier to talk about someone else’s character than it is to talk about yourself. How often would you imagine that King Charles enters a room and announces to people that know him that he is the King? Never probably. But it would seem very natural for someone to enter and address him as ‘your highness’ which would instantly let the audience know who he is and what the scenario is.
Inexperienced players may not have the inspiration to set the ball rolling and that is where you can use these tips to lead by giving cues that will encourage their creativity. Some performers whether experienced or not will sometimes lack confidence or the feeling of permission to input some ideas. This may require the other player to take charge, but almost like inception you can use the approach of sparking their creativity in a way where they’ll give input into the scene without realising that you gave them the little prod in the right direction.
For example if a player lacks inspiration in the scenario you’re in, you could make the offer that the other player is the key to solving the crisis the characters face. So if your characters have a broken down car you could suddenly remember that the other character usually carries their toolkit with them. This is a harmless enough suggestion that wouldn’t require the other player to have vast knowledge of tools, but creates a space in which they can now fetch the tools and start to work on the broken down car to help move the scene forward. Alternatively it may just be that they hand the tools back to you and pass the buck back for you to continue driving the scene forward. In this instance you still have the solution to push the story forwards and can look for another opportunity to integrate the other performer into the scene more.
I find this approach so useful when creating improv scenes. By creating offers to other performers that allow them space to input their creativity it will enable the scene to push forward, and will create a sense of chemistry between the performers on stage. The audience will be able to see that you are working together towards a unified goal. And of course there will still be moments where you can take the baton back to create a moment for yourself if the moment is right, but then still look for the opportunities to hand the baton back to your scene partner. If you get in a good rhythm you will find that they start to offer the baton back to you and you will take turns to lead and to follow the lead of each other. By giving them the focus and trusting and following in whatever they input you’ll be able to create naturally organic scenes where even if you’ve given the occasional push you’ll still be going with each other’s flow.
For new and inexperienced players working with experienced performers this approach will enable them to experience scenes where they feel they have contributed and that they have done well. This will boost their confidence and help them shake off any nerves about performing in improv.
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