by Jessica Pan
It’s true. All of these things can and do happen in improv.
Plus, given the improvised nature of the performance, watching it can also be anxiety inducing. It can go terribly wrong, and audiences don’t want to cringe on behalf of the performers or sit through bad comedy for an hour.
But I think people really can’t stand it for another reason. And it’s this: while watching a regional comedy troupe acting out an Uber journey through Nudist Narnia, they observe the performers’ joyous, earnest expressions. The audience sees how genuinely happy and safe they feel in their whimsy.
And they think the same thing I do:
Your vigor for life appalls me.
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Nearly everything in adulthood is goal oriented: increase productivity, function on less sleep, make more money, run faster, cycle farther. Fifteen-minute meals. Seven-minute workouts. Even meditating is less “path to enlightenment” and more “how meditating can help you smash your workday!”
That’s because as soon as you enter the real world, playtime is over. Kaput. Done. There are no more outlets for sheer whimsy. We’re just expected to be finished with it. Forever. Or be satisfied with getting scraps of it from Twitter memes, Beyoncé dance classes, and pets’ Halloween costumes (introvert whimsy).
Which explains, in part, why the music festivals I avoid are so wildly popular: it’s the only socially acceptable time for grown men and women to wear tails, frolic in capes, and cover themselves in glitter and face paint like it’s a seven-year-old’s birthday party (extrovert whimsy).
After my marathon networking schedule, I’m feeling this lack of play more than ever. Why does everything have to have an end goal? Why do I have to talk to Susan and try to impress her? Why is she always trying to get me to crowdfund her start-up? Why can’t we just have fun?
Years ago, I attended a one-off weekend improv course when I first arrived in London. I’d just moved here, and I was in that sweet spot between two worlds, where I was trying to shake off who I was in my previous life while being still utterly beguiled by the prospects of who I might become in this new life. The course was free, and I didn’t know anyone in London whom I could accidentally run into—it was my chance to be brave. I’d never have this chance again. But that was the day I was confronted with the Temple of Doom: I left halfway through and never returned. I was too self-conscious, too cynical, too closed off. My hand wound eventually healed, but my embarrassment did not.
But here it is again. Improv. Back in my life.
After the Facebook suggestion lands on my screen like a tiny undetonated digital bomb, I do some research and am surprised to find out that most courses in London for this month are already sold out. But, then again, improv is one of the only ways for grown-ass city dwellers to have pure, unfettered playtime and not be arrested or committed.
I sign up for an eight-week course. Eight separate occasions of structured but spontaneous play with total strangers.
I also write a will.
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I’m late for my first class because I’ve stood in front of the entrance debating the merits of going to McDonald’s instead. I arrive in the classroom, a black basement with no windows, just as the instructor takes the floor.
Liam’s demeanor is alert but gentle. Like he’s been specially trained to soothe spooked horses, which is the best way to describe the vibe of the people in the room. Fourteen other beginners and me, sitting in one long row facing him.
“Improv is not about being funny. It’s not about being clever. Or quick,” he says.
I’m confused. Wasn’t improv all of these things?
“It’s really about being open and in the moment. And going with whatever your scene partner offers you,” he continues.
He doesn’t waste time: he gathers us around in a standing circle where he leads us in our first warm-up game: passing around invisible balls. We pretend to pass a red ball to each other. Then, we throw fire balls, then bowling balls, then bouncy balls.
All imaginary.
I really don’t want to lose you here. Please don’t storm off, queasy and disgusted. Because this activity, in real life, is actually fine. I’m as surprised as anyone.
Everyone in my class is enthusiastic in the fake-ball-throwing game, but not “drama student inhaling a bag of gummy bears during the intermission at Hamilton” enthusiastic. It’s more “normal adult who is self-consciously playing a silly game that they have paid to participate in.” Plus, it is a game with balls without all the fraught anxiety around accurately catching and throwing them.
After five minutes, my bangs start sticking to my forehead from all the exertion of playing these intense imaginary sports. I wish I’d worn running shoes—I didn’t anticipate improv would be so physically demanding.
Reading my mind, Liam asks us to sit. And he introduces the concept of “Yes and . . . ,” the foundation stone of all improv. Whatever your partner in a scene says, you have to go along with it (yes) and then add something to the story (and . . .). Here’s an example of how this might work:
Character 1: Hey, Julie, I love this macaroni salad that you’ve brought to work!
Character 2: Well, I wanted to make your favorite food, seeing as it’s your last day here.
Character 1: It was just time, you know? What with the rabid bee infestation in my office . . .
Character 2: We all thought you handled the bees really well.
Liam divides us into groups of four. One by one, in our groups, each of us is supposed to contribute a few phrases at a time, building off what was previously said, to create a story. The game is called “Remember when?”
I’m initially overcome with shyness, as I always am in these situations, but I’m emboldened by knowing everyone else is a beginner, too. None of them know each other either. Plus, no one seems judgmental or disapproving.
A bearded, blond, man-bunned guy named Clover designates himself the leader of my group, which is fine with me. The two others in my group are a tall guy and a woman with blue hair.
“Do you remember when we bought some milk?” Clover turns toward me.
“Oh! Oh yeah! I drank it and . . . got an allergic reaction because . . .” I turn to my left.
“You drank it directly from the cow,” Blue Hair Girl says, looking back at me.
“I did, I did, yeah . . .” I say, turning to the tall guy.
“And the doctor told you that you wouldn’t live . . .” he says.
“If you drank it again . . .” Blue Hair Girl says.
“So you drank it again . . .” Tall Guy says.
“And you died,” Clover says, looking at me.
“Right,” I say.
Ten minutes into my second-ever improv class and they’ve already killed me off.
“There are no mistakes in improv,” Liam says from the back of the classroom. This feels very much like a blatant lie, to coerce us, like “Bikini waxes don’t hurt if you keep getting them!” or “This is the last round of push-ups.”
My group and I try again:
“Do you remember that time that we all swapped shoes?” Clover asks.
“And we all wore high heels?” Tall Guy says.
“. . . But then I got gangrene?” I say.
Throughout the exercise, I could not stop giving myself diseases, allergic reactions, or hypothermia. In the American version of The Office, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) takes evening improv classes, and he hijacks every scene by yelling, “I’ve got a gun!” It turns out that my own version of “I’ve got a gun!” is “I’ve got malaria!”
We try again.
“Do you remember that time we bought that jar of pickles?” Clover begins.
“And it was the last jar in town,” Tall Guy says.
They turn to me.
“And . . . we buried it and swo
re we’d never tell anyone about it!” I blurt out.
“But then we wanted a Sunday dinner . . .” Blue Hair Girl says.
“And we wanted those pickles . . .” Tall Guy says.
“No, no, no. We kept it buried for twenty years, remember?” I say.
Why are they screwing up the story? I discover quickly that the biggest improv obstacle for me—aside from the life-threatening illnesses—is that I always come to the scene with a fully formed story in my mind and stubbornly refuse to deviate from it. In this instance, I wanted the story to be about secrets, broken loyalties, and the apocalypse—where the pickle jar would save us. I wanted unrequited love between Clover and the Tall Guy. I wanted there to be a kiss in the rain. I did not want this to be about a Sunday dinner. Pickles don’t even belong in a Sunday dinner. How could I work with these people?
Generally speaking, I am less of a “Yes, and . . .” person and more of an “OK, but . . .” person. I knew performing would be scary, but going against my every basic instinct is a mindfuck that I had not anticipated. And it was making this place outside my comfort zone even more uncomfortable than I’d feared it would be.
So much of my feeling safe in life was predicated on planning ahead. Typically, introverts like to be prepared, and I’m no exception. I anticipate all the likely negative outcomes in a scenario and then come up with a potential solution, no matter how outlandish. I like knowing what to expect, even for the simplest of things. I read reviews before starting a TV show, do extensive research to find out the best dish to order at a new restaurant, and check exactly how long a cab ride should be. In exercise classes, I am the person asking, “So how much longer on the bike?”
I like to have a sense of what’s going to happen next—and improv consistently pulls the rug out from under me.
Liam calls me out on this. “You can’t plan ahead. You have to build on what your partners are giving you. If you’re sitting there thinking ‘wizard, wizard, wizard,’ I guarantee that by the time it gets to you, that won’t make any sense.”
I try to get out of my head and listen to my partners, but I can’t help trying to plan ahead anyway, and Clover keeps throwing me under the bus with his own story ideas. In one scene, Clover wants us to be zombies, and I want us to be pioneers. We somehow end up on dead pioneers, and neither of us is thrilled.
In the final exercise that day, Liam puts us into pairs. We have to create and act out short scenes based on locations Liam is shouting at us. As we’re all “playing” at once, mercifully, no one is watching us.
In my first scene, a man and I talk about the virtues of a stapler at “a city office,” and we are both so bad and so boring that I’m grateful everyone else is too busy to hear us.
For the second scene, I am paired with a woman named Maria.
“Garden center!” Liam shouts from the back of the room. Garden center? What happens at a garden center?
I don’t know what to say, and neither does Maria, who is looking back at me blankly.
“Look at these shrubs!” she yells, pointing ahead of us at what is actually a beanbag chair.
I look at the imaginary shrubs.
“Very green!” I finally say, loudly. What we lack in content we make up for in volume.
I’m not even sure what a shrub is. Is it a bush? A small tree?
I have never been to a garden center in my life.
“What do you think this shrub is doing?” the woman asks me.
I freeze.
“I think there’s something wrong with this shrub,” the woman adds, her eyes pleading at me to join in.
Spontaneous. Free-flowing. Yes, and . . .?
“Ma’am, this shrub is PREGNANT!” I shout.
Now it seems I have two levels of play—fatal diseases and birthing a baby shrub from an imaginary shrub vagina.
And in that moment, I realize that there is something scarier than theater kids unleashed—and that is me unleashed.
What is hiding in my brain? What embarrassing garbage is lurking, just ready to jump out, finally unconstrained from all the usual filters of normal life?
After safely delivering the shrub’s baby (7 pounds, 6 ounces, the mother is doing fine, thank you for asking), class is finally over, and I stumble out the door, spent.
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In the next class, Liam shouts, “You’re two scientists! Go!” from across the room. I’m paired with Clover, again.
He slips on his pretend lab goggles and pretends to hold something small in the palm of his hand and starts panicking.
“AHHH!” he says.
“AHHH!” I say, accepting his suggestion. Clover keeps gesturing toward his hand.
“What is it? What have we discovered?” I ask, letting him lead.
“Well, I DON’T KNOW; I can’t see it!” he says, gesturing wildly to something invisible in his hand. Clover is the most enthusiastic improv-er in the class.
“Oh . . .” I say.
“But you can! Describe it to me!”
I stare at the space in his hand.
“It’s . . . white. Small. Squishy. It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s alive!”
Clover starts panicking at this revelation. His hand shrinks up. He starts hopping up and down, and I, in turn, panic. Around us, other groups shout in their own mad scientist scenes.
“It’s shrinking! You’re hurting it! You need to soothe it!” I yell at Clover.
“OK, OK! How?” he asks.
“You need to sing it musical theater to feel better!” I shout.
Clover stares at me, processing this.
“Musical theater will cure it?” he asks.
“Yes!”
Clover launches into some wildly impressive jazz hands as he sings “New York, New York.” I join in, both of us directing our warbling at his hand as we kick our legs in unison. Aaaand . . . scene!
It is safe to say I don’t recognize myself at all in this.
I’m normally so caged, so rehearsed, so hesitant to speak in real life, that often I just rely on conditional responses, especially at the office. Work sometimes feels like an endless sequence of saying, “Good. Busy!” to a coworker’s obligatory “How are you?”
But here, stripped of lines, direction, rehearsed scenarios, Me Unleashed had spoken again. And I was getting a thrill from it. It was making me laugh, and it felt like my brain was shifting. It was refreshing to break out of the boring, rote version of ourselves that can take over when we’re at the office.
Naturally, there are limits.
In class three, Liam asks me to demonstrate a new game with him in front of my classmates. In the scene, his character eggs me on to perform ballet. I do not want to perform ballet in this scene, with everyone in the class watching. After some blathering, I ruthlessly have my character break their leg on a tractor so I am now confined to the floor, which is better than having to dance in front of my classmates.
Liam never asks me to demonstrate again.
Am I good at improv? No. I’m OK at best, but I freeze all the time, waiting for my brain to give me something to work with. “Freezing” is literally the same thing as the “blanking” that happens to me when I’m onstage. But here, people find freezing funny, because you have a partner who can control the situation if things go south. In fact, mistakes are sometimes the best part. It is usually interesting because we have no idea where it is going.
And even though freezing can be hilarious, I struggle to escape my own persona.
“All right, and now you’re in the Amazon!” Liam shouts, starting a new scene.
“Let’s go for a walk through the jungle,” Clover says. I look around at the fake jungle.
“Could you kill that spider for me?” I ask him. “That really big one. And walk ahead of me so that you walk through spiderwebs first? Do you think this plac
e has ticks with Lyme disease?”
Later, Clover and I are leaving at the same time and end up walking to the station together.
“What character were you playing in the last half of class?” he asks me.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, that kooky character you’re always playing. It’s hilarious.”
I say nothing at first as I realize:
I WAS PLAYING ME. THE CHARACTER WAS REAL ME.
There is no way I’m admitting that all those weird thoughts were actually mine. Instead, I say the pithy, brilliant fallback nugget we all utter when someone has found us out and we have no alibi:
“Yeah, good one.”
Even though every class is intense, full of people I don’t know well, and moving quickly, I start to have fun. Each class cracks open my shell a little more, and I become less scared and more animated. Crucially, this doesn’t mean I get better at improv or develop any capacity for creating organic, realistic interactions. In one scene, at the farmer’s market, I shout, “WHO IS SHE????” as I point my finger at an invisible mistress selling parsley when I’m meant to be haggling for goods.
It turns out that I actually like the fast pace of the class. Because we’re always jumping from scene to scene, or imaginary world to imaginary world, I feel free from the endless, agonizing loop of being myself. I don’t have to be her: shintrovert, anxious, shy.
For a few hours, I am unburdened from my real life, because it’s impossible to worry about making rent, your passive-aggressive boss, or your private life. I don’t talk about my job or health or worries or parents or money. No commutes, deadlines, or diets. I am far too busy playing a drunk scientist in a canoe off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
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In one scene, in one of my final classes, I am playing a lawyer prosecuting a woman, Eniko, for being on Tinder too much. I am pacing my “courtroom” in front of the rest of the class. In this exercise, we pluck random lines out of a hat to insert into key moments.
