7 Improvisation principles
@triciawang sent me a link to this fantastic blog post by Michelle James, a creativity consultant.
Michelle performs improvisation theatre - each night, she and her colleagues perform an entire theatre piece based on the audience's suggestions. Michelle noticed that some nights the performance was easy and flowed, and other nights it was hard. She became fascinated by what makes improvisation work.
Michelle asks "What creates peak level creativity in our group? What allows a complex, coherent, sense-making structure to emerge from nothing but a simple location? What is the "magic formula" that allows a fully formed, organized play - with believable characters and plot - to emerge before the audience’s (and our own) eyes? And what gets in the way?"
She describes herself as a serious student of improvisation theory. Her post can be found here, and is well worth reading - but for a quick intro I've quoted her 7 basic improvisation principles below, which I think can be applied not just to creative improvisation for theatre, but for many creative team tasks - or even ordinary social interaction.
1. Yes and. Fully accepting the reality that is presenting, and the adding a NEW piece of information - that is what allows it to be adaptive, move forward and stay generative. Each performer (agent) interacts with what is offered and offers a unique contribution.
2. Make everyone else look good. That means you do not have to be defending or justifying yourself or your position - others who will do that for you and you do that for others. Without the burden of defensiveness or competition, everyone is free to create. Complex characters can form that enable unpredictable complex actions and directions to emerge.
3. Be changed by what is said and what happens. At each moment, new information in an invitation for you to have a new reaction, or for your character to experience a new aspect of them. Change inspires new ideas, and that naturally unfolds what's next. You adapt as one structure dissipates and re-organizes into a new structure that expands, yet includes, what was before.
4. Co-create a shared "agenda." This principle involves the recognition that even the best-laid plans are abandoned in the moment, and to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. You are co-creating the agenda in real-time. In order to keep the play going, you respond to the moment and an "agenda" co-emerges that is more inclusive than anything that could have been planned. It is not consensus, which reduces. It is co-creation, which expands.
5. Mistakes are invitations. In improv, mistakes are embraced – they are the stimulating anomalies that invite the performers into a new level of creativity. By using improv techniques such as justifying any mistake can be transformed into surprising plot point or dialogue that never would have happened in following a conventional pattern. In improv, justifying creates order out of chaos. Mistakes break patterns and allow new ones to emerge.
6. Keep the energy going. No matter what is given, or what happens, you accept it and keep the energy gong. Unlike in everyday life, where people stop to analyze, criticize or negate, in improv you keep moving. A mistake happens - let it go move on. The unexpected emerges - use it to move on. Someone forgot something important - justify it and move on. You’re lost or confused –make something up and trust the process. Just keep moving. The system is not static – it is alive and dynamic.
7. Serve the good of the whole. Always carry the question, "How can I best serve this situation?" and then you have a better sense of when to run in and when to stay back, when to take focus and when to give it, how to best support your fellow performers and how to best support the scene. By focusing away from how you will look into serving the larger good – the aliveness of the system - you have more creative impulses and resources available to you at any moment. And the choices you make are more in alignment with the higher levels of creative integration that form a coherent play.
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