— read write play

One of the rules drilled into me when I was first learning to improvise was near-unconditional acceptance: build scenes by saying yes, early and often. Like many other improvisers I’ve played with, I’ve spent time working out when to ignore that impulse. It’s not bad advice so much as conditional advice.

Reading Paul Clements’ account of Mike Leigh’s use of improvisation, I found this little gem:

There are circumstances when, as a theatre game, it might be useful to run an improvisation where the actors have to accept whatever information they’re given in the interests of developing their spontaneity or acceptance but where an improvisation is an investigation of content [...] it will kill it stone dead.¹

There’s a distinction here between improvisation as instantaneous, disposable live performance, and improvisation as a medium for developing theatre; in Leigh’s rehearsal-room work, blind acceptance runs contrary to the process of actors creating individual characters with personal (and private) biographies and motivations.

So while in short-form or live improvisation, saying “yes” can be way of rapidly building content; in rehearsal or in the devising process, relentlessly saying “yes” can interfere with the exploration of that content.

There’s obviously the possibility of mixing and matching such those priorities – moving in live short form, for example, from establishing a scene (generating content) to building a narrative through reincorporation (exploring content).

The snappy capsule lesson here, then, is that the strategies we use to improvise should recognise what kind of outcome is desired (with the rejoinder that we should perhaps be sceptical of any claim to basic, infallible rules for improvising).

After the jump, Clements’ quick summary of Leigh’s process, which wields improvisation in the pursuit of realism.

1. The Improvised Play: The World of Mike Leigh, Paul Clements, Methuen. p.48 [↩]