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Step 1
Find partners. Improv is a team sport. You should have at least three people to practice, so one can serve as an audience while the other two do scene work. If you plan to perform as a troupe, you will probably want four to eight members. You may be able to interest friends or people in acting classes. You can also try recruiting people on social networking sites like Facebook, classified sites like Craig's List, or casting sites like Now Casting, but always take precautions when making connections on line. Also make sure you have similar goals. If one person is serious about building his acting skills while another just thinks it's a fun thing to do on Saturday afternoon and the third thinks you're going to tour the country as a professional improv troupe, things can get awkward.
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Step 2
Set the ground rules. It is important for everyone to feel safe and comfortable, so make sure you agree on what sort of language and physicality is acceptable. Some people prefer an almost-anything-goes atmosphere, but putting strict limits on yourself like no touching and no foul language can actually force you to be more creative in your improv.
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Step 3
Warm up. Get your minds, bodies, and voices working before you jump right into scene work. Besides the basic physical and vocal warm-ups you may know from acting class, there are exercises particularly suited for improv, such as word association, or progressive story-telling. (Where each person adds a single sentence - the goal is to keep the story moving as quickly as possible while maintaining some sort of logical narrative.)
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Step 4
Start a two-person scene. One player begins miming an activity, which can be an everyday activity like brushing teeth or something more unusual like performing surgery. The second person then engages in the same activity, or a complementary one (such as handing them instruments).
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Step 5
Observe and accept. Engage in the scene your partner is creating, don't try to take control and change it into something else. That creates confusion on stage and in the audience. Your ultimate goal will be to get scenes started as quickly as possible, but in the beginning you may need to take a little time to take in what your partner is doing.
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Step 6
Add information. Everything you say and do should tell your partner and the audience more about what's happening. That's why you should stay away from asking questions (which don't move the scene forward and put the burden on your partner) or making denials (which can stop a scene cold). Instead of asking, "How did you learn to do that?", say, "You're a pretty good brain surgeon for someone who has never been to med school." Instead of replying, "Of course I've been to med school," say, "And you're a great nurse, considering I met you in clown college."
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Step 7
Establish a setting. Creating a sense of place and communicating that to your partner and audience through your words and actions helps give even the most absurd scene a sense of reality.
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Step 8
Build a relationship. A scene comes to life when two or more actors connect in a significant way. It is best to choose a strong connection such as siblings, spouses, or best friends. If you start out as strangers, it is difficult to create a meaningful relationship from scratch. Resist the urge to argue. Conflict has its place, but constant bickering is exhausting for the players and the audience.
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Step 9
Tell a story. The best scene has a beginning, middle, and an end. One way to achieve this is to use a common storytelling structure: the characters have a goal, they work toward the goal, they encounter an obstacle, they overcome the obstacle and succeed (or it overcomes them and they fail). Try to wrap the scene up in three minutes or less. As you become more experienced, you should be able to tell a complete story in under a minute.
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Step 10
Give each other feedback. Take turns being a performer and an observer. After each scene, evaluate how successful the players were. Did they listen to each other? Did they use statements instead of questions? Did they accept instead of denying? Did they establish a setting and a relationship? Did they tell a story?
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Step 11
Repeat. Do scene work as many times as it takes to become comfortable with it. Then, do it some more, until creating a scene from scratch starts to seem like the most natural thing in the world.
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Step 12
Mix it up. If you have four or more people in your group, see that every member gets to work with each of the other members. Once you've mastered the two-person scene, try it with three, four, or even five people. Start having members who aren't in a scene suggest the setting or relationship. Once you've mastered scene work incorporating audience suggestions, you'll have the foundation you need for most improv games.
Comments
williamfjordan said
on 2/18/2009 I'm not an actor but it was an interesting article. 5*