The House That Del Built

The Intellectual Musings of an Improv Wonk.

Constant Improvisation

I’ve been reading Michael Chekhov’s On the Technique of Acting lately. Chekhov, for those of you who might not know, was the master student of the famous acting teacher and director Constantin Stanislavksi, founder of the “Method” school of acting. He went on to found his own acting philosophy (used by Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Quinn, and John Turturro, among others) focused on, among other things, the Psychological Gesture. It’s all very fascinating and really, I think it’s a good practice for any improviser, even if he doesn’t consider himself an “actor,” to read up on and even practice some of the more famous and respected acting techniques out there. At any rate, reading Chekhov, for me, has been maybe one of the most important things I’ve done in the past few years for my thinking as an improviser and an improv coach and teacher.

Because books and blogs and podcasts about improv are awesome (heck, I do those last two), but sometimes we can get myopically focused on our corner of the art of performance and forget that improvisational comedy is really just a particular form of comedic acting. When we perform improv comedy, usually if not exclusively, with a team of other improvisers, we are performing improvised scenes from a sort of improvised play, and we cannot simply “funny” our way through those scenes; sooner or later we will have to come to terms with the fact that we are, at heart, acting. One of my friends, and fellow improviser, recently complained about an improv group she performed with years ago that wasn’t so good: “It felt like a bunch of people doing stand-up at each other.” And while stand-up requires its own set of performance and acting skills, I think we can all see the difference between the two art forms (hence why most improvisers groan when family or acquaintances unfamiliar with improv, upon finding out our “hidden talent”, ask us to “say something funny.” My response is usually, “Okay. Find me, like, four other improvisers and give us between fifteen and thirty minutes.”).

So you can imagine my excitement when I read the following suggestion for an exercise from Chekhov’s book: “…choose some very simple business, like cleaning a room, finding a lost article, setting the table. Repeat this action at least twenty or thirty times. Each time avoid repetition of any kind. So each action in a new way with a fresh inner approach. Keep only the general ‘business’ as a spine for the exercise…This means that you will always find new, individual ways to fulfill old business…You will discover gradually that the real beauty of our art, if based on the activity of the Creative Individuality, is constant improvisation.” So, here’s Chekhov, one of the great acting masters of the 20th century, trying to explain to all his actor compatriots that they are, at heart, improvising. 

After all, isn’t this exactly what we, as improvisers, have to do on stage every night? How many times have you gotten a beer from a fridge in an improv scene? How many times have you stirred a pot of something? Looked at yourself in the mirror to make sure you were ready for the big night out? Handed a “report” (the most wonderfully vague and ubiquitous of improv objects, followed only by the “presentation”) to your boss for approval? Taken a pie out of the oven? Taken off your shirt in the heat of passion?

In fact, we could probably list right now, with surprising accuracy, the top twenty-five most common improv activities that are likely to take place during any given show on any given night. After all, there are only so many things to do in this world. Sure, sometimes you’ll be doing something a bit less mundane, like jumping out of an airplane or saving the world from zombie attack, but even those I’ve seen more than once. “There is nothing new under the sun.” I think King Solomon might have said that.

But here, in this exercise, Chekhov is not only unconcerned with the banality of the activity, he asks the actor to embrace the banal, and within it to find constantly new and fresh ways of approaching it. The how, not the what. What great improv teacher first said, “How you do what you do is who you are”? Joe Bill was the first one to say it to me. I wonder if anyone knows the original source. And, really, it’s a sentiment that’s been said before, and is certainly being implied by Chekhov here. It’s not the beer, or the pie, or the shirt. It’s how your character opens it, takes it out of the oven, undresses. And there are as many ways to do those things as there are, or ever have been, people in the world who have done them.

The thing is, to tap into those subtle and magical differences that really make your scene new—even when the material of it is recognizable and “old”—takes a commitment to character that is truly at the level of master acting. It’s not enough for the improviser in your head to think “What would be a funny way to do this thing?”; you have to allow the character you’ve embodied to truly do that thing in the way he feels compelled to do it. And you have to trust that that will be funny because you’ve been trained to notice and bring out the comical side of these behaviors and events, and because your scene partner has been trained to do the same, she’ll help bring what’s comical about your behavior into stark relief. In fact, the less you worry about how funny it is or is not, the better your results will generally be.

 A while back I talked about the “Typical Situation,” and how it can be an infinite fount of comedy gold. How can this be if we’ve “seen it all before”? Because the magic of improv is that you are free, within the very recognizable framework of a behavior, to surprise the audience—and maybe even yourself—with a new way of going about it. And this takes both a trust in the creative potential of even the most typical and commonplace of behaviors, and a commitment to finding the honest and therefore unique iteration of this behavior in this scene, as performed by this character, tonight and never before, and never again. 

  1. jeffscherer reblogged this from thehousethatdelbuilt and added:
    improvisers. This
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