Starting a scene with two people standing on stage asking “who are you?” or “what are we doing here?” is one of the fastest ways to lose your audience. And if you’ve done it, you already know how that feels.…
Many improvisers, especially newer ones, might feel some pressure to do “funny voices.” Those big character voices that you hear in sketches and such, like adopting a high-pitched squeak or a low gravelly tone or something like that. But (drumroll)……
We spend a lot of time in improv trying to be good. Trying to do really good improv. We take classes, we get notes, and we watch performers we admire, trying to figure out how they do what they do.…
Many have a goal like this for an improv scene… be clever or funny. Be witting, be surprising, be “big”, do some voice, do something unexpected. You get it. While those things can be great, they are usually not what…
Many of us got into improv because we like words. We love witty banter, sometimes a clever little monologue in the middle of a scene, and the fun of building a story through conversation. But sometimes, that strength can also…
That voice in our heads, the inner critic, can be pretty relentless during improv scenes and sets. It might be telling you your idea was bad, or you’re not being funny enough. Maybe that you just ruined the scene or…
In a recent episode, 7 Scene Hacks to Help When You Make a Mistake, we talked about the idea that the path to getting good at improv to rack up ten thousand “failures” instead of trying to avoid these “mistakes”.…
You’ve probably done an improv exercise that trains you to remember details in a scene. For example, redo a scene you did and try to recall every sentence. Or associate words in a list and everyone tries to regenerate the…
There is a different way of thinking about getting better at improv. Failure is one of the best ways to learn new skills (this is scientific research, not just me talking). Duration, or number of hours doing a thing, is…
“I do not need to learn to communicate with men on my improv team because I am not a man.” That seems wrong, right? We know that to be a successful team member, we have to communicate with everyone. And…