How Improv Changed My Life
The beginning of 2021 was my sixth year in Canberra. By then, I had an apartment, a stable, well-paying job and an established healthcare support network (important to me, seeing as I was in the early days of managing a chronic health condition).
Yet 2021 also found me alone. Completely alone. Most of the friends I’d made had since left, moving overseas or back interstate. I was lonely, bored, restless, stuck on the pandemic hamster wheel and I contemplated moving back to Queensland (or anywhere, really, that wasn’t Canberra). But as I said – I had roots in Canberra, and decided that a lack of a social life was not a good enough reason to leave, at least not yet. So, I decided to do something about it.
Enter: Improv
I don’t know how I found out about improvisation comedy – whether it was a Facebook ad or a passing comment from a friend that lodged itself in my mind (turns out she had gone to the same improv class, moved back interstate and has since started a successful comedy duo parallel to a career in law). The seed grew, and I fancied that thinking on the spot and acting out characters would help me become a better writer (my pandemic project – writing a novel – had been similarly stagnant and set aside by 2021) so I signed up for an eight week Intro to Improv course, having no idea that it would completely transform my life.
Now – before you get excited – this is not a shortcut to personal transformation. Improv is not easy and I was, and still am, the most reluctant improv convert out there. I hated the first session. I almost quit then and there. I was an introvert, I hated being the centre of attention – let alone being the centre of attention without anything planned, where everyone would see the moment I made a mistake. I felt exposed and vulnerable, I couldn’t control the situation, and I had to react in real time without being able to edit the perfect response beforehand. I finished the first class feeling icky, uncomfortable, and in awe of my fellow students who were so much braver and funnier and wittier than I could ever be.
But the first time doing anything is awkward and uncomfortable and hard, so I went back for the second session. And I still hated it. We had to play random word games in front of other people, and add objects to a scene, and speak and translate jibberish, and I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin I was so mortified and embarrassed to get it wrong, to not be as cool and funny as some of the other students (extroverts, to be sure) in the class, who made it look so effortless to play and make jokes and use their entire body when expressing themselves.
I didn’t want to continue – two tries was enough to know, I thought. The data hadn’t changed, I didn’t feel good when I was doing the improv (I did laugh a lot though) and surely the only fool is the one that keeps banging their head against a brick wall expecting things to change when the wall just won’t move because it’s meant to be there.
But I had promised myself that I had paid for the eight sessions, and I would see them through, and even if I learnt one thing that made me a better writer, or made one friend, it would be worth it.
And I am so glad I did. It took until week six for things to click. In week seven, I signed up for the end of term showcase, and in week eight I signed up for another eight week course. I’ve now been doing improv for a year and a half, and I’ll keep doing it, in some form, for the rest of my life.
And this is why.
I became more open to accepting risk and adapting to uncertainty
The moment everything clicked for me with improv is when I realised that I didn’t know how things were going to turn out and that was ok. In fact, it’s the whole point of improv. We are co-creating with ourselves, our fellow scene mates, our host, our audience – anything and everything is possible and so pre-planning, or doubting yourself because you won’t think of something smart, or clever, or funny, or cool, doesn’t make sense because again, the whole point is that none of us know what the scene will look like so you can’t pre-plan for it.
The freedom that comes with not planning is phenomenal, especially when we apply that same approach to life. I felt much lighter, less worried, and I stopped imagining the permutations of how a particular event or goal might eventuate, and therefore I stopped trying to plan how I would react in all of these different situations. I learnt (or rather, unlearnt) a lifetime of over-analysing and trying to control everything, the majority of which wasn’t within my control to begin with, and my life got much easier.
Let’s be honest – looking back on your life, how many of your fondest memories were planned? Those times you felt most alive, connected, engaged with the world and each other – I’ll bet that they were not planned, or they deviated from the plan and were all the better for it. We are co-creating life with every person that we interact with, every day, and it took improv to remind me that that’s what it’s all about.
(NB. Die hard improv aficionados will argue that we can, to a degree, pre-plan things, like those who have a few go-to characters, accents, crutches and techniques for success; that we might confer with our scene partner to agree on a certain setup, or structure, or game that we are playing – but to a large extent, we don’t plan improv.)
I became a better listener
We hear it day in, day out. Communicate. Listen. Express your concerns, know your boundaries. But what does it mean to be a good listener? What does it look like? And how can we improve?
Got to improv. Improv is all about listening to and responding to the other people in your scene, working together to create a successful outcome. It’s a skill that can be practiced, and then applied to every facet of your life.
My favourite improv games became techniques that I use in my daily life. The first one is to mimic, and even exaggerate, the other person’s body language. We do this unconsciously when we’re in sync (“mirroring”, for those familiar with the term), but doing it consciously means you are physically focusing on the other person, and I find this helped me pay attention to what they said as well.
The other one – and one of my absolute favourite improv life hack – is to start my sentence with the last word or phrase spoken by the other person. This trick is so good – it means I cannot pre-plan what I’m saying, and forces me to listen until the other person has finished speaking (rather than listening until they say something I want to respond to, and not hearing what they say after). I do this all the time (the secret’s out!) but honestly, try it. You’ll be surprised at the impact this has on your communication and how the other person feels after your interaction.
Being a good listener is key for all social contexts – work, dating, joining new sports groups, talking to the barista, family, the person beside you on the plane. I found these games, as well as improv in general, helped me pay attention to and tune into the inspiration in the world around (sights, sounds, events) while also appreciating the value of starting a conversation with a topic in mind.
The topic, or topics, act like guardrails, and the space between can be filled in any way. More importantly, the right way is whatever way the interactions ends up being.
For example, on a first date, I’ll bring 4-5 topics of conversation, and be open to follow the conversation where it leads. If I have an interview – as either the interviewer or interviewee – I’ll have some key questions or topics, and otherwise I’ll focus my attention on the other person (and my colleagues) to build a social interaction where everyone feels like they are valued, heard, and have a good experience.
I also found that this approach to listening and paying attention helped me focus, particularly in work meetings. Because I was listening actively, I also spoke up more when the occasion called for it – to the extent that my bosses and colleagues commented on my contribution and performance. Who would have thought?
I got out of my own way
By this I mean I learnt to ignore the nagging voice in my mind that said, “You can’t do that, you shouldn’t do that, oh – why did you say that, please leave this dangerous situation and return to your apartment immediately!”. It’s a voice we develop as we grow up, borne out of normalised social behaviours and well-intentioned parents, teachers, mentors and guardians. It’s there every time you have a call to action and hesitate, it’s there when you check yourself for laughing at something that no one else seems to laugh at. It’s the voice that squashes our impulses to participate, to help, to engage. While I’m sure they mean well and it serves a purpose, it also stops us from expressing ourselves and taking risks.
Much of my time in improv felt like I was undoing twenty years of this socialised behaviour. I was unlearning the stories that had been imprinted on me regarding how I was supposed to behave – being quiet, a good student, obedient, not drawing attention to myself, always perfect. None of these are inherently good or bad – it did, however, mean that I had engineered myself to be small. I was afraid of taking up too much space, of imposing my needs on others, and became accustomed to hiding from the spotlight.
Improv shone a spotlight on that voice. I hadn’t even been aware that it existed, and suddenly I heard it everywhere. My improv teacher referred it to “turning seven again”, in that we were unlearning the habits that children hadn’t yet developed. If something’s funny, they’ll laugh. If it’s really funny, they’ll really laugh. They don’t second guess an instinct to play, to build on an idea, to wonder “if that’s true, then how about this?”. Improv, for me, was about becoming aware of that voice, and acting before I heard it, or acting anyway.
I learnt that I am not perfect and I do not have to be
By this, I mean it’s ok to make mistakes. In fact, in the context of improv, it’s normally funny. One of my favourite, and hardest, improv classes was when we celebrated making mistakes. As in, the more mistakes you made, the better – the person who “won” the game (no one wins improv games) was the one who made the most mistakes.
Let me tell you – that was not how this perfectionist was wired! But it highlighted something in me – that I was afraid of making a mistake, always. And a lot of the time, this would stop me from even trying (because the guaranteed way to never fail is to never try, right?). But this isn’t where the magic happens. And more importantly, a lot of the time, when we make a mistake, the consequences are so minor we forget why we were so worried about making them in the first place.
Of course, context matters, and there are areas where making mistakes can have significant consequences. Driving, for example, or medicine, or making policy decisions. But for most of the things we do, the human things, the interactions we have with those around us – the consequences in our mind are far greater than anything that actually ends up happening, yet we let the fear of making mistakes prevent us from trying.
The beauty of improv is that it is a safe space to make mistakes. Lots of them, all the time. It’s even a skill that we can practice, which then opens the door to communicating authentically with others, and it can build our creativity and entrepreneurship and ability to experiment with the world. It is liberating, and I’ll have some days now where the goal is to make as many mistakes as possible (in situations where making the mistake doesn’t have life-threatening consequences) just to keep that muscle active, and to remember that making a mistake isn’t such a bad thing.
I became a better team member
I always have been, and always will be, independent. It is a strength I hold dear and it has enabled me to live a life I am proud of. It made me resilient, for I know how I react to a crisis and that I can rely on myself, and this resilience built a foundation upon which I built my life.
Independence is great, but it does not work in improv. The improv games that I played were mostly in pairs or in a group, and I will argue that even solo improv needs to work with the audience at a minimum, as well as fellow stage crew and the host.
All the games we played in improv involved co-creation and valued everyone’s input. More importantly, everything everyone does or says is correct, as it becomes a live part of the scene. The classic “yes, and” is core to improv and to teamwork, and is another improv life hack you can take with you outside the class.
I also learnt to value the different contributions and life-frames that we brought with our own experiences. Improv had a cross section of people far more diverse than any I’d seen in the one room (neuro-diverse, gender diverse, culturally diverse, age diverse…). All of these perspectives meant our interpretations varied, and it took scenes into really interesting (and hilarious) places. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a team where everyone participates with the intention of building and supporting your teammates to discover what you can find and create together?
I made friends
It turns out, you get to know people well when you’re all out there making fools of yourselves. The people I met at improv are the kindest, most open-minded and generous people I’ve met, curious and interested, always doing things, and a whole heap of fun. Within a few weeks of classes, we started catching up early for dinner, or we’d grab a drink or gelato after; we had poker nights, geo-caching sessions, random hangouts, board game nights, karaoke nights, and we went hiking.
With such a diverse cross-section of people, they introduced me to worlds and activities that I had no idea existed, and they made my life a lot more fun and interesting by virtue of being in it. In fact, people that I did not know eighteen months ago are some of the people I miss the most now that I’ve moved overseas.
Which brings me to one of the best things about improv – the community is the same, wherever you are in the world. My instructor said it first, when I told him I was leaving Canberra. Wherever I landed, all I had to do was go to a workshop, or a conference, and I’d meet people, and have friends, a launchpad for my new life. He was right. I did improv in Vancouver, and in Montréal – I stayed longer in Montréal, and this group turned into Saturday softball at the park, and random cocktails during the week.
I think it’s because there is something about doing improv that attracts diverse people with similar values – curiosity, openness, non-judgemental, kindness. Perhaps it is this willingness to constantly throw ourselves into the unknown, our shared vulnerability both on stage or in the audience, or the way we practice being present which translates easily outside the classroom as well.
Needless to say, if you want to meet people and make new friends, improv is an excellent place to start.
I became a better writer
This was a good outcome, seeing as it’s why I signed up for improv in the first place. While the improv I did was designed around games, we also studied character, story and story structure. We experimented with keeping and breaking rules, and coming to terms with what we as an individual wanted, versus what needed to happen in the scene because that’s what the audience wanted.
One instant in particular comes to mind. We were making a tug of war scene where the class was split in two, right down the middle. After much yelling and moaning and people randomly stumbling, we resolved the scene. We then did it again – this time where two people were on one side, and the rest (15 or so of us) on the other.
Now – what do you think would happen? Of course, the side with 15 people would win. But what does the scene need – what does the audience want? They want the side with two people to win, of course. This was hard for me, which is perhaps why I remember it so vividly – I was on the side with 15 people, and rationally, the side that would win. I love to win. Having to simulate a loss against all sound reasoning and my personal pride was an embarrassingly tough pill to swallow, but it made for the better story, and therefore was the right thing to do.
This idea of separating the individual ego with what serves the scene, the audience and the story is something I bring into my writing too.
Of course, just being in a live scene-building, story-telling environment once a week also helped with story structure, character development, and understanding how physicality and voice changed our impression of a character or a character’s actions. The things I had expected to learn, when I started improv, without realising how thoroughly it would change my life.
I started improv to be a better writer, but I stayed for the people
I’m sure there’s a lot more that I’ve learnt from improv, and a lot more still to learn. To be honest, I still find it a bit of a struggle – it’s still not my comfort zone, and I doubt it ever will be. I see it as more like going to the gym, because some days might be harder than others, but I always feel great after, and it helps to hang out with a bunch of awesome people and laugh till we cry.
That’s a good way to summarise it, actually. Improv is laugh therapy, with a strong shot of personal development.
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