The Four Virtues of Improvisation

I have a thing for the number four, which is weird because most actors have a thing for the number three. Three is the magic comic number. When constructing a gag based on repetition, do it three times building somehow to the third occurance and you are nearly guaranteed a laugh after #3. There is a library full of various “comic three” sequences, from simple escalations, to elaborate gags involving audience reaction. I love comedy and the techniques that drive it, but there’s something soothing to me about four.

Empathy: Kiersten Adams listens to Shea Sonsky (2020 Improvathon.)

Maybe it’s because I am reminded if the four corners of a room, holding and protecting me. Maybe years of listening to popular music in 4/4 time has brainwashed me. Maybe it’s that as an even number, four contains balance and symmetry. Or maybe it’s my devotion to Angeles Arrien’s Four Fold Way, which has formed a way of living and creating for me since my mom first shared it with me twenty years ago.

Whatever the reason, over years of acting, improvising and teaching I have come to define four virtues awakened by the practice of improvisation (and I do not restrict this to the kind that I practice - long form theatrical improvisation - I believe it’s true for all kinds of performed improvisation.) Here’s what I mean by virtue. To me, a virtue is potential. It is a beneficial way of behaving that is awakened into action by external conditions. A virtue is a reply, a response, an offer. We don’t experience and display virtues until we are stimulated by someone or some situation. And that person or situation needs to be challenging - even uncomfortable - for your virtue to appear.

Courage: Eric Walker improvises a monologue. (2020 Improvathon)

So. The Four Virtues of Improvisation.

1. Courage. Anyone who has taken any kind of improv class will have the sense memory of being a beginner there. I’ve never bungee-jumped, but I submit it’s a similar sensation. Or maybe it’s more like this: a kindly person points you and someone else towards the beginning of a trail through the woods. You can’t see the end but the kindly person says, if you help each other out you will not only find your way, you will have a great time doing it. When you ask for a map, they laugh at you. Discovering your own courage isn’t only a beginner’s experience in improv. The deeper you get into it, the longer the path is, and the greater the obstacles.

2. Empathy. There are so many empathetic engines at work in improvisation it’s hard to know where to begin. First, there’s the empathy you feel for your fellow student and performer. How dazzling and brave they become to you headed into the woods like that (and how they inspire you to sense your own dazzle and bravery.) Then there’s the empathy of character, both the one you discover and the one you’re on stage with. Because of the “yes, and” mindset improvisation drives relentlessly towards cooperation. So even the most despicable character cannot be denied. Somehow, some way you find a way to accept who they are and co-create with them to get to the end of the trail through the woods. And in doing so, your empathetic virtue is revealed and strengthened.

3. Creativity. Not the kind you plan for, the spontaneous kind. The kind where you have no idea what to say so you say the first thing that comes to your head, and it turns out to be amazing. Or you fall on your face and it’s still amazing. The practice of improvisation shows you that your imagination is limitless, which turns out to be a terrifying truth. Improvisation pushes you beyond convention, politeness, and tact. Improvisation pulls you outside of the box and invites you into the cave, as Del Close put it. If you’re being supported in the right way, you will find the most amazing ideas in there . . .

4. Faith. There is no quitting in improvisation. The scene is not over until the offstage actors say it is. So no matter how boring, stupid, banal or embarrassing you feel in whatever disaster of a scene you are co-creating, you cannot escape. Most of the rational parts of your brain may be shouting, “this is hopeless!”, still you have to say the next thing, whatever it is, and have faith that somehow it will lead the two of you to someplace less embarrassing. Or, you have a spasm of crazy courage and you decide to go all-in on the embarrassment. In either case, you will not have a clue about where you will end up. Improvisation is “ready, fire, aim!” Faith is the virtue that keeps you creating, even in when any reasonable person would forgive you for walking off the stage.

Creativity: Eric Walker, Owen Corey and Aimee Goldstein help Shannon Hill give birth (2020 Improvathon.)

If I’m right, then you can understand why those of us who are devoted to this art form feel like it has answers to many social, professional and interpersonal dilemmas. Perhaps you can see why we feel practicing improvisation is a kind of on-going personal self-improvement. I hope you will see why many of us apply it to situations that have nothing to do with entertainment. Maybe you will understand it as I do not as a genre, but as a movement.

Oh look! A handy infographic! I created this a while back so the descriptions of each virtue are a little different from above, but feel free to print it out anyway and put it up on your fridge. Your virtues will thank you for it.

Faith: Aimee Goldstein, Kiersten Adams and special guest Mary Carpenter creating the path they are following (Improvathon 2020.)

New. Year.

I have felt for a long time that the Jewish new year is placed more appropriately on the calendar than the one on January 1st. Perhaps that’s because the academic calendar is so deeply ingrained in my consciousness. Or maybe it’s because that - as an actor - I felt the fall was the season of beginnings: new shows, new rehearsals, new events. But mostly I think it’s because the Jewish new year is in synch with the changing of the seasons. This new year begins and the world slowly transforms from heat and green to cool, and orange, red and brown. It’s as if the world reminds us: change and transformation is inevitable. After January 1st it just stays cold and dark for a couple more months . . .

Speaking of change and transformation, I believe we are in an era of cultural change unlike anything we have witnessed since the sixties. The similarities are striking. Both eras are focused on racial justice and the rights of those victimized by American capitalism and systems of oppression. Both are characterized by progressive politics and led by our youth. Both include a challenge to sexual and gender norms. And both are fiercely resisted by reactionary cultural and political forces. We live in an era in which it is impossible to remain neutral. We must align ourselves somewhere on the spectrum defined by the poles of these opposing forces.

What does improvisation teach us about this state of convulsive change we are in? Several things it seems to me:

• Listen before speaking. Great improvisors are exquisite listeners and observers. They will say “My job is to make my partner look like a genius.” It is in this deep listening that extraordinary co-creating can take place. I make my creative offers based on what I hear and see from and in you. Today it’s really hard to listen to someone who is on the spectrum far away from you. But more than ever it’s essential. The goal is not to come to agreement. The goal is to feel where the words are coming from, and ask: why? Why is this person saying these things?

• Let go of the need to know. When we are confronted by a threat we work feverishly to construct a future in which that threat is diminished. We are tempted to say: I know exactly how this is going to turn out, and perhpas engage in a pre-planned “prophecy.” But we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, or what the future holds, plan as frantically as we might. Then what are we left with? This very moment. That’s it. What is right in front us, where our feet are standing, and who we are accompanied by. Improv lives creatively in this tension between spontaneity and planning. Improvisors live in the present moment, and yet some part of our brain is playing out a series of what-ifs. The trick is not getting attached to any of them. As Dr. Angeles Arrien said, “Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.”

• Conflict kills progress. Which is not to say, “don’t have a conflict.” Sometimes in a scene and in life a conflict is essential. Conflict is a part of the DNA of change and transformation. What is being left behind will cry defiantly and attempt to prevent change. Improv doesn’t teach us to avoid conflict, it teaches us not to get stuck in it. Watching an improv scene in which two people are locked in an endless conflict is a little like non-anaesthetized dental work. Improv thrives when it evolves, it dies when it doesn’t. I submit the same is true for our human species. I tell my ensemble and students, the conflict must evolve. Sometimes that means someone “loses”. Sometimes it means someone shouts “Look! A unicorn!” And sometimes it means the two amazing actors improvise their way into something truthful; something which doesn’t deny the conflict, allows for both characters to have integrity, and somehow gives birth to a way forward.

• Avoid the addiction to intensity. When a scene heats up emotionally, we sometimes throw gasoline on the fire by inauthentically stamping our feet, raising our voices, squeezing “emotion.” Some of us can become addicted to this state of fake noise and wheel-spinning anxious energy. In this state, listening usually goes out the window and conflicts are invited. But your intensity isn’t interesting to anyone, not even to you. If you’re honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that it is a burden. It misrepresents you. It is a useless energy drain. Because here’s the hardest lesson improv teaches us:

• You are enough. You don’t need extra energy, some missing brilliant idea, ten fewer pounds or more hair. You don’t need to prove to your teacher, parent, colleagues that you deserve to [ have that opinion / make that creative offer / lie down and rest / trust your gut and go for it / be here now. ] These eras of momentous change are like amazing and challenging improv scenes we find ourselves in, the ones Del Close used to tell us to “follow the fear” in. When we meet them, our natural human insecurity will tell us “you can’t do this, you don’t have what it takes.” But you do. You really do. Just as you are, breathing, listening, observing.

“Follow the fear” is often misunderstood to mean “do something outrageous and offensive.” No, all it means is that improv is a pathway to discovering innate (meaning you already have them) virtues in yourself. The four virtues of improv as I see them are courage, empathy, creativity and faith. Three out of the four need to have an event or encounter to be felt. Improv provides that encounter. Only creativity can be accomplished fully by yourself.

Perhaps the era we are living through, this new year, is an opportunity for us to feel the virtues we already have. I have adopted the inherently optimistic energy of improv, I admit it, but perhaps this new year is a canvas, or a stage, waiting for us to make our brave, empathetic, faithful and creative offers.