Monkeys Do Not Equal Improv

I think about improv a lot. Even more than unicorns. Weird, right?

Partly it's so I understand things better for myself, and partly it's so I can explain things better to my students and random passers-by who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in my vicinity for longer than 30 seconds or so.

This time I was thinking about rules. People always want to know when they can break the rules. The simple answer is, "When you stop wanting to break the rules." But that's not overly helpful.

The more explainy answer is that when you understand the rules so well, that breaking them is a conscious choice in order to achieve a very specific goal, you can break them. Until that point, there is no good rationale for breaking the rules.

People get particularly perturbed by the following rules:

1. Don't be sarcastic
2. Don't go for the joke, and
3. Don't ask questions.

But let's think about this... why do people want to break those rules so badly? Mostly because those are things that we do frequently in real life, so they just come out. And people get frustrated since that's simply how they are and, after all, frequently those things get laughs.

But improv is a game, and games have rules. Naturally, learning to play by the rules is a challenge, but it's also part of the fun. If you don't rise to the challenge, you will only progress so far in improv. But when you challenge yourself to respond honestly instead of sarcastically, you give your partner something to build on. When you avoid the easy one-liner, you add information to the scene and impress the audience, who will love that you didn't take the easy way out with an obvious joke. When you make statements instead of asking questions, you add labels that you and your partner can work with to create a complex and hilarious scene.

Yes, you can get laughs by breaking the rules. Monkeys at the zoo frequently get laughs as well. But we don't call it improv.

By Sonnjea Blackwell