Talking Improv

Fun With (Team) Chemistry

You’ve just completed your improv training and you’re ready to form your first long form team. Your club lets you pick and choose team members. The future looks bright and full of camaraderie with your new teammates.

Great, but where do you begin?

I. CHOOSING YOUR TEAM MEMBERS

I’ve said before, I feel the most important thing when forming a new team is liking the people you want to perform with. Don’t add a girl to the mix just to please Title IX supporters. If you do that, you’re doing it for the sake of someone else and not for the benefit of your team.

Also, you certainly shouldn’t try and add the “funniest” people from the club either. Even if it’s generally understood that they’re hilarious, they still may not mesh well with your group.

Basically, pick people you wouldn’t mind hanging out with outside of practices/shows. Choose people you respect. For example, I turned down coaching a team a while ago simply because I knew I wouldn’t get along with one of the performers. I liked everyone else on the team, but that one person was a deal-breaker. You have to know how you work with people and visa-versa. Are they bulls or bears? Is their style vastly different from yours? Does that even matter to you?

Also, down the road you’ll probably be going to festivals with these people. If you can’t stand being in a car with them or surrounded by them for more than a weekend, then maybe you should rethink why you’re together.

II. TEAM NAMES

Spend as little time on this as possible. Find one and be done with it. Honestly, this can be done over emails. Don’t waste practices with this bit.

III. PRACTICE

A.) The Space - Find a regular place to practice and stick to it. It’s time-consuming, confusing and plain unnecessary to move from place to place every week to practice.

B.) Warming Up - Have a list made up of warm-ups you all like to do. Some will like one warm-up, some will like others. You can’t please everyone all of the time. If you have a couple that everyone likes, then by all means do those, but don’t forget to shake things up to keep things fresh. When you have a coach, they might have specific warm-ups for you to do. Trust that their methods work. If you have any problems or qualms, voice them. Get them out. Only through regular communication can you grow. Coaches aren’t mind readers.

C.) During Practice - Take it seriously. This might be the only block of time per week you all have to work together. Before you have a coach, just work on basic scenework or try some things you’ve read or seen. When you have a coach, take some time to go over what you want to accomplish in practices. As a whole, they should be lighthearted but focused. Take breaks and share your opinions on scenework. I’m a big believer in having a constant open forum during practice. The coach shouldn’t be the only one with thoughts on your work. You’re the one doing it after all. Say something about it!

As a side note, the same methods of finding team members applies to picking a coach. If they’re not the busy type, that’s all the better!

IV. YOUR FORM

Do you want to do something radically different (serious drama-prov*) or incorporate a new element in an opening (using an audience member’s Facebook page/texts on their phone/music on their iPod as inspiration for scenes)? Honestly, I love it when a team tries for something new. We all have seen scenes. What can you do to get people talking, or more importantly, wanting to see your show?

I wish I could say what form you should do. I can’t though. There is no fool-proof way to know what form best suits your team. You have to experiment. Try things out. Read books and especially see shows. Get inspired by others’ work. One of my teams does the monoscene solely based on a suggestion from one of our players. They saw a team at DCM do one and thought we should try it. It’s very difficult to do and do well, but we all know we’re strong-minded players and we tough it out because we want to. We’re all more seasoned improvisers so just doing scenes didn’t really suit us. We’ve all been down that road, so we wanted to try something new and challenging. As a new team, you can do that too. Have big goals. Be bold in your form choices. Create a new form if a current one doesn’t do it for you.

The best thing about a form? You can change it at any time if it’s not working. Even if it is working well, you can do a one-off show where you do something different just to keep things fresh.

V. OTHER THINGS

Obviously you’re not tied down to your team. You have a life outside of them, but try to do things together outside of practices and shows. Go out drinking one night, watch a movie together, have a pot-luck dinner night, etc. It’s a great to know more about them and to see each other in a different context. You can really recharge your improv batteries with them too. During these hangout sessions, I’ve found that this is when everyone spouts their improv philosophies, which can lead to some fantastic conversations. THAT is how you bond and grow as a team. When you can shoot the shit with your teammates about the same love you all have for improv. Though these moments, you learn to respect each other more.

So that’s it. I hope I have helped in some way with this. Happy improving!

*This can be very dangerous and should only really be done with a group of improvisers who can also act well. Having said that, I really want to see a team do this.

Thoughts on this article?