"Unscripted, Unrehearsed & Unflappable"

Improv Masters Offer a Peek Behind the Curtain

[On 10 January 2017, I posted a report on Will Hines’s How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth (Pretty Great Publishing Co., 2016).  My tack was to “consider how parallel improv is to dramatic acting and how different.”  (Hines defined “improv” as “the art of making up comedy scenes as you go, on a stage.”  My report is posted at https://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2017/01/how-to-be-greatest-improviser-on-earth.html.)   

[Now comes “Unscripted, Unrehearsed & Unflappable” from SAG-AFTRA magazine (Volume 11, Number 2 [Spring 2022]), the publication of the union that represents performers in film and television.  It serves as a kind of companion piece to my post because the unnamed author reports on not that parallels between dramatic acting and improv exist, but how the skills of an improviser can benefit an actor in scripted material.

[Based on my own experience as an acting student, actor, and acting teacher, I can affirm that “Unscripted” is spot on.  I can attest to the fact—as I’m certain many other actors can as well—that there are many times on stage, whether it be a live-theater stage or a soundstage, when the confidence and flexibility of an experienced improviser would have been mighty welcome.]

THE ACTOR’S SECRET WEAPON: Performers and instructors explain why improv skills
can be useful for any actor.

The ability to excel at improv is something of a superpower. Performers, equipped only with their wits, are seemingly making something out of nothing and making it seem effortless and, most importantly, entertaining. But in reality, that spontaneity takes training, practice, cooperation and a healthy dose of mental agility.

“It’s so much fun,” said Cheryl Hines, who plays Larry David’s ex-wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm [2000-present, HBO]. The hit show is filmed without a script, so when the scene starts, no one knows how it will go — and that’s where the comedy alchemy begins.

“I still remember very early on, it might have been the first season, and we were doing a scene with my ‘parents.’ And the actress that was playing my mother asked Larry in the scene if he had a mint. And he dug around in his pocket and found a loose mint — this is while we’re rolling! He said, ‘I found one’ [and] she said, ‘I’m not going to eat that out of your pocket.’ And he said, ‘Well, you asked for one.’ And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re shooting a TV show and talking about a loose mint that Larry had in his pocket in real life — but now it’s part of the scene, and it’s hilarious, because that’s life.”

On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Hines said, performers will often do warmups backstage, where performers will stand in a circle and go around and tell a story one word at a time. She said the exercise helps her dial in to what her scene partners are saying.

Once filming begins, they do between two and six takes of each scene, depending on how many people are involved, she said.

“Larry writes a story outline, so you know the broad strokes, and you don’t talk about the scene or the information until the camera starts rolling. And if you’re listening, it will all be right there.”

Not every actor will get the opportunity to ad lib with Larry David, but having those skills and understanding the fundamentals of improv is something nearly every performer can benefit from, even for those who would rather stick to the script.

“I think every actor should have training in improv. It will make you a stronger actor, and it’s really helpful for auditioning,” said Hines, who received her improv training at The Groundlings Theatre. “Learning how to improvise has helped me in every way with scripted roles. It helps you feel confident that if something happens in the scene that’s unexpected, you will be able to stay in character and deal with that moment.”

[Cheryl Hines isn’t related to Will Hines, the author of the book I referenced in my introduction to this post and a performer and teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade, another improv troupe, who eventually ran its school in New York City.]

It may sound counterintuitive that improvisation requires preparation and practice, but Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center Director of Education Johnny Meeks notes that it is a skill that must be learned like any other. Improv and sketch training is not a replacement for traditional acting training, but it can provide more acting tools for a variety of situations.

“One of the easiest ways to see that is in a commercial audition, where you’re often asked to ad lib or improvise or even just put a button at the end of the audition you’re doing,” he said.

[To “put a button” on an improv scene means, once having discovered what an improviser thinks is going on in a scene, to come out directly and define what’s going on.  At that point, the performers are free to go on and heighten and explore the scene from the new perspective the button has given them.]

The ability to think quickly on your feet during the critical moments of an audition can make the difference between getting cast and losing out on the role.

Improvisational acting is most closely associated with comedic performances, and that’s where an actor’s mastery of the skill is most evident. Meeks and his colleagues train students to quickly identify what’s funny about a scene so that they can focus on that element, add to it and heighten the humor. 

The basic idea is “yes, and . . . [.]” That is, first you must mentally accept and agree with what your scene partner says. It becomes an established element of the world the two or more of you are creating. From there, you build upon the idea by adding details of your own — and that means getting back to one of the fundamentals of acting: listening.

“A big element of our work is listening,” Meeks said. “That’s almost what we focus on entirely to begin with at the school. It’s not uncommon for folks that talk about the craft of acting to talk about listening and reacting, and that’s more of an intangible skill that you can really benefit from [with] improv training.”

As the actors build the reality, they are establishing the parameters of what’s considered normal in that situation. The humor emerges from the aspects that diverge from the established “normal” and subvert expectations, and actors are trained to quickly identify those unusual elements and call them out.

That technique can be applied to character work as well, explains Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center Artistic Director Christine Bullen. Even if an actor is not changing the dialogue at all, their being able to identify and emphasize the unusual elements helps them make the character their own, she advises, especially if the character’s personality is dissimilar from their own. Additionally, the training helps actors quickly make and fully commit to acting choices.

Actors with improv training are also well equipped to shift gears on the fly, for instance when a director asks them to approach the scene in a completely different way. It can also be a useful skill during an audition, if a performer is asked to read for a different role.

“If you’ve done a lot of improv, you would be able to understand all the tools at your disposal in terms of creating character [and] making strong choices in the moment,” Bullen said. “Having that understanding of who you are and what makes you funny and unique in a scene is really helpful.”

Actor, podcaster and musician Tawny Newsome, who plays Angela Ali on Space Force [2020-22, streamed on Netflix] and voices Beckett Mariner on Star Trek: Lower Decks [animated TV series, 2020-present; CBS All Access, Paramount+], has fully embraced the joys of improvisational performance. Newsome spent more than five years playing eight shows a week to full houses with The Second City comedy troupe. The experience was an intense training experience that she said cured her of any notions of stage fright or fear of failure.

“It is a gauntlet. It was kind of a performing grad school, and it absolutely released any sort of fear or stage fright. I just have zero anymore,” [s]he said. “There’s no embarrassment I can feel worse than what I’d felt at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night in front of a drunk crowd stuffed full of chicken fingers, just looking at me in a scene I’d poured my heart into, and being like, ‘You suck.’”

These days, Newsome thrives in the improvisational medium, and gravitates toward projects that let her flex those skills. She loves the interplay between actors doing improv, even when working with performers who have less experience in this facet of acting. That highlights another of the fundamentals of the art, which is that it works best when actors are consciously making an effort to make each other look good.

“I’m good at ad-libbing things that will set you up for a punchline or set you up for a good character moment,” she said. “It delights me to no end when [performing with] someone who maybe doesn’t come from that much of a comedy background, [and] I feel them wanting to play. [I] give them a little setup and they’re able to respond in character with something super funny, and see them surprise themselves, like, ‘Whoa, I was really funny right then,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, we did that together. Doesn’t that feel great?’”

Improv brings the thrill of the unexpected and surprise delights for both the audience and the performers — and the magic really happens when actors get in the zone. Meeks describes how that feels.

“You know The Matrix? When Neo starts to see the code falling and then he can avoid the bullets and do all his powers, that’s kind of what’s going on in my mind. Because of the training and experience I have had, I start to see a blip in the code when that unusual or funny thing happens,” he said. “Then, when you get into that commercial audition, where [the director says], ‘Hey put a button on that,’ you’re already in that hyper Matrix-y mode in your brain, of like, I know exactly what would come next because that’s the muscle I built in my head.”

[Author of How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth, Will Hines, recommends using Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh’s The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual (Comedy Council of Nicea, LLC, 2013) as a reference for explanations of basic improv terms and forms.]