The Improvisation Book

John Abbott

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780014784
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

A practical guide to conducting improvisation sessions, for teachers, directors and workshop leaders.

The Improvisation Book takes you step-by-step, session-by-session through a graded series of improvisation exercises. Starting with the very first class, it adds a new element at each stage until even the most inhibited students have gained a full vocabulary of improvisational techniques.

'a veritable treasure trove... Abbott's book is of real value in the training of actors; I'm enthused and excited about putting it into practice' - ReviewsGate.com

'distils a lifetime of experience and is set out logically and practically so that would-be actors can build skills from the very simple to the remarkably complex' - British Theatre Guide

1

Trusting Yourself

If you have ever watched a potter shaping a pot at the wheel, or a baby examining a flower for the first time, you will begin to understand how absolutely absorbing another person’s concentration can be. We all love to see other people being totally engaged by whatever they are doing: the athlete focusing for the 100-metre dash; the Mastermind contestant concentrating on a difficult question; the snooker player engrossed in the geometry of his next shot. As observers we too become focused, concentrated and absorbed.

A few years ago there was an exhibition of Tibetan art in London. As part of the exhibition a group of Tibetan monks created a sand mandala. The word ‘mandala’ is Sanskrit for circle, and a sand mandala is an intricate circular symmetrical picture drawn in coloured sand. It is often a symbolic illustration of a palace with four gates, facing the four corners of the Earth and is representative of ‘man’ or ‘woman’ in the world. These mandalas are used as a support for meditation.

To make the mandala, the monks first sketched out the pattern of the picture on a flat table about eight foot square. When that was finished, three or four of the monks worked at colouring in the patterns and shapes of the mandala using nothing but brightly coloured, dyed sand. They used a series of traditional copper funnels called chakpurs to pour out the sand. These funnels have a very fine hole at the end and a ridged edge, so that by moving a wooden stick up and down the bumps of the ridged edge the coloured sand falls out grain by grain. The monks have to be very careful as they colour in the mandala because they cannot make a mistake. There is no rubbing out or painting over. A sand mandala takes several days to create, and the monks meditate as they work – or to be more accurate: their work itself is their meditation – and as a result their concentration is very intense. While the monks worked, visitors to the exhibition were allowed to watch them, and the ‘audience’ were as intrigued by the commitment, self-belief and pure concentration of the monks as they were by the developing work of art.

The mandala was finished after about a week, and the monks lifted it up and carried it carefully to the Thames where they ceremonially poured the sand into the water as a blessing for the health and healing of the people of London.

They did it for us, and they did it for themselves.

We live in a society of critics. Newspapers, magazines and television programmes continually need things to write about, and every journalist has to have an opinion to express. Is the latest recording by this or that band as good as their last? Is such and such a politician making the right decisions or the wrong decisions (and by the way, is his murky private life acceptable or not?). And now there seem to be hundreds of programmes on television which have a panel of experts giving their opinion on the talent of an amateur singer who wants to be a star. And what is more, everyone at home can phone in and give their judgement too (via a premium-rate telephone call, of course). Everyone is a critic nowadays. No wonder performers get nervous.

The Tibetan monks didn’t get nervous.

Why not? What’s the difference?

The difference is that the monks believe in what they are doing. They believe in themselves. They concentrate on the job in hand. They put all other thoughts out of their mind.

HOW CAN ACTORS LEARN TO BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES AND concentrate during an improvisation when expectations are so great? When people watch an improvisation they always seem as if they are going to have an opinion. They seem as if they are ready to criticise. Did the improvisers create good characters? Were they able to keep talking? Did they have good imaginations? Were they funny? Who was the best?

Who was the best? Ouch!

Positive Feelings

For any kind of performer these problems cannot be solved overnight. Many creative people continually question the worth of their creations. But if you are leading a group of people through an exploration of improvisation techniques, the first thing you need to do is to help them develop a positive mental attitude to improvisation. The best way to do this is to encourage them to tap into the times when they felt good about themselves. When people are with a new group they often feel quite nervous and unsure of themselves until everyone else knows who they are and why they are there. So help them get to know each other. If they are complete strangers, make sure they get to know each other’s names, and at the same time, make sure you learn their names as quickly as you can. Use their names whenever possible. Encourage everyone to find out a little about everyone else. If they are interested in other people, other people will be interested in them. Get them to ask each other questions and encourage them to be forthcoming in their answers. Make it fun. Take the pressure off.

The next step is to help people to work on a positive mental attitude about themselves. They are probably used to acting, even in a small way, so they will be able to ‘act’ positive feelings if you talk them through the details: a positive stride; positive thoughts; optimistic feelings; etc. And the more they practise ‘acting’ feeling positive, the more positive they will become.

Positive feelings are important and need to be reaffirmed on a regular basis.

What is Improvisation?

First of all, people need to know what improvisation really means before they can start doing it. Encourage them to think about what it is. Encourage them to think about what it is for. Let them make their own decisions. Let them express their own opinions. Do they like watching improvisation? Do they like doing it? Encourage discussion. Encourage them to speak and encourage them to listen.

If people are allowed to express their own ideas, they start to feel positive about themselves.

Having allowed the group to discuss improvisation and the various forms that it can take, it is important to clarify the kind of improvisation they will be exploring in these sessions. Keep positive about their ideas and experiences, but make sure they understand that this is improvisation for exploration of character and relationships; it is not improvisation for entertainment. Make it particularly clear to them that they don’t have to be funny.

The Ground Rules

Finally, identify the ground rules of these improvisation sessions. How long is each improvisation? When does it stop? Do they need props? Could they be animals? Make sure they understand the guidelines – the foundations of an improvisation. If the foundations are solid then they can build confidently on top of them without the fear of collapse.

The rules that I use are simple.

1.	IMPROVISATIONS ARE USUALLY FOUR MINUTES LONG. I time them with a stopwatch and finish them, even in mid-sentence, when the time is up. In the early stages of the training, four minutes is long enough to explore a particular improvisation technique, and yet it is short enough for everyone in a group to have a chance to try out the technique for themselves.
2.	IMPROVISATIONS ONLY END WHEN I SAY SO. Sometimes people think they have nothing more to say and they will just stop improvising. But why stop? Life doesn’t stop, and an improvisation should be like life. Inexperienced improvisers usually stop when things start to get difficult or they can’t think what to say next, but in fact that is just the time when interesting things start to happen because the improvisers have to start being creative and exploring uncharted territory.
3.	DON’T TALK TO PEOPLE WHO AREN’T THERE. If there is a difficult moment in an improvisation and people don’t know what to do next, they will often turn to an imaginary waiter and ask for the menu, or start having a one-sided conversation with a passing policeman or whatever. But what’s the point of that? That’s just working on your own. Why do that when there are real people – other improvisers – who will give you a response and work with you? This leads to the next rule.
4.	DON’T TALK ON IMAGINARY TELEPHONES. I know telephones have become a major part of everyone’s life, and not allowing improvisers to talk on the telephone can sometimes be untrue to life. But as above, people start having one-way conversations and are actually just talking to themselves. What good is that unless you are working on a one-person show? (Actually, even if someone is explorin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• 1 Trusting Yourself
• 2 Trusting Others
• 3 Being There
• 4 Atmospheres
• 5 Adjusting the Scenario
• 6 Emotions
• 7 Activities
• 8 Objectives
• 9 Character
• 10 Consolidation
• 11 Listening
• 12 Building Together
• 13 Releasing the Imagination
• 14 Re-incorporating
• 15 Incidents
• 16 Interruptions
• Appendix 1: Warm-up Games and Exercises
• Appendix 2: Preparing the Cards
• Epilogue
• About the Author
• Copyright Information