How To Be a Great Improviser

What separates good improvisers from great ones. Scene initiation, character commitment, listening beyond words, and finding the game: the skills that come from thousands of hours on stage.

The Fundamentals Never Stop

The best improvisers in the world still practice the basics. Del Close rehearsed with his ensembles until the end of his life. T.J. Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi, whose two-person show at iO Chicago became legendary, still warm up before every performance. They do not skip the fundamentals because they have moved beyond them. They do the fundamentals because they understand that mastery is not a destination. It is a practice.

Listening, agreement, commitment: these are not things you learn in Level 1 and leave behind. They are things you deepen over a lifetime. A beginning improviser listens for the words. An experienced improviser listens for the emotion underneath the words. A great improviser listens for the thing their scene partner does not even know they are communicating.

Great performers do not have more tricks than everyone else. They have deeper fundamentals. They have done the basic things so many thousands of times that the basic things have become extraordinary. When you watch someone like Susan Messing or Joe Bill on stage, you are not watching someone who has transcended Yes And. You are watching someone who has finally understood what Yes And actually means.

The Skills

Listening

Not just hearing the words. Listening means absorbing your partner's energy, posture, emotion, and intention. When you truly listen, you never have to think of what to say next. The response is already there.

Initiations

The first few seconds of a scene set everything in motion. A strong initiation gives your partner a gift: a relationship, an environment, an emotional reality. Weak initiations ask your partner to do the heavy lifting.

Character Commitment

Half-committed characters are invisible. Great improvisers commit fully to the physical, vocal, and emotional reality of their character, even when it feels ridiculous. Especially when it feels ridiculous.

Finding the Game

Every scene has an unusual thing: the pattern, the dynamic, the absurdity that makes this scene different from every other scene. Great performers identify it early and heighten it.

Guiding Principles of Scene Work

These principles have been passed down through generations of improvisers, from Del Close's notes to Mick Napier's guidance at The Second City and Annoyance Theatre. They are not rules. They are observations about what works, distilled from thousands of shows.

Keep it real

Stick with recognizable human behavior and situations. Even in a silly, cartoonish scene, the behavior should be motivated, consistent, and real within the context. Believe you are your character and the audience will believe you.

Keep it smart

Avoid going blue, selling out for a joke, or pandering to the audience. Play to the top of your intelligence at all times. The audience will settle for less — that doesn’t mean you have to give it to them.

Observe and listen

The most basic, and most neglected, skill. Don’t just listen for the words — listen to inflection, subtext, emotion, intention. That’s what gives you the relationship. Lack of listening is the main culprit behind bad scenework.

Get out of your head

The scene consists of what the audience has seen and heard, not what was in your head before you started. Be prepared to drop an idea, premise, or even a good line, the second the scene turns into something else.

Have an objective

Something that’s driving your character, preferably related to your scene partner. Hang onto your objective until forced to change.

Avoid negativity

“I hate being here” translates to “I hate doing this scene.” If there is conflict, let the stakes be high and the characters passionate. Don’t devote a scene to solving the conflict.

Have a where

The most neglected of who/what/where. A breakup scene at his apartment, her apartment, or the upper deck at a baseball stadium is a drastically different scene each time.

Know who you are

As soon as you can. Don’t be “a dad” — be a dad who would rather watch football than have the talk with his daughter. Once you know who you are, all dialogue flows from character.

Adapted from notes on scenework used at Second City, iO, and the Annoyance Theatre. See also Mick Napier's Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out.

The Performance Arc

A great improv performance has an arc: it builds, it breathes, it lands. The best shows are not a series of disconnected scenes strung together; they are a single experience that carries an audience from one emotional place to another. This does not happen by accident. It happens because the performers have internalized a sense of rhythm and pacing that can only come from years of stage time.

Year 1

Learning the Rules

Yes And. Don't deny. Make your partner look good. You are learning the grammar of improvisation, and every scene is an exercise in restraint. You are fighting the urge to be clever and learning to be present instead.

Year 3

Breaking the Rules Intentionally

Understanding when denial serves the scene. Finding your voice. You start to recognize the difference between a rule and a principle, and you begin making choices that would have terrified you two years ago.

Year 5

The Rules Are Invisible

You don't think about technique anymore. You play. The fundamentals have become reflexive, and your conscious mind is free to focus on the only thing that matters: your scene partner and the reality you are building together.

Year 10+

You Become a Teacher

Your body of work becomes your style. You see things on stage that newer performers cannot. You understand why the rules exist because you have broken every one of them. You can feel a show's arc in your bones.