Improv - The Invisible Part of the Play

by John Koprowski

In my years in the theater, as I have made my way from beginning actor to semi-pro, I have found that the freedom to improvise is one of the most effective approaches to problem-solving. It is useful throughout the rehearsal process and extends to coping with the unexpected on stage, during a performance.

From the start, the actor uses improvisation in a variety of ways. The first basic exercises a new actor will encounter involve acting, silently, to indicate basic circumstances like the time, place, or weather in which your character finds himself. If you want to demonstrate that you are coming home to your apartment, how would it play differently if you were coming in at the end of a long day? As you open the mail, how would it play if you were opening an invitation to a party, or a past-due bill? If it's raining outdoors, or 95 degrees and very humid, or fifteen degrees and icy? If, instead of your apartment, you are entering your office, or a haunted house? These fundamental exercises focus the actor on his demeanor and behavior, and deal with the fourth wall by installing a picture window in it - a way the actor can deal with the audience without feeling as though he is looking at the audience.

In the early rehearsal stage of any new production, it is good to have actors do an improv, not on the particular action they are going to be doing, but rather on surrounding situations, preceding situations, or other major crisis points or high points in the imaginary life of the character. When I was in the Sam Shepard play, Simpatico, for example, the two main characters did improvs around how the two of them met, and how one of them first mentioned getting married. Other comparable back-story explorations might be the day the son told his parents he was gay, or the day the wife discovered the telltale phone number in her husband's suit pocket. Working on moments like these, the actor deepens the present situation and brings to his part a better sense of his character and of the other characters with whom he will interact.

A director may use improvisations on unrelated material to enrich a particular character trait she wants to emphasize in the play. For instance, if the character has an explosive temper, the improv might be around what kind of things drive you over the edge, like the day you told your boss to shove it. Or it can be useful to work in a situation where you could not lost your temper: where you had to sit and take it. Directors will often suggest exercises like these to build up an actor's sense of the emotional life of the character.

Conflict improvs are another standard exercise in acting class. The teacher might begin with, "Okay, there are two people in the woods and they are lost and one wants to go North and one wants to go South." Or he wants the beach and she wants the mountains. Or you are in a store and a salesperson is trying to sell you something you don't want. Another classic conflict is the seduction scene, with one unwilling participant. Conflict improvs zero in on the powerful forces used to confront a conflict.

In a variant on this, the director will take a scene from the play, but tell the actors to use their own words to convey the conflict underlying the scripted parts. I once saw in rehearsal two actors improvising the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in contemporary English. The exercise was a great success - the actors got over their concern about classical language, which they felt freer to learn later in the rehearsal process. First, however, they had laid in the situation and had some idea of their characters, the foundation on which all the other layers could be built. In general, I have found it helpful to regard the lines as just another layer in the play. Accented speech works the same way - otherwise the play becomes all about the accent instead of about the play and your part in it.

Actors will use the play as a jumping-off point, as well, improvising the what-if's. What if you had said that you would lend me the money? What if we had gone on that date, after all? These imaginary interactions between their characters will help the actors convey to the audience more depth and more emotion, when the time comes.

Sanford Meisner, a great teacher of the Stella Adler / Lee Strasberg / Harold Bergoff generation, uses what he calls "activities" - situations for the character that are at once difficult, important, and imminent. So your niece's birthday party is in two hours, a one-hour trip from here. You bought her a special doll, for which you made all the clothes. You are hurriedly trying to get all the clothes onto the doll, wrap it, buy a card, and get to the party on time. Then the director adds a "doorperson." A friend knocks at your door - "You must help me, right now, everything depends on it, no one else can help." Their need is just as great as yours, and under the rules of this "activity" you cannot tell them to buzz off, nor can you abandon your task either.

Just coming out of a doorperson activity like that one, the actor will be ready for the scene in Mr. Roberts where he confronts the captain about giving the crew liberty. The doorperson exercise tunes you up to the emotional pitch you need for that scene. Improvising your way out of a few of these activities can definitely strengthen your acting as well as your ingenuity.

Then there are improvs using imaginary facts. Two people are on a date. One knows an imaginary fact about the other one, and the other does not know anything about this arrangement. The first has been told, "Did you know this guy just spent ten years in prison for securities fraud?" Or, "Did you know this man was in the priesthood for ten years?" Knowledge of such a fact changes the entire way you relate to the character, while he doesn't know that you "know" this information about him. So his character begins to wonder why you are acting so strangely - his character is still pursuing the exercise's original objectives.

Depending on the style of acting, improvs can take place on an empty stage, or with a full set, using realistic props. Students of Bergoff / Hagen rely heavily on props in their time-and-place activities: The surroundings are very real. With Meisner, the circumstances are very real, so that by the time you insert your actual lines from the script, your character has already been fully formed.

I have found, both as an actor and a director, that improvs can be useful within the framework of a role, but without regard to what is written down. Put a different spin on a situation from the play, so that the actor will react entirely in character to this new situation: Do the scene as if you were telling it to a child, or your grandmother, or a police officer. In auditions, directors will often try an exercise like this, to test an actor's flexibility.

After the audition and the rehearsals, once the play is in performance, things can still happen unexpectedly. If your acting technique is really strong, you will remain in character, no matter what. Especially if your rehearsals were done this way, you are better prepared for those eventualities.

Even when nothing goes wrong, you still benefit from using improvs in your preparation: In a play with a run of more than a few weeks, you find yourself adding non-verbal things, as you come to know your character better. The director won't come to every performance, and gradually the play becomes increasingly the actors' expression. It feels like a rite of passage, when the director gives you her last set of notes and turns the play over to the actors. At that point, there's not much the director can do. In fact, the actors may be better suited to make the small changes. If they already became well-acquainted with their characters through rehearsing and improvising, they are prepared to keep the play alive, even for a long run.