Ten Improv Questions Answered

Over the years I have received a number of questions about my approach to IMPROV. I have selected ten of them and answer them below.

Question 1. What is IMPROV?

Improv is short for improvisational theater. It is a performance art, it is acting not from your lines but from your imagination.

Question 2. Is IMPROV basically comedic?

Improv taps into the most basic of human instincts: the need to create something out of nothing. This process unleashes a great amount of energy while letting go of resistance in the form of social inhibitions. The comedic experience comes from the viewer of someone improvising rather than the improviser himself or herself. It is a joy to see someone create in the spur of the moment, letting go of the usual norms of correct behavior and make something they really believe in. Hence, even an intense and serious exploration of a scene by the performer will be interpreted by the audience as an unusually funny performance.

Question 3. Does one have to try to be funny while improvising?

No. In fact trying to be funny does not really work. You just get involved in your world in a hyper-real way, believing in the environment you are creating with your partners, taking unexpected pathways of your imagination. When you do that effectively, thats when your audience has a good laugh.

Question 4. What is the point of IMPROV class?

To come together with other performers of varying levels of experience in a carefully structured environment of scores and exercises with the express purpose of exploring to the utmost your own imagination and co-creating with others using their imaginations.

Question 5. Why do you not teach a traditional IMPROV class stratified into skill levels?

Improv is not a matter of skill. All that we need to know about improvising we already know intuitively. My students are not looking for one more class in which they master certain skills and pass exams. What they are here for it to be able to explore and grow creatively as performers. There are no 'levels' in my classes just individual explorers of the creative imagination expanding their own capacities for self-expression. There is never any comparision with anyone else.

Question 6. What is your background in IMPROV?

I grew up studying experimental theater and pantomime in India. By the time I was in college at the University of Bombay I started my own hugely popular mime group. After moving to America I studied IMPROV at Second City in Chicago with some of the pioneers of the IMPROV renaissance of the 1970s and other theater arts such as Neofuturism and Goat Island method. Once in california my years of study with Cassie Terman in West Coast Improvisational methods led me in the direction of blending all my many influences over the years. I now belive that Improv can not be copyrighted or be prescibed. It is as natural to humans as sleeping and awaking. The trick is in reconnecting with that inner knowing.

Question 7. What is the most important thing for a student to keep in mind or be focused on?

Am I having fun? Do I believe in this world I am creating, however far-fetched it may seem to others? Do I know that I can't get it wrong, that this is something I was born with?

Question 8. You stress physicality in your teaching. Why?

That is the nature of our art form. It is about using our bodies fully to create and then engage in worlds of our imagination. Let us say you create a world in your imagination. Well you can tell us about it. But if that is all you are going to do why not write a book? If you are in my class you are here not to tell us about it but to show us and what better way to show us than to use your entire body to enter into your world fully?

Question 9. You are a teacher who plays and performs with his students in class. Can you comment on that?

That is how I teach. By becoming a student myself.

Question 10. Why do some of your students keep returning to class year after year?

I think it is because my class is a sanctuary where each person's silly, goofy, weird, obsessional, and tender side is given space for expression and exploration. It is the same reason why I keep teaching the class year after year: I feel so good after each class!




Image: Abhay performing in an elevator.