The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond by Tom Salinsky

The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond Reviews

• 
  Akhil Jain

  My fav quotes (not a review):
  • Choose two people. One says What are you doing? Their partner picks an arbitrary activity— I’m brushing my teeth. The first person now performs the activity named by the second person. The second person asks What are you doing? and ..
  • Encourage them to reincorporate earlier elements to provide an ending. If our gardener had had a trowel, he could have used it as a weapon or to fling soil in his boss’s eyes.
  • Bobbing your head up and down as you speak, the audience is likely to subconsciously think If they’re not even in control of their own head, are they really in control of what they’re saying?
  • STATUS AND SLAPSTICK Man slips on banana peel is the archetypal joke. It’s a quick drop in status. If a frail old man slips on banana peel, though, we’ll rush to help him up. This is not funny because his physical status is already very low. But if the pope slips on a banana peel and his hat falls off, this is very funny— despite the fact that he’s a frail old man—because of the status his position and costume endow him with. This is why Monty Python and lots of other sketch groups deal with politicians and arch-bishops so frequently. They’re socially high status so it’s fun to bring them down. You will even see comedians raise their status immediately before a fall to maximize its comic potential.
  • So we started to study what people like Bill Clinton or George Clooney did to give the impression of always being the most confident person in the room while at the same time being eminently likeable. We discovered that they used all the high status body language and married it with smiling, charming behavior. They complimented others, never defended themselves and raised the status of others, crucially, while maintaining their own.
  • We also developed a similar game called Estate Agents. Decide you’re in a ballroom. Look around. What’s there? Is it empty or full of dancing couples? What color are the walls? Are you in the center of the room or hiding behind a curtain? If you’re behind a curtain, is it heavy red velvet or white chiffon? All of these things can give your scene huge imaginative scope. Even if the audience never sees or hears about most of these things, knowing they are there will inspire you. You’ll look and act like you’re really there. When you’re stuck for an idea you can just look around the space: Can I use your fax machine? The kettle’s boiling. Wow, an indoor fountain!
  • Divide the group into pairs and have one person shut their eyes and the other ask them questions. Where are you? In a French café. How big is it? About ten small tables. What can you smell? French coffee. What’s on the counter? An old-fashioned cash register. The questions are better if they are open questions that make assumptions—What can you smell? rather than Can you smell anything? Next, get a student up in front of the group and get them to enter a space onstage. Side-coach questions in a similar fashion. When they’ve established a space, let them play a scene in it, using as many things in the environment as facilitate the scene.
  • UNDER THE GUN The best ending to this scene I ever saw was performed in a show by Deborah and Chris Gibbs. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, barked Chris. Er, your impending assassination, sir? hazarded Deborah. My what!? Ugh!! responded Chris, as he mimed receiving a bullet in the chest and collapsing on the floor. Lights.
  • in some plays there seemed to be a great deal of action—wars, death, plague, destruction—but they were left feeling that nothing much had happened; whereas in other plays (fewer), there seemed to be very little action, but they left feeling that they had seen something of tremendous power. The answer, Keith recalled, was just too simple for them to see: A changes B. If one character is altered by another, we perceive this as action. If characters remain unaltered, we get the feeling that nothing is happening.
  • Once you look for it, it becomes very obvious that reactions, emotional changes, are the heart and soul of stories, but oddly they are often not the most conspicuous features.
  • As situations get less and less realistic, emotions often run higher and higher. Jane Austen characters in love are famously repressed. What raising the stakes really means, is how much the characters care about the plot— whether or not they happen to be wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
  • Most comedy involves people having big reactions to little events.
  • As Patti Stiles used to put it to us: Don’t look for an offer, assume one has already been made. That offer can be a slight furrow of the brow or a tilt of the head, which makes the improviser look a little sad—giving rise to a breakup scene. A shifting of the weight from foot to foot makes the improviser look uncertain—giving rise to a secret diary scene. A confident air implies that the improviser is an authority figure—giving rise to a scene about a cruel military dictator. Improvisers can visualize themselves as detectives on the look-out for clues which they can act on.
  • We watch drama to see other people suffer, because that’s more fun than suffering ourselves but more interesting than everything being nice.
  • You’ll come in, sit down and wait for your number to be called. When she’s entered, the next person in line—that’s you, Paulo— will also enter, and you too will adopt a different physicality, ideally something which will be a contrast to whatever Jo is doing. You’ll sit next to her and you’ll acknowledge each other. Then Jo’s number will be called and she’ll leave. Which means the next person, Tina, can enter with yet another physicality. And so on until everyone has had a turn. It doesn’t have to be a big reaction; eye contact is often enough. But there is a great deal of anticipatory pleasure in seeing what will happen when the hyperactive child enters the room in which the nervous old lady
  • Keith’s solution is to begin with a purpose, or what Stanislavski called a super-objective. This is the thing that a given character is almost always trying to achieve in life. Examples include: to be thought clever, to be the life of the party, to not be noticed, to seduce a man/woman. So on a to be thought clever list you might put: - Correct people - Quote statistics - Use foreign words and phrases - Talk down to others - Smile quietly to yourself, but don’t tell anyone why - Carry gadgets - Finish other people’s sentences
  • Lawyer: Poor baby. Do you want a lollipop, darling? Client: No, I want you to get me out of jail. Lawyer: Let’s start with the lollipop and go from there. What flavor?
  • Our problem was how to improvise characters with dimension, like classic characters in fiction that interested audiences; characters like people we knew in life. We know teachers who do drugs and librarians with loads of tattoos who are writing a novel, and there must be kind-hearted parking inspectors (though we’ve never met one).
  • These scenes are endlessly entertaining, and wonderful and effortless to play. The technique works just as well with the heart-less midwife who acts like a sergeant major, the psychiatrist who doesn’t tolerate complaining and the high court judge who wants to be liked and to fit in. Almost any scene you’ve played a million times before (strict parents and rebellious teenagers are a constant) can be given a new lease of life this way.
  • If we get a parking ticket, we’re irritated and might get a bit cross, but ultimately we get ourselves together and make the best of it. Remember, Shakespeare did not write about irritated people who were putting on a brave face. He wrote about huge and irrational extremes of emotion, as did the Greeks, as do your favorite sketch and sitcom writers.
  • If a policeman is getting ready and puts on his badge and gun, it is what we expect, but a nun who puts on her rosary and a gun is immediately a character with promised dimension. If the gun is remembered and explored—she goes to confessional, confesses to a murder and shoots the priest in the head for fear he’ll tell her secret, or is leaving the convent to take her revenge on the man who murdered her family, or is a nun as well as a part-time private investigator—the audience will be interested and, as long as it is justified, will feel it’s a deeper character than they normally see.
  • Sketches are usually drawn in bold strokes, so the strict teacher is unlikely to show that they’re a person too, and in their youth they experimented with drugs and had their heart broken which led to less-than-exemplary schoolwork. This is something we would normally find out several episodes into a sitcom or halfway through a movie, not in a three-minute sketch. Improvisers quickly creating short-form scenes or short scenes during a free form often do the same. How can we create more dimension in our characters?
  • If you have to make an arrest while you’re doing it, if you ask her out the way you’d normally question a suspect, if you end up finding drugs in her handbag and arresting her while you’re in the process of telling her how much you love her, then the audience will love it.
  • When a traditional mime does the wall, it isn’t the hands moving across an invisible plane that sells the illusion—it’s that the hand stays still, apparently resting on the wall, while the rest of the body moves.
  • Keep the idea of a shock to the forearm, but instead of having the hand spring open from a closed fist, just have the open fingers jerk a little, and then see if you can take it all the way down to a sudden, barely perceptible tightening of the muscles. This is known as a pop, and popping at the beginning and end of a motion can help give your mime a little extra snap and precision.
  • Try picking up a heavy (mime) suitcase and then putting it back down again. Now see what noises you can add. Obviously you can grunt with exertion as you pick the suitcase up, but you should also be able to make a satisfying shtooom! noise, or something similar, as it hits the floor. Yes it’s childish, yes you might feel a little foolish and yes, it really helps sell the illusion. Remember, we aren’t asking our audience to sit back and admire our physical dexterity; we want to make the world of the story rich and complete so that they can lose themselves in it—and so that we can too, to a certain extent.
  • It’s also fun to get improvisers to make themselves a mime cup of tea, which should take as long to make as a real cup of tea. Many improvisers get very engrossed in this, which is also good.
  • you have to do X at least twice before you do Y. The rule of three is simply the most efficient version of the general principle. E.g. A: I just accidentally drank some gasoline. I washed the taste out of my mouth with lemonade. B: I just accidentally drank some gasoline. I washed the taste out of my mouth with Coca-Cola. C: I just had a cup of coffee in the BBC canteen. Anyone got any gasoline?
  • I get two players up and give them a fairly bland scenario: two builders having lunch, a librarian and a customer, a doctor and a patient. Let’s take that last example. I tell them just to play the scene and I will give them a direction. Patient: Have you got my results back? Doctor: Yes, yes I have. Patient: Is it serious? Doctor: No, no, no . . . Patient: Oh, thank god for that. Doctor: Well, actually it is quite serious. Patient: Tell me! Doctor: Have you lost your appetite lately? Patient: Yes, I have. Me: Say Does that mean anything? Patient: Does that mean anything? Me: Say No, no, no. Doctor: No, no, no. Patient: Oh, thank god for that. Doctor: (Getting the idea) Well, actually it does mean something . . . Suddenly, the pattern for the whole scene is clear.
  • Stories happen when routines are broken and when A affects B.
  • When students complain to us about other improv teachers, a common complaint is that the teachers are reviewers criticizing scenes at the end
  • If a woman says yes to a marriage proposal, cut to the honeymoon. If a chef remarks on how sharp a knife is, have someone impaled on it.
  • Most improvisation is about people having trivial reactions to serious situations. You’re pouring your mother a cup of tea when you knock her in the head with the teapot and kill her. You shrug and claim that she was old anyway and continue to drink your tea
  • Bernard Shaw once wrote in a review: When I go to the theatre I want to be moved to laugh, not tickled to laugh. Often we are tickling our audiences, who get used to making little laughter-like noises at whatever improvisers do.
  • Don’t let other improvisers get away with trivializing everything. Call them on it. The audience will enjoy it. If your mother comes back from the dead and scolds you for breaking the teapot, point it out. Mother, I killed you, and you’re worried about the teapot?! What kind of unfeeling person are you? Even as a ghost you can’t get in touch with your emotions. Please say that you love me. Please say that you forgive me!
  • Shakespeare’s plays have thrilled millions of people for hundreds of years because they’re all about people who care, who are changed, affected, vulnerable, hysterical, insane, angry, joyful and desperately in love. We can learn from that.
  • The easiest way to affect a character is to thwart their desire.
  • You now have a choice: You can either establish a democracy or a benign dictatorship. We would recommend the latter. Democracy is a great way to run a country, but rarely produces great art.
  • improvisers are fearless imaginers
  • Men tend to be given status— both by women and by other men—for being funny, and it is common for men to fight for status harder. Thus, a pressure exists for little boys to be funny and little girls to laugh at their jokes and so audiences tend to make gender-based assumptions about comic ability.
  • Freud said that pleasure is the relief of pain. And improvisation is a sort of exquisite pain. The audience are always so relieved when you do come up with something, and there’s a pleasure in fearing you won’t and being relieved.
  • audience would rather see someone be vulnerable than someone trying to be clever
  • Teach with a beginner’s mind.
  • We treat each other as a group of geniuses, artists and poets. When you do that, bonds form that last forever. It’s something to live by, not only to do on the stage.
  • Afraid of saying I’ll have your Moc Chedon, because some people will know I screwed up Moet et Chandon. So what? My verbal mistake could be a fun offer.
  • Games:
  • No S: players must speak without using the letter S or yes or I
  • Sexy Smelly Stupid: Four ppl pick another to find sexy, another smelly and another to find stupid. There is no one sexy person; it’s about how people treat other people. Have one of them host a party and the others arrive as guests.
  • Small Voice An onstage player has an interaction with a tiny creature, too small to be convincingly portrayed by an actor, whose voice is supplied from offstage. E.g. a flea in a wheelchair.
  • Backwards Scene: e.g. Murder In Reverse, where you start (end) with a dead body on the floor.
  • Clap Switcheroo: When one player claps their hands, everyone picks someone else’s character and takes it over.
  • Da Doo Ron Ron: Sustaining the same rhyme until one of them flounders. E.g. A: I met him on a Monday and his name was Jack. All: Da Doo..! B: He was lying in a field, flat on his back. All: Da Do…! C: Alas and alack!.. A: We went back to his shack! All: Yeah!
  • Inner Monologue Two improvisers play a scene, while two more supply their inner thoughts at various intervals.
  • I Am, I Am, I Am: One person stands in the middle of a circle and announces what they are: I am a king. I am a dog. I am a wall. They then adopt an appropriate pose. A second person joins, adding to the tableau. A king might be joined by a crown, a throne or a queen. Again, the second person adopts an appropriate pose. Finally, a third person joins and completes the tableau. Perhaps the king sitting on his throne gains a cushion. Now the first person announces which of the other two they will remove. I’ll take the throne. The king and the throne leave together and the remaining player restates their role (I am a cushion) and so the sequence starts again.
  • More Stories Like That Three improvisers tell a story, taking one line each at a time, according to the following sequence. – Once upon a time there was . . . – And every day . . . – Until one day . . . – And because of that . . . ( repeat as necessary) – Until finally . . . – And ever since then . . . If anyone stumbles, either over the template or the content,
  • Fog of War The idea that improvisers are easily distracted by the stress of the situation and will fail to see or hear things that are easily noticed by the more relaxed audience.
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  This is a good overview of not only how to do improv but how to put on performances, ways of making money, etc. I read it to get some ideas for a retreat I'm running. I laughed when improv games other books recommend are skewered in this book, like "First Line/Last Line." I plan to combine a few of the games for fun!
• 
  Dianne

  I found the second half really useful and practical. I'm a little too beyond the first half. But would use this if I fell into teaching.
• 
  Deyth Banger

  I am not saying it's a bad book, it's a book for impro... if you are not planning to invest time and sources into improv courses.... then this book is for you, as for me I started improv courses... and those courses changed me forever.... it changed me the way I look the world... the way I interact... this book I bet it has good stuff inside... I didn't finish it.... but still for people who are interested how to be more free in the conversation this book is for you!
• 
  Shannon Appelcline

  An excellent overview of the art of improv, much of centered on the play of games that really reveal the heart of improv, and all of it delivered with an absolutely knowledge and authority. Some of the last chapters (like one on making money through business ventures) are dull and should have been stripped out, but that's irrelevant to this book's brilliant core.
• 
  Raphael Poch

  Helpful in explaining the Harold and other forms of Longform
• 
  Chiara Bonacini

  Davvero completo e ben scritto
• 
  Siobhan Hypatia

  Excellent guide to the workings of improv.
• 
  Emily Fortuna

  This book is a general survey of improv, borrowing exercises from a variety of well known improvisers. In my opinion though, I felt like I was better served just by reading the "primary sources" themselves: particularly Keith Johnstone's Impro and Impro for Storytellers.
• 
  Standback

  Excellent, excellent material - but you need to wade through a whole lot of tripe to find it.
  
  (Kind of like actual improv, really.)
  
  Salinsky and Frances-White have a clear, compelling view of what improv is, what to aim for, and how to teach. The Improv Handbook is at its best when it's discussing games and exercises - because these are the concrete building blocks of the form. The book does an excellent job explaining specific goals and ideas in improv, and how particular games can teach these ideas, and help actors practice and sharpen these specific skills. Equally enlightening are the books dissection of poor games, or just games that aren't particularly interesting - there are sharp, pointed analyses of exactly why these games fail to entertain, or pointlessly difficult to play. When the book points out how certain games force you into one-note premises, or have you doing something silly with no real risk of failure or difficulty, or they rely on the actors being brilliantly witty with no relation to any skills of acting or improv - then you understand better the potential that "good" or "on-form" improv really has - improv that sidesteps these traps, and grows organically from the situation and the actors.
  
  Between the games the authors like and the games they don't, a reader can get an excellent picture of fundamental tenets of improv, how to master them, and common pitfalls worth avoiding.
  
  Unfortunately, the authors' style and tone is condescending and self-important, to the degree that it becomes a serious annoyance. While I understand (and appreciate!) the desire to criticize some offshoots of improv, the put-downs and sniping at "other" styles are often so frequent as to be downright unpleasant. And there's a huge amount of space devoted to all sorts of name-dropping and historical trivia that's simply not made interesting in any way. (Did you know that the authors' production company was called "The Spontaneity Shop"? Did you know that before that, they were called "The Old Spontaneity Shop," and they changed it because they felt it projected an elderly image? Didja, didja, didja? Do you want to know the names of every single teacher and investor they ever had?)
  
  I highly recommend this book to actors who want to deepen their understanding of improv, and particularly those looking to improve their skills through practice and exercise. Skip over the boring bits.
  
  I read this alongside
  Long-Form Improv: The Complete Guide to Creating Characters, Sustaining Scenes, and Performing Extraordinary Harolds by
  Ben Hauck, which proved an excellent companion volume. Hauck's book is much gentler and much better at conveying the basic principles and ideas behind the form, clearly and engagingly. But Hauck's book is short on concrete games and exercises; this book plants your feet firmly on the ground. Taken together, I think the pair of books will serve you well.
• 
  Jeff

  The content deserves a solid 4. Salinsky & Frances-White are at their best when speaking as workshop teachers addressing new(ish) students. In this mode, they churn out dozens of valuable concepts that might surprise newbies or "stuck" performers.
  
  Alas, the authorial tone drags my overall rating below 3.5. I understand their desire to express a focused point of view (namely,
  Keith Johnstone's) regarding what's most likely to generate deeply satisfying improvisation—as opposed to merely amusing gags—but that doesn't require insulting all differing philosophies (notably,
  Del Close's).
  
  A lot of the time they were speaking to teachers or theatre owners. That was disconcerting for me when it occurred within Section 2, "How to Improvise," which i (reasonably?) expected to be teacher-to-student oriented.
  
  I want to look forward to reading Johnstone's
  Impro Improvisation and the Theatre, but i'm expecting it to be just as annoyingly ideologue-ish. And i can't help but expect to prefer Close et al's
  Truth in Comedy.
• 
  Michele

  An outstanding book for anyone who is interested in improvisation or in improving their overall acting skills through improvisation. The book is directed both to actors, and to experienced coaches who want to offer training in improvisation. Very clear and insightful, this is a book that will stay on my shelf for reference. I read it in preparation for a three-day impro workshop I'll be attending in a couple of weeks - I definitely feel primed and enthusiastically ready to dive into the practice I've had such fun reading about.
• 
  Brett Bavar

  A great introduction into the world of improv, and a great handbook for those who would like to start teaching or starting a troupe. I definitely plan to look back at this book for tips when I get more into teaching and performing.
• 
  Mike

  Great resource for basics of improv, good/bad games for teaching different skills. Discussion of "status" within a scene was insightful for the stage and for life. But as the authors state from the first page, "if you're interested in improv, go take a class!"
• 
  Oriana

  Look, there's just nothing less funny than a 'scholarly' analysis of a comedic art form, you know? These people just take themselves so seriously.
• 
  Dana Torrente

  Great book. A little long winded at times but super helpful when I was designing curriculum for an improv class I teach to my high school students.
• 
  Seymour Glass

  Undeniably thorough and a very peppy and cheerful introduction to improv - the writers clearly love the art form and care deeply about teaching it well. Waffly in parts and a bit name-droppy but you can skip those bits.