Improv Nonsense

When someone on your team is making a reference to someone or something you have never heard of — a movie, or tv show, some science-fiction b.s. that does not interest you or some reality show you’ve been avoiding because you still love yourself — what do you do? The audience reacted to what was said, so you know it means SOMETHING but you know you don’t know what it is.

The textbook answer is that if you react honestly and yes-and, then the scene will be fine. It’s okay that you don’t know what the reference is. And that is true.

But I have an alternate back-up plan for people who are really investing themselves in improv: you should just KNOW EVERYTHING. I say you have a responsibility to be a smart, informed person if you want to be a good improviser. Okay, not EVERYTHING everything. But I’ve never known a good improviser who wasn’t extremely smart and didn’t know a LOT.

Good improvisers read books, watch movies, know what’s happening in the news and know what the hit shows are. They are media-absorbers and remember everything. They talk to people and know what the general opinion is of the issues of the day. They know the Bible and the tenants of most major religions, they know classic television from past generations, books that your English teacher told you to read, they have a decent-to-great knowledge of history. They get lost in wikipedia, they like skimming through weird magazines. They know dozens of genres of fiction, movies, plays. They have a “Mad Magazine parody” level of knowledge of plots of all classic movies. They get out in the world and do weird things and talk to interesting people and remember it all. They have conversations with their weird relatives and they humor the annoying person in the bar and they learn and remember and learn and remember.

And then despite that, these improvisers will still run across scenes in which something is being discussed that they don’t know. But rather than throwing up their arms and exclaiming with fear “But I didn’t know! I had NO IDEA what that person was talking about!” they will react honestly and yes-and and make the scene work.

And then go home and look up what it was they didn’t know and never forget it for the rest of their lives.