I’m in the final stretch of my improv education. In a few week’s I’ll graduate out of the 5-level program at Finest City Improv.

I’ll continue to learn, of course, but this seems as good a time as any to reflect on my experiences learning and performing improv for the last ten months.

It All Comes Down to Fear

When you enroll in Level 1, the instructor’s goal is to get you to play again. Act like a kid, make silly noises, be goofy, release the judging mind.

Levels 2-4 are about learning “the rules,” those nebulous things that seem to make an improv scene good or bad.

Some of these rules are:

• Don’t ask questions
• Don’t create unnecessary conflict
• Don’t do transaction scenes
• Say “Yes, and…”
• Support your scene partner

And so on. There are probably dozens of them.

Being the analytical person that I am, I loved these rules. They helped me structure and make sense of this nebulous art form in my head, so I could know if I was doing it “right” or “wrong.”

My experiences in Level 5 have taught me that almost none of these rules matter. At least, they’re not the real reason that an improv scene is good or bad.

It all comes down to fear.

In his book, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out, Mick Napier points out that breaking these rules don’t always lead to bad scenes. And following them don’t always lead to good scenes. Therefore, they must be correlated with the goodness or badness of a scene, but not causative.

He makes the claim that our own fears are what create bad tendencies on stage and ultimately cause bad scenes.

I was doing a scene with my classmate where we were both DJs who were amped up on our beat-making skills. Here are a few lines of dialogue with my inner monologue:

Her: Dude, the bassline you dropped on that latest beat was straight flame!

Me: I know, right? Sometimes I actually get scared about how fire my beats are.

My inner monologue, “OK, I agreed, but I didn’t really add much. What can I do to further the scene?”

Me: You know, Trey, I gotta be honest…your beats haven’t been that fire lately. I don’t like them…

My inner monologue, “Shit. I just started an argument for no reason.” I then get side-coached by my teacher: “Don’t start fighting!”

Me: I don’t like your beats…I fucking LOVE them. You absolutely melted the club last night, they had to mop up literal human tissue, that’s how fire you were brother!

If we’d gone down the “I don’t like your beats…” thread, the scene would have petered out into a debate about beat-making that would have gone nowhere, most likely.

But notice that starting an argument wasn’t what caused the scene to take a turn. It was my fear. My fear of not saying something “good enough” made me panic and reach for something, and that something was an argument.

Unless you’ve been genetically engineered to perform, you’ve got an instinctual fear response to performing on stage in front of people while making stuff up off the top of your head. If you give in to that fear response, you’ll create scenes that are less fun than they could be if you let go of your judging mind and simply created.

You seem to follow all of “the rules” of improv when you let go of fear. And if you break one, it probably made the scene better.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

Before I went on stage for the last improv show I had, my instructor asked each of us for one thing we wanted to focus on while performing. As we went around the room, some common improv rules showed up:

• Listen! Have your scene partner’s back! Focus on the game!

When it came to me, I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind:

Be dumb!

This was my way of telling myself to get out of my own head. My way of releasing all of the rules and theory behind improv and just having fun on stage.

After all, doing improv is like trying to be a kid again…but doing it right feels like you are a kid again.

Kids don’t try to be kids. Kids are kids.

This is where the Be Dumb mantra comes from. It’s a metaphor for releasing the judging elements of your brain and dropping into the moment.

For me, coming up with stupid ideas that I personally think are funny is the way I drop into the present.

Here are some other ways to Be Dumb:

1. Realize that there is nothing to achieve when doing improv. It all goes away at the end of the show anyways, good or bad.
2. Realizing that you can’t think about two things at once, and if given the choice of thinking about the “rules of improv” or what your partner is saying on stage, you should always choose the latter.
3. Realizing that comparing yourself to another improviser is a complete waste of mental energy.

P.S. This series is called Improv and Life for a reason. These realizations are more useful off-stage than on.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

One of the most interesting rules of improv — if there are such things — is the maxim, “If this is true, then what else is true?

It’s the rule that has the most applications outside of improvisation for me, especially when it comes to general creativity and entrepreneurship.

But first, let’s examine it within improv. Suppose we have a scene that starts off like this:

Steve: “You know, one of the things I love about you the most is how selfless you are.”

Ryan: “I’m glad you noticed. I take it as a personal point of pride to be the most selfless person in any room.”

As soon as the other improvisers hear Ryan’s statement, they can ask themselves, “If Ryan tries to be the most selfless person in any room, then what else is true about him?”

They can initiate scenes, putting in him in situations where his drive to be more selfless than the other people in the scene is increasingly absurd:

• In a hospital alongside a priest who is giving a dying man his last rites. Ryan might offer to die in place of the man.
• Speaking alongside the Dalai Lama. Ryan might try to out-holy the Dalai Lama.
• As a doctor in open-heart surgery, offering to sacrifice his own life John Q style.

“If this is true…” is a fantastic way to be “logically creative.” All you’re doing is free-associating off of an absurd premise, playing along with the reality of the premise. You come up with seemingly creative scenes as a result, but you didn’t perform any mental magic to get there.

Real World Applications

This seems helpful for teasing out new business ideas, especially in industries that are rapidly changing. In fields where new ideas are becoming accepted, you can ask yourself, “OK, if this idea is true, what else in the world would be true?”

Elon Musk does this quite often. In the brilliant Wait But Why article The Cook and The Chef, Tim Urban notes that most people think Elon can see the future and the rest of us are stuck in the present. In reality, Elon is seeing the present and the rest of us are seeing the past.

He’s asking himself questions like, “In a world where solar power is cheaper than fossil fuel power, what else would be true? Oh, we’ll all drive electric cars powered by solar cells? OK, I’ll go build that right now then.”

Of course, he has to be right about the fact that solar will be cheaper. Reasoning from the ground up, if he believes that it’s extremely likely that will happen, he can confidently start a business based on that assumption and succeed.

Whether you do improv or not, asking yourself “If this is true, what else is true?” will help you be far more creative than you ever have been before.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

Here are the two most important lessons I learned during my Level I improv classes.

Do not judge your choices while in a scene — ever.

If you’re into self-improvement and growth, you’re no stranger to embracing criticism and using it as a vehicle to grow. That turned out not to work so well for me with improv.

I remember doing a “Three Line Scene” exercise, where I initiated the scene like this:

Me: “Hey, you forgot the…crumbs…on the floor….”

Her: [Something I forgot because I was instantly judging myself for my choice]

Me: [I mumbled something that made no sense in context]

As soon as the words left my mouth, I was out of the moment and in my head, judging myself for saying something that dumb and boring. I went into evaluation mode, analyzing what I could have done differently to make a better choice.

What I failed to realize is that your choices in a scene are perfect, because you made them. Sure, there are probably more interesting choices than the one I uttered, but ruminating on what those choices might be is best saved for after the scene.

Take constant action and let the lessons seep in via osmosis instead of rote learning.

I’m used to learning information that I then use in my field. For example, I’ll learn a new business strategy and go right ahead applying it after the fact. This is a linear process, where you have to know what to do before you do it.

Improv is different. As the weeks went on, I found myself wondering what I was actually learning — if anything. It seemed like we were just playing around in class. Very rarely were any improv concepts mentioned by our teacher. There was very little guidance as to how to improve.

What there was a lot of was extremely positive praise. It confused me — I’m used to learning a system, and then working that system. And I want negative feedback, not positive! Who cares if I’ve done something well? I want to know what I did poorly, damn it!

After reflecting on this for a while, I realized that what mattered in Level I was simply doing scenes and working exercises. Sure, there are underlying concepts that help you get better at improvising, but they would only make sense in theory if we’d learned them before doing improv.

Our Level I teacher prioritized practice in scenes and exercises over rote learning of concepts. This prepared us for Level II, where we’re:

• Defining each concept and digging into it
• Doing specific exercises to strengthen our understanding and application of a concept
• Begining to tie all of the concepts together into a improvisation framework

Play to the top of your intelligence.

This is a weird one. When doing improv, you’ll be playing characters of all types. Don’t resort to lowest common denominator stereotypes. Don’t make the obvious choice, try to go a bit deeper and search for the honesty in the scene. Try to find how you, AS the character would really respond to your scene partner.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -

I started taking improv comedy classes a few months ago on a whim. They have quickly become some of the most useful and productive hours that I spend in my week.

Slowly, the lessons learned in improv are seeping into every aspect of my life, so I figured I’d write a series on how certain principles of improvisation are applicable to other areas of life.

Let’s tackle the Holy Grail of Improvisation: “Yes, And…”

If there could only be one rule, this would be it. And it’s a very simple rule. Let’s take a look at each word separately.

Yes

In an improv scene, everything is being made up on the spot. If you’re in a flow state, there’s almost no forethought as you’re performing — it’s just happening.

This is why “Yes” is the foundation of the art form. Everything your scene partners say to you is a gift. And it’s rude to reject gifts.

If your scene partner is doing their job, they will be saying and doing things that help you succeed. The last thing you should do is refuse the information that they’ve given you.

Here’s an example of a flat out denial of information:

Them: “Mom, the pies are going to burn if we don’t take them out of the oven!”

You: “I’m your uncle, not your Mom. And we’re making cake, you nutjob!”

This is a painfully obvious refusal of the information offered to you by your scene partner. You’ve just killed the scene. There are ways this can be saved, but it’s clunky and obvious to everyone in the room.

Here’s an example of a better choice (but not by much), given the same information:

Them: “Mom, the pies are going to burn if we don’t take them out of the oven!”

You: “Oh no!”

Your character’s shock in learning that the pies are going to be burned both affirms your role in the scene as your scene partner’s mother, and affirms the fact that pies exist and they’re going to burn if you don’t take them out of the oven.

This scene can go somewhere, unlike the scene above, where the information is rejected, making both your scene partner and your audience extremely uncomfortable.

However, your “Oh no!” response is a bare-minimum affirmation of the information your scene partner gave you. How can we make an even better choice?

The answer to that question lies in the second word in the rule…

And

Now that we understand that we should accept everything our scene partners give us (more on what “accept” means later), how can we create a scene that isn’t two people just agreeing with each other until someone mercifully cuts the scene?

You must both agree and add to the information your scene partner gives you:

Them: “Mom, the pies are going to burn if we don’t take them out of the oven!”

You: “Oh no! Not again! I do this every single time I try to bake…”

All we’ve done here is add one some extra information on top of the simple “Yes” you gave your scene partner in the last example.

Think about it from your scene partner’s point of view. You accepted what they said, and gifted them back some extra context. You are their mom and you are burning the pies. But, you have also burned the pies before and seems to burn something every time you bake. Now your scene partner can build off of this.

This gift-giving, accepting, and adding goes back and forth between you and your scene partner. Repeat enough times and you have an improv scene.

Of course, there are many other principles and rules that go into the art form, but if you had to pick only one rule, “Yes, and…” would be the one.

A Caveat

Saying “Yes” doesn’t mean being agreeable in the scene. It means that you accept the point of view and information that your scene partner is bringing into the scene and work to incorporate it into what you do next.

Here’s an example of saying “Yes” in a way that doesn’t seem like you’re agreeing:

Them: “Mom, the pies are going to burn if we don’t take them out of the oven!”

You: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you would ever help in the kitchen, maybe you wouldn’t have to eat my extra crispy rhubarb pies…”

You’re still affirming the information given, but taking the scene in a different direction by blaming your scene partner instead of taking it all on yourself. This can make for a great interplay of emotions between you two.

Avoid: The “Yes, But…”

This is a tactic that shows up all of the time in normal conversation. You “agree” with the information offered, but immediately offer a caveat or counterpoint that effectively means you didn’t really agree in the first place:

Them: “Mom, the pies are going to burn if we don’t take them out of the oven!”

You: “You’re right, but I never really cared for pie anyways. Let’s just forget about it.”

This is a workable scene, but you’ve refused half of the gift your scene partner gave you. You’ve accepted that you are their Mom and pies are burning, but redirected the scene in a different way by negating the importance of the pies burning.

The scene will be bumpy from here, because you didn’t give your scene partner any gifts in return. You are making them carry the scene.

Applications In Conversation

People who have internalized the “Yes, and…” rule are often wittier and more playful than others. They’re able to entertain silly, absurd, or outrageous ideas or suggestions in conversation and say something back that furthers the conversation in a much more interesting way.

People who haven’t seem incapable of entertaining ideas or suggestions that go outside of what they know to be “true” and “correct.”

These people are either in a “Yes, but…” or “No” mode

Note: It’s probably not a good idea to universally apply the “Yes, and…” rule. There are clearly situations where you need to disagree or offer caveats. Real life is not improvisation.

But I would put forth that people don’t apply “Yes, and…” anywhere near as much as they should be.

Kevin Espiritu

Founder / CEO of Epic Gardening. Gardener, business-builder, curious.

www.kevinespiritu.com

Kevin Espiritu -