Improv, if you let it, can function as a training simulator for living your own life.
In scripted theatre, aspects of the playwright’s personality, and whatever the playwright’s been chewing on, will manifest in the script.
In improv, since you’re always co-creating the piece while you’re performing it, aspects of your personality, and whatever you’ve been chewing, on will manifest in your work. Beautifully, if annoyingly, things about you that get in your way in life will also get in your way as you improvise. So, tools that help you do improv better…often help you do parts of your life better.
In my first few years doing improv, back in the ’00s in Chicago, the compliment I most frequently got from teachers and directors was also the note I most frequently got from teachers and directors: “Grimwood, you sure can talk!”
To the extent that an improv scene needs dialogue, scenes I was in had plenty. To the (much larger) extent that an improv scene needs action, connection, decision, and silence, scenes I was in were often too flooded with dialogue for those to exist.
Unsurprisingly, this problem also occurred in my daily life. Actually, as improv helped me gain confidence, the problem occurred more and more.
Questions people asked me would get an answer…but the paragraphs the answer was buried in would flood the zone. My actual useful answer would get swept up in the avalanche and lost.
I needed to work on this. In my improv, sure, and in my life.
Enter one of my favorite improv exercises: Five Words or Less.
In an improv context, Five Words or Less is simple: you and a partner do a scene, and each line of dialogue must be five words or fewer in length. (Yes, grammar friends, “Five Words or Fewer” would be more correct, but “Less” is more catchy, so it stays.) Once you’ve said five words, you may not speak again until your partner has spoken. No one’s obligated to speak perfunctorily just to let their partner keep talking. What happens when you run out of words mid-sentence? Well, I guess you just…
Yep! Turns out, whatever you were about to say with a ton of words, the scene didn’t need you to say.
Maybe instead of continuing to talk, you do something. Maybe you let the focus swivel back to your scene partner. Maybe there’s a good pause in the dialogue, and whatever just happened in the scene gets a chance to land. The scene-work gets stronger.
Working this way, you develop a feel for how much you can say in five words. What kind of things you can’t say in five words. How to find the core kernel of an impulse or a response. You discover that anything requiring more than five words is more than one line needs to say.
In a regular life context, I use Five Words or Less when I catch myself pulling a “start talking and find the thing eventually.” Or when I once again start to “answer someone’s question…plus one thousand additional answers.”
For years I’ve taught corporate training clients that when giving feedback, you have to go one small step at a time, and check in at each small step to see if what you’ve just said has landed. But in my own conversations? Oops! Firehose.
So when I notice myself about to do that, or in the middle of doing that, I will stop and give myself “Five & Five.” I’ll attempt to convey my answer in five words. If I need five more words, okay. But that’s it.
Suddenly, an exhausting dossier on what guitar pedals are becomes “portable boxes of inspiration and expression.” The intricate breakdown of my complex web of siblings becomes “eight kids across three marriages.” The bizarre office job I had in my twenties becomes “watching TV and writing quizzes.”
All the details and background information I cut out to get to five words? Nobody misses it. I don’t miss telling it. And it might have muddied the communication of the actual piece of information.
It rules.
You can try this on right now. Think of a movie or book you know really well. Describe it in five words or less.
Star Wars? “Skywalkers causing and solving problems.”
Lord of the Rings? “Gentle farmers save everyone’s asses.”
Dune? “Schemers’ plans succeed spectacularly, unfortunately.”
Then the next time somebody asks a simple question, to which you can give a long and fascinating answer that is probably more than they were looking for, give yourself Five & Five. Pause, let your thoughts catch up with you, and cut it down to five words or less before you answer. If you need five more words, okay. But that’s it.
I think you’ll find your communication becoming more effective, more collaborative, more communal. Whether you’re in an improv scene, on a conference call, or across a dinner table.
As actors, performers, creatives, we train and grow to become absolutely comfortable generating and delivering. The next level is getting comfortable delivering just a single small piece of what we just generated. Dropping the rest. Receiving our partner’s response openly and wholly. Generating anew in response to that. Then delivering a single small piece of that new.
Five words at a time is a good pace. Give it a try.
– Geoff
Upcoming classes with Geoff include Improv I: Fundamentals starting 3/15, and Improv II: Long Form starting 3/17 or 3/18.
Check out TBG’s full schedule of classes, including youth options!