Improvisation (also known as Impro or Improv) is the art of spontaneously acting and reacting to your surroundings in the moment. It offers a chance to relax and drop your defences in a safe and positive environment, to really be yourself on stage. In the theatre this usually takes the form of actors turning audience suggestions into totally spontaneous and unrehearsed scenes, games and sketches.

The result of improvisation is sometimes serious, but usually comic. It's important to make clear that actors don't have to be clever or funny, which seems counter-intuitive when compared to the result. It is more important to be present in the moment and to listen to the other actors, so that the comedy and entertainment almost happens by accident.

Improvisation is the ultimate team game, with actors working together, listening to each other, and building on each other’s ideas to create whole new stories and scenes in the moment.

We improvise all the time in real life; we don't plan every conversation and interaction that is going to happen to us over the day. Many of the best bits of life are totally spontaneous, and this is what we try to recreate on stage.

The most famous example of improvisation is probably the TV Show "Whose line is it anyway?", but this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of different games and techniques and it's exciting to explore as many of these as possible.

About Improv

Types of Impro

There are many different types of impro performance, and many actors perform more than one style. So there is a cross-over and you don’t have to limit yourself to one style.

Short Form: A performance of shorter games and scenes based on multiple audience suggestions, similar in style to the TV show ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’. Quite a common place to start performing impro and lots of fun.

Scenes: Actors improvising self-contained scenes and sketches that don’t necessarily form part of an overall narrative.

Long Form: Actors improvising multiple scenes from just one suggestion, sometimes using loose structures like The Harold or Montage.

Narrative Impro: Improvising multiple scenes that form one ongoing story, sometimes using a narrative structure like The Hero’s Journey.

TheatreSports: Teams perform scenes in friendly competition.  

Musical Impro:  Actors improvising an entire musical based on audience suggestions, like long-form with singing.

Playback: A director takes truthful, genuine stories from the audience and sometimes interviews in depth, and the actors perform these stories back to the audience. These shows can sometimes be more serious than other impro and are often used in drama therapy.

Solo: There are a growing number of solo performers improvising, although the shows aren’t necessarily called impro shows. Rob Broderick and Jonathan Kay are good examples.

There are also loads of other formats popping up all the time.

Foundations of Impro

Our foundations of impro are based on four concepts; listen, say yes, commit and be altered. From these all manner of exciting things can happen:

Listen: listening and seeing others on stage instead of listening to your own self-consciousness or trying to plan in advance.

Say Yes: accepting and building on the ideas and offers of other actors and letting things happen.

Commit: going for it, going for the first idea, the worst idea, the most obvious idea and letting yourself be free.

Be Altered: letting yourself be emotionally and physically changed by the other actors.

This all helps to create an environment in which actors can be themselves in the present moment and spontaneously do the first thing that comes to their head.

Together actors can then define a platform of where they are, who they are and what they are doing, create new characters and relationships, and build on each offer line by line to expand a scene, forward the action, and reincorporate details to tell a complete story. Mistakes are justified and woven in as if they belonged there all along. In fact, there are no mistakes because everything is accepted.

The final and most important concept is HOOPLA, but to find out what that is you will have to turn up!

Additional Impro Skills

On top of the foundations of impro we also teach some additional skills that are essential as actors progress. However it’s essential to keep practising the foundations, similar to how a footballer should keep practicing their passing.

Some of the additional impro skills include:

Platforms, the where, what, who

Mistakes and justification

Being Obvious

Performance skills

Status

Impro Narrative

Additional narrative structures

Longform

Game of the Scene

Solo Impro

Character including Mask and Commedia dell’Arte

Genres

Musical impro

And general acting skills like movement and voice are also helpful.

Improv around the World

Improv is a massive thing in North America and lots of Europe, and Hoopla are trying to raise the profile of improv to a similar level in the UK.

In North America there are large and well established improv theatres and training schools including well known names like Second City, Annoyance, IO, The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, Loose Moose Theatre and more.

The improv hot spots include Chicago, LA, New York, Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary. A lot of these places came out of the work of Viola Spolin, Del Close, and Keith Johnstone.

The UK used to have a reputation for just doing short-form, but over the last couple of years this is rapidly changing and lots of different styles have popped up. Short-form is still great though, we love everything.

Hoopla are striving to raise the profile of improv in the UK, making it more professional and mainstream. There are now loads more groups than there used to be, a larger audience, and improv shows appearing at professional theatres across the UK. Hurrah!