What (Not) Doing Improv Taught Me About Trust

No one has walked away from an improv show saying "Wow, that team can really rely on one another! How trusting they were!"

Good improv stems from trust. Supporting your scene partners can be anything. Climbing on their shoulders. Teaching how to Dougie for five minutes straight. Tackling each other on command.

Or it can be doing nothing.

Having trust in our scene partners brings out our best in improv. But improv has also made me see it brings out the best in my work, my projects, and myself.

(Not) Doing Improv

If you're watching a longform* improv show, you'll notice some of the players standing off to the side. They're not performing. They're watching and laughing with the audience. Chillin' on the sidelines.

But while it looks like relaxing, it's actually a matter of trust. They're sideline support. Key word support.

In improv, performers can jump in at any time. If they have an idea, they can execute on it right away. There is nothing holding sideline supporters back.

But the best improv I've seen (we’ll call them Team A) is when they show restraint. They let the current performers play, explore their ideas and characters, and let them get the laughs.

Compare that to some other shows I've seen (Team B). Random characters jumping in for no reason. Making jokes and puns without keeping the focus on the scene. Shouting over each other.

It's chaos.

When I’m sideline supporting, I operate around this quote:

"Sideliners' jobs are to support. 90% of the time, that's doing nothing."

Team A’s sideline support let the scenes play out in a natural way. No random additions. Even if the scenes started out slow and serious, the sideline support trusts the performers to perform and take it to a funny place. It was selfless improvisation.

Sure, some of the ideas may not have been the funniest. But the performing improvisers got the audience involved in the story, characters, and situation.The scene eventually evolved into a laugh-filled riot. This wouldn’t have happened if the sideline support jumped in. The best idea evolved out of the improvisers' trust.

For Team B, the opposite is true. Sideline support was interjecting their own ideas into the scene, regardless of what was established previously. It was selfish improvisation. There was no trust among the improvisers to handle the scenes on their own.

Everyone needed to have the best idea.

But without trust, no one's idea was supported as the best idea.

I don't remember anyone laughing at Team B’s show.

"Stop Monologuing"

Onstage and offstage, I've had difficulty with trust and delegation. In short films I've made, I've taken the role of director/editor/cinematographer/writer. I check on progress too often. In an improv class, my coach noted me:

"Stop monologuing. Whenever someone monologues, it demonstrates their unwillingness to let anyone else contribute."

This note stuck.

I hadn't made this connection. Monologuing isolates. It’s a demonstration of distrust.

I asked my coach after the workshop: "If I can't monologue, how am I going to get my idea onstage?"

He turns around and says:

"You have to stop thinking your idea is the best one."

Rethinking The Best Idea

An audience doesn't go to an improv show to hear someone's “good ideas”. They go to laugh. To chuckle at the zany characters, situations, and lines made up on the spot.

Improv comedy is created through uniting disparate ideas. Not Gus freestyling a soliloquy.

It revolves around Yes Anding disparate ideas, which will give the performers more to work with than a single performer could ever give. And more for the audience to laugh at.

I went through my creative projects and noted some highlights and lowlights. I've noticed that most highlights are from times I've said, "Yes, we can work that in somehow."

Most lowlights are from a selfish place. I like this joke/lyric/sentence. I think it's funny. I failed to ask for help, even for proofreading

Trust builds to new places. I need to open up more to let better things in, whether for general collaboration, creative projects, or not monologuing in an improv scene.

Gus Vieweg is the creator and host of Raleigh’s Triangle Improv Comedy Meetup. When he’s not improvising, you can find him programming, playing piano, and actively correcting his posture.

*Longform is a style of improv which focuses on 20+ minute sets, unlike shortform (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) which focuses on 3-4 minute games. See UCB for example.