Everyone has periods of their lives that they regret. Some of us have hurt the ones we love, while others did improvisational comedy in college. Who’s to say which is the greater sin? (To be clear, it’s acapella. Acapella is the gravest offense of all).
After years of improv-ing without improving, I became a film professor and chose a life of reading, writing, and the solitary, slow practice of endless editing. Scholarship is never done; improv comedy, for better or for worse, is over in a flash, for better or for worse. Scholarship is serious; improv is just fun. Scholarship is careful; improv is reckless.
Or not.
Such distinctions obscure the ways in which improv and academia overlap and how scholarly writing might borrow some of improv’s playful, writers’-block-busting energy. As educators, we can and should think about how to bring a spirit of creativity and curiosity into the teaching of college writing.
“First Thought, Best Thought”:
In Improv: It is what it sounds like. You don’t have much time to consider and weigh your options – go with your instinct and “don’t think twice.”
In Writing: Turning off your inner censor can be difficult, but remind your students – and yourself – that what Anne LaMott calls “shitty first drafts” are the inspiration to revision’s perspiration. You need both. (Some of you may already know this, particularly if you watched the recent Jane the Virgin episode, in which Rogelio makes this very point.)
In the Classroom: Implement free writing, with or without directed prompts, in class. Ask them to free associate on a film still, a line or two of dialogue, or the title of a program they watched. If they are working on a paper for your class, free writing is a tactic both for finding a topic and for thinking it through more deeply than before. If you are more interested in having students express their ideas verbally, look into deep listening classroom activities.
So the take-away? The blank page is a cruel mistress, but free writing has all the generative possibilities of improv – without the scary audience bit. Make your students try it, and try it yourself!
“Yes, and”:
In Improv: If you’re even a little bit of a comedy nerd, you have probably heard of this rule. Basically, “yes and” means that, when working with a scene partner, you should accept the reality they set up and then build on it. Newbie improvisers often break this rule, either for an easy laugh or because they don’t want to play the scene their partner has set up. But ultimately, if the people in the scene can’t decide if they’re at a shopping mall or a funeral home, it gets awkward real fast. Remember that what you are saying “yes” to is the situation, not the (implied) question. If one player says to the other, “You look much improved from when I last saw you,” two very different but equally acceptable answers might be: “I am better, and it’s the all that Vitamin D I’ve been taking,” or “I may look better, but I feel even worse!” The latter is perhaps more of a “Yes, but” scenario, but what is important is that the scene can move forward with all players on the same page.
In Writing: Who among us hasn’t scrawled “say more!” in the margin of a student paper? Whether it be thin description or a failure to generate analysis from an observation, we need to train our students to be unafraid of building strong, robust cases for their claims; “yes, and” just might be the ticket.
In the Classroom: This could take the shape of a more structured free-writing exercise or a pair-and-share classroom activity. For example, if you are teaching a class on Hollywood star personae, you might ask them to free-write on a star of their choice. Say Chris Pratt…
Chris Pratt is a man.
Yes, and he is a white man.
Yes, and he is a straight man.
Yes, and he is a strong man.
Yes, and he is an action hero.
Yes, and he is funny.
Yes, and he is silly.
Etc.
A “yes, but” version for studying celebrity might provoke more nuanced claims about how the celebrity persona has fissures or contradictions. Say Natalie Portman…
Natalie Portman is elegant.
Yes, but she is also funny.
Yes, but she is not funny in the Dior commercials.
Yes, but then she did that rap video on SNL.
Yes, but she is also a wife and mother.
Yes, but wasn’t her husband with someone else when they met?
Yes, but everyone forgets that, because she’s an American sweetheart.
Yes, and Angelina Jolie is vilified as the archetypal Homewrecker.
(See what I did there?)
So, the take-away? For much of my life, I outlined my papers before beginning to writing. The problem began when I realized that I was only thinking during the outlining process, and writing became a rote act of transcription. Then again, especially with longer works, structure is essential to putting your best foot forward. So, to rip off Rachel Bloom a bit: you do/you don’t want to outline. To that end, “yes, and”-ing is something all writers should always be doing, even if we think we know what we are writing about. Good writing reads like a conversation, not a monologue or a clinically depressed soliloquy.
Flexibility, Versatility: The Art of the Ding:
In Improv: When improvising, it is crucial that the actor be able to take direction and accept change. Someone can traipse in off the backline, and suddenly the situation and your character have radically changed course. The David Ives’ play “Sure Thing” shares the shape of the improv game Ding, in which a bell (or the word “Ding”) forces the improviser to offer an alternative to what s/he just said or did.
For example:
Girl: I have news.
Boy: What?
Girl: I’m having your baby.
::Ding::
Girl: I lost our baby.
::Ding::
Girl: I found a baby!
::Ding::
Girl: I found my prom dress!
So the alternative statement can be a variation on what you just said or a complete 180, mostly depending on what is funny and playable.
In Writing: The most sophisticated argumentation reconciles contradictory or surprising pieces of evidence rather than relying on straw men or circular logic. Writing and writers should be ready to change direction with the “ding.”
In the Classroom: In teams or in a seminar setting, ask a student to start describing an idea or a thought – then ding them, and ask them to explore the exact opposite. Then ask them to reflect on what the “ding” did for them. Did it make them realize that their argument was too facile or obvious? Did they find that, by exploring an initially counter-intuitive claim, they discovered a more intriguing thesis?
So, the take-away? Improv does not allow for the actor to put on blinders: s/he must be hyper-aware and endlessly accommodating. Tear your thesis a new one, and see what comes up! It might be nonsense, but it might be a delightful perverse provocation. This is a particularly good remedy for theses or arguments that are too obvious: what does it mean to look at a drama as a comedy? A comedy as a tragedy? A heroine as a femme fatale, or vice versa? Ding your way to an original claim.
Finding the Game of the Scene and Learning to Heighten:
In Improv: Improv can be short-form and gag-based, like Whose Line is it Anyway, or long-form and narrative-centered. In long form improv, such as the Harold, improvisers are often asked to find the “game” of a scene and, in subsequent scenes, heighten said game for comic effect. Say, for example, two actors play two construction workers more interested in what they brought for lunch than the fact that the façade is crumbling around them. In an oblique comic call-back, these actors may return later and play two astronauts on the moon who make small talk about their favorite flavor of Tang as they gradually lose consciousness. (Fine, this isn’t Upright Citizens Brigade funny: I warned you.) Same game, different context: see?
In Writing: What’s the difference, really, between finding the game in a scene and the argument or through-line in a piece of writing? Good writing and good improv ask the practitioner to keep the main theme in the audience’s sights, to uncover varying kinds of evidentiary support, and to raise the stakes of the argument whenever and however possible.
In the Classroom: There are a number of ways we might think about this. What would it mean to students to ask them to find the game in their peers’ writing rather than the argument? Another is to break students’ out of their 5-paragraph-paper comfort zone by saying that, instead of each paragraph tying back to the thesis statement, they should strive to make each point build off and heighten what they established in the previous paragraph. This forces students to rank their evidence in terms of interest and applicability and invites them to compose more compelling and less awkward segues.
So, the take-away? Let a spirit of play infect your writing: rather than thinking of argumentation as building a sturdy foundation – which, I mean, it should, but how un-sexy is that? – imagine taking your reader on a fun and exciting journey. And with some training, students can feel that way and reconceive of analytical papers as the creative gesture we know it can be.
Follow The Weirdness:
In Improv: Don’t make it weird; let it get weird. Never enter a scene with an elaborate and overly weird premise – “I’m a space cowboy, and you’re the reincarnated body of Andy Warhol, and we’re going to go herd some wild alien cattle as performance art!” Not only are you holding your scene partner at gun-point (see the “Yes, and” rule above), but you are also going to lose steam on that kind of joke quicker than you might think. Often it is better to begin with something simple: conveying that you are in a kitchen through space-object work or establishing a relationship with your scene partner by asking them what they think of this fabric swatch, Sweetheart. Trust that the game will emerge organically in a way that allows for group/actor chemistry and which the audience will ultimately find more rewarding.
In Writing: Some writers are deathly afraid of taking a risk or making a bold claim; for those, finding the game and learning to heighten will be a more useful course of action. Born provocateurs, however, need to develop the opposite skill: allowing themselves to let the evidence or text guide their analysis and not the other way around.
In the Classroom: I tried something like this in class the other day while asking students to meditate on a still from The Bicycle Thief. I am not kidding about meditation: we sat in a dim room in silence for a minute before I projected the image on the board, followed by three minutes of quiet contemplation. Then I asked them to write down a few words that the image made them think of. Only from there did we begin to talk about the framing, mise-en-scene, lighting, etc., creates meaning. Admittedly, Bicycle Thief is not funny and neither is meditation – well, maybe meditation is a little funny – but the point stands: being open to whatever sensation or weirdness strikes, rather than shoehorning your insights into a prescribed thesis, can lead to deeper, more rewarding analyses.
So, the take-away? The interactive nature of improv forces actors to be open to whatever weirdness their partner suggests, so find the weird scene partner within! Encourage your students to spend some time with the triangular shadow falling across a character’s face. Who knows what it might come to mean in an hour, a day, a week from now? (Caveat: letting it get weird also might mean starting your paper earlier than the night before…)
Don’t Ask Questions:
In Improv: This can be a very hard rule to follow, especially at moments of high tension and overwhelming stage fright, but don’t throw your scene partner under the bus by asking them a question. Simply, you are putting them on the spot. “Why did you kill my goldfish?!” makes your partner do all the work; “You killed my goldfish!” allows for more of an equal exchange… provided, of course, your partner knows enough to follow up with “Yes, and.”
In Writing: We are all guilty of asking the Big Question We Can’t Answer in our work, particularly in the conclusion. That is fine in small doses, but often, answering a question is much better than simply posing one, and this is especially true if we are talking about articulating a main argument.
In the Classroom: Invite students whose thesis statements are questions to rephrase them as statements; remember: there’s no such thing as a spoiler in an analytical paper. Be that annoying kid who answers every question with a question, except that your question is: “Why did you pose a question here? Can you answer the question? If so, then why not answer it? If not, what are you getting by leaving this unanswered question in the paper?” Not all Big Questions are worth asking, and those that are might be worth hazarding a reply.
So, the take-away? What does bringing improvisational comedy techniques and approaches into critical writing mean? (Answering a question with a question: I know, what did I just say?) See, I’ll hazard a reply: it means asking students to make bolder claims, to see their works-in-progress as malleable and evolving clusters of ideas, and, perhaps most of all, to produce writing has that sense of play and curiosity baked right in. This, my friends, is how we will continue overproducing humanities PhDs!
…And scene.
--------------------
This piece is dedicated to my colleagues at Hollins University with whom I participated in a Mellon workshop on writing pedagogy and to Duke’s Dr. Cary Moskovitz, our group’s facilitator. Our conversations and collaborations inspired this piece and continue to guide me in my evolution as a writer, teacher, and amateur comedienne.