IMPROV Q & A

By Abhay Ghiara

What is IMPROV?
Improv is short for improvisational theater. It is a performance art, it is acting not from your lines, but from your imagination.

Is IMPROV basically comedic?
Improv taps into the most basic of human instincts: the need to create something out of nothing. This process unleashes a great amount of energy while letting go of resistance in the form of social inhibitions. The comedic experience comes from the viewer rather than the improviser himself or herself. It is a joy to see someone create in the spur of the moment, letting go of the usual norms of correct behavior and make something they really believe in. Sometimes an intense and serious exploration of a scene by the performer will be interpreted by the audience as an unusually funny performance.

Does one have to try to be funny while improvising?
No. In fact trying to be funny does not really work. You just get involved in your world in a hyper-real way, believing in the environment you are creating with your partners, taking unexpected pathways of your imagination. When you do that effectively, that's when your audience has a good laugh.

What is the point of IMPROV class?
To come together with other performers of varying levels of experience in a carefully structured environment of scores and exercises with the express purpose of exploring to the utmost your own imagination and co-creating with others using their imaginations.

Why do you mix skill levels?
Improv is not a matter of skill. All that we need to know about improvising we already know intuitively. My students are not looking for one more class in which they master certain skills and pass exams. What they are here for is to be able to explore and grow creatively as performers. There is never any comparison with anyone else.

What is the most important thing to keep in mind?
Am I having fun? Do I believe in this world I am creating, however farfetched it may seem to others? Do I know that I can't get it wrong, that this is something I was born with?

You stress physicality in your teaching. Why?
That is the nature of our art form. It is about using our bodies fully to create and then engage in worlds of our imagination. Let us say you create a world in your imagination. Well you can tell us about it. But if that is all you are going to do why not write a book? What better way to show us than to use your entire body to enter into your world fully?

You are a teacher who plays and performs with his students in class. Can you comment on that?
That is how I learn, too!