Improv Jams and Why They're Great

Wednesday night, I was lucky enough to be part of Nashville Improv Company's most recent Improv Jam. For the uninitiated, an Improv Jam is when you perform a show and invite audience members to join you on-stage. The NIC does these as short form shows that usually run about 90 minutes. Students, prospective students, improvisers from other troupes, and frequent audience members make up our typical Jam crowd. At first blush, it seems like a lot of things could go wrong by just inviting somebody with potentially no training on stage, but a lot tends to go wrong even when have 10 year vets filling out a cast. Instead of asking what the worst that could happen, let's find out what's the best that could happen.Improv Jams rule. They are crazy fun, and I believe every troupe should have one occasionally. Here's why:

Students get a chance to perform in a real, live performance. Not every student in our classes is interested in performing in front of an audience. Because of that, it can be a little difficult to offer a showcase when they have finished their 6 weeks. With an Improv Jam, you get a final hoorah with your students who'd like to participate and they can play all their favorite games with your whole cast.

You get to connect and work with your regular audience members in a very special way. We have a great many audience members who come to shows very regularly. We recognize them and know them by name, they always give us wonderfully bizarre suggestions. Improv Jams give us some time to learn about and work directly with those folks. It's a fantastic feeling to see them land the closing line in a scene after they've contributed so much to our shows over however-many months.

Improv Jams provide a way for improvisers from all around town to connect with each other. We meet more "new-in-town" improvisers at Jams than at any other event, including auditions. Somebody gets on stage with us and blows us away and then they tell us how they just moved down and were really happy to find an outlet to get on stage. We get to invite them to our regular shows, our auditions, and find other ways to help build up our improv community.

Improv Jams are laid-back, simple times to learn how to host shows. People in small casts all need to be familiar with how to introduce games, get suggestions, and when to cut scenes. A regular Saturday night show feels like an incredibly high pressure situation to be learning in (welcome to improv!). In an Improv Jam, there's an unspoken agreement between the audience and cast that we're all gonna do some stuff that we don't know how to do tonight. The cool thing is that we're all gonna deliver pretty flawed performances, but nobody's gonna be casting judgement.

What You Got: The best game for an Improv Jam, or the best game period?

And the best thing that could happen: Everybody has a great time and realizes they're capable of incredible things. Seriously, it's beautiful to watch someone meekly volunteer to play in a game and then develop incredible confidence once they realize you've got their back. One of our previous Jams was closed out by a 6 year old dropping a grand slam of a World's Worst joke. The kid got a standing ovation at 6 years old and I sincerely doubt that's a moment that he'll ever forget.

So get out there and invite some new people on stage with you! No matter what happens, I promise you'll have fun!