Breaking the Rules, Breaking the Rules

"You don't know what's lllliiiiiiiike!"

My personal philosophy on how to have fun and get yourself out of your head while doing improv: break stuff. Dive into scenes with the mind of a destructive eight year old. I'm comin' into your kitchen and I'm not gonna stop til I've broken every plate and cup in that room! Take that perfect scene with no issues that's developing on stage and set it on fire. Fiddle while Rome burns.

At first blush, this seems like an awful thing to suggest. We want to create something on stage, what good does it do anybody to tear down the things that are being built? Aren't we supposed to be collaborating with our stage partners? I'm not suggesting coming on stage and blocking your partners's every move, I'm saying come on with every awful and lame idea you have and charge face first into a wall with them. Play recklessly and relish in the chaos that you and your partner create.

Too often scenes settle into comfortable, recognizable shapes. If you see that happening, ruin it. Find the first idea that's going to throw everything off balance and blow up the status quo. Once you do that, it's now up to you and your partner to find your way out of the incredibly compromising position you just put yourself in. It's fun to do, it's fun to watch, and it's easy to get yourself engaged.

Another reason to break stuff: It gets you out of your head. If you have the mindset of "I'm gonna go in there and do some real bad stuff. Like, things are gonna get out of hand and someone's gonna have to call the improv police," then it's going to be much easier to achieve your goals as a performer. It's common to tell people to follow the first unusual thing, but for my style I'd suggest the first incredibly dumb thing. You can play a dumb idea intelligently and somehow it only gets dumber. Scenes go off the rails, everything gets messed up, and the whole show is a lot more fun.

This works in short form as well. I watched a game of four people in an airport where three of the characters were the kind of people you'd find in an airport and the fourth person was, inexplicably, Batman. After a second of bewildered laughter, I thought to myself, "Yeah, why do we have to be regular old airport characters when we could be The Batman?" Break the rules and break your scenes as often as possible. Bad things will happen, but so will amazing things.