Book Review: Impro by Keith Johnstone

It’s kind of funny and weird to think of everyday life as an improv. Some corollaries:

1. We all have a responsibility to keep it flowing, responsive, and fun.

2. We need to stay coherent and not totally insane but without sticking rigidly to boring cliched habitual scripts.

3. There’s always opportunities to do or say something unexpected, refreshing, lively.

4. Sometimes you ought to play the straight character to let someone else do their thing.

I wonder if there’s also some compelling arguments against thinking of life as an improv theater. Maybe Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics would be an example because it emphasizes continuity within a life of community, like your character is much deeper than an act.

If you're doing Impro, I can recommend reading the book by Spolin - Improvisation for the theater. The first (theoretical) part was the most interesting as it showed to me something I hadn't figured out myself, doing impro as a beginner.

In an impro game or play, you get a role and have a goal to fulfill. Your task is to fulfill that goal, and not to bother with the goals other people have. It's not to make things more "interesting" by making life for the others more difficult. As a beginner I thought that creating conflicts would result in more interesting plays, but it doesn't. It makes things messy, but not good messy. The different goals create enough conflict. And you can actually help eachother and make the play better by working together towards the goal of ending the game. Understanding that was an eye opener.

I highly recommend this book, even if you have nothing to do with theatre. I've given numerous copies to other people over the years. The observations on creativity, spontaneity and how we block ourselves are excellent, and it's written in a highly readable way.

This is an outstanding book, can be a life impacting work for introvert tech types.

I did improv in college and I remember this book and the impact its “status” philosophy had on me. Its a wonderful way of bringing awareness to status dynamics in everyday life, particularly in narcissistic families or other status-conscious settings, where people respect “top” and disrespect “bottom.” But thinking that all human dynamics involve this seems very lonely and sad. Loving relationships should be between equals, there should not —- and need not —- be constant dynamics of dominance and submission. Theres give and take, sure, but to play that out through dominance and submission seems really bleak and lonely, and doesnt reflect my experience of life among people who are not obsessed with status. It would be a mistake for socially anxious people to see it as a prescription, but its a wonderful tool for understanding those toxic and competitive environments we were traumatized in, as well as much of human interaction outside a loving and cooperative context.

Tangentially related: Towards a Poor Theatre by Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba. I disagree with a lot of it but one cannot deny it is an eye-opening book.

Impro greatly improved my public speaking by making me more aware of "status" (Johnstone's conception of it) and the dynamic relationships in the room. Highly recommended.

I read this book more than 10 years ago as a teenager. My big takeaway: try to defer responsibility to something other than yourself or other people and you suddenly have a lot of room to say things that you otherwise could not say.

It's so nice to see a thorough, thoughtful review rather than the typical HN submit of a ripped summary and affiliate links.