I love playing with beginners

[DanAbrams]

I love playing with students in level one or who haven't even begun...way more than I enjoy playing with other experienced improvisers. Even more than I love getting to play with improv legends!

I think it has to do with having almost no expectations put on the scene by the audience (after all, I also feel liberated when shooting improv for film, where if I'm not happy with it, I can do it again).

But I also thinks there's an element of anything could happen, these people aren't going for the clichés, they haven't learned the rules, and aren't doing things by the book that I find so much fun. There's no greater joy in improv for me than playing with someone who doesn't understand yes and in the slightest and working hard to make them look good. The sheer joy of the energy from them and the audience that this silly thing is working, when they expected utter failure, is just breathtaking.

Does anyone else feel the same?

 

[Holmes]

I don't want to seem like I'm jumping on this to promote myself, but here I am.

I do a show with an audience member, usually someone seeing improv for the first time ever, and I get a rush from the fear and a high from when it really works well.

It sort of feels more like you're existing as the character you're playing than pretending to be something. Really, anything can happen (moreso than with improvisers who have an idea of what's supposed to happen). If you know what you're doing and the other person doesn't, you take on a role where you're leading but not trying to lead and you're kind of omniscient, at least comparatively, which makes you even more a creator-of-everything than improv usually is.

My only other recent experience is performing with people I've been performing with for like 8 years now, so that's two extremes (total stranger and people who I'm completely gelled with), but I would assume that I'd feel a lot less comfortable performing with someone who 'knows improv' now that they've completed Level 3 and seen more than 20 shows.

 

[lefty]

The best thing I learned in improv came from being in and playing with people in their first level 1 class after I had been doing this for about a year and a half. Because I wanted to share the joy we all have for this stuff with them, and half the time they'd walk out scared to death about what was going on (which probably is the state of being we should be in on stage) I'd make eye contact (a lot more than I had been doing up to that point) and grab onto what ever they said or did and made damn sure they knew I was so into what they were doing or so effected by it-- just full on "yes, and"ing.

I think the thing that unites the two ends of the spectrum as you pose them, Dan, is that in both you playing with beginners and you playing with vets is the focus on the moment. With beginners you're focused on making sure that nothing gets left behind, everything is reacted to and the truth of the moment is explored. With vets that stuff just flows out of them naturally. We in the middle worry about "oh, how do I make this active" or "would my character do that" or other thinking stuff.

I was talking to the great Nick Bacan last night and the fact that "training" is what helps get us to that "don't think" place. If you have someone in slow motion swing a broom stick at you coming straight down over your head, over and over for a long time, and each time you bring your forearm up to block it or do what ever your being trained to do, eventually you will react to such an event without thinking and it will instinctually be the perfect move executed perfectly. Same with this stuff.

 

[BruceCarroll]

I am enjoying being a beginner learning from the more experienced performers in our group. I have found that something I thought was meh the others thought was great, usually for reasons I hadn't considered. I am enjoying this improv thang, and am absorbing everything like a sponge.