Creativity & Performance

I was working with a student who had a big presentation coming up, the kind where the room goes quiet and every pair of eyes locks onto you like a heat-seeking missile. She told me her strategy was to "turn into someone else," a professional version of herself who didn't get nervous and knew all the answers. A mask, essentially. The kind we all reach for when the stakes feel high. Here's the thing about masks, though. They crack. Play the character, not the caricature The imp

I watched two improvisers walk on stage last week. The first one had an idea, you could see it in her eyes, that little plan she was carrying: I'm going to be a flight attendant, and the scene is an airplane. She opened with it. The second player accepted it, but the whole thing felt flat. The offers were polite but thin and the scene ended politely four minutes later with a weak button and a relieved audience. The second pair walked out and one of them just looked at the oth

The Paradox You Feel First You can master chess, you can master guitar or public speaking or surgical technique, and each of those has a plateau, a point where the marginal gains shrink to almost nothing and you're just maintaining what you already know. Improv doesn't have one. The better you get at it, the more possibility you see, and that's not a poetic accident, it's structural, built into the very thing improv asks you to do. Convergence and the Infinite Pivot Most skil

The Moment It Clicks There's a moment in every improv workshop where someone gets hit with the truth, the realization that they've been told to "listen harder" for years but no one ever stopped to explain that listening is only half the equation. And then they play Freeze Tag from the back line, and they understand. How Freeze Tag Works If you've never played Freeze Tag (it's a warm up game you'll find in most improv programs), here's how it works. Two players are on stage do

You're on stage your scene partner says something and you have to decide in a split second: do you go with it or do you push past it? Most of the time you know you should go with it but it feels like giving up your idea. What you're really doing though is listening. Not the kind of listening where you wait for your turn to talk but the kind that actually changes you in the middle of a scene. Not all listening is the same. There's a spectrum from the obvious adjustments everyo

There's a concept from UCB training that I keep coming back to, even though I've never set foot in their building. Not yet, anyway. But their philosophy adds useful depth to my own, so I pay attention. The idea: find the unusual thing in your scene. The bank robber who cares more about the tellers' feelings than the money. The doctor who's afraid of blood. That one offbeat detail that makes the scene play. "Unusual" is vague on purpose. It's whatever you notice as unexpected.

I've been wondering what advice works in every improv style, and I think I found the layer underneath. There's a note that keeps surfacing in improv conversations lately, the idea that the most universal piece of advice you can give any player regardless of their training or tradition is simply to add specific information. It makes sense on the surface, a vague scene start dies on the floor while a specific one fills in the room around you, and I've seen enough wishy-washy sc

Will Hines is an improv performer and teacher you might know from the UCB Theatre in New York or from his book How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth and his newsletter Will Hines Improv Nonsense which has become a kind of water cooler for improvisers who think seriously about what they do. He recently wrote something that stopped me cold. The Toronto problem is too much agreement and not enough direction. He was teaching in Toronto and noticed that players would agree be

You hear a lot about "Yes, And" in improv. You hear about support, about agreement, about building on each other's ideas. And all of that matters. But there's a quieter piece that holds it all together. Accountability. In improv, like most things, accountability starts with the basics. You said you'd be at rehearsal. So you go. You said the show was at 8. You're there at 7:30, warmed up and ready. You said you'd learn that format. You study it on your own time. None of this i

I had a student once who could talk his way through any scene. Fast lines, clever setups, always had something to say. And the audience liked him well enough. But he never really landed. There was always this gap between what he was saying and what the scene actually needed. One night I told him, "For the next five minutes, you cannot speak a single word. You can make sound, but no language. You have to find the scene through your body." He looked terrified. But he did it. An

You know it when you feel it. That thing between two people on stage where every move lands, every look means something, and the audience leans in because they can tell something real is happening. We call it chemistry, we treat it like magic, like some people have it and some people don't and you just have to hope you get lucky. But chemistry isn't magic, it's not even mystery. It's a skill you can practice and a choice you can make. And here's what improv taught me about it

Here's something I've noticed after years of teaching improv. When you ask a new student to come up with something funny on their own, a character or a line or a scene starter, they freeze. Their brain starts racing through every movie they've ever seen and every comedian they've ever liked and every idea they've already had, and what comes out is usually fine. Serviceable. But it rarely surprises anyone, including them. But put that same person on stage with a partner. Give

Here's something I notice teaching improv. When a student makes a character choice, there's always a moment of hesitation. A half second where they could pull back, soften it, make it safer. And sometimes they do. But when they don't and they commit fully, that's when the scene comes alive. What Commitment Looks Like Onstage In improv there's no script and no safety net. The only thing that makes a character real is you deciding they're real and then acting like it. If you're

Here's a quick scene for you. Two improvisers walk on stage. One of them launches into a passionate monologue about the mating habits of penguins. It's weird. It's specific. It's kind of brilliant. The other improviser nods, steps in, and says, "Dr. Kowalski, the board of the Antarctic Zoological Society is waiting for your report." That's support. And that second improviser just made the whole thing work. You see this all the time in improv. The funniest person on stage isn'

Let me tell you something I wish someone had told me ten years ago: you're taking this way too seriously. And by "this" I mean everything, your job, your relationships, your side hustle, your fitness journey, your Instagram aesthetic, the way you frame every conversation like it's a negotiation. You've turned your life into a strategic plan and somewhere along the way you forgot that living is supposed to be part of it. I know because I've been there. Twenty-plus years as an

You Don't Need to Feel Ready. You Just Need to Start. Most of us wait for a feeling before we act. I'll speak up when I feel more confident. I'll apply when I feel ready. I'll start when the fear goes away. But here's what improv taught me: that gap never closes on its own. You have to walk through it. The Waiting Trap The Gap: Most people think "I'll do it when I feel ready." But readiness is a myth. The gap between how you feel and what you're capable of is wider than you t

You are sitting in the waiting room. Again. Not a real one. The one in your head. It is the space between the thing you want and the thing you are afraid to start. The space between the stage and the wings, between the blank page and the first word, between the idea and the offer. Most people live their whole lives in this room. Improv taught me something surprising about waiting. In improv, we have a name for this. We call it being in your head. It is the moment before the s

You're staring at your screen. There's a half-written draft staring back at you. Maybe it's a post, a script, or an idea you typed out at 2 AM that now looks ridiculous in the light of day. You're about to delete it. Don't. Here's what nobody tells you about creative work: the draft you want to delete is usually the one that matters most, because it's the one that's actually alive. It's rough, unpolished, sitting out in the open waiting for someone to say something about it.

Improv, short for improvisational theater, is an exciting art form that thrives on spontaneity, creativity, and collaboration. At its...