Jonathan Herron:

Among my many improv books, is a tattered copy of the “Improviser’s Almanac” -- a copy of a copy of a mimeograph of typewritten “suggestions” for improvisers. I’ve had it since my comedy days back in the 90's.

It was passed around the Chicago improv community and has some of my late friend Martin DeMaat’s writings in the almanac. Apparently, some of the material is from an old iO student handout, but people have been adding to it over the years… editing, appending or plain altering that which has come before.

Here is the text of the “Improviser’s Almanac” (corrected for grammar and spelling—both of which were atrocious by the way). It is very, very long. Many principles here can apply to leading your church or organization!

THE IMPROVISER’S ALMANAC

This is not a list of rules. This is a helpful guideline that has been compiled and reworked to give you the aspiring artist some assistance in developing your ability to become the best you can be. Your instincts and talent should be your first guideline. These insightful suggestions should help you understand how some of the more successful improvisors made their discoveries that led to their success. Some of these guidelines may appear to contradict themselves, but then so do many things in life.

To improvise is to expand and heighten the discoveries in the moment.

Avoid preconceived ideas. Start each improv like a blank canvas waiting to be covered with details.

Always agree; never deny verbal or physical realities.

Follow the leader. Lead so others may follow.

Silence creates tension. Don’t be afraid of this white space; let it happen by using the moment to build to the next moment, logical or if you wait another moment, a possible illogical one.

Move action forward by adding to the last moment, not sideways by trying to wedge your idea into the fray.

A scene is an idea and a comment.

Always take the active choice.

You don’t have to try to be funny, laughter will happen just by being human--humanity is funny enough.

Action begins with the disruption of the normal routine.

Be Specific.

Start in the middle.

Play the opposite.

Move Fast & Break Things.

Everything is important, everything matters.

Try to be aware of seemingly insignificant detail, as your audience sees everything.

Try to become a better audience yourself, so you may begin to understand what it is that makes us appreciate a better performance.

Less is more.

The less you plan, the more you will discover, and the more you plan, the less you will discover.

Take responsibility for your actions. You are not always responsible for your character's words on stage.

Subtlety is not everything--it is everything else.

It is your responsibility to justify.

“Yes and, “ is always better than, “No, but,” or “No and,” or “Yes, but”

Be alert. Listen very hard to everything outside of yourself.

KISS—Keep it seemingly simple.

Always play to the top of your intelligence. Know what you really know; know what you can do. If you really truly don’t know, play your ignorance, real or imagined hold you back. Your honesty will help rather than hinder you.

Follow your fears; if you are not comfortable with some aspect of your work, try to do it anyway. Your ineptness and courage will be a truer source of entertainment.

Don’t push a scene, follow it and add to it.

Trust your instincts and intuition. Let your character help guide you through the unknown.

Try not to invent, try to discover.

When in doubt and at last resort, try seduction.

Wear your character as lightly as you would a hat; be ready to tip it to reveal yourself.

Play against cliches. Blacks, gays, Hispanics, etc., will be less a character and more of a caricature or cartoon, which is not what we are really after.

Play the game by the rules to the best of your ability.

A space can be anything you want it to be, and can have anything you want to have in it. Once it is there though, it is THERE.

Recognize the space. Own it, use it, make it yours. Adapt, adopt, and improve it by making discoveries that help define it even more.

Show—don’t tell. Trust that the audience will see and they will respect you even more.

Be prepared for anything, like a Boy Scout.

Straight actors in plays have to trust their lines and the play. Improvisors have to trust the moment and the other actors in the moment. This trust will be reflected in the reality of the moment.

Accept what your partner does or says, as you would a gift, not as a challenge.

Accept the other player’s reality.

Do not ask questions if you can avoid it. Turn the question around and make a statement out of it. Questions put the responsibility on your partners.

Make assumptions, but don’t script-write. You only have what you have discovered in the improv. Again, try to stay out of your head and in the space.

Know each other, avoid introductions by sharing an assumed past.

Keep the action onstage. Don’t story tell or plan for the future. Try not to bring up the past. Try not to focus on people or animals that aren’t there. It’s very difficult to have a scene on what is not there in the now.

One should always know what the audience knows or has just learned. Playing against this will lead to denial.

Don’t let the little details go. By being ecological, one can create the whole. Those little details are all you have to build the bigger things out of. Remember the details.

Follow the process and the product will follow.

As co-characters, playing together in a scene, the optimum time to have known each other is between a couple weeks and many, many years. The ability to discover things about each other over many years can’t be reproduced on stage, yet the comfort of knowing each other and those discovery results can come across in the comfort of each other in the moment.

Play the realities as if you are living them for the first time; and yet every discovery must be made freshly, in a unique way.

Think of all your possibilities or think of all the availabilities.

End a scene after a new element has been added or a new discovery made. Also, if you are entering a scene, enter knowing you are either ending or adding information to help further it. Try not to prolong the agony of a scene that is slowly dying, but infuse it with the momentum it needs to end on a positive note.

Every character ever written, played or made is inside of you. Release them as necessary.

Rather than focusing your energy on what you're going to say, focus on the point of view of the character’s or group's activities.

Think of the environment as a multi-dimensional where the audience is a part of. The environment also contains an outside or beyond, and an inside--focus in and focus out.

One can do anything onstage: if one does it honestly, it is believable. This enables us to travel in time.

Invest a great deal of importance in what you are doing, saying, choosing and reacting to.

BECOME A PART OF THE WHOLE. Help out in any way that you can. Be each other’s stage managers. Help and be helped. It’s OK to not be Superman all the time.

Once playing onstage, take on a competence at something, with the confidence of an expert, at whatever it is you are doing.

To help find an end to a scene, look to the beginning.

As soon as one starts to tell jokes, one starts to treat the other actors as objects. Comments on the scene or to the audience are not part of the scene and can be very detrimental to the scene reality. They are also subtle displays of not trusting. This is also a sign of the player going into his head to solve the problem, rather than trusting the focus and the other players. The stronger improvisors try to make use of the discoveries in the environment, using objects or details.

Try not to tell, but try to show.

Do not talk about what you are doing.

For heightened object work, focus on the object. Give it time, weight, space, shape and detail. This will help the object take on more reality and the audience will appreciate your talent more.

We create the rules that the audience feels uncomfortable for us in.

There is a great deal of difference between improvising and making things up. “Let’s pretend,” as we played when we were younger, is only the doorway to creating the realities of the stage. Once can feel the vast difference between inventing or thinking and the incredible state of improvising.

It’s interesting how “dull” can be interesting.

Improvising is a bit like Zen Archery. One must misdirect oneself to be on target. Make your partner look good, being more than interested in them and you will look good.

Comedy = Tragedy + Time. It is strange how we accomplish this. Humans are unique in our ability to laugh at things, and after a very sad or tragic event, with some interval of time we can find some humor in it to help ease the burden or grief.

We can handle conflict or disagreement, if it is all contained within a larger overall agreement between the players. Do not argue just to argue, and find the solution if you must disagree.

No attempt should be made to emotionally affect the audience, unless the work being done at that time demands it. This is not to say we do not want to affect the audience, but not to hit them over the head with the message. Again assume their intelligence will allow them to feel for themselves.

There are no holds barred, anything can happen and should, it’s just a matter of when the holds are used.

Occasionally play against your feelings. Surprise yourself and the audience at the same time. This will help the audience from getting ahead of you.

Remember to give and take with equal intensity.

In group scenes, introduce each character one at a time. Let everyone have their moment. This will allow the audience and the other players to know who is who and what is what.

Share the responsibilities for the success of the scene. IF you use the analogy of a motor, driving the car. If there are six people on stage, then each person is like a piston and responsible for 1/6 of the scene. You may be the scene leader, or motor, but you can’t do it all by yourself.

Incorporate the moments of discovery from the past into the institution of the future i.e. learn from the mistakes of the past to help improve your future.

What we are is infinitely more interesting than who we are.

Try to end just before you speak.

Ideas reveal more when they are acted upon than when they are discussed.

The rule of three’s is inflexible. If something is done twice, it must be done a third time.

If you are bored, your audience is also bored, and this may mean you are not building anything. You can do just about anything to an audience, scare them, disgust them, please them, amuse them, but try never ever to bore them.

Explore each beat to its fullest then let it go.

Playful, direct, co-developed ideas, information or dreams will always be far hipper than one person’s alone.

Everything can be as obvious as a symbol in a dream.

For building a machine, go with a different motion of what is already there, and then interconnect with at least two other actions.

“Harolds” are like holographs or “Etch-a-Sketches”—the more we add to them, the clearer they become.

Try to bring a brick rather than a cathedral to a scene or improv.

Think on the laughter, talk and move on the silence.

When taking audience suggestions, put them at ease. It is not a test, or they are on the spot. Define clearly what it is that you want, and give a couple of good examples. Encourage them to be creative and at the top of their intelligence.

No scene is ever about the words that are being spoken.

Always respect your audience. As a group, their intelligence is higher than yours, simply because they have many more minds to draw from, as compared to your 5-8 players.

There is a wealth of humor available through status differences and the playing thereof. Realize it and play with it. The changes and shifts that are inherent are ripe for the taking.

Think of improvisation as worshipful play; in scenes, try to think profoundly and it will come off as pretentious, whereas profoundness will come out of natural honest exploration of reality.

Try not to follow on group activity with another.

We should be rational about our irrationality.

If the whole is going to be art, the parts must not strive to be.

Improvisation is the ultimate disposable art form; it is like toilet paper, if one sheet isn’t working, let it go and try another one. Try not to be tied to any one moment or discovery. One of the more important aspects of the work is to keep the discoveries fresh, and make them new each time, rather than go about the same moment each way in the same way.

Onstage the thinking should be in an ecological fashion, nothing should go to waste.

If one doesn’t play the game, one can become the victim or the game's punishments.

Try not to spend too much time and energy building a character, they’re already there to be discovered and utilized.

Most any common object or attitude can inspire a character: a lemon, a pumpkin, a Ford Bronco, a pencil sharpener. “The world is beautiful,” or “Nobody loves me.” Using the idea as a seed, let the character evolve to a flower as quickly as possible.

Be aware of patterns; play with them.

The challenge is to lose control, mental vertigo, changing oops into rarified logic. The discovery of improv is landing in the same play-space, and using it to the best of your ability.

There are no minor plays by a player.

After an exit, on your entrance, come in with the same attitude and new information.

If you are doing a teaching scene, the role of the teacher should keep fading in and out of focus. The teacher should not dominate the scene. The leader of the scene is responsible for bouncing the focus off of all the others in the scene.

If you go off stage keep your reality going. Visualize your off-stage actions, keep real-time going and then come back.

Learn to discover human nature instead of what you want the scene to be about.

What you're doing is to justify your existence in the where.

One should try to play out and fulfill the moment to its end before you go on to the next.

The best way to find something is not to look for it.

Do not attempt to parody anything unless you KNOW what, where, how, why, who, and which you are parodying.

Treat absurd notions seriously.

Derailment comedy; you think you are going down track A, when you discover you are going down track B instead.

Comedy can come from seeing a union out of two apparently disparate thoughts/images.

One old lady breaks her leg and it is sad. Two old ladies breaking their legs is strange. Three old ladies breaking their legs is starting to get funny.

Always be sensitive, aware and respond to anyone entering the space or scene.

In improvisations it is not a matter of setting out to “make things” but of letting the improvisation determine what it will become.

Don’t complicate the complications.

On becoming an object; vitalize the object by becoming the object.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, so respect your other actors because in improv, what goes around comes around. Remember, they can turn you into an ashtray, toad, or anything else any time they want to.

If you bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. IF you do not bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will destroy you.

Every scene is whole; it is only incomplete on another level.

To look normal on stage, you have to expend some energy. This level of performance should be your neutral character. This persona is good for straight roles, interviewers and supporting roles.

Don’t worry about mundaneness. Any scene we start on a mundane level, by doing what we do, will no longer be mundane.

Try not to top somebody until you have equaled them.

Keep pulling on the string of ideas the something will take shape.

You do not decide your function on stage, the group in the scene decides your function for you.

Explore your where by handling objects (not props) and reacting to the discoveries.

If something seems like the obvious thing to do you probably shouldn’t do it. But if it seems like the normal weird thing to be doing, do it.

Identify an object. Let the audience know what “it” IS. Then you can use the exposition and say instead of “look at the car”, “look at the ’55 Thunderbird”

On speed rapping; try not to fall into the Robin Williams syndrome, remember, he is a stand-up comic. Allow yourself time; unless of course your character is a speed addict or disc jockey.

Choice: improvisation is a series of choices, you may not be able to choose the situation in which you make your choices, you are free to choose and think with your response to the situation.

Self consciousness can destroy your thinking, let the audience watch you.

Satire dignifies the object by recognizing it; comedy enhances the recognition.

Make accidents work.

What we are dealing with is a theater in which every decision is ecological and holistic.

The lowest level of humor is social satire, the middle level is thinly veiled allegory and the upper level is high fantasy.

Bring the energy or your life to your work; don’t suck the energy of your work into your lives. Ground that energy; return it to the earth and the muses from which it came.

Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.

For object transformations, use what shouldn’t be there.

You can prove anything in terms of anything.

The more you tell an audience, the less they can imagine it. So we are searching for that privileged spot of Mohammed’s coffin between heaven and earth.

If you follow a fantasy long enough it becomes real.

Be careful not to win the game at the cost of going off the board.

Through theater, mirrors become prisms.

If you are lost on stage, then obviously you should be. So do a scene on being lost. Realize the next best thing to perfection is being damn good at whatever you do.

All masks are empty until they are put on and inhabited by the actor.

If you are always turning something into something you can never see what it is becoming. All your characters in your dreams understand your dream better than you do.

There is no idea as good as the inevitable. So if in the middle of someone else’s beat, and you have the great idea, let it sit a while, it may not fit or it may, but if it is the right idea and it is the correct one, then it will be able to fit in. If it was incorrect, or untimely, then waiting will prove how it may have been a comment on the action.

Try to remember the opportunity to incorporate rhythm at any and all levels. Each character, every moment, entrance, exit and line has an internal momentum and rhythm.

One aim of religion is the method of science, and the medium of theatre. One original function of theater was to find and focus on the problems and information of being a human in the current state. The truth of improvisation is about people. The objects, forms, structures, environments, games, characters and processes all lead us to these various truths.

A dream found is a dream lost.

Characteristics help a character express basic emotional patterns.

Sharing the history of the character with the audience can be seen as spoon-feeding. Sharing the emotion with the audience brings the history out.

All acting is writing.

Actors must agree to the ironic point, agree on the opening, then go.

Every line should advance the scene forward.

The faster you greet the exposition and get it out of the way, the sooner the scene can start to fly.

When playing someone who is young, play as smart as an adult and when playing an adult, try not to lose the childlike wonder of the world. I think this means experience each discovery anew.

Let each moment or beat have its time in the space before allowing the next one to unfold.

Let every object have time, space, texture and a life of its own. It is vital that you believe you are biting into a juicy peach and can feel the small bit running down your chin. This attention to detail is not exactly mime, but the focus you give these moments will be rewarded in the response to the scene. If you believe, the audience can’t help but share in your belief.

Jonathan Herron

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