I used to think that part of the job of being an improviser is to keep up with everything: current events, the latest movies and books, a rudimentary knowledge of science and history. Then I discovered something: it’s tiring and impossible.
We don’t need to know everything. We need to connect to it; even in those times when we’re connecting to material that we have no personal knowledge. Maybe we’re being asked to perform a task (like surgery or dance) that we’ve no skill at. Maybe there are references being made to a movie or story that we are not familiar with. Maybe there is a foreign concept at play.
There are still things we can do.
Some will say to start by expressing “I don’t know” – which is fine, because it’s the truth. Truth is always a good place to start. This tactic can be very limiting on mileage and fun. How about instead trying…
1. Play the incompetence
Take that not knowing to a reckless degree. Be so obviously bad at surgery. Pepper that Star Wars scene that is building around you with so many references to things that are so clearly not part of the oeuvre.
The scene is never about the activity or the pop culture backdrop. It’s about the people and how they relate to each other. One person who is clearly outside of the norm for that world will create a very strong dynamic between the characters.
2. Play the unmatchable expert
There is usually a deer-in-the-headlights response that I see when an improviser clearly doesn’t have any familiarity with the topic at play. This is based on a misguided belief they have that everyone else in the room is an expert. That’s never the case.
We all have different levels of familiarity with everything, including many people that have none. Why not one-up them all and pretend to be the ultimate expert?
Be the physicist who knows of those “famous” Dutch experiments. Tell me about that “little known” experimental album that Otis Redding did. Be one of five people in the world who can speak that “obscure” Slovenian dialect. Whatever the topic, swing for the fences and improvise your expertise by taking it to a level that perhaps ONLY you are familiar with.
3. Play the parallel
Just because you find yourself at Hogwarts, doesn’t mean you have to be a Harry Potter character. You can be a worker on strike, a building inspector, a beautician school applicant who is in the wrong place. There are no two things that cannot go together. I defy you to find otherwise. Remember the first offer of the scene is just that, the first. It’s the starting point. That scene will ebb and flow and turn and change and grow every step of the way.
So decide what’s fun versus what’s appropriate.
Even when you’re being pimped to perform a certain role, playing the given expectations of that role is only one of myriad possible moves.