Rules in Improv

"If you are improvising, why do you have rules and rehearsals?"

I'm sure every improviser has heard this question and it is a tricky one. Shouldn't improvisation just come on the go? Isn't it just an innate thing that happens?

For years I have tried to explain the need for rules via the metaphor of ball game. Let's say that you have a group of friends who decide to play ball together. You could just toss it to each other or play football or basketball with it... but in order to play, all of you must understand what you are playing. You cannot play soccer and rugby at the same time (though, American football tries to do that). 

While it gives some explanation, I'm not sure it is the best one.

It is not only that we impose rules... often they just happen due to necessity.

The stage is yours

I was pondering on this question last week and raised it in my improv class. Many students mentioned that they had been thinking about it before so at the end of the class I decided to make a small experiment. We had half an hour to do anything on stage - as long as something was happening on it. No rules! (that ironically is also a rule :P) Though I did give some suggestions to make it easier.

Making total chaos is difficult. To keep on doing it for a long period of time is even harder. Our brains are hard-wired to see and create patterns and make sense of things. 

But it also varies by person. It's like writing an essay on a free subject. Some people just dig in while others are overwhelmed by all the possibilities.

Same happens on stage when you say that you can do anything. Some start creating order while others freeze. But trust me, do it long enough and everyone there wants to have some set of rules. Even the Freeform in improv has some rules, though sometimes vague and even in there, patterns start happening.

We need the safe zone to play in. 

We need a shape for the chaos. 

Chaos in a can

I feel that this is a bit better way to explain why we have rules in improv: Let's say that there is a huge ocean of chaos and you fill your glass from it  - taking just a section of the overall and giving it a shape. It is still chaos but in a specific shape. In a glass, it is easier to handle and consume.

Just as in our lives. We have our own routines and patterns that we use to make sense of the overwhelming chaos. If something disturbs that security we can get quite agitated. Nowadays the best example of random chaos, that everyone understands, is your phone or computer breaking down. Suddenly the thing that you use every day is no longer there - the order is broken.The same thing can happen when people around us die or travel abroad or whatever ... our balance gets broken and a trauma that brakes the balance really badly can sometimes even leave it this way for years to come.

I believe that all of us have a threshold of chaos we can handle and it is something that you can get better at. Improv helps. What we do on the stage is taking chaos and turning it into order. Taking randomness and turning it into a narrative. Turning strange and odd stuff into things that people can relate to. 

This is why we have rules - to introduce you to chaos. This is what we do in rehearsals. 

This is also why the longer you have been doing improv, the more you see the rules as guidelines that you can break with people that can handle it (or they just stick to one or two rules for every situation).

Rules are the auxiliary wheels you need when handling chaos because it does not come naturally and needs some order around it to emerge.