Improv & Football: Surprisingly Similar
A Sporting Analogy
We believe that most players have a style they enjoy more, Realism or Absurdism, and that this style tends to be the style they are most instinctual with. Most improvisers are moderate enough to be able to incorporate the other style when necessary in favour of the overall goal but will eventually tire if they are forced to continuously improvise in that style over long periods of time. We thus think that an extremely good analogy for assembling an improv team is to view it like a sports team. The basketball analogy (you can find the sketch referred to in that video here) is commonly used to describe the process of discovering a scene, but when it comes to assembling a team we like to use football.
In a full football team, you have 11 players that will be split into the following areas:
- A defense.
- A midfield.
- An offence.
If we map making the audience laugh to scoring a goal, we can also map our playing styles as:
- Realists (Defense)
- Adapters (Midfield)
- Absurdists (Offence)
Note that we have very specifically stated here that the goal is to make the audience laugh. Improv comedy is The Improv Chippy's brand and that is what we optimise for. If you are aiming for a different goal, you may want to reverse the polarity or drop the analogy all together. For example, if your goal is to elicit emotion, your realists may be your offence scoring the goals and the absurdists, serving as the comedic relief and ensuring the audience do not burn out, may be what you consider the defence.
If making the audience laugh is the goal, then what is the opposite, the equivalent of a goal being scored against us? The answer is simple: disinterest. Whenever the audience loses interest and stops paying attention we have conceded a goal, and we now need to win back the energy in the room. In football, if you go a certain amount of goals down, it can be very hard to turn a game back around and the same is true of improv if you have a string of failing scenes.
You may be wondering why Absurdists are considered to be the ones most likely to get the laughs. The reason is simple: surprise. Most comedy is surprising in some fashion, with some comedians arguing that all comedy is 100% surprise. As Kristen Schaal states in this video, we believe you can also get laughs through commitment rather than surprise, but we also agree with Jeselnik that the overwhelming majority of laughs come from surprise rather than commitment. By definition, an absurdist will be more surprising than a realist and so they tend to get more laughs, hence why they are our strikers.
Improv Positions
Dividing these football areas into player positions can get very complicated, so for the sake of clarity we will use the following five:
- Defenders
- Midfielders
- Strikers
- Goalkeepers
- Wingers
Regardless of position, you are unlikely to win a football match unless your entire team coordinates together and works as one in service of a strategy set by the manager. Likewise in improv, you are unlikely to perform a successful show unless all performers coordinate together to fulfill the show's vision. A coach may want to pursue a more offensive or defensive strategy depending on the context, but it is unlikely they will win a game fielding a team that comprises only of strikers or solely of defenders.
So let's take look at each position in turn:
Defenders
Our Realists are our defenders. They build our scenes up from nothing and give us a stable base from which to launch our attack. If our attacks go awry, they return us back to a grounded reality by getting us back in touch with the emotional core of the scene. And just because they are defenders doesn't mean they can't score goals themselves, particularly in the latter half of a show when we're pressing high and going for the win.
Midfielders
Our Midfielders are our most versatile and adaptable players. They may have a slight preference for defensive or attacking play but they can swap between the two at ease. They are playmakers, adept at creating set ups for our strikers and providing support when needed for our defenders. They take what is offered to them at the beginning of a scene and utilise it.
Strikers
Our Absurdists are our strikers. Often, they may end up having less stage time than other players, but when on the ball they have a huge impact. They actively use creativity to try and get into a position where they can receive a pass from another player and take a shot on goal. They may drop back at times, particularly if we are in trouble, but they are always looking for the opportunity to go forward and do what they do best.
Goalkeepers
The goalkeeper is the most defensive position in football, being the last line of defense preventing the opposition from scoring a goal. In improv, our goalkeepers are our players on the sidelines, watching and analysing our fledgling scenes and stepping in as necessary. They add the missing pieces of base reality, reinforce characters POVs or add other important details to stop our scenes from failing or losing the audience's interest. If they think the scene can't be saved then, like a keeper belting the ball out of play, they edit us so we can get out of there.
Wingers
In football, wingers operate on the sides of the pitch, aiming to send crossing passes to our strikers to score goals with. In improv, our wingers also operate on the sidelines. Unlike goalkeepers, who are actively looking to prevent our scenes from failing from missing pieces, our wingers are actively looking for opportunities to set up laughs through tilts, tag runs and other heightening moves.
Assembling The Team
When assembling a team, we are going to want to assemble an appropriate mix of players depending on the format of the show. Doing an absurdist premise show like an Armando? We are going to want to go on the offensive with our best strikers and attacking midfielders but ideally we need to make sure we've got two strong realists who can get us out of trouble. Doing a monoscene? You're going to want stack your team with realists, but you're also probably going to want at least one strong absurdist to inject some chaos and make sure it doesn't get too boring. As with most things in life, finding the right balance for the individual context is the key to success.
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