How does acting training help improvisers?

Three improvisers who trained as actors share what acting training can give improvisers to help make their shows better - and how improv helps their acting too.

On this episode you hear:

Eleanor Stankiewicz - IG: @elestankiewicz / @thenewlywedsimprov / linktr.ee/elestankiewicz

Anděl Sudik - yesandel.com

Dan Simpson - itsdansimpson.com

Host:

Lloydie James Lloyd - an improviser based in Nottingham, England

Podcast Theme:

Composed by Chris Stevens at Studio Dragonfly

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Transcript of episode:

Not all improvisers have acting training when they apply it to improv

Lloydie: Oh, we have to pick up the dog poop.

Eleanor: Yeah, sorry.

Lloydie: This is a first for me.

Eleanor: Now keep asking the question, and we just hear the rattle of the bag.

Lloydie: This is the improv Chronicle. I'm Lloydy. When we improvise, we are, of course, also acting. But not all improvisers have acting training. So what does. Does the kind of training an actor gets give you when you apply it to improv? We begin in a dog park in Sydney, Australia, where I grabbed a few words with an experienced actor and improviser while her dog played and pooped.

Eleanor Stankiewicz came to improv through acting training

Eleanor: My name is Eleanor Stankiewicz . I am an actor. That's my training and my profession. So I came to improv. I did a little bit of it at drama class in, um, Adelaide, where I grew up. Like kids drama class, bit of theatre, sportsy kind of things. And then I moved to Sydney to study, did my undergraduate, um, for acting. And in that, we did a lot of improvising for long form and for rehearsal, devising techniques. So, like, how to create character, how to devise shows. We did, in our first year, a six hour long improv. We did a wedding. So we did getting ready for the wedding, we did the ceremony, we did the reception afterwards, and we had, like, little objectives to try to achieve as well as had spent the whole term devising the life and the history of these characters. Um, so that's where I came from it, and came from it through a theater making perspective, never thinking that long form could be performed. I always thought that improv was for short form or theater, sportsy or warm upy things. Um, and then, yeah, I think in 2017, 2018, I started realizing that I would love to do all of the acting with less of the rehearsal, but also it feeds into my craft as an actor. So I'm always using improv, like, in auditions, on set, in, uh, the room, like everywhere.

Lloydie: There are a lot of people who have come from encountering improv as part of their acting training, as part of an acting degree or otherwise. It's only more recently that people have discovered it through improv theaters. What kind of. We have to pick up the dog poop.

Eleanor: Yeah, sorry.

Lloydie: This is a first for me.

Eleanor: Now, keep asking the question, and we just hear the rattle of the bag, right?

Lloydie: That is a new sound effect for the podcast gig. Yeah. What would you say are the advantages of having encountered it in a more kind of formal training setting? Through acting training?

Eleanor: I think for me, it's how it relates to text. Uh, and I kind of now both am an actor. And I do voice coaching and voice work. So I'm kind of back at the same institution I studied at teaching, and seeing the correlation between. And when I did my masters, it was about how to use improv techniques and philosophy in my research to create a sense of freedom and play within text work and voice work for students. And so now I'm kind of really hyper aware of the gift of improv and how having the improv philosophy, uh, and techniques and, um, perspective underpinning text work. So text is. Yes, is primary, is everything. Everything on the page is the structure. But that's, like, the format. The script is the format, and anything you do within that is the artistry of the players. That's how I'm seeing it. And so there is absolutely nothing wrong with any journey into acting at all. I think everybody is an individual, and what you need as an individual in your artistry is so unique. But the thing that I love about it when I was doing my training, and now that I'm kind of bringing this philosophy in training others, is how can you expand the imaginative world of the playwright, of the director, of the creatives, and then being on set? Uh, I was on set recently, and there was a couple of script changes, and so the ability to, like, I'm 100% prepared with this scene, but now I have a new line or a new word or a new character name, because perhaps someone has been cast as a different gender than what was in the script. That quite often happens. Um, and so that's now changed on the day, and those sorts of things are really like. So that flexibility and that ability to kind of be like, this is what we prepared, but also, this is what's happening now.

Lloydie: I'm really struck by that. How can we. Let me get this phrase right. How can we expand the imaginative world of the players and the characters? Is that right?

Eleanor: Yeah, that's what I said just then. Yeah. Uh, if this is true, what else is true? If this sentence shows us the expression of the thought, then what is the thought underpinning it? Uh, what is not just the one thought, but the 10,000 different variations that I can then, as an actor, stay in the point of rediscovery rather than redoing, even at, like, month four of a season of a theater show that has eight shows a week, or I've just come off touring a children's theater show that I toured for about two years, in and out and around lockdowns, and that had a 13 page script, but how could I still stay imaginatively involved so that this job is not just paying my bills. It's a first theatrical experience for, like, under fives. And it's bringing their world and the words of their world to life in a new way because I get bored. And so I really find that, like, if I think about it, okay, how else can I expand? What other avenues? What other dimensions? How else can I twist the kaleidoscope to find out more?

Anděl discusses how being an actor has informed his improv

Lloydie: Over in the UK this weekend, an actor and improviser friend of mine visited. And so while we walked to get dinner, I asked her opinion too.

Anděl: Hey, my name is Andiel. Uh, I'm an improviser. Uh, I'm based in California, but spent most of my formative years in Chicago through Second City and IO and the annoyance.

Lloydie: You're also an actor, and I'm really interested to know how being an actor has informed your improv.

Anděl: Oh, yeah, well, that's such a big question, so you might have to help me to a useful answer.

Lloydie: I can break it down into component parts if you want to try. I am happy to try.

Anděl: Or see where I start and then redirect.

Lloydie: All right, yeah, you start and then, yes. Let's see. What popped into your head first when I said that.

Anděl: Well, I mean, that I started as an actor, so I came into it from that theater perspective. Both my parents were actors and, um, I always did theater. And then when I found improv, to me, it was like the marriage of all the things that I loved. And then I found a decent amount of success in improv because I was naturally committed to the reality or were able to play with things that I just knew as an actor.

Lloydie: That's interesting, being naturally committed to the reality. Can you break that down a little bit more? Told you I'd break it down into component bit.

Anděl: Yeah. Um, just like, uh, the assumed knowledge. So taking in information and immediately being able to be, like, what's important, um, to me as an actor. So seeing it through an actor's perspective more than like, a writer or a director, um, or a stand up comic, I guess. Does that make sense?

Lloydie: I think so. So do you mean like, finding subtext in what is being said?

Anděl: Yeah, and then really filtering it through the character. So clicking into a character pretty early in a scene and then everything, being able to flow through that filter, which just makes it easier.

Dan Simpson started out in acting before moving on to improv

Lloydie: How about holding yourself on stage and using the space? Does being an actor help you with that more intuitively than if you've just gone to an improv class and not done any acting?

Anděl: Oh, yeah, definitely. Like staging in general, of just the specificity, um, or the awareness or the joy and delight in what it means to move across the stage, or what it feels like to command the stage or have that presence is something that you learn and you practice as an actor. So that's like, naturally, intrinsically already there.

Lloydie: One of my jobs is to be content director of a children's radio station here in the UK. A number of the team have done improv training, and one started out in acting before moving on to improv. So in between keeping the nation's six to twelve year olds entertained, we found a spare studio.

Dan: Hello, I'm Dan Simpson. I am a radio presenter for the BBC and for a children's radio station called Fun Kids. Uh, a podcaster, and now an improviser, too.

Lloydie: But your background is in acting, right? You were an actor before you were an improviser?

Dan: When I grew up, yeah, I did a lot of acting, moving right the way through to university, really. Um, so school plays and then doing a lot more than that, like local, professional productions, and I've since picked that up as I become an adult. I've, uh, done kind of pro local shows again with people that I did it with back then.

Lloydie: So what was it like coming to improv from an acting background? What did you notice straight off, it.

Dan: Gave me a much firmer foothold in games, particularly that I was being asked to do. So I started at level two of my course with Hoopla that I did it with, and, uh, just a lot of people hadn't been on a stage before, hadn't been on a stage, were really going outside of their comfort zone. So had that initial spooky scaredness of, uh, I need to talk in front of people for the first time. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to put myself out there. Whereas I think coming from an acting background, it helped me do two things immediately. That worry of not knowing what to do, how I would do. The basics of standing in front of people and talking wasn't there. Also, I'm big into my. Into character improvisation. I'm no leading man. When I was acting, when I was young, I was always into, uh, character comedy, particularly back then. So it immediately helped me be able to dive into the skin of anyone that I was improvising and performing on the hoof.

Lloydie: That's interesting. The bit about character, um, where do you get your characters from when you improvise, then? Because when you're doing scripted work, you've got a little bit of info in terms of the text. But how do you jump into character, and how does that relate to your acting training?

Dan: Uh, well, bad accents and physicality. I'm a huge, huge fan of physical performance because it does two things. It lets the audience know immediately something about the character, and it lets me, as an actor, dive into one particular bit of my personality that I can emphasize. So perhaps rather, um, clichedly, might be like a gait or a walk or a strange posture or something that I'm doing with my face. But I can use that as a, uh, personification of something that's going on with me. And I find that really helpful to use that as a door to get into the performance. So immediately, if I step into the scene and I say my first line, and it turns out I'm doing a score to schlad, um, that's got something strange happening with his right shoulder. I know that I've got that to lean back on, and I can, uh, keep digging into that hole and see what else comes of that. And that's the joy of improv. Right. More so than acting, because acting is so prescribed. And if you're performing, uh, a script, you need to read 100 pages of the script before you need to know. Right. This is the full tableau. This is, um, the whole rounded nature of my character in improvisation, you don't need to do that, because I can step on into the scene and I do something in 5 seconds, and I need to justify that a little later down the line. So I'm discovering it as well as the audiences by the movements that I'm doing as the character.

Lloydie: So you're more, in that sense, filling it out rather than narrowing it down.

Dan: Yeah, hugely. Um, I would say when I step into the scene, I don't immediately know everything that I am about. So there's no way it's this wide view that I am having to choose a select window of to show people. It's. Right. This is the small window. This is what I know. Here's how I can show it. Let's grow this together and see where this goes.

Anděl: Ow. I think, um, when I started doing theater, because I think because of, like, some of my first teachers and directors were very, very strict, and it was, like, not joyless, but it was very specific and very rigid. Improvisation opened up the possibility of play, um, and of excitement inside of acting work. So I think it opened it up in that way. And then going back to acting work afterwards, um, you just have so many more options, or, um, your imagination is so much more open because of that, I think.

Any class you take as an improviser makes you a better improviser

Lloydie: So if somebody's listening to this as an improviser who hasn't done very much acting at all so far in their improv career or their improv experience, what would you recommend to them? Do it. But I mean, where to start, though, because if you're an improviser and you've been taking improv class for a while, you're like, hey, I'm having a great time. I realize people have mentioned things like stagecraft and what have you. What is there available that would be like, what type of thing in an acting class would you be looking for as an improviser?

Anděl: Well, I'm going to be so useless in this because I think any class you take as an improviser, whether it's like an acting class or a pottery class, makes you a better improviser because you're looking through those different perspectives after having that improviser mind, which is like that hungry, open mind. Um, so any acting class, um, or even just like reading a page out of an acting book and then taking that idea into your next rehearsal. So being like, ooh, I want to play with, um, intention the next time I play. Or like, ooh, I want to play with, um, proximity, uh, or staging the next time I play. So just like, I don't know, anything helpful?

Lloydie: No, that is helpful.

Acting and then also just staging are important elements of improv

Um, is there one thing out of anything that you've mentioned or beyond that, um, that you think, actually, when you look at, ah, improv groups, improv teams that you think, ah, they could do with this thing, which is more of an acting thing?

Anděl: Um, I think emotion, for sure. So things having stakes, I think, is something that I get from acting and then also just staging, I think because when we're improvising, we're making up words, we tend to focus on that and stand 3ft away from another human and really focus on the words. Whereas if you play around with proximity or movement or staging, sometimes those things can lead you to reaction or lead you to lines of dialogue. And so I'm always looking for that. Of different stagings. I guess I want more of that.

Lloydie: Yeah, more staging.

Anděl: More staging. Well, because I don't know. Do you notice that whereas a lot of scenes are two people standing a comfortable distance apart, whereas if you allow yourself to be in a little bit of physical discomfort, stand a little bit closer or a little bit farther away, or turn your back, immediately, your body is physiologically having a response that then you get to play with instead of being stuck in your mind, having to think of words to say.

Lloydie: There is an exercise that I know I've got from Katie shoot, um, the UK improviser, uh, and I'm not sure whether it's hers or whether she got it from someone else, but where you get everyone to pretend the scene they're doing is from a scripted play.

Anděl: Yeah. Uh, so I think I initially might have gotten that from Bill Arnett. I know she's studied with him as well. Um, but that was a big thing coming up in Chicago that we would do. And when I do that in workshops, it's my favorite pieces, um, of watching because you get honesty, um, and it's so much easier because you don't have to worry about world building. It's just two people on stage, and everything that happens is between them. I love it.

Lloydie: I love it because you get so much more intention, um, all of a sudden, like, miraculously, when you do that. But also, I find the stage craft is usually much better. It's almost as if blocking has taken place. Like it would do in a scripted play.

Anděl: Yeah, exactly. Like, just that conceit of, like, these lines are written, there is a stage. Every movement is intentional. Um, just making that choice allows people, I think, to move specifically and intentionally, or to move and then discover what the intention was behind it. So I think it works both directions.

Eleanor discusses what she brings from theatre to her improv stagecraft

Lloydie: Back to that dog park in Sydney and with her dog's poop cleared up, I wanted to know what Eleanor took from theatre and brought to her improv stagecraft.

Eleanor: I am never in doubt that someone can see and hear me, um, which is super important. Um, also my sense of, I think narrative. Like, I really don't have to think about narrative, but my internal sense of narrative structure. I think genre and style and how to express thoughts. So how can I still have subtext within a sentence that's both playable and also easily understood and specific for other players? Um, my love of a monologue and looking out into a window and finding. I find myself sometimes being like, oh, that felt like, uh, this kind of play or this felt like a. This kind of play or this kind of character as well. And really? Yeah. I just love playing other people and other worlds. Yeah.

Lloydie: Eleanor talked about stagecraft, and that's something I know I've chatted about several times with Dan at work. So I asked his thoughts on stagecraft in improv.

Dan: Like, it does my head in when I'm there. And, all right, people are learning at different stages, but you're there doing a thing, and then someone walks in front of you and blocks you off, or I'm watching people do a scene, and we're all amateurs here. Um, but I can't hear what they're saying, or I can't see them because they've not opened their body up. And it sounds so trite and simple, doesn't it? Uh, but very simply, those basics, the foundations that you can build on is always very helpful. And just planting your feet, uh, really easy. I'm not in a position in my improv group where I can really say to people, you plant your feet, but, uh, that's very helpful. Just stand on stage, plant your feet, and clearly speak. If you do that, you're at least 50 of 50% of the way there to winning over the audience, because it's all about trust, right? If you get the simple things done well, that an audience is expecting from you, but doesn't know they're expecting from actors. Like, we've all seen shows, and you're thinking, what's wrong with this actor's performance? What are they doing? Why aren't I really getting engaged? Well, quite a lot of the time, it might just be the simple things that they're not doing well. So if you immediately show them that you're doing those things, you can trust me, because I know how to do this. I'm speaking loudly. I've planted my feet, I've opened my body up to you. Take my hand, and I will guide you through this. We will be okay. So, very simply, those little bits of stagecraft of blocking and planting your feet, I'll say it again. Uh, I don't think I'd have got as easily if I hadn't have trained in acting.

Lloydie: And finally, back to that walk with Andiel, which may be a little bit more fast paced now, as we were getting very close to when we were.

Anděl: About to eat, because improv is a shared art form. Like, when I'm playing with people who are really good with words or who come from a stand up background, um, I get their gifts, right? So I get their strengths. And so I think similarly, when you play with people who have an acting background or a theater background, you can gain their gifts just by paying attention and also sharing what you bring, even if you don't come from that background. That's what I think.

Lloydie: That's what I think.

Anděl: That's what I think.

Lloydie: I would love. Every podcast ends with that's what I think.

Anděl: So it wasn't obvious that I'm sharing my opinion.

Lloydie: I love it.

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