Touch, Smell, Sight
Your three senses guide to different styles of impro(v)
I like coaching more than classes. Classes is making lesson plans. Coaching is accentuating what is already there. This month I was running a series at Impro Neuf called “Pimp My Team” (yes, I was a kid growing up with MTV’s Pimp My Ride).
Each team has their individual playing style, but in my machine-learning mind, there was a clustering of playing styles. This is not something novel, but it helps me understand how to coach. I code them TOUCH (relationship), SMELL (game), and SIGHT (narrative).
Why am I codifying something old in terms of The Five Senses (Touch, Smell, Sight, Hearing, Taste)? To sell books of course 🙄 But seriously, there’s a shit ton of sensory overload when doing improv. We want to do everything, but for different troupes — and different shows! — we may need to focus on only one of our senses.
Here’s a simplified way to identify improv styles and what to practice.
TOUCH 🤗
Relationship Scenes. Relationship based scenes are scene about interactions between 2 or more characters affecting each other. There might not be a story or a game, it’s the relationship that matters. Hence.. touch. Relationship-based scenes are often the (figurative) heart of improv. Some distinguished improv gurus would even go as that is the only improv that matters. I won’t go that far, but.. yeah. I guess that’s a default.
A lot of improv tools basically enhance either your ability to ‘touch’ your partner (eg. make YOU or WE statements, don’t be strangers) or making ourselves available to be affected (eg. be emotional, be vulnerable).
How to enhance your TOUCH:
- sharpen your character / point of view
- reach out and affect your partner emotionally
- be vulnerable characters
SMELL 👃
Game of the Scene. Game-type improv focuses on ideas rather than characters. You want to pounce on funny or interesting ideas, and build a world around that idea. In cases where the scenes are blazingly short, characters are secondary and serve only as vehicles to carry that idea. In a world where fish is currency, it’s not about the banker who serves fish loans, it’s about the fish. In this type of improv you have to be super-alert and smell ideas that may come out. Your nose has to be sharp.
How to enhance your SMELL:
- be on the prowl for ideas, stick your nose out to detect funky odors
- be super nosy to know where that funky smell came from
SIGHT 👀
Narrative improv. Pretty self-explanatory, this is improv that focuses on storytelling. I’d say narrative improv is similar to relationship or character-driven improv in some ways, but there is an added element of creating a bigger arc where things lie. Whereas relationship driven is basically enjoying the ride, narrative improv wants to go somewhere. We want to have a bird’s eye view of what has already happened. You have to see the big picture. That’s why often the best moves come from the sideline.
How to enhance your SIGHT:
- follow the story like an audience
- keep thinking, what are we missing? what does the story need? (note: sometimes what the story needs, is for you to stay on the sideline)
HEARING. 👂
Ironically we use the term listening in improv all the time, yet I haven’t figured out what Hearing is. Maybe, Hearing is free forming, organic improv. Maybe it’s group scenes.
TASTE 👅
Taste improv?… I’d rather not think about what kind of improv that is.
Hmmm. Maybe the five senses is a bad analogy.