The Structure of Spontaneity from Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

One Saturday evening not long ago, an improvisation comedy group called Mother took
the stage in a small theater in the basement of a supermarket on Manhattans West Side.
It was a snowy evening just after Thanksgiving, but the room was full. There are eight
people in Mother, three women and five men, all in their twenties and thirties. The stage
was bare except for a half dozen white folding chairs. Mother was going to perform what
is known in the improv world as a Harold. They would get up onstage, without any idea
whatsoever of what character they would be playing or what plot they would be acting
out, take a random suggestion from the audience, and then, without so much as a
moments consultation, make up a thirty-minute play from scratch.
One of the group members called out to the audience for a suggestion. Robots,
someone yelled back. In improv, the suggestion is rarely taken literally, and in this case,
Jessica, the actress who began the action, said that the thing that came to mind when she
heard the word robots was emotional detachment and the way technology affects
relationships. So, right then and there, she walked onstage, pretending to read a bill from
the cable television company. There was one other person onstage with her, a man seated
in a chair with his back to her. They began to talk. Did he know what character he was
playing at that moment? Not at all; nor did she or anyone in the audience. But somehow it
emerged that she was the wife and the man was her husband, and she had found charge
on the cable bill for porn movies and was distraught. He in turn, responded by blaming
their teenaged son, and after a spirited back-and-forth, two more actors rushed onstage,
playing two different characters in the same narrative. One was a psychiatrist helping the
family with their crisis. In another scene, an actor angrily slumped in chair. Im doing
time for a crime I didnt commit, the actor said. He was the couples son. At no time as
the narrative unfolded did anyone stumble or freeze or look lost. The action proceeded as
smoothly as if the actors had rehearsed for days. Sometimes what was said and done
didnt quite work. But often it was profoundly hilarious and the audience howled with
delight. And at every point it was riveting: here was a group of eight people up on stage
without a net, creating a play before our eyes.
Improvisational comedy is a wonderful example of the kind of thinking that Blink is
about. It involves people making very sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment,
without the benefit of any kind of script or plot. Thats what makes it so compelling and
to be frank terrifying. If I were to ask you to perform in a play that Id written,
before a live audience with a month of rehearsal, I suspect that most of you would say no.
What if you got stage fright? What if you forgot your lines? What if the audience booed?
But at least a conventional play has structure. Every word and movement has been
scripted. Every performer gets to rehearse. Theres a director in charge, telling everyone
what to do. Now suppose that I were to ask you to perform again before a live audience
only this time without a script, without any clue as to what part you were playing or
what you were supposed to say, and with the added requirement that you were expected
to be funny. Im quite sure youd rather walk on hot coals. What is terrifying about
improv is the fact that it appears utterly random and chaotic. It seems as though you have
to get up onstage and make everything up, right there on the spot.

But the truth is that improv isnt random and chaotic at all. If you were to sit down with
the cast of Mother, for instance, and talk to them at length, youd quickly find out that
they arent all the sort of zany, impulsive, free-spirited comedians that you might imagine
them to be. Some are quite serious, even nerdy. Every week they get together for a
lengthy rehearsal. After each show they gather backstage and critique each others
performance soberly. Why do they practice so much? Because improv is an art form
governed by a series of rules, and they want to make sure that when theyre up onstage,
everyone abides by those rules. We think of what were doing as a lot like basketball,
one of the Mother players said, and thats an apt analogy. Basketball is an intricate, highspeed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is
possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured
practice perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and
over again and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical
lesson of improv too... spontaneity isnt random. How good peoples decisions are
under the fast-moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of
training and rules and rehearsal.
One of the most important of the rules that make improv possible, for example, is the idea
of agreement, the notion that a very simple way to create a story or humor is to
have characters accept everything that happens to them. As Keith Johnstone, one of the
founders of improv theater writes: If youll stop reading for a moment and think of
something you wouldnt want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then youll have
thought of something worth staging or filming. We dont want to walk into a restaurant
and be hit in the face by a custard pie, and we dont want to suddenly glimpse Grannys
wheelchair racing towards the edge of a cliff, but well pay money to attend enactments
of such events. In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the
improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very gifted
improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good
improvisers develop action.
Here, for instance, is an improvised exchange between two actors in a class that
Johnstone was teaching:
A: Im having trouble with my leg.
B: Im afraid Ill have to amputate.
A: You cant do that, Doctor.
B: Why not?
A: Because Im rather attached to it.
B: (Losing heart) Come on, man.
A: Ive got this growth on my arm too, Doctor.
The two actors involved in this scene quickly became very frustrated. They couldnt keep
the scene going. Actor A had made a joke and a rather clever one (Im rather attached
to it) but the scene itself wasnt funny. So Johnstone stopped them and pointed out
the problem. Actor A had violated the rule of agreement. His partner had made a
suggestion, and he had turned it down. He had said, You cant do that, Doctor.

So the two started again, only this time with a renewed commitment to agreeing:
A: Augh!
B: Whatever is it, man?
A: Its my leg, Doctor.
B: This looks nasty. I shall have to amputate.
A: Its the one you amputated last time, Doctor.
B: You mean youve got a pain in your wooden leg?
A: Yes, Doctor.
B: You know what this means?
A: Not woodworm, Doctor!
B: Yes. Well have to remove it before it spreads to the rest of you.
(As chair collapses.)
B: My God! Its spreading to the furniture!
Here are the same two people, with the same level of skill, playing exactly the same
roles, and beginning almost exactly the same way. However, in the first case, the scene
comes to a premature end, and in the second case, the scene is full of possibility. By
following a simple rule, A and B became funny. Good improvisers seem telepathic;
everything looks pre-arranged, Johnstone writes. This is because they accept all offers
made which is something no normal person would do.
Heres one more example, from a workshop conducted by Del Close, another of the
fathers of improv. One actor is playing a police officer, the other a robber hes chasing.
Cop: (Panting) Hey Im 50 years old and a little overweight. Can we stop and rest for
a minute?
Robber: (Panting) Youre not gonna grab me if we rest?
Cop: Promise. Just for a few seconds on the count of three. One, Two, Three.
Do you have to be particularly quick-witted or clever or light on your feet to play that
scene? Not really. Its a perfectly straightforward conversation. The humor arises entirely
out of how steadfastly the participants adhere to the rule that no suggestion can be denied.
If you can create the right framework, all of a sudden, engaging in the kind of fluid,
effortless, spur-of-the-moment dialogue that makes for good improv theater becomes a
lot easier.