Keith Johnstone is the inventor of Theatresports, he is also the author of 2 of the great books on improv, “Impro”, and “Impro for Storytellers”
He is one of the major figures in the world of improvisational theater.
He is certainly one of the most important people in my improv life, who shaped my idea of what improv is, and how to do it.
I met Keith, at a BATS (Bay Area Theatresports) master class he gave years ago. I was taking classes and doing shows with Theatresports at the time. There were probably less than 20 of us in this room that BATS used at the time (late 80’s, early 90’s) for their classes in a reconfigured warehouse in the Mission in S.F.
(One unrelated thing that I totally remember, the mens and women’s bathrooms were right next to each other, there were walls but no ceilings so you could every word that that anyone said. Like I said, unrelated.)
I don’t remember the address but it was very close to St. Lukes Hospital. The S in the St. Lukes sign was burned out so everyone called it T. Lukes Hospital.
One of the high points of the class for me was when Keith directed me in a scene from the game, “Boris” It’s an improvised interrogation scene with 2 people. I’m pretty sure it’s a Theatresports game, it’s the only place I’ve ever seen it.
“2 players play an improvised interrogation scene. One is the interrogator, the other is a suspect. The interrogator randomly throws unconnected elements to the suspect, who needs to incorporate these and get himself into (even more) trouble.
And then we have Boris, who is a nasty, huge, but invisible thug assisting the interrogator. Every time the interrogator does not like the suspects answers (and also when the suspect does not incriminate himself enough), the interrogator calls on Boris to torture the suspect, prodding him to confess or incriminate him even further.”
It was a lot of fun to do, but a bit of a challenge, early in my improv career, to react to the unseen abuser at first. He laughed so I guess it worked. (For the record, I can still feel the sweat coming off of me, which was real!)
I recently happened to see a video of Keith. It was great for many reasons, but mostly because it completely reinforced a lot of my ideas about doing and teaching improvisation. (No to mention reliving the “Boris” scene again!)
Listening to him talk, I kept thinking, “Oh, that’s where I got that from!”
“Striving for originality makes your work mediocre.” - Keith Johnstone
A lot of times improvisers think they need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to doing improv. You really don’t.
“Okay, we’re going to run out and circle the stage like an 8 man tornado, crisscrossing around each, maybe start doing figure 8’s, after a minute we’ll run into the audience and grab some unsuspecting audience member, preferably someone screaming, “No not me!” and pull them onstage, sit them down and start running around the stage again. After a little while we’ll ask our unwilling participant what their name is, then start a scene based on a pre-existing thought we came up with backstage, occasionally throw out our improv hostages name. We’ll call it “Circling the Wagons!”
The above is based on something I saw at an improv festival once. They were young and really wanted to make an impression on the audience. They did.
My father, who happened to be at the show, said later, “I don’t know what that was, it certainly wasn’t improv.”
Improv is foolproof, you don’t need to add bells and whistles.
I’m not even going to mention “NerfProv” at this point.
Another quote I got out of the KJ video was, “Learn to think inside the box.”
Basically, everything you need to know is inside the box, the solution is right in front of you.
Later in the video, Keith happened to mention Robin Williams, (It was a wide-ranging conversation) as someone you wouldn’t want to be onstage with, because Robin (who Keith said was a genius) would be driving the scene wherever it took him, and not doing any listening. Which of course, as we all know by now, is the key to improv.
It’s true, I ran into a guy who did some improv with Robin and he basically said the same exact thing. None of this remotely diminishes Robins genius, it just a different style of improv than we do.
Remember - “It’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about us.”
I saw Robin live when he was at the peak of his Mork and Mindy fame. It was at the Boarding House in S.F.
It was an amazing show. I went by myself. The place was sold out, when I gave the guy my ticket he walked me all the way up front to a table of 4 with only 3 people directly in front of the stage.
So far so good!
I’ve tried for years to describe the show, it was amazing, exhausting, hilarious, enlightening and a little disturbing because I knew there was no way in hell I would ever be able to do that. It was Jonathan Winters on Blow. (Normally, you would say, on steroids, but this was definitely blow.)
The whole experience brought back the time that I saw Steve Martin (then at the height of his fame) live at the Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley. I left both shows rethinking the idea of ever doing comedy.
Luckily, I stopped worrying about that. As I always say, “We don’t teach comedy, but improv, if done properly, will be funny.”