One of the most challenging things in an improv scene is to be silent. So often, improvisers feel like if a scene goes silent, then nothing is happening. Silences turn awkward, the audience isn't laughing, no one knows what's going on... It often causes fear to drive a scene forward in ridiculous or unrealistic ways.

Inexperienced improvisers need to realize that there is huge power in silence. Sometimes more can be communicated by what someone doesn't say instead of what they say.

People and Chairs recently posted about how to improvise without dialogue. In that article, they asked improv teacher David Razowsky about silent scenes. A couple of phrases stuck out in our minds:

This is a really powerful statement on what's important in a scene. Not the dialogue - which is usually what comes naturally first - but rather everything else. How and when you say something, what your body language says, what your proximity to the listener says, what your tone of voice or inflection says - all of these are as powerful (sometimes more so) than the words that come out of your mouth.

Good improv scenes can start out with dialogue right away, but better improv scenes often start with one player engaging in an action and others reacting to that. Their spoken line comes from the reaction to the first player's moving, gesturing, sitting, or whatever - and it's that reaction that sets the stage for the rest of the scene. Letting that silence sit there - letting the initial action play out for a bit, as well as letting the other players' reactions to it percolate can lead to a much richer and well-thought out scene that would happen if someone just started talking because they felt they had to.

Starting a scene with silence shows that you trust your scene partner(s) that they will fill in information when necessary, but it may not be necessary at the beginning of the scene. 

The video excerpt below is taken from the TJ and Dave documentary Trust Us, This Is All Made Up. They start a scene in complete silence, for almost 14 seconds. Their scene then begins very gradually, even with the first lines of dialogue not revealing too much about what's going on in the scene. They show incredible trust in each other that eventually the point of the scene will manifest itself. Which is does, more than two minutes later.

We just added three games (lovingly borrowed from the aforementioned People and Chairs post) which emphasize silence in an improv scene: Emotional Mime, Third Wheel, and Upstage Downstage. Start working them into your rehearsals to see what you can really do with silence.

I had a great debriefing session the other day after four of my slightly inexperienced improvisers had just finished what turned out to be a really great scene. They did a great job of listening and reacting to each other, and bringing their own flavor to the scene.

In the debrief, however, each of them made comments about where they had planned to go in the scene. I mentioned to them that despite all of their plans, and that the scene didn't really go in any of those directions, they still managed to create a great scene.

That's incredibly challenging for high school improvisers - to go onto a stage with nothing planned. Professional improvisers have trouble doing it, much less insecure teenagers. What's great about Allen's quote is how it tries to get past the preconception that your improv scene will either be a success or a failure. Only rarely have I seen a "bad" improv scene that also failed to entertain the audience - most of the time, improv scenes are bad or good only when judged against our own preconceptions.

Here are a couple of ideas to help improvisers just live in the moment.

• Face your fear and just do it.
  Ignore your own ideas for the scene and just walk on stage and put yourself in that scene. Listen for an opportunity to become a character, solve a problem, cause a problem, or establish a relationship, and just do it.
• There are no mistakes, only opportunities.
  Everything done or mentioned in a scene is now part of the reality of the scene. Instead of ignoring it, or trying to "correct" it, just let it be. Sometimes the best scenes come from things that at first seem contrary, but good improvisers who listen and work together can find a way to make them make sense.
• Be brave and trusting.
  This is one that is important for everyone in the scene to adhere to. Someone's going to have to play the underdog, the problem-maker, the victim - if everyone in the scene is brave, then anyone can play that character. And if everyone trusts their scene partners (and recognizes the trust that everyone else places in him or her), then everyone knows that someone in the scene will get them out of it.
  

My students are always so concerned with sucking.

Especially newer improvisers, they are very timid about getting into a scene with more experienced students, because they feel they can't measure up, or that they won't know what to do, or that they - god forbid - won't be funny.

As a result, they tend to overthink their improvisation. They try too hard to be funny, or they try to fill with too much dialogue, or they throw in huge, outrageous character actions that don't seem to fit the scene.

What they're missing is that the most important part of being in a scene is just that - being in the scene. Listening to and observing what's going on will often present very logical means of entry - mention of another character, the appearance of a problem in need of a solution, one character's action just begging for another's reaction...

Occasionally, your entry into the scene may not even be an active one - a scene taking place in a grocery store can easily have a silent shopper in the background. That player, if they're present in the scene, listening and observing, can find the spot to add their one line, their observation, their insertion into the primary scene unfolding. Even if they don't, they've made the scene that much richer by just being supporting characters adding to the environment.

Some of our games which focus on support can help student learn how to just be present.