Concepts

The practice of using improv principles, tools, and mindsets for non-performance purposes — business training, education, therapy, healthcare, community work.

An offer that assigns a trait, backstory, or behavior to another performer — a gift the partner accepts and plays as truth.

The single funny idea, pattern, or unusual behavior that defines what a scene is about and is then heightened and explored.

Escalating the game of the scene by making each subsequent move more absurd than — but consistent with — what came before.

Full, receptive attention to one's scene partner — widely taught as the single most important skill in improv.

The craft of handling imaginary objects — the invisible coffee cup, the door, the phone — with consistent weight, position, and physics.

An interactive improv form founded in upstate New York in 1975 by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas — audience members tell true personal stories, actors play them back on the spot using structured short forms.

Johnstone's technique in which every performer plays a relative status to their partner — not socioeconomic rank, but a pecking-order posture that shapes behavior.

Mick Napier's anti-rules school — take care of yourself, strong individual choice over polite agreement, reject 'Yes, And' as doctrine.

The lineage of improv running through Compass Players, Second City, iO, and their teachers — ensemble-centered, long-form-first, Harold as core discipline.

Keith Johnstone's global lineage — status-based, narrative-focused, game-and-match structures, teacher-to-teacher transmission through the International Theatresports Institute.

The UCB-dominant NYC lineage — game-of-the-scene as primary discipline, if/then heightening, tight premise-driven long-form.

The LA-centered lineage — character-first, sketch-adjacent, industry-facing; the Groundlings as anchor, UCB LA as late-arriving counterweight.

Augusto Boal's framework of theatrical forms that turn spectators into active participants ('spect-actors') in rehearsing social change — foundational for applied improv worldwide.

The foundational agreement principle: accept your partner's offer ('Yes') and build on it with new information ('And').

Receiving and building on an offer rather than blocking it — Johnstone's term for the courageous half of improv collaboration.

Ruth Zaporah's body-based improvisational theater — presence tracked through sensory experience, not situational premise. San Francisco Bay Area roots.

The specific craft of listening for content, subtext, emotion, and rhythm simultaneously — taught as a trainable skill, not a given.

Moving the scene or story forward rather than sitting on the current beat — a corrective to scenes that stall after agreement.

The shared commitment between improvisers to build a consistent reality together by accepting each other's offers.

In Forum Theatre, the character who embodies the oppression; more broadly in improv, the role of generative resistance that makes the protagonist's arc visible.

Global nonprofit of applied-improv practitioners, founded 2002 by Paul Z Jackson, Michael Rosenberg, and Alain Rostain — now 5,000+ members.

The craft of sensing an audience's attention, laughter rhythm, and emotional availability — and adjusting the show mid-flight.

The competitive process by which advanced students are evaluated for house-team placement — usually a single scene-based audition, sometimes callbacks.

The specific teaching of how to audition for a house team — separate from regular improv craft, focused on first impressions, short-scene judgment, and stamina.

The Annoyance-school counter-argument against walking into a scene with a pre-baked premise — premises collapse when the partner doesn't match them.

The normal, grounded world of the scene established before any unusual thing appears — the who/what/where that makes heightening possible.

Any move that prevents the scene from developing — denying an offer, refusing to engage, or closing down a partner's initiation.

A show that doesn't land — no laughs, no connection, no momentum. Universal and formative.

Each improviser's job is to bring one clear, committed contribution — a brick — that the ensemble builds into a cathedral together, rather than arriving with a pre-built vision.

Applied-improv work focused on corporate contexts: leadership, sales, management, negotiation, conflict resolution, meeting culture.

A deliberate reference to a character, phrase, or idea from earlier in a show — a staple of both shortform games and longform structure.

The difficult-to-reverse-engineer quality that separates technically strong ensembles from ensembles that feel alive — mutual trust, shared reference, played-in listening.

The craft of inhabiting a distinct person on stage — physicality, voice, point of view, emotional life — as opposed to playing yourself in a funny situation.

An opening that leads with a committed character choice — physicality, voice, distinct POV — before context is established.

A Playback short form using the full ensemble as a unified voice or force — synchronized sound and movement to amplify a theme the teller has named.

Johnstone's name for the cultural assumptions an audience brings to a scene — the narrative world's implied boundaries, which the improviser tilts just beyond.

The European clown lineage — Copeau, Lecoq, Gaulier — and its imprint on improv: play, vulnerability, the found comedic self over the constructed character.

The craft question of when to perform linguistic, cultural, or class codes that aren't your own — when it's character work, when it's caricature.

Playing a choice — a character, emotion, object, or reality — fully and without hedging, even when it feels absurd.

The short, non-scene movements between Harold beats — group games, songs, monologues, or ensemble tableaux that bridge without becoming a full scene.

The practice of explicitly negotiating physical, emotional, and thematic boundaries before scenes and rehearsals, displacing the assumption that 'Yes, And' overrides performer comfort.

Pre-show and pre-class negotiation of physical contact — what touch is on the table, what isn't, and how performers signal limits in the moment.

An advanced, multi-term program at Second City specifically focused on developing performers for revue-style sketch-and-improv comedy — admission by audition.

Pre-show or pre-class signals about content that may include violence, trauma, or identity-sensitive material — growing practice post-2017.

Boal's term for internalized oppression — the internal censor that represses desire before a person can act on it; target of Rainbow of Desires techniques.

An initiation that states something as fact — no question, no qualifier — giving the partner a concrete platform to Yes-And.

Non-textbook Harold beat structure where later beats deliberately break, reframe, or parody the earlier pattern — a deconstructed Harold.

Rejecting or contradicting a partner's offer — the primary failure mode that kills scenes.

The practice of entering a scene without a premise and finding meaning through listening and play, rather than imposing a pre-written idea.

The ongoing critique that major improv institutions are demographically and culturally narrow — producing and privileging white middle-class performer perspectives — and the programmatic responses to it.

Johnstone's diagnosis of boring improv: performers playing safe, trying to be clever, or blocking offers to maintain control — the default failure mode.

Applied-improv work in K-12 and higher-ed classrooms — used for literacy, language acquisition, social-emotional learning, STEM pedagogy.

The pre-scene or pre-show practice of arriving with a committed emotional state — not neutral, but charged — so the first line of the scene has weight.

An opening line that establishes a strong emotional state first, then lets the scene discover its context — an alternative to location-first or character-first openings.

Pre-scene agreements and in-scene signals (safe words, door-tap-outs) that let performers exit or redirect content that becomes unsafe.

What the character stands to lose or gain in the scene — the source of dramatic weight and audience investment.

The ensemble-level craft of pacing a show's emotional and physical intensity — when to escalate, when to ground, when to let silence sit.

The slow work of turning a group of improvisers into a unit that listens, trusts, and plays as one — measured in months, not classes.

The physical establishment of the scene's location — doors, walls, furniture, weather — collectively and consistently mimed by the ensemble.

The core discipline of Playback Theatre — listening to a teller without editing, interpreting, or performing empathy, so the actors play back essence, not projection.

The complement to heightening: providing logic, philosophy, or rationale behind absurd behavior — answering 'why is this true?' rather than 'what else?'

The first beat, behavior, or statement that breaks from the established base reality and signals the potential game of the scene.

A Playback Theatre short form for feelings, not narratives — actors enter one at a time with a repeating sound and movement that layers into a group sculpture of the teller's emotional state.

Del Close's maxim that the strongest choice is usually the one that scares you most — fear as a diagnostic for truth.

Boal's signature form — actors perform a short play depicting an oppression, then invite audience members ('spect-actors') to replace the protagonist and try interventions.

A move that calls attention to an unusual thing so both performers recognize it as the potential game.

An edit (from French drama convention) where the scene changes whenever a character enters or exits — often executed by performers changing character without leaving the stage.

The character embodying the unusual behavior pattern of the scene, whose absurd choices the straight man reacts to.

The decisions around how gender shows up in scenes — character cross-gender casting, gendered endowments, defaults, and whose bodies are assumed to play whom.

Characters played close to real human behavior — naturalistic, believable, emotionally consistent — rather than cartoonish or premise-serving.

The ensemble state in which an experienced team thinks and acts as a single intelligence, anticipating moves and reinforcing patterns without verbal coordination.

A note-session format where one performer at a time receives targeted feedback from the coach and ensemble — higher intensity, higher specificity than group notes.

A regularly-performing ensemble affiliated with a specific theater, typically auditioned from advanced students — the main path to performing longform publicly.

The multi-year arc of a single house team — audition, early rehearsals, finding voice, settling into a style, graduation or dissolution.

The heightening logic of UCB-style improv: once an unusual thing is established, ask what else must be true in this world.

A Boal form that uses the human body to create still images of oppression and desired reality — no words, bodies only, posed and re-posed by the group.

The ongoing craft-development role for an improv team — a coach rehearses the team weekly, gives notes, and shepherds the team's voice over months or years.

Applied-improv work in R&D, product design, and creative-technical teams — framed by Keith Sawyer's *Group Genius* (2007) as the science of collaborative innovation.

Applied-improv practice that targets leadership development — status agility, active listening, decision under ambiguity, team trust.

Using improv training to build speaker fluency under pressure — handling hecklers, Q&A, teleprompter failures, and the anxiety of unscripted moments.

Applying improv mindset to technical interview performance — thinking aloud, accepting the interviewer's framing, committing to wrong answers before correcting.

Use of improv technique in therapeutic settings — both as clinical skill-building for therapists and as intervention with clients (anxiety, autism, Parkinson's, recovery).

Teaching practices that avoid stereotyping suggestions (e.g. 'exotic location'), use neutral prompts, explicitly name identity boundaries, and center historically excluded performers.

Coaching for improv teams that are not house teams — self-organized ensembles who hire their own coach, rehearse on their own time, and book their own shows.

The opening line or action that starts a scene — the offer that establishes base reality and often foreshadows the game.

A Boal form performed in public space (buses, parks, restaurants) where bystanders do not know a performance is happening — ethically contested, politically sharp.

The act of making odd or unexplained choices make sense in-world — grounding absurd moves so the scene stays believable as it heightens.

The MD's use of a key change to mark a turn in the song — emotional lift, new character entrance, or the 'last chorus' feeling — a structural move masquerading as musical decoration.

The canonical five-level (sometimes six) curriculum used at UCB, iO, and Second City: 101 fundamentals, 201 game/editing, 301 Harold/longform, 401 advanced, 501 performance.

Prompt lists Johnstone provides in Impro for Storytellers — Tilt Lists, Fast-Food Stanislavsky Lists — used in rehearsal to drill narrative moves.

An opening that establishes the physical environment first — through object work, spatial language, or scene painting — then lets character and relationship emerge.

Ensemble ethic: every performer's job is to make their scene partners shine, not to get laughs at their expense.

Applied-improv curriculum for clinicians — listening, presence, bad-news conversations, teamwork under pressure — pioneered by Katie Watson at Northwestern Feinberg in 2002.

The UCB-style Harold opening practice of extracting premises from a performer's true monologue — scenes spin off specific details from the monologist's real life.

The keyboard player and musical anchor of an improvised musical — reads scenes, picks song styles, provides vamps, underscores, and tracks thematic callbacks.

A group scene-painting form set to music — players tag in to describe space, sound, and mood while the MD underscores; usually resolves into a song.

The neutral mask tradition from Jacques Copeau and Jacques Lecoq — work in silent, featureless masks that trains physical presence without personality.

The practice of rejecting audience suggestions that target identity, stereotype, or shock — and the pedagogy for training suggest-takers to do it gracefully.

An opening built around a single, specific object handled in silence or near-silence — the scene then discovers itself through how players relate to the object.

A scene-work approach where players reveal the scene's reality slowly through listening and patience, rejecting premise-first or game-first initiations.

A longform opening that moves from suggestion straight into scenes, without a structured generative format — discovery-based.

Scene-level and show-level rhythm — how long a scene breathes before edit, how tightly scenes pack, how much silence the ensemble tolerates.

A Playback short form for ambivalence — two actors each embody a contrasting feeling the teller is holding, playing them side by side without resolving.

A structured longform opening in which performers free-associate from a suggestion and back, surfacing themes for subsequent scenes.

The practice of identifying the abstract pattern across two or three Harold scenes and using it to generate second-beat and third-beat material.

The performer skill of noticing repeating motifs, themes, or images across a longform show and reinforcing them through callbacks and heightening.

A musical-improv song built on a fixed lyric or melodic pattern the MD establishes and the singer variates — the musical cousin of a pattern game opening.

Pre-show body preparation — stretching, movement, energy-building — for groundedness, reach, and injury prevention.

Forcing a scene partner to perform a specific, often difficult or embarrassing action on demand — 'Fred, why don't you sing us the song you wrote?'

Respond to an absurd premise as the smartest, most thoughtful version of your character would — don't play dumb for laughs.

Spolin's insistence that the audience is an active participant in theater games, not a passive spectator — a radical claim for the 1960s.

Spolin's foundational teaching device: every theater game has a single focal objective that occupies the conscious mind, freeing the unconscious to act spontaneously.

The specific, emotionally-loaded lens through which a character sees the world — the filter that determines every reaction.

The structured post-show debrief — what worked, what didn't, what to try next time. More formal than a walk home, usually at the next rehearsal.

The recognition that scene-stage status includes off-stage power — race, gender, seniority, teacher-student — and the craft of working those dynamics honestly.

The warm-ups, chants, circles, and physical practices an ensemble does before a show to sync presence and set collective focus.

The explicit decision set around how race shows up in scenes — when it's the content, when it's a complication, when it's ignored, who gets to decide.

Boal's later 'introspective' Theatre of the Oppressed technique — used for internalized oppression rather than external, developed during his European exile.

Napier's prescription: respond to what's actually happening in the scene, drawing from your authentic emotional reaction, rather than applying a learned rule.

The recurring image, phrase, or theme a Playback conductor identifies across tellers in a single show — used to shape the arc of the performance.

The technique of bringing earlier story elements back into the narrative to create shape and satisfaction — what distinguishes a story from a series of events.

The dynamic between characters — not just 'brothers' but 'resentful older brother who feels replaced' — treated as the primary scene material.

An opening that establishes how the two characters know each other before anything else — a line that names or implies the bond.

A musical-improv scene played entirely over an MD's groove — dialogue finds the pocket of the rhythm, not the other way around.

A continuous-motion edit style where scenes flow into each other without a hard break — players in new positions before the previous scene has fully ended.

Johnstone's reframing of narrative: a story isn't a sequence of events but an established routine that gets interrupted.

A performer who describes a scene's environment in third person as the scene is played — used in scene-painting openings and narrator-based long-forms.

A performer verbally describes the environment — 'We see a diner with steamed-up windows' — conjuring the world rather than miming it.

The second round of scenes in a Harold — each first-beat scene returns, but heightened and usually displaced in time, place, or frame.

Second City's corporate-training arm — a 30-year-old applied-improv practice blending improv games, sketch writing, and video content for 600+ Fortune 1000 clients.

The use of sensory recall (smell, texture, temperature, light) to ground a scene in physical specificity — adapted from Strasberg-era Method work.

The main narrative form in Playback — actors enact the teller's full story, usually 3-5 minutes, with the teller watching from the chair.

The craft of pulling a struggling show back — ensemble reset mid-show, intentional edits, deliberate shift in tone or energy.

Spolin's technique of calling out instructions to players during an exercise — 'Share your voice!' 'See the space!' — without stopping the action.

Jimmy Carrane's scene-work method — get real before you try to be funny, slow down until the game reveals itself, commit to the emotional truth of the moment.

The working taxonomy of song shapes in musical improv — I Want, I Am, I Feel, List Song, Love Duet, Villain Song — each with distinct lyric and musical conventions.

Spolin's practice of treating the air and invisible objects as real substance, building the physical world through committed sensory engagement.

The discipline of naming exact, concrete details — people, objects, places, emotions — instead of generic placeholders.

Boal's term for an audience member who steps into the play — the collapse of the spectator/actor binary is the political heart of Theatre of the Oppressed.

Two simultaneous scenes play side-by-side on stage, each advancing in alternating beats — visual parallel that invites thematic comparison.

Spolin's central aesthetic goal — the 'moment of explosion' when a player acts from intuition rather than calculation.

The discipline of keeping one's attention in the immediate moment of the scene rather than planning ahead or evaluating.

Paul Sills's narrative ensemble form — improvisers enact myths, folk tales, and legends with transformation, mime, and dance as the primary vocabulary.

The grounded character who registers and questions the absurdity of the game player — plays at the top of their intelligence.

Making specific, high-stakes, point-of-view-loaded choices at the top of a scene rather than vague or neutral ones.

Stanislavski's technique of substituting a real personal memory to access an emotion on stage — adapted by improv teachers for quick emotional availability.

A performer walks or runs across the front of the stage, clearing the scene and starting a new one — the most common longform edit.

A Playback short form of frozen moments — the ensemble sculpts one or more still images that capture a pivotal moment in the teller's story.

A musical-improv technique where offstage performers tag in briefly to describe the environment or emotion, priming the MD and singer for the song's world.

A new performer enters, taps a current player out, and replaces them — usually advancing time or shifting context without ending the pattern.

Napier's core principle: the best way to support your partner is to be individually strong — a powerful improviser, not a deferential one.

A multi-year wave of allegations, policy reforms, and institutional restructurings at major improv schools that transformed teaching, audition, and harassment practices.

The Playback Theatre facilitator — interviews the teller, casts the story, calls the form, and holds the container for the ensemble and audience.

The ongoing, institutionalized discourse at UCB, iO, Second City, and their counterparts about race, gender, access, and power — triggered by #MeToo and 'Improv So White.'

An offer so specific, strong, and unprompted that it hands the scene a clear direction — the most prized kind of initiation in longform scene work.

The person who directs a scripted-improv production — a show with set beats, loose structure, and nightly improvisation inside it (common at Second City revues).

The long-running pedagogical disagreement: do you start a scene from your internal state (emotion, thought) or from your external choice (physicality, line)?

Stock instructional metaphor for object-work consistency — if you sip from an invisible coffee cup, the cup must stay in the same hand, at the same height, with the same weight for the whole scene.

The facilitator role in Forum Theatre — neither director nor actor, but the person who holds the space between the stage and the spect-actors.

The post-rehearsal or post-show meeting where a coach or director gives feedback to the ensemble — the primary craft-transmission mechanism in improv.

Any piece of information — verbal, physical, emotional — that one performer gives another to build on.

The lineage that treats improv scenes as discoverable realities rather than invented games — slow, listening-heavy, patience over pace.

A supporting performer's edit, walk-on, or scene-saving move that pulls a struggling scene back — rarer and subtler than the word suggests.

Jimmy Carrane's Chicago-centered school — real before funny, emotional grounding before scene-work, slow discovery over fast heightening.

The audience member in Playback Theatre who shares a personal story from the 'teller's chair' — the central role around which the entire form organizes.

Silence on stage that performers feel as failure but audiences often register as presence — a craft-transition moment separating intermediate from advanced.

The informal, unstructured post-show processing — players walk or drive home together, replaying what worked and what didn't.

The critique — named in American Theatre's 'Improv So White? Yes, And' (2019) — that American improv's cultural default, casting norms, and institutional habits center whiteness.

The final Harold movement — shorter scenes that cross-pollinate characters and games from earlier beats, often resolving into a single ensemble scene.

A performer stepping outside the scene to narrate action in third person, commenting on or advancing what the characters are doing.

Johnstone's term for the change that breaks an established routine or platform, forcing the story to adapt — the pivot point of a narrative improv scene.

A Playback short form where the enacted story shifts toward a wished-for outcome — used when the teller names what they wish had happened or might still.

Del Close's directive that improvisers treat one another as if everything they do is brilliant, thereby making it brilliant.

A short looping musical phrase (4 or 8 bars) the MD plays while a performer is finding the shape of a song — the scaffold on which improvised melody sits.

Pre-show voice preparation — breath support, articulation, range — often skipped by improvisers but considered essential by those trained in theater.

A performer who enters an in-progress scene briefly to deliver a specific contribution — a discovery, a pattern-move, a game-heightener — then exits.

Spolin's term for the activity characters are engaged in — the physical, purposeful work of the scene.

Teaching prompt for starting scenes: frame the moment as a departure from an established routine, implying backstory and stakes.

Spolin's term for the established environment of a scene — one leg of the Who-What-Where triad she taught as scene foundation.

Spolin's term for the characters and relationship in a scene — not just who each performer is, but how they know each other.

The application of Yes-And as a negotiation stance — accept the counterparty's frame, then expand it — often taught alongside Harvard's principled-negotiation method.

An anti-pattern in which a performer appears to accept an offer but then undercuts it with a qualifying objection, functionally blocking the scene.