Improv Theater and Complex Adaptive Systems

I am in an improvisational theater performing group. We improvise full-length plays with nothing planned in advance. No structure. No outline. No character or plot development. Nothing, except for 2 locations we get from the audience at the beginning of the play. The play is then titled, "The Space Station and the Bathroom" or whatever locations we get from the audience. Two of us then run on stage and start interacting, and thus the play begins.

When the play goes well, the audience says, "That HAD to be scripted. At least some part of it had to be scripted. It looked too easy." It was easy. When the performance does not go so well, the audience says, "That looked hard." It was hard.

I became fascinated by what makes it work. What creates peak level creativity in our group? What allows a complex, coherent, sense-making structure to emerge from nothing but a simple location? What is the "magic formula" that allows a fully formed, organized play - with believable characters and plot - to emerge before the audience’s (and our own) eyes? And what gets in the way? Why does it work seamlessly sometimes and not so well other times? I became a serious student of improv theory - reading the seminal books in the field and observing the patterns in my group and other groups.

I soon recognized the connections between adhering to the principles of improvisational theater in a performance and being able to adapt, create and improvise effectively in the work place – and in any social system. The same principles that allow a performing group to improvise a 90-minute play out of nothing but a location are the same principles that allow groups, teams, and organizations to solve problems in new ways and reach peak levels of creativity and innovative thinking. The principles form the “container” that allows the group to self-organize to emerge what’s next.

Around that same time, I began exploring complexity sciences theory in creativity and couldn't help but recognize the stark similarities between improvisation and complex adaptive systems such as emergence, self-organization, interdependence, pattern making, increasing complexity, dense local connectivity, coherence emerging out of disorder. Both are open, inclusive, non-linear, dynamic systems that use interactive agents, feedback loops and multiple variables. Both require resilience, collaboration, structure and flow, spontaneity, and engaging the unknown. Both result in a surprising emergence.

In our troupe, we don’t go on stage with a pre-formed notion of our characters, plot, conflict, challenge or situation. We just let them emerge based on our interactions, actions and reactions. The "magic formula" is the adherence to the basic improv principles. When we adhere to the principles of improvisation, something emerges that is more intelligent and creative - and intelligently organized - than any one of us could have planned. As with any good emergence, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By adhering to the principles, a play unfolds that is so original and unpredictable, that you have a sense of being entirely in flow - getting to fully experience the adventure as you create it.

The principles that allow this to happen are simple, yet profound. They seem easy, but in practice, they are almost the exactly opposite of the ways in which we navigate our everyday work lives. They take re-learning. I say that because we were born natural improvisers and then got "educated" and "civilized" out of the playful aspects of our own improvisational creativity.

The following are 7 basic improv principles – all of which I believe tie in to complexity theory. There are others, but I have found these to be essential:

1. Yes and. Fully accepting the reality that is presenting, and the adding a NEW piece of information - that is what allows it to be adaptive, move forward and stay generative. Each performer (agent) interacts with what is offered and offers a unique contribution.

2. Make everyone else look good. That means you do not have to be defending or justifying yourself or your position - others who will do that for you and you do that for others. Without the burden of defensiveness or competition, everyone is free to create. Complex characters can form that enable unpredictable complex actions and directions to emerge.

3. Be changed by what is said and what happens. At each moment, new information in an invitation for you to have a new reaction, or for your character to experience a new aspect of them. Change inspires new ideas, and that naturally unfolds what's next. You adapt as one structure dissipates and re-organizes into a new structure that expands, yet includes, what was before.

4. Co-create a shared "agenda." This principle involves the recognition that even the best-laid plans are abandoned in the moment, and to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. You are co-creating the agenda in real-time. In order to keep the play going, you respond to the moment and an "agenda" co-emerges that is more inclusive than anything that could have been planned. It is not consensus, which reduces. It is co-creation, which expands.

5. Mistakes are invitations. In improv, mistakes are embraced – they are the stimulating anomalies that invite the performers into a new level of creativity. By using improv techniques such as justifying any mistake can be transformed into surprising plot point or dialogue that never would have happened in following a conventional pattern. In improv, justifying creates order out of chaos. Mistakes break patterns and allow new ones to emerge.

6. Keep the energy going. No matter what is given, or what happens, you accept it and keep the energy gong. Unlike in everyday life, where people stop to analyze, criticize or negate, in improv you keep moving. A mistake happens - let it go move on. The unexpected emerges - use it to move on. Someone forgot something important - justify it and move on. You’re lost or confused – make something up and trust the process. Just keep moving. The system is not static – it is alive and dynamic.

7. Serve the good of the whole. Always carry the question, "How can I best serve this situation?" and then you have a better sense of when to run in and when to stay back, when to take focus and when to give it, how to best support your fellow performers and how to best support the scene. By focusing away from how you will look into serving the larger good – the aliveness of the system - you have more creative impulses and resources available to you at any moment. And the choices you make are more in alignment with the higher levels of creative integration that form a coherent play.

So, what make it "look hard" when it is not working so well? Simple: any violation of the principles. If one of us tries to orchestrate, or worse impose, our own agenda or plot on the piece. If one of us tries to be the "star" and take too much focus. If even one of us is not present to what is unfolding, moment-by-moment. If one of us worries about the plot, and starts to figure out how to "save" it. If we expect that someone should respond in a certain way. In short, anything that gets us out of the moment and what is emerging - and into our controlling heads.

The rules are simple – the application can be challenging, requiring conscious effort. One of the paradoxes of improv is that you practice being spontaneous until it comes naturally. By staying present to each moment, getting out of thinking and planning and into being, you have a wellspring options and choices in each moment that you otherwise would miss. With positive intention, active engagement, presence and yes-anding, you can't do anything but be co-generative!

The truth is, in each performance we have some magic moments and some more effortful ones - some that work and others that fall flat. But by adhering to the improv principles we significantly increase the magic and decrease the efforting. A creative - and surprisingly logical - play can then emerge through that fresh and alive energy. We, and the audience, then get to experience the real-time excitement of riding the flow of a creative emergence. 



I first put my Improvisation and Complexity Matrix into action at the Plexus Institute DC Fractal a few years ago. Participants were led through a series of improv activities that we then tied in to complexity science principles and discussed how they played out in organizations and other complex adaptive systems. Everyone agreed that, although framed differently, the small number of laws that can generate complex systems are embedded in the small number of laws that can generate full-length improvised plays.

Improv takes you to the edge of chaos – the inflection point – filled with fertile creative potential. We are natural meaning makers, and left to our own devices, our brains naturally seek to evolve order, coherence and meaning. Once you allow yourself the freedom to explore and play; set the initial conditions; and then get out of the way, creativity can develop and unify all kinds of things that otherwise would seem impossible.

The principles of improvisation serve a much larger purpose than performance - they have the ability to create the life-giving container for cognitive, personal, organizational, social, political, and spiritual transformation. I see them as rules of engagement for a more peaceful, co-generative, co-creative, sustainable world. ~ By Michelle James

Michelle James, CEO of The Center for Creative Emergence, founded Quantum Leap Business Theater 10 years ago where she has lead improv-based programs for organizations such as Microsoft, The World Bank and Kaiser Permanente among others. She also offers public workshops such as Improv for Leaders, Creative Facilitation using Improv and Improvisational Thinking to name a few.

Pictures are from one of our performances - Precipice Improv

 

 

Comments

[Bonifer]

Beautiful essay, Michelle. The re-learning of these principles is, indeed, the key to personal and organizational growth in the Networked World. We all have the potential to remember how it was when life didn't follow a script written for us (or by us), but was instead a series of amazing discoveries. And having remembered, we can get there again. This is not only possible. It is essential.

Thanks for the post!

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Mike. Yes, love it...before the script we lived in non-stop amazing discoveries...and it is essential we reconnect with that now.

[Bob Kodzis]

Wow! Michelle, you captured it so beautifully. Rock on. Keep improvising!!

[Michelle]

Thanks, Bob. Took a look at your web site - fun! Love what you're up to.

[Alan Post]

I've just started working with an improv group that tells improvised stories at bardic circles in our community. We're still norming, and trying to figure out how we best work together. I love how succinctly you put all of this together, and particularly how you help articulate the reason I started doing this in the first place--I wanted skills that I could apply to other complex processes.

Thank you!

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Alan. I am delighted that you connected with the article. Bardic circles sound great!

[Robin Horton]

Wonderful. This is what every client needs.

[Michelle]

Thanks Robin. I agree and love bringing improv-based programs into organizations. I also think every high and college should have improvisational theater courses as mandatory. I know some MBA programs and some community development programs are using it.

[Carl Nobile]

This has helped me into a greater understanding of the whole emergent applied-philosophy phenomenon, Michelle! Thanks!

[Michelle]

Thanks Carl. 'm so delighted it was helpful.

[Carol Ross]

Thank you, Michelle, for taking me deeper into the nature of improv. The seven principles are a nice reminder of how so much of what we learn growing up and as an adult in the working world needs to be "unlearned" in order to get different results.

The application of these principles to the business world and workplace has the potential for profound impact. Thanks for doing the work you do.

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Carol. Yes, I am passionate about the application of these principles to set the stage for profound change.

[Tom Graves]

Many thanks indeed, Michelle - I've been adapting principles from Keith Johnstone's classic 'Impro' for use in business-contexts, so this takes it all to another level of detail.

From my own experience (mostly in enterprise-architecture) I would add a Principle Zero to your list: "When you get lost, return to the Vision". You've actually described this above, as your starting-point for the performance: the 'two locations' provided by the audience. In a 90-minute play with experienced performers, that's probably all you'll need; but in an organisation, dealing with 'improv'-type contexts at every possible timescale from seconds to decades, we need something more stable to return to when the inspiration vanishes (or when we get too lost, confused or tired to remember where we are...).

The Vision for the organisation needs to be as succinct as each of your other seven principles. It's not a marketing-statement, but a descriptor of the 'world' that the organisation chooses to be in, and the overall aims and desires of that 'world'. It's unique to each organisation, and literally 'sets the stage' for everything that it is and does - exactly like your 'two locations'.

Two presentations on Slideshare about this that may be useful:
- 'What is an enterprise?' http://www.slideshare.net/tetradian/what-is-an-enterprise (about the 'stage' and 'audience' for 'organisation as improv-theatre')
- 'Vision, Role, Mission, Goal' http://www.slideshare.net/tetradian/vision-role-mission-goal-a-framework-for-business-motivation (about how to frame the organisational equivalent of your 'two locations')

They're both written from an enterprise-architecture viewpoint, but should be easy translate into 'Principle Zero' terms for 'organisation as improv-theatre'.

Hope this helps, anyway - and thanks again.

[Educationontheplate.wordpress.com]

Teachers are told to plan, plan, plan. "Failure to plan is planning to fail" is the most common aphorism about teaching I hear.

How does one 'plan' improvisation? I do it by starting a lesson with a provocative comment and letting conversation go where it may. At the beginning of the year I cut in at appropriate times to teach listening, "yes, and" or "no, because." and other conventions of civil conversation, but as the year progresses I can sit back to watch and listen without having to actively engage.

Our system of schooling tends to destroy student imagination and creativity even if we don't intend to and we must make deliberate efforts to teach and leave room for improvisation and other creative activities.

[Michelle]

Loved your slide shows, Tom, thanks! I especially like how you included the "trust economy." Trust is such a big part of the co-creative process.

I resonate with what you said about Vision as it is a powerful part of my own work with organizations. I also think in terms of Purpose as a core organizing principle - the thing to return to when things get "messy." What's great about emergence is that goals, and sometimes even mission, can evolve and change as an individual, team or organization begin to engage their creative process and go deep into their foundational drives, and then Purpose serves as that stable ground on which to return.

You bring up food for thought about what is it that keep our plays coherent. In our form of improv, I'd say the focus of creating a 90-minute comic play is the vision (the intention) - it is what we keep coming back to. The improv principles are the tools to do that. The locations simply serve as the entry point.

What's missing for me in that particular performance model is that the goal is just to create an entertaining play. I miss the connection to serving the larger whole, behind the performance; and the interpersonal transformative potential. So, that is what I focus on with my clients when I bring Applied Improv-based learning engagement into organizations…using improv for serving the greater good, purpose, mission, vision and goes beyond goals for change and transformation.

Thank you so much for the links you provided and introducing me to the term Principle Zero. :-)

[Michelle]

Educationontheplate: thanks for your comment about engaging improvisation by starting with a provocative comment. Great idea!

[Tom Graves]

Hi Michelle - many thanks for feedback etc :-) - and glad you found the slidedecks useful.

I probably haven't explained Vision well enough above, because unfortunately it has several distinct meanings, and it's easy to blur them together. To try to separate them, I tend to use 'Vision' (cap-V) to mean 'that which does not change', and 'vision' (l/c-v) to mean 'the guide for what we're aiming to achieve right now'. (You might find it easier to use 'Purpose' for cap-V 'Vision', but even that too has several overloaded meanings.)

Probably the key point is the layering of how all of this vision/role/mission/goal stuff works. For your theatre practice, for example, the unchanging top-level Vision provides "the connection to serving the larger whole, behind the performance". The Role is improv-theatre; the Mission is the collection of capabilities (your-plural skills, the physical theatre-space, and the organisation and other structures such as advertising, bookings, payments etc) that enable performances; the Goal is a timeboxed performance (date, start-time, duration) with its own success-criteria and so on. Within that Goal we have the 'vision' or core reference-point _for the performance itself_ - which in your case consists of those two locations provided by the audience. This detail-level 'vision' changes with each performance, and hence is not the same as the Vision that underpins _all_ your performances.

If we think of your performances etc as an enterprise in the sense that I described in the 'What is an enterprise?' slidedeck - i.e. your troupe as the organisation, the theatre etc as your supplier/partner, the audience as your customers, and so on - then it's straightforward to adapt those principles above to _any_ organisational context, whether for-profit, not-for-profit or whatever. In effect, that's where your work and mine overlap :-) - and hence would very much like to discuss these ideas further with you, 'cos it seems likely there'd be some useful synergies there.

Again, hope this helps, anyway.

[Michelle]

Thanks for clarifying your terminology, Tom, and offering your enterprise framework. Love the perspective! And, yes, would love to talk more.

Yes, the principles and practices are easily adaptable to any type of organizational system, group situation or even relationship. I've been using Applied Imrpovisation in organizations (and w/leaders and entrepreneurs) for the past 9 years and have it found it to be incredibly powerful via the Quantum Leap Improv (http://www.creativeemergence.com/improv.html) part of my business. I also offer a course, Creative Facilitation Using Improv,to help others do the same.

Precipice, the performing group, serves as entertainment. It's a great learning lab for me, but doesn't carry with it the deeper meaning and purpose I get form helping my clients apply principles and practices toward toward the triple bottom line: people, profit and planet. I am passionate about the transfomative power of consciously applied improvisation.

I look forward to a real time conversation :-)

[Scott Davis]

Love the post. I think Viola Spolin's book IMPROV FOR THE THEATRE is a gold mine of leadership wisdom for non-thesbian organizations of all ilks. Wrote a post on applying these principles with quant jocks here ...

http://circaspecting.typepad.com/circaspecting_musings_on_/2007/09/learning-from-u.html

Keep the great contributions coming!

[Michelle]

Thanks you, Scott! Love your post - and your whole blog - as well :-)

[paul z jackson]

Super article, Michelle, which I'm reposting to my millions of contacts right now...

[Michelle James]

Thank you so much, Paul! Means a lot :-) I hope readers of this post will check out the Applied Improvisation Network ning group: http://appliedimprov.ning.com

[CrisBuckley]

Loved this article, Michelle. Had been thinking about how business structure needs to be organic, alive, minimal structure, flexible for growth and change, but your article was out of the park! Great (and timely!) food for thought!

[Michelle James]

Thanks so much, Cris! I am so delighted to hear that!

[Flemming Funch]

I was in an Improv group in Hollywood for a couple of years and really loved it. It was really surprising to me how much it added to all my other fields of activity. Learning to be in the moment, pay full attention, be in sync, have no agenda, say yes to whatever happens and take it further. And it is an amazing feeling when it works. Starting sentences without knowing how they end, taking a step forward and something to step on materializes.

[Michelle James]

I feel the same way, Flemming - find that exhilarating. Thanks for your comment! Improv changed my whole life, far beyond the confines of the performance stage. After doing improv for a while it's hard to go back to the flatness of planning everything. There's a palpable difference in the energy in a room when people speak/react/engage/generate from the fertile moment than speak from the from what was planned. The latter might be more polished and comfortable, but it lacks the true aliveness you can only find in the present. That can't be faked.

[Bob Woody]

I'm so glad a tweet I received directed me to this site. I'm a musician interested in the processes of creativity and expression. The principles here, as well as the comments, are really interesting. Just as some have pointed out their application to domains like the business world, I definitely see parallels to much musical creativity. I recently wrote about a creative session between John Mayer and two other musicians at:

http://beingmusicalbeinghuman.com/2011/04/17/glimpse-into-a-group-creative-process/

Great article, Michelle. I'll be checking back in the future for more!

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Bob! I am not a musician, but have read articles around jazz improvisation and the creative process, which mirror my experience with improv theater. John Kao write a whole book on the metaphor in Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity. I loved your article as well - just tweeted it!

[Antonyquinn]

Brilliant, thank you Michelle. I was reminded me of Peter Drucker's 7 origins of innovation in his 1984 book "Innovation and Entrepreneurship", for example 'unexpected success' and 'unexpected failure' -- it's how we react or respond that makes all the difference.

[Genevieve Roberts]

Love this! Thanks Michelle! Just recently had a fabulous time at "Thriving In Uncertainty" Applied Improv Downunder. An outcome: I am establishing a local Improv Group. Hey, you're coming yo Oz later in the year, aren't you? Hope we catch up then! I'm going to Gathering '12.
Genevieve :-) @EcoWellsprings

[Michelle]

Thanks so much, Genevieve! I imagine that AIN Downunder was awesome! Not sure if I can make it to Melbourne this year (due to schedule), but will see you there if I do. And if not this year, definitely at next year's Gathering :-)

[Sharon J.]

I love improv acting! I like the definition to your blog, as well.

[Michelle]

Awesome, Sharon! Thanks so much.