In the first half of this article, I described my experience of participating in an improvisational sketch with Camden Civic Theatre. This next section will be devoted to assessing that scene with an anthropological lens. What can improvisational comedy reveal about culture? How does improv work to negotiate meanings within a particular community?
One of the more obvious features of the improv exercise I described was the clearly defined roles that were involved in the performance. The audience contributed suggestions, the director edited and arranged these, while the actors interpreted and performed them. Although all performances are to a certain extent co-created by company and audience, the self-consciousness with which this is done in improv is quite distinctive. Audience participation directly engages the sense of being on-line and in real time, and thus enhances a mutual sensitivity between those who are on stage and those who are not. There is no third-party mediation through playwright or composer, only the traceable maneuvering of the caller whose function is to achieve a certain aesthetic chord of humor between actor and audience.
Another feature of the exercise that is quite apparent is its use of the performance-as-game frame. The rules of the game are rendered transparent to both audience and cast, leaving no doubt as to how the anticipated scene is to be structured. There is no attempt to create an illusion of reality, no attempt to conceal the parameters of the stage and the moment. Everyone in the room is invited into the same universe of understanding, where the ordinary rules of behavior and social matter are temporarily suspended and distorted. In this imaginative universe, identities may be rapidly assumed and cast aside, and ordinary occurrences take place alongside the extraordinary.
Because improv games place a high emphasis on rules, participants are encouraged to reflect on the seemingly arbitrary nature of reality. Comedy is indiscriminately subversive. In improv, even gravity may defy itself. The very absurdity of the format, of random audience suggestions and comic enactments occurring in sharp juxtaposition to one another draw our eyes to the very rigidity with which we comply with our own social conventions. In the real world, one must either be a hooker or snow plower (or something else). In improv, the lines between the two are deliberately blurred.
The next point is that, although audience suggestion may sometimes appear to be completely random, they do take on a certain coherency of narrative, intentional or not. For example, in our scene of STOP, two separate audience members suggested, respectively, a hooker and a snow plower. When compared side by side, it is possible to draw out the metaphorical extensions of each for humorous effect. Similarly, you'll notice that each of the role categories to which the actors were assigned hinged upon an area of cultural tension - age, gender, and commercial sexuality.
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