Staying Healthy: a Love Letter to the Professional Improviser 

Written by Patricia Ryan Madson – This article is from AIM Issue 2 (released November 2023).

Paintings by Patricia Ryan Madson.

I've been watching improv actors make magic for over thirty years.

One of the deep joys of living in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California in the United States, is having access to a remarkable array of improvisational theater groups. I’ve been one of the lucky audience members for several thousand performances of “one of a kind” plays created out of sheer grit and magic on the spot. I’ve watched a number of groups come and go, form and dissolve, reform and spring back like the Phoenix. Among them were Pulp Playhouse, True Fiction Magazine, 3 For All, The Improv Playhouse of San Francisco, Awkward Dinner Party and two decades of BATS shows.

The community of artists who perform this work are both saints and eccentrics, in my opinion. Their talent and courage - and endurance over time – astonishes me. I’ve been a theater person for half a century. I taught acting at Stanford University, spent summers doing stock with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Nebraska Repertory Theatre and several raucous southern Outdoor Drama productions. I have not, however, trod the boards of the improv stage. It’s far too scary for me, I tell my students. I’m okay with a script. I like knowing when the show is over.

However, I teach improv, and like to think that my experience in the classroom, if not on stage, allows me a voice. What’s on my mind is the mental and spiritual health of the men and women who are professional improv actors, especially those of you who do improv for a living or devote a serious part of your lives to performing. I am writing this as a love letter to you. You know who you are. You have been bestowing gifts upon me and your audiences for decades.

When you improvise a performance you are using 120% of your humanity. Becoming characters that live and breathe and struggle and die and change and love and mourn takes a gigantic human toll. I’m guessing that when the lights go down after a successful show – or even a mediocre or lousy one – you are both exhilarated and exhausted. To improvise means that you are using the whole self: body, mind and spirit. You are using your deep knowledge database of literature, story, character, locale, vocal technique and social psychology. It’s a miracle - especially in a long form show, but to a lesser extent, in short form improv as well. I can’t think of any other human activity that uses all of our human capacity at the same time. Even Olympic athletes, while using 100% of their physical and mental ability are not creating the scene and story on the spot before an audience. I think professional improv actors are Gods and Goddesses, or at least Superheroes. They are doing so much more than even great actors are called upon to do.