For more than 20 years, the Comedy Store Players have fought to spin a fragile order out of the darkest chaos. Based on shouted suggestions from the 400-strong audience that packs into a dark Leicester Square basement every Wednesday and Sunday night, they improvise comedic routines - from two-handed skits to mini-musicals. Every performance is different.
When Neil Mullarkey, a founding member of the Players, first saw improvised comedy, he “literally thought they were lying. Until I experienced it, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Improvised comedy is possible because the performers follow a short set of rules: they don’t censor themselves and they don’t block other players’ offers. “Most actors would be terrified - they want to know what their motivation is. We do the reverse: we say something, and then work out why we said it.” Keith Johnstone, the British father of improv, insists the explanation can always be found in a struggle for status - “hysterically funny, but at the same time very alarming”.
Like generative music, which takes a small number of initial seeds and expands them, through simple rules, into structures of incredible complexity, improv builds tottering edifices on humble foundations.
“We need a person. Okay, Gordon Brown. And an object? A hammer. A hairdryer... no, I heard a hammer first. Okay, so here we are. The story of Gordon Brown and the hammer. Chapter One.” Mullarkey points at each of his colleagues in turn, switching the story between them, and before long John Prescott, Paddington Bear and Sarah Brown are sunbathing naked in the back garden of Downing Street, as Prince Charles comes by with a spliff.
The key to improvisation is accepting offers and building on them. “I’ve got you an ice-cream, daddy,” says Mullarkey in a high voice.
“Thank you,” says Andy Smart. And then, explicitly accepting the offer: “Thank you, son. Where’s Mummy?”
“You killed her,” says Mullarkey, accusingly. “I know. What have you done with the body?” The enemy of improv is self-censorship. Someone in the audience tries to banter with Lee Simpson and comes off worse. “You said that without thinking of the consequences,” offers Simpson kindly. “That’s our job.” But most of us have first thoughts we’d prefer to swallow.
“The best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal,” argues Keith Johnstone. “Something wells up from your unconscious that you don’t want to share,” agrees Mullarkey. “If it’s too graphic, the audience will go ‘Ugh!’ I prefer the stuff where you go: ‘Where did that come from?’ If a rude thing hasn’t come from a real place, it isn’t funny.”
In performance, Josie Lawrence trips over this when improvising a scene in a cheese shop in the style of a porn film. The audience wince. “Josie’s disgusted herself,” crows Simpson. “There is a line... “
The atmosphere, says Mullarkey, is completely different from stand-up comedy. The audience invest more. “They know this is unique, and they’re complicit in the act of creation. They’re half thinking ‘What would I say?’ and half glad they don’t have to.” This evening there is one heckler, who loudly urges the players to “get on with it” during an improvised musical about Welsh gangsters. “Buy the DVD,” advises Richard Vranch tartly, “and then fast forward.”
The players toy with the mood, maintaining a train of thought long enough to suck the audience in, then disrupting it.
“How can a peninsula become a pass?” asks Andy Smart, as the established geography of his sketch goes awry. “Do not question the ways of the valleys!” retorts Simpson, darkly.
Some art forms lend themselves to improvisation; in others, it is close to impossible - an improvised novel, for instance? Film-makers from John Cassavetes to Mike Leigh have used improvisation as a technique, but as long as they retain the right to discard material the danger of failure is lessened. Some musicians improvise around known tunes, but the Bays - who play improvised dance music, never the same twice - take the art further still, and because they have never released a record the only way to experience them is live. John Zorn’s music, such as Cobra, unfolds divergently according to arbitrary rules.
“When I hear free improvisers talk,” says Mullarkey, “they’re speaking my language: silences, gaps, incorporating mistakes.”
The pianist Keith Jarrett’s philosophy is, in fact, subtly different from the comedians’ technique of saying what pops into their heads. “I have to not play what’s in my ears, if there’s something in my ears,” he has said. “I have to find a way for my hands to start the concert without me.” He looks not for the first thought, but for something before thought.
The business guru John Kao likes to start his lectures by improvising a couple of short riffs on the keyboard, in markedly different styles, before promoting the idea of “jamming” in organisations. “Jazz - like business - implies a series of balancing acts. It must always be pushing outward - and therefore, inevitably, against complacency.”
When it is done well, improvisation looks like nothing. The hardest element of preparation is clearing one’s mind. “It’s skating along in a Zen trance,” says Mullarkey. “Afterwards, you don’t remember anything.” The closest cousin to improvisation is quantum physics. At every point of decision, multiple worlds are summoned into being and kept temporarily alive by the goodwill of the players and the audience. Watching it offers the joy of being present at the creation. All creativity should aspire to this ecstatic channelling of the unconscious.
