The Thermodynamics of Improv

Now let's create an analogy (or a reality) with an improv scene and the second law of thermodynamics. First of all, it's important to define the closed system. Remember, a closed system is a system that has no external input of energy other than what is included in that system. So let's say we define the improvisational theater itself as the closed system. The whole room, once the audience is seated and the improv show is about to begin, will hopefully have no external energy inputs. Its internal energy inputs are:

• The light hitting the stage

• The audience, with their quantity and their reactions (such as coughing or laughing or clapping)

• The air conditioning and heating system

• The improvisers

• Sound energy (voices)

• Kinetic energy (improvisers' movement)

• Potential energy (lack of sound and movement)

Notice that these are also the primary factors that determine the success of an improv scene. All these sources of energy are being thrown into a scene. If energy is the capacity to do work, and work is a force applied to something moving it a distance, what is the thing that our closed system is moving forward? In this closed system, the theater, what is moving? What work is being done?

The scene itself, or what the scene is about.

That's what we're moving. That's what we put all of our energy into when we improvise. We create what the scene is about and put all of our sound, movement, lights, and audience reaction toward moving the scene forward. In a comedy scene, the audience adds real energy with their sound of laughter, fueling the scene farther. In a dramatic scene, the audience's concentrated stillness provides potential energy, which enhances dramatic tension. All of these ener­gies are directed at the intangible, yet agreed upon concept of what the scene is about.

This is truly the engine of an improv scene. We often speak of "driving a scene" and "a scene that loses its gas" and "cranking it into fourth gear in that last scene." We put gasoline in a car to provide energy to an engine to move a car a distance. As improvisers, we speak and move to provide energy to what the scene is about in order to move the scene forward.

Our biggest goal in our quest to move a scene forward is to reduce entropy. We battle against the second law, attempting to reduce wasted energy. We strive to have all our lines, movements, character choices, and environment choices go toward what the scene is about, and nothing else. Anything other than that is wasted energy. Unlike a car, which already has an engine, we have to create our engine—what the scene is about—out of thin air. And though it's not tangible, it is real; like pistons we must fire the engine in order to propel the scene and have it move forward.

In an automobile, this is all that the pistons do: gain energy from the combustion of gasoline, allowing the engine to turn the crank­shaft and move the car a distance. Imagine if the pistons of a car sometimes fired to move the car and sometimes didn't. Perhaps they fired and the explosion went into the air, or other times they fired and the car went in reverse at random, or other times they fired and they added a force to an engine of another car. Inefficient work would have been done to move the car a distance. Waste heat. As a matter of fact, this is what automobile manufacturers do all the time: seek to create cars with better fuel efficiency. They work to battle the second law, in order to minimize wasted energy and maximize fuel efficiency. (In countries other than the United States, anyway.)

As improvisers, we are the pistons of the engine of the scene. We must be able to create that engine, identify it, and do our damndest to add energy to it and it only. Yes, waste energy will disperse into the atmosphere, but we must do all we can to minimize it.

You may have seen a scene in which an improviser played a par­ticular point of view for two or three beats, and then changed her mind and went with another point of view. You just witnessed a dis­persal of waste energy. The piston misfired. Perhaps you've observed a scene where two improvisers glance back and forth at each other in silence for eighteen seconds in fear. You can feel the energy drain out of the scene even before the engine has been created. The audience can feel it also, and they unwittingly contribute to it by their reac­tion, or lack thereof.

Maybe you've witnessed a scene that starts out well enough, everything seems aligned, and then it just doesn't go anywhere or it keeps revisiting the same territory over and over again. Once again, you can feel the energy drain. Every wasted line or break of character or going to the environment with little purpose or bailing on what you created is the emission of waste energy for your scene.

Doing nothing or doing the same thing over and over in an improv scene is not even good enough: entropy will occur over time. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't care. It will take wasted energy from your scene whenever it can. Being all over the map in an improv scene is also not good enough: disorder will occur, the scene will break down. We need to focus on what the scene is, add our energy to that, and let the audience add theirs.

In improvisation, we don't have much time. Everything we create in a moment is true, and everything is about that truth and that truth must be fueled with our energy now so that we don't let ourselves waste too much energy in time, allowing our scene to reach disorder.

I am not suggesting improvising quickly, just succinctly. For example, a scene could be about not doing something. In that case, not doing that thing is where you want to put your energy. Imagine a quiet scene with two people on the thin ice of a pond; if either of the two characters move or speak too loudly, the ice will break. The potential for the ice to break is what the scene is about, and all the improvisers' energy must go toward that.

Whatever the scene is about, once you lose the energy of it, you can never get it back. When we say we lost the energy of the scene, we really did, and it ain't ever coming back.

Thermodynamics means the dynamics of heat, or what happens whenever heat energy is exchanged. Improvisation involves all dif­ferent kinds of energy exchanges, and anytime there is an energy exchange in this universe, the laws of thermodynamics are lurking in the shadows. The second law is just waiting for the molecules of the scene to break, dispersing waste energy into the universe at random, never again to be recaptured in that particular form.