by Jules Munns, Director of Studies

I like telling this story to new improvisers because it often surprises them: I started doing improv because I hated improv. Well, not quite hated it. Friday mornings at drama school, we had improv classes with a gentle New Zealander called Ken. Simple mirroring exercises made me blush and sweat. Doing a scene in front of the class was as much as I could cope with, and I wanted to go straight home afterward. I had panic attacks. So I started doing more improv. For better or worse, I have always walked towards things I am unsuited to.

Because the truth is, I have always been (and I remain) an anxious person. An over-thinker, a planner, someone who feels out of sync and on edge, not quite in tune with the world. As a teenager, I gazed with envy at those who had unflustered ease and could move through the world unfazed by its complexity and instability. Sometimes I still do. 

Luckily, I am not the only one. Improv is not full of the naturally confident, at least not in my experience. Improv is full of people who have had to learn, hardscrabble, to function under pressure. People for whom group work and emotional expression were built  from scratch. The shy, the introverted, the neurodiverse. People who have been called weird a lot. People like me. Improv is a set of carefully constructed circumstances where for a moment, we can be our best and brightest selves. 

Alright, enough preamble. This is all very well (you say), but you haven’t answered the question. The question that comes up in emails from students, whispered to a classmate in the pub, or on the r/improv subreddit. ‘How do I deal with my nerves before my improv class?’

It’s frustratingly simple. You don’t. You just turn up and get on with it. Sure, in week one your nerves may be jangling and your adrenaline so high you think you’re having a cardiac event. But it will be less the next week. It’s like exposure therapy. Your body is gradually learning that there is no lasting trauma here, you can relax. Because in fact the question was wrong all along. You don’t need to do something before the class, you just need to get to the class. The improv itself is the thing that will, moment by moment and piece by piece, help you. It’s not a huge breakthrough (few worthwhile things are), it’s a slow unwinding of tension. A realisation that, somehow, things got a little easier while you weren’t looking. 

Because in the end, nerves don’t go away. They are, after all, a vigilance mechanism for when you face the unknown. In the end, as CS Lewis said about grief, the pain becomes part of the joy. You start to see the nerves as excitement. They power you. And over time, the thing you wanted to get rid of becomes the thing that keeps you coming back. That jolt of stimulation in a safe environment.

So yes, I still get nervous before shows (and classes and rehearsals and other things). But I understand what it is for and how it can serve me. I welcome it like an old friend. Mostly.