Playing the Protagonist in Narrative Improv

Lots of people fall in love with improv because of the collaborative nature of the work. They love the connection it brings with others, and the egalitarian feeling of creating theatre together in the moment.

So when it comes to playing the protagonist in narrative improv, particularly in full-length stories, it can feel like quite a challenge. It can even feel like the antithesis of improv itself.

This is especially true if you got into improv precisely because of those bad experiences of being made to stand in the background holding a spear in the school play. Maybe you wanted to do something more interesting. Maybe you wanted a bit of agency.

Anyway, there are qualities we usually associate with protagonists, but there are the qualities that make someone a useful improv protagonist. Having swum around in this for a while, I think there are three qualities that remain particularly useful for us as improvisers.

They are the main character

This might sound simple, but it’s surprisingly hard to get an improv ensemble of people who like each other to agree on making one person the focus of the story.

Of course sometimes you can have a buddy story, or a romance, or a family story where more than one main role is essential. But getting into the practice of identifying who a story is really about, and how that person can be changed as an individual, is good practice. This is true even if many of the satellite characters around them change too.

People often report to me that they feel guilty about scene hogging. But being able to step into the lead role can be a very generous improv move.

At the other end of the scale, some people feel self-conscious or pressured when placed in the role of the protagonist. They try to push it away or resist it. Unfortunately, in improv there are few things more likely to make you the protagonist than not wanting to be the protagonist. It just makes you too darn interesting and/or low status. More on that another time.

In the meantime, I’ll say this: being able to be the star or the support are both essential skills. If your class or company is practising well, the ability to take on either role should be interchangeable among cast members.

If that’s not happening, I’d suggest coaching people to take on plot functions they don’t normally gravitate towards.

They want something (or are motivated by something)

It’s pretty hard to tell a story about a person with no desire. Honestly, it could be argued that it’s pretty hard to do a great improv scene without an emotional attachment to something or someone.

Hopefully, we can make our audience care about our characters by having our characters care about something.

I’m not a fan of the formulaic “come out in scene one and lay out your dream or want” approach. That is, unless it’s coming from a spontaneous place rather than a sense of obligation.

However, this is where the ensemble can really help discover who and what the story is about in a more organic way.

We can make statements about how we feel. Or have strong reactions to things. Maybe build out the world, endow our scene partners with names and characteristics, and do walk-ons to support and strengthen offers that have already been made.

Then we see what sticks and what gets picked up by the rest of the ensemble.

It’s not unusual for the protagonist to change during an improv show. But if the cast can agree on what feels important and meaningful, and to whom, in the opening scene or scenes, that’s a great place to start.

They will be changed, or learn something, by the end

There are lots of amazing story forms available for improvising. We often use Kenn Adams’ Story Spine from How to Improvise a Full-Length Play.

My own foolproof improv story structure, though, is just: Status Quo – Change – Status Quo.

In other words:

What is the world like at the beginning?
What changes when the story gets going?
How does it all land when the dust settles?

In some stories, the hero goes off on an adventure and learns they had it all right in the first place. Dorothy travels to Oz only to realise there’s no place like home. Ebenezer Scrooge, on the other hand, has a full personality transplant.

As a protagonist in improv, the pressure to wrap up the story “correctly” can feel huge. It often leads to decision paralysis in the final third of the tale.

In improv, we don’t have to know what the change will be at the beginning of the story. In fact, I think we’re better off not getting attached to that change at all. When we’re working in an ensemble, we often have different ideas about where the story is heading in real time.

This is where the superpower of callbacks and reincorporation, so effective in short-form, can be a magical salve. The end is in the beginning. We look back at what we’ve already created in order to decide what can happen next.

And if you do find yourself as the protagonist that night, you don’t need to know how you’ll change. You just need to stay open when your scene partners offer you opportunities for change.

Listen, and you’ll find the answer. Listening is the willingness to be changed, after all.