What is Quantum Improv?

Quantum Improv suggests we can become better improvisers by studying some of the smallest elements at work in an improv scene. These boil down to the choices improvisers make. It is true and I agree with the opinion that if you get too technical you lose some of the spontaneity of the work and that's what it's all about, isn't it? There are no rules. If you make hard and fast rules that improvisers are supposed to follow they will not be "in the moment," as an improviser should.

I'm not sure I totally agree. I believe it is like learning and playing a sport. There are techniques and skills that are learned, relearned and drilled every day, even during seasons of performance.

Everyone agrees that the beginning improviser needs to learn to build with their fellow improviser. We call this the yes, and rule. We teach beginning improvisers how to open up their spontaneous minds so the creativity can flow, and then how to say yes.

But I see 4, 5, even 6 year or more veteran improvisers struggling on a stage to build a scene with their partner(s), to keep a scene going, and to move a scene towards a conclusion - let alone be interesting and/or entertaining enough for themselves and especially for an audience.


Quantum Improv concentrates on developing skills and techniques the improviser can use to do all of those things, starting from some of the most basic and simple building blocks of scene work.

This blog will be a place to generate and develop theories and practices that can help this happen for the improviser. I will use it as a forum to introduce techniques for better improv, discuss and comment on topics I see and hear in the improv community, and whenever the energy hits to rant and rail about this or that choice I see improvisers make and habits they form.

The first several posts will introduce a scientific model as a foundation for the work to be discussed and developed in Quantum Improv. This model will not only serve as an analogy for the work to be done, but it will also suggest some correlation between natural laws in our world and their effects on objects in our world, and natural laws of energy in improv that shape not only the work accomplished (the outcome) but the work set forth (the beginning).