On Stage Without Scripts—Guts Improv Theatre

After the audience enters and the stage lights go on, the company begins with “Harold,” a type of long-form improvisation. The actors introduce themselves, then ask the audience: “Please give me a word that begins with the ‘k’ sound.” Someone offers “keke” (the sound of chuckling), and someone else “Ke P” (the nickname of Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je). Finally, the actors accept “Ke­xue Mian” (“Science Noodles”), a brand of instant noodles, typically eaten uncooked, that is popular with schoolchildren. From that suggestion, the four actors take turns coming up with new words by association to use in that night’s performance.

The 80-minute improvisation seems to pass in the blink of an eye. The actors and the audience together embark on a marvelous journey, riffing on themes such as homosexual romance, single parenting, and workplace strife. Eventually, in different scenes, homosexual lovers, a grandma and grandkids, and a single mother and her child all eat “Science Noodles” as a heartwarming conclusion to their dramas.

Improv dispenses with scripts. Performers take suggestions from the audience, using them to craft improvisational scenarios.

Guts Improv Theatre began putting on “Harold” performances last year. The method is based on a style of improvisation developed in Chicago in the 1960s that interweaves various storylines without the use of scripts. Imagine a film where the actors also serve as screenwriters and directors, performing their duties all at once. It is a classic model of long-form improvisation.

In addition to the various kinds of long- and short-form improvisation, there is also “theatersports,” where two teams of actors act out short scenarios based on audience suggestions. The team that earns the loudest applause wins.

The method of training that Guts employs is very playful in spirit. Viola Spolin, known as the founder of American improvisational theater, began by using improvisation to raise the creativity and confidence of children. Only later did she gradually turn those techniques into classes for adults.

Wu ­Hsiao-­hsien, Guts’ executive director and founder, is the leading figure in Taiwanese improvisational theater. She explains that improv isn’t just a form of performance. It’s also a form of self-reflection.

“On stage without a script, actors need to have an intuitive understanding of each other. That kind of understanding is built on trust. And trust is built on familiarity.”

Improv dispenses with scripts. Performers take suggestions from the audience, using them to craft improvisational scenarios.

Wu, who was born in 1976 and studied drama at National Taiwan University of Arts, has loved the theater since she was little. While enrolled in a theater management program in the United States, she had the good fortune of being exposed to improvisational theater, and it changed her life.

In addition to her schoolwork, she also had an internship with a theater in San Francisco and still managed to take some additional courses at an improv workshop. Though she was running herself ragged, she took those improv classes out of fear that none would be available in Taiwan.

“I came up empty handed on Google,” she recalls. “I kept hoping I would find an improvisational theater group somewhere in Taiwan. But I never did.” On the night before she returned to Taiwan in 2003, Wu said goodbye to her workshop teacher with a heavy heart, and the teacher asked her why she looked so depressed. When she explained the circumstances, her teacher asked: “Why don’t you teach improv in Taiwan?” The question immediately lifted her spirits, and not long after she got back, she began teaching Taiwan’s first improvisational theater class at Shi­lin Community College in Taipei.

At Shi­lin she came up with the company’s name: Guts Improv Theatre. When she formally established the company, the name really resonated with students.

“To come and take a class really requires you to pluck up your courage!” Wu says. She herself had felt quite anxious taking improv classes at the workshop. Half way into the class, she often felt like making a sudden exit, simply because “being up on stage without any script or prepared lines can be terrifying!”

Currently Guts’ most senior company member is Renee Wang, who joined in 2005. Wang has more than 100 ­performances under her belt now, but she recalls that when she first joined she would often think about performances while driving or sleeping. She had a lot of doubts about her performances. She was hardly brimming with confidence. But later Wang realized that the key was in relaxing and letting herself go. Only then could she focus in the moment and really grasp the ideas of her companions. Too much attachment would kill the performance’s life and creativity.

“Improv allows me to live in the moment and to look at myself with greater honesty,” says Wu Hsiao-hsien, executive director of Guts Improv Theatre.

By adopting an ethos of working together and letting your companions shine, improvisational performance has a special side benefit: You learn how to communicate better.

Wang cites an example: She once used improvisational methods to resolve disputes she was having with her family. When they got into fights, she suggested that each person should only be allowed to say one word at a time, letting one’s antagonist finish one’s thoughts. This forced them to think about the other’s point of view and helped them to overcome disagreements amicably.

In improvisational theater, one’s on-stage performance often draws from one’s own life experiences to some degree. And audiences find those sorts of performances the most realistic and moving.

Improvisation is often labeled as being crude and shallow, nothing more than a kind of game. But consider the basic nature of theater, suggests Wu: “Theater is simply about getting people to suspend disbelief and have real emotional responses to fabricated scenes. So why is scripted theater a truer form of the art?”

Improvisational actors are extremely busy on stage. They’ve got to remember what has happened before them, so that the storyline doesn’t fall apart. Meanwhile, they’ve got to be constantly attentive to their fellow actors, readying themselves to play the “ball” when it is thrown into their court. Only with that awareness can they know how to act next.

In 2004 the company formed and began holding classes. They started out accepting invitations to perform wherever they could. Now, a decade later, Guts Improv Theatre has its own exclusive performance and rehearsal space. Currently, Guts has ten members who are full-time professional actors, and holds rehearsals two to four days a week. These are impressive and rare achievements for a theater group in Taiwan.

“It’s not that I’ve done such a great job,” Wu says. “It’s that improvisational theater is just so awesome.” Wu says that she has come to be known as the founder of improv in Taiwan only because she had the courage to get into it a little earlier than others. “A few years ago I worried that I wasn’t doing a good job,” she recalls. “It was only after going back to the US to take some more classes that I realized I was indeed teaching the art correctly.”

No form of theater better demonstrates the idea that “life is like a play.”

Guts’ actors bring their own life experiences, personalities, and worldviews up on stage and then seek inspiration from the audience before launching their performances. The company has created one work of improv after another that is deeply rooted in real-life situations.

Improvisational theater is indeed a lot like life: It changes unpredictably, and it provides nothing to hold on to but the moment. So why not go to Guts Improv Theatre and take in one of its one-of-a-kind performances?