Improv/Life Advice

I’ve always been amazed with people who can think quick on their feet. Put them on stage, no preparations, and they can still put on a solid show. So when I got the chance to meet the Founder of SPIT and the Co-founder/CEO of Third World Improv Gabe Mercado, I had to ask, how?

This was February 6, 2020. The fourth Pecha Kucha Night in Manila, where speakers are invited to tell their stories using the pecha kucha format. If you’re not familiar, pecha kucha is a form of presentation where the speaker prepares 20 slides and has 20 seconds to present each slide.

Towards the end of the night, all speakers are invited back for an open forum where an exchange of ideas takes place. By then, the audience has had its fill of wine or beer and is quite ripe with questions. This was my cue.

So I took the mic and asked Gabe, who was one of the speakers that night: What’s the trick behind thinking on your feet? Is there a secret or tip to improvising that you can share?

I thought his answer to my question was brilliant. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, improv is about asking yourself: “what do I give myself permission to be?”

He explains further, and I’m still paraphrasing: in improv, the common misconception is that the goal is to get a laugh. But it’s really about giving yourself the permission to be something or someone, be it an actor, comedian, teacher, etc. It is in the attempt to fill this role that it becomes funny or interesting. Once you’ve given yourself this permission, everything else is a side effect of that.

These were, of course, great notes on performance and improv, but I found that it’s also really solid life advice. After all, what is life but one huge attempt at improvisation? I have no experience with improv, but i think I’ve lived long enough to presume some of its similarities with living in general. Nothing is certain. The next moment is not promised. We’re all kind of just winging it.

And so I took it as life advice as well: a secret to living is giving yourself permission to be what you want.

This is especially relevant today because identity is so fluid and broad. Now, more than ever, we are given the autonomy and power to select our own selves at certain capacities, that we, too, get to decide. Before this data revolution, the industry had to pick you. Newspapers picked writers, production studios picked television hosts, radio stations picked DJs and artists, corporations picked managers. Although this is still partly true today, much of the agency has shifted to the side of “the chosen.”

You choose you.

One downside to this, as many can relate to, is the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that comes with selecting one’s self. We don’t feel that we deserve our role. We think that one day they’ll see right through us and find out the truth of our fraudulence.

But who’s “they” anyway? This is where Gabe’s advice takes center stage. There is no “they.” There is only you giving or not giving yourself permission to be what you want. Everything else is a side effect of that decision. You have to be your biggest fan and that starts with allowing yourself to be.