Mick Napier seems like an interesting guy.  He’s a bad-ass improviser and no-nonsense kind of artist.  I can’t imagine him as a teacher, though.  When you read the prose in Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out, he seems like he would be pretty impatient unless you were a talented and imaginative performer before you darkened his door.  His book almost seems like a preemptive strike, as in read this before you show up to his class.  Fix a few things and then maybe I can teach you something. 

Napier’s book reads like an intermediate improviser’s “how to” manual.  You have already learned how to accept other’s offers, to “yes and.”  You have learned the basic tools: scene starts, characters and who-what-where.  Now, you have to learn how to work with those tools to make something that people will actually want to watch. 

While his advice is sometimes tough, it’s also practical and pragmatic.  I especially like the exercises you can do alone, because I simply don’t have the time to do as much improv practice as I’d like.  I wish I could attend more jams, workshops and practice, but I’m always balancing that with work, side projects and a family.  I keep reading this book in different ways.  Only now am I reading it in a traditional sense, from front to back.  The first time I read it, I read those chapters which seemed most relevant to me and my needs, and then I read the exercises in the back as a way to practice whenever I had a few moments alone.

This book is turning out to be one of my favorite improv guides.  It’s well worn and contemplated because it’s one of the few books I’ve read on the subject that really delves deeply into the challenges of creating fresh, interesting and (gasp) funny material.    But it also helps you remember to take chances and get away from self-judging, which my guess is one of the biggest challenges to performers.  It is certainly my biggest challenge.  

Buy Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out from your locally owned bookseller.