The 15 minute improv city
Everything you need from a show in 15 minutes, and you'll be in cycling distance to the Illuminati headquarters. What a deal.
‘15 minute cities’ is Carlos Moreno’s technical planning principle that kicked around the public policy circles I work in for years, before bored conspiracists got hold of it in 2020. Somehow1, they extrapolated it into a bizarre and abstract global conspiracy by vague ‘elites’ to control people into zones, ‘something something 5G’, forced vaccinations , low traffic neighbourhood ghettos etc, fuelled by the World Economic Forum’s unfortunately titled ‘Great Reset’.
It’s none of those things. 15 minute cities is the simple idea that essential services (healthcare, groceries, leisure activities, work) should be within 15 minutes of active travel or public transport from their home - ie by foot, bike, bus or train, but not private car - for everyone. Not much to object to, though few places have pursued or achieved it (there’s interesting work in Paris, London and Copenhagen (a *5* minute city). Mostly, it rebalances 70+ years of prioritising cars in urban planning, with all that’s dangerous and unpleasant about that from filthy air to thousands of avoidable deaths.
Having briefed many politicians for the WEF’s Davos event since 2013, I assure you there is no conspiracy. It’s mainly a bland industry conference in a Swiss leisure centre and some 3-star hotel lobbies. Imagine LinkedIn wearing North Face puffer jackets and snow shoes. Good luck booking a table at a Davos fondue restaurant in late January, let alone building a New World Order2.
The 15-minute improv set
Anyway, what has this got to do with perfoming improv? Well, what could be more improv-like than to exaggerate a simple premise into an implausible fantasy with no basis in reality (honk!). But no, I got thinking: What if the principles of 15 minute cities were applied to an improv set? Like a stand-up’s ‘tight-five’ or a sketch groups best 3 sketches, what if your improv team could give an audience everything they need in 15 minutes? It’d be more convenient and fun than struggling through silence in half your set towards a couple of polite chuckles.
When my group Do Not Adjust Your Stage (DNAYS) started in long-form improv, we performed a lot of short performance slots on mixed-bill nights in pubs, sometimes alongside stand-up and sketch acts. That was where we could get stage time. We did so many bad and unfulfilling sets, then they gradually got better.
How? In weekly rehearsals, we relentlessly practiced 10-15 minute sets so we could confidently nail them for audiences who may be new to improv and impatient to its rhythms. Instead of outstaying our welcome, we’d hopefully leave them wanting more at our own fuller length shows (plug!). Even now, with the privilege of longer sets, fellow performers highlight how quickly we cut to the chase. This owes a lot to those 100s of 15 minute drills a decade ago.
Why can’t I have more than 15 minutes to show off!? Gimme that stagetime. Chompchompchomp. yummyyummyyummy.
Real talk. 99% of long-form improv sets have no business being 30, 40 or 50 minutes long. Too many talented performers have tried and failed. There is no audience alive that can tolerate an hour-long Harold, Deconstruction or whatever format you half-learned second hand from an iO/UCB team you’ve only seen on the NY Comedy YouTube channel. Your sound-&-movement invocation opening is too weird for anyone who hasn’t heard of Del Close… and most of those who have. No-one will ever be as impressed with it as you are with yourselves. Being polite to other, the fellow acts on your bill will not appreciate your 45 minute-long Harold, while the audience bakes in the increasingly hot room.
I think I heard this from Adam Meggido of Showstopper, but if not, I’m sure he’d agree: You are charging people to watch a show, ‘put on a f*cking show’. Respect your audience and their time, and put consideration into what a specific show needs from you. Warm up properly. Just because it’s improvised, doesn’t mean it’s okay to roll on the stage off no warm-up, mail your show in while you catch-up, then get sad when it flopped. No-one has a right to that stage time. If all you have is 15 minutes, it’s smart to make that 15 minutes the best it can be3.
But I can’t do my improvised Squid Game parody in 15 minutes!?
To be clear, in the right hands, I do think a *good* narrative show or a genre parody show can still be fun for 45 mins+. There’s a reason they are the most sellable and successful improv shows, other than the ones crammed with TV comedians. The Edinburgh Fringe programme is packed with improvised musical, sci-fi, TV genre or Harry Potter parody shows every year.
However, if we’re honest, these lean heavily on the audience’s knowledge and enthusiasm for a popular genre or structure, rather than a love of improv per se4. Familiar tropes prop up attention through the more esoteric aspects of improvising. Will Hines’ blog on gimmicks speaks to this better than I can.
In an ‘15 minute improv-city’, performers have to be assertive. They have to make clear choices, supporting the hell out of ideas, while keeping scenes as accessible and relatable as possible. With 5 or 6 performers, teams have to edit decisively if all performers are going to get any time on stage at all. Your local improv theatre charges £100s to teach you these impulses, because they tend to make for good improv shows.
In a 15-minute set, you can still do a sad scene, a slow scene, or an angry scene, but you quickly learn the need to cleanse the audience’s palette with something different immediately after. Alternatively, if you choose it, a short set gives you leeway to do loads of similar scenes without outstaying your welcome.
Either way, performers need to be receptive and connected to their audience for that 15 minutes. Keep them within walking distance of what they need! Also, don’t be stupid, vaccinate your kids before the illuminati turns them into electric cars.
Endnotes
Where have you been? I literally forgot this exists: Thanks for asking. I’ve hugely rebalanced my life for my long-term happiness. That means much less improv and a far healthier lifestyle. I recommend. I’ll still be writing here sporadically. But, without performing and teaching 19 times a week, you’ll also get other snippets I think you’ll enjoy. Hope you stick with me when it isn’t 100% niche improv observations.
Watching: Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is very funny and a masterclass in making art that appeals across generations. ‘NEAT & TIDY’ has become an instant catchphrase in our household.
It also stole a march on mine and Tim Grewcock’s as-yet-unmade short film ‘Das Barge’ (‘Apocalypse Now on the canals of Brexit Britain’). In the meantime, you can enjoy a high stakes, slow-speed, narrowboat chase across the Pennines in claymation form instead.
Listening: ‘Young man with a bruised old soul, One snap to bring you back’
Stupidity
I recommend this episode of 99% Invisible for more on the mad 15 minute cities discourse, and the collective idiocy of the ‘Facebook Mikes with the sunglasses in their car profile pics’.
I’m having awful flashbacks to the numerous occasions Mr Meggido has likely watched me do this.
Showstopper is an excellent exception - they work phenomenally hard on their craft and I’ve seen them pull off sets from 5 to 90 mins superbly. There’s a reason they won an Olivier Award
Great read. Lovely to have you back Shaun!
Lloydie