While we’re at it, let’s stop the misogyny in our improv too

My fellow male improvisers and I like to consider ourselves a progressive bunch. Our theaters – many of them female-run – have produced Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Melissa McCarthy and Broad City. We view the women on our teams as equals, giving us a post-feminism free reign to make light of rape, sexual assault, spousal abuse… Hey, we’re just going with the flow of the show, after all. And that’s OK, because improvisers are smart. We’re above the misogynistic muck of the stand-up world, where female comics face discrimination on all fronts – drunk hecklers, sexist bookers, male comics. #YesAllWomen doesn’t apply to us.

As a joke, I almost hit “publish” right there, but this discussion is more deserving than that. Admittedly, I’ve been debating with myself over whether I should even be writing this. On one hand, the #YesAllWomen posts have created such an important conversation, and we should LISTEN to it rather than get more “male experts” to weigh in. On the other hand, part of the problem is that these have been trivialized as “women’s issues” for too long, making it too easy for men to ignore a problem that their attitudes and behavior is the cause of. So I’m going to talk about it – and not just because I think male improvisers should feel guilty or let political/social pressures dictate our comedy, or because I’m still hoping to get laid from an improv blog. (It could happen! No, it won’t.)

Yes, it’s true that the improv world is a far more progressive one than stand-up or “the industry.” Here, women don’t have to wait for someone else to give them an opportunity – they’re in control. It’s a community of the people, a support network of classes and indie nights and house teams, allowing once-marginalized individuals to thrive. Go see a show at any major theater and you’ll see that women seem to be doing quite well.

But we’d be fools to think that the improv community is somehow immune to the misogyny that infects every other aspect of society. We see our fair share, both on and off stage. The evidence may not be overwhelmingly vicious enough to trigger Jezebel headlines and Bechdel Tests, but it’s there, and it’s not hard to find. Men outnumber women 2 to 1 (by the most generous estimates), and those stats are only the surface of an oftentimes hostile environment:

An environment in which women are valued as potential sexual partners and then flatly ignored when they reveal their relationship statuses, or in some cases, ostracized after their relationships with more established male improvisers end.





An environment in which audiences won’t laugh as hard at women playing male characters as men playing female characters, and how bold, aggressive female players are seen as “wrecking balls” rather than their “wild card” male counterparts.





An environment in which women are accused of having an “easier” prospect getting on house teams because of gender quotas.





An environment in which a female improviser is regularly, intentionally exploited for a quick laugh – ignored, talked over, ordered to make a sandwich, labeled a prostitute or stripper or ditz – forcing her to make an awkward meta move to “take back” the show.





An environment that celebrates all-male teams gleefully depicting women getting beaten and raped, all in the name of serving the game of the scene or honoring the audience’s suggestion.

Worst of all, this kind of behavior results in no consequences for the men who perpetrate it. In fact, audiences often reward them for it.

Of course, sexism is a tricky thing to police in the improv world. The instructors I’ve had at iO and UCB have done a fairly good job calling out blatantly offensive or mean-spirited moves. But how does an instructor encourage a student to be confident and just make a choice – any choice – and trust that his scene partner will support him, just to turn around and say that some choices are off-limits? Should we tell our teams to avoid group games that begin with “Hookers, get in here…” because some team members might be uncomfortable playing those roles? Indeed, I can think of at least a few situations where a prostitute group game, or even a depicted act of sexual violence, would be totally justified on stage, and I hesitate to suggest we self-censor ourselves in the name of political correctedness. Furthermore, the misogyny that’s happening off-stage is reflective of a much broader societal problem, and there’s only so much we as improvisers can do on-stage to remedy that… which is why I’m glad to see these #YesAllWomen posts, which have been far more influential than any improv blog will be.

But here are two simple things that we, as improvisers, CAN do help bring an end to the hostility our female scene partners are experiencing on stage. They require very little effort and, I predict, will lead to better improv as a whole.

1. Avoid the “mean game.”

This is a note I heard from Will Hines recently, that improvisers will often choose to play characters who are overly critical or cruel and gang up on a lower-status character. It’s a low-hanging fruit that gets a quick pop out of the audience, with an easy-to-follow blueprint of how the game should heighten. More often than not, however, the mean game manifests itself as a group scene in which a low-status performer is bullied by the rest of the team, trapped in a situation where he/she can either try to outwit his/her teammates and “win,” or play into their mockery and “lose.” In either case, the game creates an uncomfortable level of mean-spiritedness that risks turning off the audience and leaves the victim out there to fry, with no one left on the backline to edit.

And when that victim is played by the team’s one female, it can be a little hard to watch.

The mean game comes from a place of desperation, when other game moves have been bypassed or ignored, and players feel the pressure to make something, anything, happen. We can avoid it by being better listeners and placing our scene partners in situations where they feel free to actively play their characters – not passively defend their characters – and by making choices of group games that will be fun for the entire group to play together – and not necessitate that one person be “it.”

2. Allow the conversation.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to uprooting the misogyny from our improv is that no one feels comfortable talking about it. Usually, a show that contains a lot of misogynistic moves will be a bad show, and a coach will be able to point out a dozen of things wrong with it – lack of agreement, unclear gameplay, no group support – before sexism even enters the discussion. And if the show happens to go well, coaches will be reluctant to dampen the mood by saying something like, “That scene was hilarious, but did you have to dick-slap her?” And that’s IF there’s any post-show discussion at all.

Furthermore, I have heard of several instances when women have been shamed for bringing up sexism after shows, accused of deprioritizing the comedic success of the show in favor of a feminist agenda. (I’ve been asked by some of them not to be mentioned in this blog… just to give you a sense of how concerned some women are that even having their discomfort with being sexually exploited known will damage their reputation with some dudes in the community.)

Even if we don’t want to change the way we play, we have to at least allow the conversation. We have to recognize what moves we made and learn from them. If I play abusive husbands two shows in a row, even by accident, I need someone to point that out to my face, and I shouldn’t make whoever pointed it out feel guilty for doing so.

Whether or not you agree if actual examples of misogyny in the improv community are as widespread or serious as the title of this post suggests, we nonetheless have to hold the perpetrators responsible when it does happen, and stop treating the issue like a hurdle only women have to deal with.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview Charna Halpern did with Splitsider two years ago, when she was asked what she would say to women in comedy who are discouraged:

The women who are discouraged see themselves as victims and they have to stop that. They say “Men steamroll me.” You just have to make good choices and not allow yourself to be steamrolled. Tina [Fey] and Amy [Poehler] were never steamrolled. They were never victims. You just have to make choices. I see women like Stephnie Weir. Someone when she was performing here said to her — a man said to her — “Honey, I brought some people home for dinner.” And she said “Well that’s fine, but I did ask you in front of people to please call me Madame President.” So, you see, you can make choices for yourself. You don’t have to be the woman who makes dinner. She would also be willing to lose. She would. I remember another scene that her husband did with her before they were husband and wife and he said to her — he played a thirteen year old boy — he said “I took my bond money from my Bar Mitzvah and cashed it in so I could buy myself a prostitute” and he handed her the money and she said “You’re thirteen?” and he said “Yes” and she said “So am I!” It was the most heartbreaking, beautiful scene I ever saw in my life. She was never a victim and that’s what I tell women. I don’t teach women how to improvise. I don’t teach men how to improvise. I teach players how to improvise. You have to make strong choices for yourself. There isn’t a way for women to play and men to play. You have to be equal and you have to make each other look good and you have to make strong choices for yourself. I’ve seen men get steamrolled just as I’ve seen women get steamrolled. You have to be out there, you have to be bold, you have to trust and be trusted. Stop being a victim. Just refuse.

I think encouraging women to make more empowering choices is a great first step, but it doesn’t speak to the broader improv culture in which men are rewarded for steamrolling women. Stephanie Weir is a brilliant role model for female improvisers, and the two examples Charna mentioned are the best examples of a woman taking back the show that I’ve ever heard. But maybe women shouldn’t have to take back the show. This is a collaborative art form, not a battle of the sexes. I would hate that the best advice we can give a female improviser is to be prepared to cleverly recontextualize the scene whenever a man labels her with a role that offends her as a woman.

How about this? Maybe in addition to telling women, “Don’t let yourselves become a victim,” we should tell men, “Hey, stop victimizing women. Right there, when you intentionally cut her off right as she was saying something in the group game, and you got a laugh for doing it, that was an asshole move. Stop doing that shit.”