Active Selflessness and the Improv Cube of Strength

I’ve always been fascinated by this question: What makes a great improv team? The fact that we move in packs, and there are no defined hierarchies or position assignments within these packs, is the key thing that distinguishes improv from other forms of comedy. And the fun-killing scientist inside me believes that if we can unlock the secrets of group dynamics, we can take improv as an art form to a whole new level.

So let’s revisit that question. In the past, I’ve suggested that shared comedic perspective, common on-stage experience, and team size are key variables. But lately I’ve begun to see improvisers in a few new dimensions that I think, when combined, give us a new interesting way to think about our roles within our teams, and how the right mix of those roles correlates to more successful teams.

In other words, I’ve created a new way to creepily judge other improvisers, and I want to share this weapon with the world.

So when we ask “what type of improviser are you on your team,” one common answer is that they lean one of two ways:

Active & Passive

Improv teams contain “active” and “passive” team members, which are two qualities that fall on either sides of the same continuum.

ACTIVE players are the ones who tend to initiate scenes, edit, aggressively support other scenes with tag-outs and walk-ons, drive the opening, etc.

PASSIVE players are the ones who tend to respond to initiations, go easy with tag-outs and walk-ons, hang back and go with the flow of the show, listen hard and give themselves time to process things before making a move.

Now of course, a player’s activeness or passiveness is largely relative to the team he or she is on, and even which team members show up to the show that night. For example, I consider myself very active on my indie team, but very passive on one of my house teams. And on my iO Harold team, Colleen threatens to make me do pushups if I get too chatty, so I tend to play passive. (Kidding, Colleen’s threats are never that tame.)

The point is, how “hands on” each player is in the show is an expression of that team’s dynamic.

Selfless & Self-Serving

Same deal here. We’re all a mix of these two qualities, but we tend to lean toward one end of the spectrum. Improvisers are on all kinds of spectrums. Some of us more than others.

SELFLESS players do the grunt work. They label, justify, clarify the game, wave back on other players and set them up to call back their great character, to connect threads late in the show. They pass and set up shots for the Jordans of the team.



SELF-SERVING players see themselves as the Jordans. They want the ball. They tend to set themselves up to play to their strengths, to carry the burden of the unusual element of the scene, to be the focus of attention.

Let’s be clear. Self-serving players are NOT necessarily “selfish.” We often need improvisers to be more self-serving. If you initiate a premise that requires Mr. T as a real estate agent, YOU should play Mr. T. We shouldn’t feel guilty over taking the ball and driving the scene, so long as we’re still responding to our scene partner.



Playing selflessly requires more patience. Selfless moves are far too undervalued, especially here in Los Angeles, and especially during improv auditions, which we’re smack in the middle of at the moment.

But we need selflessness. A team solely composed of self-serving players can be very good, but it’s probably not going to be great. Players would be too focused on their own role in the show and not enough on each other’s roles, and the brilliant overarching connections tend to get missed.

I know it’s weird to use specific examples, but I consider players like Craig Cackowski and Zach Woods to be truly selfless players. They tend to be the ones in the show who make a simple move that sends us off to the races. I could give examples, but I feel like you’ve seen it.

I’ll admit that I’ve also seen Craig and Zach play huge, bonkers characters and cash in on big laughs. They can be self-serving too. That’s OK. And again, this is relative to whatever team you’re playing with.

Now, when we lay these two continuums on top of each other, we get some interesting categories of team members:

Imagine these two axes exist on a plane or grid, and we can plot ourselves and team members in different quadrants. Where would you land? Closer to the middle, closer to the edge of the graph at any places? Do you think that placement is consistent show to show, or does it change depending on your team, and depending on the night?



I know, this is super nerdy, but shut up! You became a nerd the moment you clicked on this post.

Let’s start in the upper-left and talk about how the two traits relate to each other:

PASSIVE/SELFLESS players tend to be more hands-off for the show, but when the show requires their service, they deliver. The team is out of ideas for that third beat of a tag-run? No fear, here comes the passive/selfless player to save the momentum and edit or tag back to the source scene. Everyone’s been hitting funny lines so hard that there’s no escape from this group scene? The passive/selfless player has an exit plan. Too many of these players, however, and no one ever steps out to initiate a scene.

Directly beneath is the PASSIVE/SELF-SERVING corner. These players can be both the most beloved and the most maddening to work with. They’re on board for anything and their character work is great, but they tend to only participate in the show when there’s an opportunity for them to shine. They’re the ringers who saunter on late into a scene, say one line as the sexy bailiff, and bring the house down. You need passive/self-serving players for peas-in-a-pod scenes and straight-up great acting, but too many of them can be problematic, for obvious reasons.

Sliding right, we get the ACTIVE/SELF-SERVING players. These are the most visible members of the team. They steer the show with initiations, edits, and supportive moves. They tend to give themselves plenty to do in a show, because they trust themselves with that burden more than the others. This is the most crowded corner of the quadrant, from my estimation. For most improvisers, it’s the most fun way to play: Initiate your own hilarious premise in the first beat, play the hell out of a fun character, then make sure that character comes back into the show at all the right moments. You’re the star! Starpower doesn’t necessarily lead to great improv teams.

Finally, the ACTIVE/SELFLESS players. They’re out there steering the show as much as the players we just talked about, but they leave no trace. Active/selfless players straight-man by making game-moves, sharing the burden alongside the unusual character. They label and justify like it’s second nature. All their moves seem to benefit others. While other players may get the spotlight, these people are the ones the improv nerds argue are truly the best on the team. And unlike the other categories, you can never have too many of them on a team.

The F-Axis

I’m gonna get gross now and add another axis to this, bringing us into the third dimension. I call it the F-Axis, and I define it as: “whomever the audience considers to be the strongest comedic voice(s) on the team.”

In less sophisticated terms… who’s the funniest.

I fucking hate this axis. It’s the worst. For one thing, it’s not even real. Whereas the other two axes are adjustable variables that depend on how we see ourselves within a team, the F-Axis is an imaginary constant that comes from the audience’s perception of a show on any given night. We have no control over it.

Still, it plays a large role in the success of a team. Because, whichever of those four categories that the audience rewards the most, whomever they identify as the overall “voice” of the team, influences the direction and the priorities of the team.

Are the “funniest” players (from that dumb, untrustworthy audience’s point of view) the Passive-Selfless ones? If so, the other three types of players are going to appear stage-hoggy and selfish by comparison. “There’s one funny person trying to hold that mess together… he/she should be with a better group.”

What about the Passive-Self-Serving ones? In that case, the players trying to give the show structure, direction and meaning will always be working against a crowd that prefers to reward players for subverting those aims. “When’s that guy/girl gonna come back out? That character was so funny.”

Often, the Active-Self-Serving group gets the love – they are the most visible. There’s nothing wrong with that. These teams are well liked, but they’re exactly the sum of their parts. “Everyone on that team is so good, and I always like their shows, but…”

That leaves us with the Active-Selfless players again. Something special happens when the players who stand out, whether it’s all of them or just some of them, also happen to be the ones who play both actively and selflessly. People go apeshit for these teams. The Heydays and the Dummys, the JVs and the Smokeses, the Lou Malnati’s Brown Line Blueses. (I don’t know the names of current beloved Chicago teams… TJ & Dave? People still love them, right?)

And we’ve arrived, finally, at my point:

Improv teams that prioritize active selflessness are the most successful on stage and the most cherished by audiences.

The aim of every improv show should be an ensemble collaborating with each other, leaning on each other, building off each other’s moves to create comedy that none of them could come up with on their own. Of course we want to see great comedic actors kill it with characters, serve up perfect one-liners, even fuck around with each other a little as they jockey for the helm.

But what makes improv different from other forms of comedy is that we need each other. We don’t improvise in spite of the seven other people on our team, we improvise FOR those seven other people.

If you imagine those three axes in three-dimensional space, forming a “cube” with eight sections, the best teams occupy the section marked in blue, seen in this very crude sketch on my dry erase board. (Big thanks to Matt Cavedon, Darius de la Cruz, and Nate Ballard for insisting I depict this as a big dumb cube.)

BEHOLD, THE IMPROV CUBE OF STRENGTH:

So what do we gain from this monstrosity? Anything? Another reductive metric for pigeonholing artists? A misleading visual that people will take out of context without reading any of the explanation?

Remember, those active/passive and selfless/self-serving lines are variables. There’s certainly a core to your comfort level in your style of play, BUT how active or selfless you are can change, with discipline and reps.

If you feel yourself playing passively, you can force yourself to initiate and edit scenes. Alternatively, you can restrain yourself and pocket your tag-out idea for a later beat. You can transform your self-serving walk-on as the sexy bailiff into a more purely functional move that gets the scene out of a goddamn courtroom, because those are always the worst and extremely difficult to edit for some reason.

We don’t have to be locked into our roles on a team. We can push ourselves out of our habits and aim for something different. And I believe that if we aim to participate more and play more generously, our teams will find the greatness our art form is capable of.

So what do we think, is Drew Coolidge in the Passive/Selfless/Funny cube or the Active/Self-Serving/Unfunny cube? He goes back and forth for me.