Book Review: Impro, by Keith Johnstone

I picked up Impro by Keith Johnstone because it was recommended during my time at Palantir and is meant to inspire an better understanding of human behaviour. Johnstone was a drama teacher at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and later founded the Theatre Machine and developed Theatresports. Despite Impro feeling like an acting book (and it's probably quite relatable for actors), Impro isn't really about acting. It's about why we became less interesting as we grew up, how to think about social interactions, and how to become a more interesting character as we navigate the complex world ahead of us.

Status

Johnstone's core observation is about status — not socio-economic status, but the constant, moment-to-moment status transactions happening in every conversation. Low status says "don't bite me, I'm not tasty." High status says "don't come near, I bite." Once you see it, you can't unsee it. People are constantly raising or lowering their own status and others' in dialogue — you just have to train yourself to notice it.

Status can be used as a lens to analyse any social interaction. Consider the master-servant dynamic: both parties act as if all space belongs to the master. The servant's primary function is to elevate the master's status. They move differently, speak differently, occupy space differently. This isn't about class or money — it's about the subtle game being played in every exchange. Who holds eye contact? Who looks away first? Who interrupts? Who waits to be acknowledged?

Your status also varies by context. You might be high status at work — confident, decisive, taking up space — but low status at home, deferring to a partner or parent. Johnstone's advice for actors is to decide your status relative to others before a scene begins, then do everything it takes to stick to it. But the broader point is that status transactions are happening constantly whether you're aware of them or not. Flexibility in playing different statuses — being able to raise or lower yourself as the situation demands — improves not just improvisation but social awareness generally. Most of us are stuck in patterns we never chose.

Spontaneity

Johnstone's claim is that creativity is what comes before your mind filters it. The filter — the thing that makes you pause, second-guess, smooth over — is imposed by society and bad teaching. School made you duller. Usually the first thing that pops into your head is the thing worth exploring. But you've been trained to suppress it, to reach for something safer or more "appropriate."

There's an exercise he describes: mime something, then immediately answer a question about what you're miming. What are you holding? Say the first thing that comes to mind. Don't think. If you're ever stuck, just say "My god, what's that?" — anything to keep moving. The whole book is filled with these little games designed to bypass the internal censor. Another trick: you can "work" someone by asking them questions that lead them down into a funny or unexpected hole. "What, you got it? The device? Well help me put it in..." You're not creating the content — you're just asking questions, and their spontaneous answers create the scene.

In improv, it's more fun to say yes to everything. Accept offers. Make interesting offers back. If someone throws you into a situation, the response should be "yes, and..." — not blocking, not deflecting. Johnstone argues that people with dull lives often think their lives are dull by chance. In reality, everyone chooses what kinds of events happen to them through their conscious patterns of blocking and yielding. If you say no to enough invitations, opportunities, and strange situations, you end up with exactly the life you've selected for — whether you meant to or not.

He quotes a psychology paper on "yeasayers":

Yeasayers seem to be "id-dominated" personalities, with little concern about or positive evaluation of an integrated control of their impulses. They say they express themselves freely and quickly. Their "psychological inertia" is very low — very few secondary processes intervene as a screen between underlying wish and overt behavioural response. The yeasayers desire and actively search for emotional excitement in their environment. Novelty, movement, change, adventure — these provide the external stimuli for their emotionalism. In the same way, they seek and respond quickly to internal stimuli: their inner impulses are allowed ready expression... the yeasayer's general attitude is one of stimulus acceptance, by which we mean a pervasive readiness to respond affirmatively or yield willingly to both outer and inner forces demanding expression.

Most of us are too far in the other direction. We've built elaborate filtering systems that protect us from embarrassment but also from interesting things happening. I felt more inspired to speak to random people after reading this section – the old lady next to me on the plane, the dude behind me in the coffee line. Interacting with other humans can be really fun, and you never know where it might lead you.

Narrative Skills

A story, Johnstone argues, is where there's a common thread of reincorporation — you bring back earlier elements. It isn't random. The audience feels satisfaction when something from the beginning returns at the end, transformed. Free association generates material; reincorporation turns it into narrative.

Johnstone has a trick for getting someone unstuck creatively. If they insist they can't make up a story, tell them to ask you questions about "your" story, and you'll only answer yes, no, or maybe. They ask: "Is there a man?" Yes. "Is he old?" No. "Is he in trouble?" Yes. Suddenly they're building the story themselves. They thought they couldn't do it, but the questions prove they could all along — they just needed permission to externalise the process. The creativity was always there; the block was psychological.

There are exercises throughout. One:

Person A makes the craziest story they can for 30 seconds.
Person B has to connect it all and make it cohere.

This is the tension between free association and reincorporation — between generating wild material and shaping it into something that holds together.

Another:

Make someone pretend to be interviewed as if they're an expert in something random you invent on the spot. They have to improvise expertise.
Or take that interview format and make it more environmental — you're on a street, what street? What shop is behind you? Who's that approaching? What did you just step on? Each question throws them off guard but the answers start building a world.

His rules for improv storytelling are simple: interrupt a routine (the audience assumes they know where it's going, then you change direction), keep the action on stage (don't get diverted to something happening elsewhere or in the past), and don't cancel the story. A good story is one where the audience resonates with the setup — they feel like they've heard it before, they know where it's headed — and then something changes that direction. The familiar becomes strange. But it's hard to do in practice because our instinct is to protect ourselves from the unknown, to steer back toward safety.

What I'm still thinking about

Johnstone makes a compelling case that education systematically suppresses spontaneity — that kids start creative and school beats it out of them. I wonder if it's a function of society though, as much as it is education. If a child is homeschooled, does the same happen?

The status lens is powerful but also slightly paranoid. Once you start seeing every interaction as a status transaction, it's hard to stop. Is that person making small talk, or are they subtly lowering my status? Am I laughing at that joke because it's funny or because I'm playing low status? There's probably a version of this awareness that's helpful — noticing dynamics you were blind to before — and a version that's neurotic. I don't know where the boundary is.

The dull life passage is harsh: we think our lives are boring by circumstance, but actually we've selected for boringness through a thousand small refusals. I should just be way more energetic in all the things I do, step outside of the bounds, and see where it takes me.

Try writing down a list of the first things that pop into your head, Johnstone suggests at one point. No filtering, no editing. Screen. Baby. Moist. Turns. Floor. Against. Wall. Upside down. Crew. Heel. Magic. Fairydust. Green. Hippo. Sunny. Sauced. Pan. That's what comes before the filter.

The book is from 1979 but doesn't feel dated. If anything, the observations about spontaneity feel more relevant now — we're more filtered than ever, more aware of being watched, more careful about what we say. Johnstone was trying to free actors from their inhibitions, but the lessons apply to meetings, conversations, writing, life. Notice the status games. Trust your first instinct more. Say yes more than you block. Don't cancel the story.