What Are “Good Questions” In Improv?

There’s a so-called “rule” sometimes quoted in relation to improv: “don’t ask questions”. It’s designed to encourage improvisers who are building scenes together to make choices. It’s important, to give a scene some momentum, to “know” about what’s happening rather than assume the other person has the whole thing planned in their head. 

Making statements, and thus efficiently painting a clear picture of the place, the people, and the background to their relationship, tends to make the scene easier to perform – and funnier to watch. 

However, at The FA, we think it’s a little more complicated than that. Yes, there are questions that can stall momentum, but there are also times when it feels vital a character asks a question.

Here are some examples of bad questions that stall momentum: 

• Who are you?
• Where are we going?
• What should we do next?

These are things that a character should already know and be able to answer. You are making it up: so decide who, what and where! They’re also things that you rarely say in real life. I don’t know about you, but I never say “who are you?” and “where are we going?”, unless I’m actively being kidnapped. We want characters and scenes to feel believable, so say things that it’s believable you might say! 

On the other hand, there are good questions you can ask on stage – and these are usually about exploring something together with your scene partner.

Here are some examples of questions that might help you explore your relationship, and won’t stall the scene:

• You don’t believe in me do you?
• Are you proud of me?
• You seem distracted. Is everything ok?

Each of these is about exploring. It’s noticing something in the scene, asking about it, and helping to dig into how the other character feels. Not only that, it’s adding a tiny piece of information. When your burning question is “are you proud of me?”, we in the audience learn a ton about your character, as well as the relationship dynamic. 

You can also ask questions to “figure out” something fun or surprising about the other character. These are situations where your scene partner has made a fun choice and you want to understand more about the character so you can play what’s fun together:

• You think it’s safer to keep your money under your mattress than in a bank?
• How did you manage to spend an hour at Sainsbury’s and not come back with anything from the list?
• Can I ask why your car is missing all its doors?

With these questions you’re trying to highlight and get to the bottom of an unexpected thing that’s been mentioned or alluded to – and you’re giving your scene partner an opportunity to own their behaviour and give you a reason for it. 

But Alex, I hear you cry, couldn’t you “choose to know” the answer to these questions too? You sure could. You could endow your scene partner with their rationale for weird behaviour (e.g. “I know you get overwhelmed easily, but you’ve got to start coming back with shopping”.) But you could equally ask them, so that they get to choose for themselves. 

It also might make more sense, and therefore be more believable in the scene, that you don’t know why that car is missing its doors. 

As long as you’re remembering to make choices and build the scene together, “good” questions can help you to discover fun stuff, and create relationships between characters that feel realistic and interesting.  

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