I’ve read a lot of books about improv. I find it a subject I can continually read about and almost never get bored. Improv books serve as a excellent foundation of any improv student trying to round-out their improv education. They bring alternate approaches to understanding improv concepts that can help strengthen you as an improviser.

If it weren’t for Truth In Comedy, I wouldn’t be improvising today.

One thing to note, however, is that reading about improv, while you are learning or performing, will undoubtedly screw you up. While thinking, in most situations, is a good thing, in improv it can actually serve as inconvenience. Thinking, or being “in your head,” in improv can be a huge problem. It can screw up your scenework, stop you from listening, create insecurities, confuse your instincts, slow your responses, even give you a false sense of failing in a scene even if it’s going well.

So, why read?

If it weren’t for Improvise, I wouldn’t be improvising as well as I do today.

Luckily, these are all temporary side effects of you growing as an improvisor. Your brain is thinking, because you haven’t commited the ideas into your memory yet. I find, once I let the ideas sink in, my improv scenework improves dramically. It takes a little while, but once the lessons learned from books becomes habitual information, you have more tools to attack a scene with without having to think about them.

I send you this warning because I have seen improvisors, reading books, get dejected because they feel they suck. It’s not you, it’s the book making you think. Read all you want, but remember to give yourself a little judgmental leeway while doing so.