I’ve been getting into Contact Improvisation recently. Maybe I’m just in that new hobby haze, but it seems that Contact leads people who really engage with it to change how they interact with others at a fundamental level. It feels like Contact encourages people to reexamine how they live their lives in a way that I haven’t seen improvised theater do, at least in the US.

I don’t want to make it seem like Improv doesn’t provide deep benefits to those that engage with the art form. I’ve gotten so much out of Improv, it’s ridiculous. It’s just that there was always something missing in the art form for me.

Improv helped me connect emotionally to people in a way that I was completely unable to before I started. At the same time, I was always craving ways to connect physically with people. It drew me into physical theater and into Tai Chi push hands. But it wasn’t enough.

There are a few things that I can think of why the kinds of life impacts of Improv are different than Contact.

  1. Contact involves a lot of touch, especially touch in a way that breaks down societal expectations of who/how you should touch people that are not intimate partners. There are improvised physical theater forms that include touch, but it’s optional in a way it isn’t in Contact.
  2. Contact supports a level of self-awareness and boundaries that Improv doesn’t always support. If you need a day off on your own or dancing only in a certain way, it’s in the form for Contact. Improv, there’s still an expectation that you deliver comedy. That was part of what felt new and exciting about the Atlanta Improv Dojo, that we were building in ways for people to acknowledge where they were when they walked through the door.
  3. Improv involves a lot more performance (you can perform Contact, but it’s rare). The emphasis on performance creates a tension in the art form between purely acknowledging your or your improvisation partner’s impulses and catering to the expectations of an audience. It’s hard for most improv to help break people free from how they currently live because it thrives on mining how they currently live.
  4. Contact is purposefully undefined. It continue to evolves as an art form, which encourages people to engage with their art form more deeply. In Improv, the styles have consolidated around a few different theaters, who are all trying to sell a consistent style. It takes a while for an improvisor to break out of doing Improv “the right way” (cause there is no right way). And the conversation around what improv has already started with the idea that there’s a right way, which skews where the conversation can go.