The Stories That Make Us: How Improv Helps Teens Shape Their Sense of Self

Teens are in a process of continuous emergence, their “right now” an ongoing story that is like an improvisation in that they are building a bridge to their future while walking on it. Because the teen brain is being rewired, and their sense of self as well as view of the world is taking shape, it is a time of great opportunity to develop talents and pursue interests, and of great risk if chronic stress, trauma, loss or other negative conditions are present. Wants, needs, impulses and emotions are heightened at the same time the reasoning part of the brain that can think long-term and make rational choices is still under construction. “Teens Tell Better Stories After Improvisational Theater Courses,” an article in the March 2021 issue of Frontiers In Psychology reports about research showing that narrative skills — the ability to organize, connect and express ideas in a coherent way that others can track — were strengthened by participation in an improv training group.

Improv scenes and stories unfold in real time, created through players’ focused attention on their own and others’ actions and choices. Because it is created without a script, props or a set, clarity of communication is key. “I’m very conscious about how an object moves through a scene,” says Greer Gerney, a 2021 High School graduate who started improv training at age 11 with Elana Fishbein, MA, who teaches Improv For Teens classes through The Magnet Theater in NYC and Improv For Educators through her own practice. Objects in improv scenes are imaginary, and they enrich the action by placing the characters in an environment or situation. “I learned that when an object is used in a way that tracks with the story as it unfolds, it helps enormously to maintain the reality of an improv scene. If you are drinking a cup of coffee you need to remember where it is in the space, and go back to it.” Learning to think with this level of complexity is just one of the benefits she attributes to improv training, a process she describes as “an enormous part of my life and how I express myself creatively.”

We might think of the “self” as a collection of interconnected stories, or layers of stories, some of which are fully conscious and some so woven into the day-to-day reality we have we have to stand back from them to see…