Improvising Now

Rob Norman's Improvising Now: A Practical Guide to Modern Improv is a concise, technically focused handbook for performers seeking to refine their stage work. Published in 2014, the book addresses the paradox at the center of improv training: the harder a performer pushes for good scenes, the further those scenes seem to recede. Norman's response to that paradox is not philosophical but mechanical -- the book offers clear, practical instruction grounded in the principles that define modern longform performance, written by a practitioner who has spent years training performers at an institutional level in Canada.

Norman serves as Department Head of the Longform Program at The Second City Toronto and teaches at Bad Dog Theatre. His perspective is shaped by the Canadian improv tradition, which has developed its own robust body of technique in dialogue with -- but distinct from -- the iO and UCB schools that dominate most of the English-language literature on the form. Improvising Now gives voice to that tradition in a direct, workshop-tested idiom: less concerned with manifesto than with result.

The book moves through the mechanics of scene construction in a logical progression. It opens with starting scenes -- how to establish reality, character, and relationship in the first moments without relying on questions, vague gestures toward location, or other habits that delay the scene's engine from turning over. From there it advances into character dynamics, pattern recognition, and the Game of the Scene, tracing the line from a first unusual beat to a fully committed repeating pattern. Norman gives sustained attention to heightening, which he frames not as volume or escalation but as specificity: making the next choice more of the same thing, further in the same direction.

Separate chapters address mental blocks that interrupt the discovery process mid-scene, and the navigation of group scenes, where the challenge shifts from bilateral commitment to ensemble coordination. The treatment of second beats and structure moves the book beyond pure scene technique into the architecture of longer work, giving performers a framework for returning to established material in a way that accumulates meaning rather than simply restating it.

Two final sections mark a deliberate departure from technique. The first offers targeted advice for intermediate and experienced performers who have mastered foundational rules but find themselves plateauing -- the problems at that level are different in kind, not just degree, and Norman addresses them directly. The second takes on the business side of improv: producing independent shows, developing relationships with professional theatres, and sustaining a career in the form. This section is frequently cited as a rare and practical contribution to a genre that typically stops at the stage door.

At 150 pages, Improvising Now is one of the most compact books in the canon, and that compression is deliberate. The writing is spare and instructional rather than anecdotal, and each chapter is designed to deliver technique without padding. The book does not attempt to be a complete survey of the form; it targets the specific gaps that trained performers most commonly encounter, and it addresses them with the directness of someone who has watched hundreds of performers hit the same walls in the same order.

Improvising Now is regarded as a focused, no-nonsense manual that fills a gap between introductory improv books and the more philosophical works in the canon. Readers consistently praise Norman for his clarity and his willingness to address intermediate and advanced concerns that many other books sidestep. The chapter on the business of comedy is frequently cited as a rare and useful addition. The book is recommended most strongly to performers who have moved beyond beginner training and are working to close the distance between understanding improv principles and applying them under pressure.