Some people don’t like ‘em, but I think warmups are an important improv tool for several reasons:

1. Leave the Past Behind

When you’re just getting into your rehearsal or show,  everyone is coming from vastly different days that may have been filled with winning glamorous prizes, an argument with a loved one, a traffic ticket, or a really good sandwich at lunch. A little warming up before you begin helps everyone to forget (or at least postpone the remembering of) their day. Everyone can start on a relatively clean sheet of paper.

2. Burn out the Bad

Many times, even though you’re working from a place free of outside stresses, you may not yet be in “the improv zone.” With warmups, you can burn out those first few scenes that aren’t quite up to your own good performance standards. Personally, my first scene of the night is never my very best one. I think this is true of most people. Why not get that first scene out of the way early, when there’s no audience watching?

3. Get the Cells in Motion

While I’m on stage, I move in many varied ways like I never do during the rest of the day. On stage, there’s a lot more crawling, rolling on the ground, crouching, squatting, faux humping, walking funny, wild arm undulations, and head bobbing.  A good physical warmup gets the dust burned off your muscles, and you’re ready to do some moving around. Nobody likes an entire evening of talking heads, after all.

It also gets your energy flowing. I’m a lot more apt to do an energy-filled character if my cells are buzzing with some good, warm movement energy. This is also good for your audience - energetic characters are usually harder to do, and therefore more rare. We owe our audience those kinds of characters once in awhile, and a physical warmup can help bring those characters out.

4. Forge the Group

In most groups I know, the warmup is the only activity in which each and every person in the group is up and actively participating at the same time. Most games don’t use everyone, so everyone playing at once really helps build your sense of group, and helps further develop group mind. At Roving Imp, every rehearsal starts with circle warmups, where we can all look into each others’ eyes, do our exercises, catch up on each others’ lives, and get focused on what we’re about to do together.

Whether you realize it or not, warmups are accomplishing all these extremely important tasks. I think that unless you’re the Chosen One of Improv*, and you’re performing with more than one or two other close friends that you’ve been with for at least five consistent years, you need a warmup. Otherwise, you may as well flush the first half hour of your rehearsal down the toilet, and while you’re in there, just hope that your group will manage to cohesively gel without getting some up-front face time.

*If you are the Chosen One, I would like for you to come perform with me.