Polyglot kings of the improvring

Where free spirits reign, the adrenalin, fun and laughter flow TANG YUE

It ain't about if he knocks a guy out. It's about how he knocks a guy out. It's the style, the improvization.

- Don King, American boxing promoter

The improv comedians of the world, those whose business it is to deliver knockout punchlines, would no doubt say amen to that.

For most of us the idea of getting up in front of an audience of a few hundred without at least a script to fall back on is the stuff of nightmares, but for the improv artist the very unpredictably of it all is what keeps the adrenalin pumping.

Add to that the twist of an audience many of whose members do not speak your language, and you have the raw material for a whimsical evening that is liable to head off in any direction, and usually does.

This is the stage that improv artists in Beijing step out onto, parlaying an art form born in ancient Rome, refined in Europe and the US and passed on to the rest of the world to do with it what it will.

Beijing's contribution to this potpourri comes by dint of its being home to tens of thousands of people from every nation on the planet. That means the lingua franca of improv comedy in the capital is a zany hybrid of Chinese and English, with other languages sometimes thrown in for good measure.

"Switching back and forth and playing around with the language is fun," says Jeffery Schwab, an American who is a member of the Beijing Improv Bilingual Group, who has lived in China for 10 years.

Beijing improv has always been in Chinese and English, and then a bilingual performing troupe was "naturally born" about five years ago, he says. It now has 12 members, half Chinese and half those of other nationalities.

Anete Elken, an Estonian, says that when she arrived in Beijing 18 months ago she shared a hotel dormitory room with an American in town for the third annual Beijing Interactive Arts Improv Festival. She was invited to watch and joined the group later.

"That was my ultimate yuanfen, meeting the improv people," Elken says, adopting the patter of a Beijing improv performer, in which English and Chinese are seamlessly woven together to suit the communication needs of the moment, on and off stage. (Yuanfen conveys the idea of meeting the right person at the right time in the right place.)

"It's not only cool, but the Chinese words are a lot more expressive sometimes," Elken says. "I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in yuanfen, coincidences that change your life for the better."

Just as the serendipitous beauty of yuanfen is that it just happens, the same can be said of Beijing improv. The performer need not make every single line bilingual, and can switch languages whenever he or she pleases, which adds to the spontaneity. The language mix often depends on the makeup of your audience, Elken says.

"And if you know there are three French people in the audience, you are obviously going to have to make a crack about France."

Bilingual perfection is by no means a prerequisite to being a success, she says.

"Sometimes I have no idea what a Chinese word means but I have to build on that. That's all part of bilingual improv. It's a risk you have to take."

Schwab says: "Sometimes you just have to pretend you understand. You have to act like an expert. But sometimes you can also ask 'What does that mean'? You ask and you can learn something on stage and the audience is watching you learning, too."

Dong Fen, from Yunnan province, says: "At first I was very unsure of myself because my English is not that good. But then you find insane misunderstandings can make the show all the funnier."

But just as jazz, which some could regard as the epitome of artistic spontaneity and improvisation, is constrained by certain musical practicalities and rules, improv comedy also has a few guiding principles.

One of them, those who were interviewed for this story say, is the principle of "Yes, and", which means you must accept whatever idea your partners on the stage come up with and go with it.

"Generally, non-Chinese are better at interacting with strangers and getting along with them very quickly," says Zhi Xuxin, a member of Beijing Improv Bilingual Group and a former TV anchor in Urumqi, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. "They also have all kinds of odd and interesting ideas."

Once in a workshop, she says, the scenario was set as a dating show, with a foreigner playing a door, rather than a man, as a dating candidate.

"I was there just gaping, unable to understand any of this, and couldn't see how we could go with the idea. But the non-Chinese there seemed to have no reservations whatsoever."

Schwab says trust between those on stage is crucial when you set a storyline because "if I go with the idea, I don't know where it is going to lead me to".

Chinese performers are more likely to summarily reject any ideas that those they are working with suggest, he says.

"In the US we worry about people carrying guns," says Schwab, from Virginia. "We don't worry as much as people in China do about being tricked by others."

Theater and drama in China lack the encouragement they receive in the US, he says. "As a result, people have to relearn how to express themselves and open up and not worry about losing face."

"That's something I hope improv can help with."

Last month the State Council required high schools nationwide to add dancing and drama lessons to the existing curriculum by 2018.

However, creativity and free expression cannot be developed in only one or two courses but are the result of a certain teaching philosophy, members of Beijing Improv Bilingual Group say.

"In school we are so used to there being 'only one correct answer', so on stage people are probably afraid of doing the wrong thing," says Peng Zikang of Beijing.

"After each show or workshop, the Chinese tend to look back and analyze which part was right and which was wrong. I don't see any foreigners do that. Improv is about spontaneity, and they just enjoy it."

Improv has better enabled him to appreciate the diversity of ideas of others, and he has learned to judge himself less critically in daily life, he says.

Beijing Improv Bilingual Group has free workshops every Wednesday evening and a show every second Saturday. Proceeds of performances go towards supporting Hua Dan, a not-for-profit organization that uses theater techniques to empower migrant women and children.

Elken says Beijing improv is a niche interest in that it requires basic levels in both languages and in particular aims to attract, as performers or as audience members, students learning Chinese.

"You don't really practice your Chinese by going to the local grocery. This is the best way to learn a language."

While performing with Beijing Improv Bilingual Group, Zhi Xuxin has set up Born to Improv, a Chinese improv group.

"Performing in English is too hard for many Chinese, but they definitely should get the chance to enjoy improv. It's becoming increasingly popular in China."

He Na and Yang Wanli contributed to the story.