Pippa Evans, star of improvised musical Showstopper!, has written a self-help book based on her stage experiences. ‘Yes … and?’ asks our comedy critic
Did you ever think: I wish my life was more like Whose Line Is It Anyway? It’s not, I suspect, the first thought that strikes those in need of (self-)help. But they’re missing a trick. I practised improvisation professionally for three years, and spent much of that time telling anyone who’d listen that it makes you a better person. They didn’t seem to believe me, perhaps because hectoring my friends repeatedly about self-betterment didn’t make me seem like a very good person at all.
But now along comes Pippa Evans, making a similar point with infinitely more grace and authority in Improv Your Life, the new book of a course that the Showstopper! and Radio 4 star has been teaching for seven years. This “improviser’s guide to embracing whatever life throws at you”, written under lockdown, illustrates how the building blocks of improv are tools for winning at life. It’s also a memoir of sorts: Evans, 38, mines for case studies her own life as a jobbing performer and struggling human. “That,” she says, “was the most challenging thing: putting a lot of myself into it. Making sure that wasn’t indulgent, while saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve made a lot of fuck-ups myself, and here they are so we can analyse them.’”
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