Phil Kay is a stand-up comedian known for his love of live work and improvisation. In his interview for The Comedian’s Comedian recently he said some things that resonated with me.
There’s not a principle that I must avoid things I’ve done before … There’s plenty of room in the form for doing brand new things [but that’s] not the aim, that I must do it brand new.
I write notes all the time … anything interesting that comes to me … but [the notes] are not the thing. The thing is the fact that I’m watching out for stuff … like a boxer keeping loose … on stage I hope they’ll all come together.
Allow the best to be a thing that could happen. If you’re trying to enforce something, no best can ever happen.
The list of traumatic failure gigs is so long … I accept the risk it’ll go wrong.
Looking around for related material I found that James Lyndsay has a workshop on Improvising for Testers, and Damian Synadinos has one specifically on the links between improv comedy and testing, Improv(e) Your Testing! Tips and Tricks from Jester to Tester. George Dinwiddie has also written about TDD and Improv.