Negativity is the Mother of Invention Negativity is the Mother of Invention by R. Kevin Doyle R. Kevin Doyle is an acting teacher at the Mid-Pacific School of the Arts in Honolulu. For nearly eight years, he has been a member of Hawaii's Loose Screws , and has been teaching improv for nearly ten. Ask a portion of the improv population any one of these questions and you are likely to provoke a tirade, often a tirade aimed against the very act of asking the question. For a long time now, many improvisers have worked under the assumption that these debates are tiresome at best, destructive at worst. Not only are these debates useful, but that the rage they generate is essential to staving off artistic entropy in improv.
All art needs energy to grow and develop.
Energy, including creative energy, is generated by potential difference. When an artist publicly rages against, for example, short form improvisation, the potential difference between that artist's belief and the beliefs of the short form practitioners increases, propelling them to prove that critic wrong by performing the best short form they can. Presumably, the despiser of short form is also driven to do long form so brilliant that it puts short form to shame. Examples of this sort of violent energy creating new, exciting art can be seen throughout the history of improvisational theatre in America. The most obvious example of this was the attitude of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live .