Islander Matt Smith says lessons in improvisation start with listening.

This is the time of year Matt Smith turns into a mutant Santa.

Smith, who leads a workshop at BPA in January, dons half of a two-headed Santa outfit with a partner to do the thing he does best – dive into the stream-of-consciousness comedy called “improv.”

“It’s very much like a sport when you’re doing it well,” Smith said. “There’s a tremendous rush and a satisfaction.”

Improv actors create instant scenes and situations with fellow actors.

But engaging the conscious mind is deadly, Smith says, because getting “in the zone” means flowing with the rapid-fire give-and-take.

Listening, on the other hand, is the form’s sine qua non – a skill Smith says he learned only through his immersion in improv.

The Seattle native had been alternating waiting tables in the Northwest with international travel, when, at the age of 30, he decided that his lifestyle was more about avoidance than adventure.

He decided to face a longtime desire to be actor.

“Living in a foreign country requires all your attention, so you don’t have time to be neurotic,” he said. “It was 1984, I was 30. I had nothing to lose.

“I thought ‘if I don’t try, I’ll be an old man throwing bricks at comics on the TV.’”

Acting out

Smith initially aimed at stand-up comedy, but switched to improv after a class with Roberta Maguire, Seattle’s improv “godmother.”

“I was hooked,” he said. “You get on a stage and invite total chaos so you can put it in order.”

The first step to improv, Smith found, was to accept a scenario just as it was. Next he had to learn to listen, because the cues to the next move come from others.

“It really means learning how to be in a relationship,” he said, “because you learn how to listen without agenda, anticipation, or trying to control the outcome.

“Every moment the context shifts; the answer is always in your partner, not in your head. The best improvisers are always looking into their partners.”

Listening in an absolute sense means relinquishing control, Smith points out. Through improv exercises, he found out how much he wanted to shape and direct reality.

When he learned to listen, Smith discovered that the skill applied to all areas of his life – altering the quality of both his professional and his personal relationships.

“The reason I learned to improvise was to be onstage and be funny,” he said. “But I found out that it was only the surface benefit.”

Smith says that the bottom line was acquiring the ability to be in a “fair and other-centered” relationship.

Through exercises like “writing” a hypothetical letter by alternating words with a partner, Smith now teaches what he learned to a range of improv students, from corporate executive to college students, as well as professional actors.

Smith says he also helps students “unlearn.”

To create improv situations, Smith had first to divest himself of negative “self-talk,” the inner voice delivering inhibiting messages. Once he learned to displace his own internal censor with a positive “go for it” message, his own stories could advance.

“Improvisers brainwash themselves to move the story forward,” he said. “It’s like martial arts – a discipline of thinking and responding. And listening.”

Sharp-edged

Smith is currently helping ratchet the art form to an even higher level with island improv group The Edge, as the group trains in preparation for a pilot program the group will make in early 2004 for Seattle’s public radio station, KUOW.

He was introduced to the group a decade ago, just as islander Ed Sampson was forming the troupe.

Smith, who had co-founded Seattle’s Stark Raving Theater with Sampson, briefly directed the Edge, and, through the decade of the actors’ honing their craft, often sat in on the improv group’s monthly performance at BPA.

Working on the KUOW pilot, Smith says, has been an eye-opener; losing the visual dimension has only complicated the dynamics of the performance, as ambient sounds are created by an improv performer on a keyboard, while individual sounds are instantly supplied by two Edge actors playing a second keyboard and a musician “scores” the scene.

“Then, you also have someone writing on a board so you can keep track of the names and situation,” he said.

“It’s beautiful, because everyone has to do one small thing. If you take over, you drown everyone out.”

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Directed by Ken Ballenger for nearly a decade, Bainbridge’s improv group the Edge appears 7:30 p.m. Jan. 3 at the Playhouse, and every first Saturday of the month. Information: www.theplayhouse.org.