Free Association

Close inspection of human behavior, the theory goes, will almost always result in comedy. And when it doesn't, it results in something tender or dark or warm or raw. All of it, ideally, affecting.

Of course, Bellavia adds, "this only works if you tell us what you're really thinking, and that's scary."

"But it's exhilarating when you do it."

Cut to the scene of an empty kindergarten classroom.

Five guys in their 20s and 30s enter, turn on the lights and begin to clear away the tables. We see that they are casually dressed -- cool sneakers and button-down shirts, the types who would look at home perched on stools at any given sports bar.

"Wait, are you having a baby in April?" one asks, stretching his elbow over his head.

"Who knows," another responds, fast and deadpan. They're not improvising yet, not officially, but they also never really stop.

Meet the boys from Jackie, one of WIT's permanent troupes. Usually it's the boys and girl from Jackie, but their sole female player, Molly Woods, couldn't make it to rehearsal tonight.

"People love those times when you're hanging out with your friends, just messing around, having fun," says Zack Phillips, a 28-year-old journalist and Jackie player. "We're just doing that in a more physical way, sometimes in front of a paying audience."

More physical, and because they never know where their stories will go, also more surprising.

"When you explore, going through a cave or on a hiking trail, you don't know what's coming and don't have any expectations, so everything you encounter is awesome," explains Ken Hays, a 31-year-old engineer with bright eyes and closely cropped hair. "It's the same thing with improv."

Hays remembers being worried about the people. He was an athlete in high school and a member of a fraternity in college, and he was worried, when he signed up for that first WIT class, that he'd be surrounded by artsy theater types.

"Five years later, these are my best friends here," he says. And thus when they're on, when they really start to sparkle, "it's the joy of winning with a team."

But right now what they need to do is "lose more."

"Lose faster," instructs Patrick Gantz, the Jackie player directing tonight's activities from a too-small lacquered chair. Probably that's not something guys on basketball courts or football fields say to one another an awful lot. In improv, though, losing is as good as anything else, because it's something real.

And so in pairs, the guys stand up, walk to the center of the room and proceed to turn themselves into losers. They are a misunderstood teenager and his feckless, cow-milking dad; a little boy in love and a lemonade-selling girl who can't be bothered; a devoted cat owner and the friend who backed over Mothball in the driveway.

They are a computer-game-obsessed husband and his ever-neglected wife, who finally, finally erupts: "Pay attention to me! There's liquor in my underwear!"

There are moments of magic. And after 2 1/2 hours, the Jackie boys have one another in red-faced hysterics.

Then they go out for beers.

Off the main drag in Chinatown, on a stretch of hulking concrete and steel sewer grates, is a tiny little art gallery. In the rear of the tiny little art gallery is a tiny little theater, all painted in black.

Some of the most exciting live entertainment in Washington happens here.

Exciting in part because at any given moment it could go completely off the rails. We give one suggestion and expect our players to run, to tell us a story, to put on a play, to write and act in real time.

And sometimes what happens inside the Mead Theatre Lab is spectacular. Sometimes it's flat. Often it oscillates between the two, and then it's gone, and whatever was done there will never be done again.

So we come as spectators, to see what forces of imagination our mercenary players can bring. And we come as voyeurs. Because it's a rare thing, in this time and place of press releases and polish, to catch a glimpse of a naked mind.

The words are their words; the topics, their topics. And inevitably they turn to the pressure points of the human condition: love and loss and longing and fear, self-perception and family dynamics and personal demons, the quest for acceptance, redemption.

The lights go down, and seven women run onstage. They are an all-female WIT troupe called the Shower, and they want to know about a disappointing Christmas present someone received.

"A scarf, a hat and some gloves," offers a lady in the audience. Will she return them? "I can't," she says. "My husband gave them to me."

All the players but one rush to the sides of the stage. Alone there, she starts to fuss, arranging trinkets on an imaginary table. One by one, the others come back, offering hugs like guests arriving for a party.

"We're here to celebrate Jessica's last Christmas," says the first player, now clearly seen as a host. "She's getting married! Converting!"

The player who has become Jessica slumps with annoyance as the others cheer. "L'chaim!"

"Here, I brought you a cross," one guest says. "But I'm taking it back later."

"You can tell your kids you used to love Christ!" another suggests.

There are maybe 40 people in the theater tonight -- all of them, at this moment, laughing.

A coffee shop. Mark Chalfant is about to go into full Deepak mode, but right now he can't get comfortable so he's shifting around in a big leather chair like Chuck Woolery.

"Tell me about your date," he says, offering his hand as a microphone. Playing.

In the beginning and the end, Chalfant will say that's what this is about: the playing, the fun.

In the middle, he'll detour. He'll talk about what improv gives people, how it changes them. How for him "it was like somebody was poking my personality, saying, 'Are you who you think you are?' "

And how for him, "the answer was no."

"I was very boxed in in a lot of ways," the 36-year-old will recall, pale blue eyes blazing as he shifts again, closer. "And D.C. was only gonna box me in more."

He'll say that sometimes, after people do it for a while, the principles that are important in improv -- being truthful; making bold decisions; trusting others; really, really listening; and paying attention to the moment at hand -- assume amplified importance away from improv.

Chalfant will say it made him see parts of himself he "hadn't been looking at before . . . like being adventurous, connecting with people, taking risks and pursuing fun."

He'll talk about how it has nourished a community, roused a bit of creativity, pushed some people in Washington to take themselves a shade less seriously.

Then he'll lean in one more time and say that maybe what improv comes down to is what it's not.

"The counterbalance to playful comedy," he'll say, "is despair.

"And that's there any time you want it."

Ellen McCarthy is a Weekend staff writer. Her e-mail address ismccarthye@washpost.com.