Today was my last improv class, and I was left hungering for more. It seemed as if we, or maybe I, had just gotten into the swing of things when the workshop came to a close.
Last week, in class #4, just three of us showed up, giving us each more time to play, act and express. I "starred" in a comedy skit featuring two people who met shopping at Whole Foods and who were obsessed with reading food labels and with what they put into their bodies. In the course of our improvised dialogue, I invented a gadget called the iCombine, like an iPod for health nuts, which allows you to select images of various foods with a stylus and then the screen shows you if they combine in a nutritionally positive way or not. If anyone reading this likes the idea and can create it, let me know and I'll tell you where to send me my royalty checks.
One of the roles I played today was that of an illegal Mexican migrant worker who speaks no English, and the feds have come to check everyone's papers. My acting partner and I "escaped" being caught and possibly deported by traveling on the underside of a farm truck, hanging onto the axle and onto each for dear life. The coach then asked me to deliver a speech, in English and Spanish (which I speak, albeit rustily), to a crowd of thousands who were gathered to protest recent immigration legislation. I learned afterward, from my classmates and the coach, that the part of the speech I delivered in Spanish was much more emotional and powerful than what I had said in English, that my whole demeanor changed when speaking Espanol. Their remarks confirmed what I've felt ever since learning Spanish, that this language gives me access to parts of myself that seem to be somewhat locked up in English. It is truly odd to contemplate that, in some ways, I am more authentic when not speaking my native tongue, that English limits my expressiveness. Perhaps it is the nature of Spanish itself or that I feel freer using another culture's words, intonations and gestures, as they are not burdened by early conditioning about what can be said, and how. Hopefully I will be able to translate my Spanish self back into English.
To close, some thoughts on how to approach life itself as an improvisation:
1) Say YES! When life "offers" something, just as a partner in improvisation will offer up a scene or a plot, accept the offer. For me, this is a great form of spiritual practice, as my earlier "training" in life has had me saying "maybe", "I'll think about it", or just plain old "no." Somewhere along the way I picked up that being enthusiastic was not in keeping with (my idea of) being sophisticated, or maybe my ego would be unhappy that someone other than me came up with a great idea. It is time to let these notions drop.
2) Make offers! In addition to saying "yes" to another actor's offer, it is important to keep making offers oneself. If not, it is the equivalent of having your tennis partner hit balls over the net while you just stand there, watching them roll away, refusing to swing your racket. Most of us would not play tennis this way, but sometimes we play life this way. And sometimes I feel as if I am the one hitting balls across the net, only to have no one hit them back. It is hard to know if I've chosen the wrong partners or if I'm simply hitting the balls too hard.
3) Take risks! You could say that making an offer is taking a risk, but for people who are comfortable making offers, the risk might be to make new kinds of offers, or to behave in ways that are somewhat "out of character", as it were. Taking risks requires moment-to-moment awareness, stepping into a potentially scary space to try out new behavior. Easier said than done, but I intend to continue to try.
Showing posts with label Improv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Improv. Show all posts
Monday, July 16, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
Improv, Week 2 & 3
This posting will appear before "Improv, Week 1" but should be read afterward.
I hoped Week 2 would be as cathartic and challenging as Week 1, as well as more fun. Instead, the class quickly went from bad to worse. A few people arrived late, which threw off the leader's plan. She had wanted to begin with a circle, to discuss the first class and talk about what we'd do that day. But rather than have us wait, we began with our warmup and then, once the group had assembled, started us on scenes so that we wouldn't waste time.
Perhaps the transition was a bit abrupt, because one of the scenes didn't go well. The two characters became stuck in a circular dialogue, with neither offering new information or a different response to push the plot forward. In reviewing the scene afterward, one of the actors faulted the other (the man) for not responding to her cues. She felt that she had offered a lot in terms of ideas and plot development, but that he hadn't reciprocated. Another student, who had been in the audience, also criticized him for causing the scene to languish and soon the atmosphere in the class deteriorated to a blame game, puncturing the fragile balloon of safety we had started to create the week before.
Our leader intervened, insisting that we own our reactions to what had been a confusing scene rather than pointing fingers. Suddenly, I felt as if we were all children sitting in a sandbox, being chastened by a grownup for having flung dirt in each others' eyes. It was all the more distressing because one of the more vocal critics was a therapist and someone who had enrolled in this workshop before. My inner judge thought she should have known better.
It was time for the next scene. I volunteered and waited for someone to join me in front of the group, but all I saw were frustrated faces. A chill was in the air, and no one wanted to play. The leader asked another person to join me, but this woman became emotional, upset by all the flak that had flown around earlier. The leader asked her to identify the source of her tears and to do a monologue around that. I sat down. My turn would have to wait.
The therapist was then asked to do a scene with the man. She stood up and began by throwing a chair towards him while ranting about their (fictional) marriage. Her rage was real, its intensity not explained by the improvisational scene.
"Out take," called our leader. "What is going on?"
The action stopped. The therapist was able to realize that she was projecting much of her anger at her own (deceased) father onto the gentleman in the class who, in some ways, resembled him. Wisely, and with much more skill than I've seen exhibited by the one group therapist I ever met, our leader asked this woman to do a monologue about her father, rather than dumping her raw emotions on our innocent classmate.
At some point during the class I went from being a participant to a bystander, a witness as several people exposed their emotional wounds. The class was not turning into the fun and spontaneous experience I had expected; au contraire, it was heading into very deep and painful territory. I tried to view the situation positively, being grateful that our leader had the experience and the emotional intelligence to channel people's raw feelings into transformative acts of theater. But I was somewhat angry that the people who were losing control were getting the stage, that the group's energies were being focused on people who were having difficulty with the class format.
Even though I did get to spend some more time on stage, the session depleted and saddened me. I spent much of that afternoon wondering if I would go back the following week.
A few days later the leader called to check in with me to discuss what had happened. I appreciated hearing from her and to have a chance to express myself. The class felt a bit too much like a therapy session, I told her. She assured me that what had happened - an unusual collision of people and their issues - was extraordinary in the decades she has been teaching.
We began Week 3 with a discussion of what had happened in Week 2 and in the phone conversations we had each had with the leader. I hoped that this processing would take just a few minutes, clearing the slate for a fresh attempt at improv, but it turned out that the man in our group was distraught to the point of wanting to leave the class. An older and sensitive gentleman, he simply did not want to spend another minute being the recipient of anyone's latent or blatant hostility towards men, even in fictional scenes. I couldn't blame him. And some of us, it turned out, came to class reluctantly, wanting to fulfill our commitment to the workshop yet not convinced that we'd have any fun in the process. It is a poignant irony that several us were drawn to the class to explore new ways of being and to loosen the shackles of established habits - such as putting duty and the needs of others first - only to have those same habits lead us back.
And so, after spending nearly an hour rehashing and repeating much of what had transpired in the previous week, and each of us letting the man know that we wanted him to stay, we were able to proceed. The group remained intact, but after all the discussion and reassurance I still felt that something very valuable - a sense of possibility? of playfulness? - was lost.
I hoped Week 2 would be as cathartic and challenging as Week 1, as well as more fun. Instead, the class quickly went from bad to worse. A few people arrived late, which threw off the leader's plan. She had wanted to begin with a circle, to discuss the first class and talk about what we'd do that day. But rather than have us wait, we began with our warmup and then, once the group had assembled, started us on scenes so that we wouldn't waste time.
Perhaps the transition was a bit abrupt, because one of the scenes didn't go well. The two characters became stuck in a circular dialogue, with neither offering new information or a different response to push the plot forward. In reviewing the scene afterward, one of the actors faulted the other (the man) for not responding to her cues. She felt that she had offered a lot in terms of ideas and plot development, but that he hadn't reciprocated. Another student, who had been in the audience, also criticized him for causing the scene to languish and soon the atmosphere in the class deteriorated to a blame game, puncturing the fragile balloon of safety we had started to create the week before.
Our leader intervened, insisting that we own our reactions to what had been a confusing scene rather than pointing fingers. Suddenly, I felt as if we were all children sitting in a sandbox, being chastened by a grownup for having flung dirt in each others' eyes. It was all the more distressing because one of the more vocal critics was a therapist and someone who had enrolled in this workshop before. My inner judge thought she should have known better.
It was time for the next scene. I volunteered and waited for someone to join me in front of the group, but all I saw were frustrated faces. A chill was in the air, and no one wanted to play. The leader asked another person to join me, but this woman became emotional, upset by all the flak that had flown around earlier. The leader asked her to identify the source of her tears and to do a monologue around that. I sat down. My turn would have to wait.
The therapist was then asked to do a scene with the man. She stood up and began by throwing a chair towards him while ranting about their (fictional) marriage. Her rage was real, its intensity not explained by the improvisational scene.
"Out take," called our leader. "What is going on?"
The action stopped. The therapist was able to realize that she was projecting much of her anger at her own (deceased) father onto the gentleman in the class who, in some ways, resembled him. Wisely, and with much more skill than I've seen exhibited by the one group therapist I ever met, our leader asked this woman to do a monologue about her father, rather than dumping her raw emotions on our innocent classmate.
At some point during the class I went from being a participant to a bystander, a witness as several people exposed their emotional wounds. The class was not turning into the fun and spontaneous experience I had expected; au contraire, it was heading into very deep and painful territory. I tried to view the situation positively, being grateful that our leader had the experience and the emotional intelligence to channel people's raw feelings into transformative acts of theater. But I was somewhat angry that the people who were losing control were getting the stage, that the group's energies were being focused on people who were having difficulty with the class format.
Even though I did get to spend some more time on stage, the session depleted and saddened me. I spent much of that afternoon wondering if I would go back the following week.
A few days later the leader called to check in with me to discuss what had happened. I appreciated hearing from her and to have a chance to express myself. The class felt a bit too much like a therapy session, I told her. She assured me that what had happened - an unusual collision of people and their issues - was extraordinary in the decades she has been teaching.
We began Week 3 with a discussion of what had happened in Week 2 and in the phone conversations we had each had with the leader. I hoped that this processing would take just a few minutes, clearing the slate for a fresh attempt at improv, but it turned out that the man in our group was distraught to the point of wanting to leave the class. An older and sensitive gentleman, he simply did not want to spend another minute being the recipient of anyone's latent or blatant hostility towards men, even in fictional scenes. I couldn't blame him. And some of us, it turned out, came to class reluctantly, wanting to fulfill our commitment to the workshop yet not convinced that we'd have any fun in the process. It is a poignant irony that several us were drawn to the class to explore new ways of being and to loosen the shackles of established habits - such as putting duty and the needs of others first - only to have those same habits lead us back.
And so, after spending nearly an hour rehashing and repeating much of what had transpired in the previous week, and each of us letting the man know that we wanted him to stay, we were able to proceed. The group remained intact, but after all the discussion and reassurance I still felt that something very valuable - a sense of possibility? of playfulness? - was lost.
Improv, Week 1
I am 3/5 of the way through a weekly improvisational acting class. A friend recommended it to me more than a year ago, suggesting that it might be an effective way to release and act out some stuck emotions and personal history. After signing up, I received a welcome letter, which among other things said:
"We’re looking forward to creating together in a dynamic and fun improvisation laboratory where everyone has the opportunity to learn, practice, and deepen his or her acting from the moment skills."
I was excited to begin and looking forward to the possibility of transforming some stinky old baggage into a theatrical scene, thereby leaving it in the dustbin of history. The first week we - five students (4 women and 1 man) and the leader (a woman) - dove right in. To begin, we warmed up our bodies and minds to different kinds of music, dancing alone and moving improvisationally with each other. After 30 minutes, I was starting to feel tired and wondered if I could sustain that intensity for the remainder of the three hour class. She then coached each of us in monologues, picking up on our subtle emotional vibrations and encouraging us to move in those directions. When it was my turn to sit on a chair in front of the group, she noticed that my hands were gesturing intensely, generating a lot more energy than the words coming from mouth suggested. Rather than deliver a spoken monologue, she asked me to get up and dance.
Dance?
Alone?
Without music?
With everyone watching?
And this is supposed to be fun?
I stood up but stood still, a split second of hesitation. But then I realized that I had signed up for a challenge and I began to move, trying to express what I had been unable to say aloud and trying to stay with myself, rather than stepping outside myself and becoming, as I often have, a harsh and judgmental critic who stops me in my tracks. After what felt like an eternity of running, leaping and rolling about the room, during which time I made eye contact with no one, she cued me to stop dancing and start speaking. Screaming and yelling, actually. My assignment was to deliver a rant as a teenager, and then throw a tantrum as a four year old, acting out a few scenes from my earlier life and saying things I hadn't had the courage to utter at the time.
The exercise both emptied and liberated me. It had been a highly productive few minutes. I returned to my seat and, not nervously, awaited the group's feedback on my "performance". I don't remember the exact content of what people said, but the general atmosphere was affirming and encouraging. We were there to cheer each other on, not take each other down.
"We’re looking forward to creating together in a dynamic and fun improvisation laboratory where everyone has the opportunity to learn, practice, and deepen his or her acting from the moment skills."
I was excited to begin and looking forward to the possibility of transforming some stinky old baggage into a theatrical scene, thereby leaving it in the dustbin of history. The first week we - five students (4 women and 1 man) and the leader (a woman) - dove right in. To begin, we warmed up our bodies and minds to different kinds of music, dancing alone and moving improvisationally with each other. After 30 minutes, I was starting to feel tired and wondered if I could sustain that intensity for the remainder of the three hour class. She then coached each of us in monologues, picking up on our subtle emotional vibrations and encouraging us to move in those directions. When it was my turn to sit on a chair in front of the group, she noticed that my hands were gesturing intensely, generating a lot more energy than the words coming from mouth suggested. Rather than deliver a spoken monologue, she asked me to get up and dance.
Dance?
Alone?
Without music?
With everyone watching?
And this is supposed to be fun?
I stood up but stood still, a split second of hesitation. But then I realized that I had signed up for a challenge and I began to move, trying to express what I had been unable to say aloud and trying to stay with myself, rather than stepping outside myself and becoming, as I often have, a harsh and judgmental critic who stops me in my tracks. After what felt like an eternity of running, leaping and rolling about the room, during which time I made eye contact with no one, she cued me to stop dancing and start speaking. Screaming and yelling, actually. My assignment was to deliver a rant as a teenager, and then throw a tantrum as a four year old, acting out a few scenes from my earlier life and saying things I hadn't had the courage to utter at the time.
The exercise both emptied and liberated me. It had been a highly productive few minutes. I returned to my seat and, not nervously, awaited the group's feedback on my "performance". I don't remember the exact content of what people said, but the general atmosphere was affirming and encouraging. We were there to cheer each other on, not take each other down.
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