Don't miss the moment

What would you do if you were having a conversation with a friend and suddenly they cut off their finger?  Or, if you were talking with the person you had been dating for a while and you told them that you loved them and they went back to what you were talking about two sentences earlier? Or what would you do if someone stole  your grandmother's heirloom ring from your night stand in front of you?

You would have a gutteral, instinctive emotional reaction, right?

So why do we see so many improv scenes where the equivalent of these things take place and it seems like it's a rainstorm on a Tuesday moment.  We don't react... we're business as usual, we're stuck in five seconds ago and miss a critical moment.

These are the moments we simply cannot miss... They are the moments that define why TODAY is different than any other day. These are the moments improv was made for - the ripe and juice fountain of emotional raw discharge waiting to gush onto the stage.

DON'T MISS THEM.

Latch onto them with all of your might and ride the emotional wave into a meaningful, memorable scene.  Get Angry, Get Happy, Get Sad... Punch Someone, Chase Someone, Fly off the handle - Give your character a come to Jesus moment and watch the rules and the instincts you've been building as an improviser pour out of you. 

We go through our classes and workshops learning the basic skills of an improviser, the yes and's the heightening, the character and emotion work, etc etc. etc. AND THEN - we spend the rest of our time honing in on our ability to listen and react to each other. 

In your next scene listen and pay attention to each and every moment and when one of them screams "I'M DIFFERENT!" jump on it.  Your scene and your work will be so much better for it.

Less Is More

It feels good to be back in a class. While I'm teaching now, it's been a long time since I've been in a full term of classes. I've taken seminars and workshops, but not a full class. It feels good.

Way back in the day when I started improvising one of the things I really took hold of was giving your scene partner gifts to work with. The idea that we are the masters of our universe on stage is not lost on me. We can imbibe each other with gifts, bring things into the scene for your partner to react to, for you to build on and to create something together.

Over the years it's become really clear that this good quality to have has actually become my crutch. When I get stuck in a scene, when I don't know what to do, I begin to fill the scene with facts... who we are to each other, our history, things we like, why we're there, etc.  While that can be a good thing, too much of it is like putting more and more ingredients in a cake... it's just too much. Instead of adding and adding, we can make another choice to build on something that's already on the table, especially emotion, motivation or needs.

Already in this Boot Camp class I've realized how valuable this lesson is. Today I got into a scene and felt a moment where I wasn't sure what to do next. I felt the exposition rising up and I stopped, held it and just let the scene be quiet for a moment. We reconnected to a previous thought and the scene continued, exploring the reality we had already created on stage.

There was no need to add more, there was only the need to focus on what already was.

For this old-timer, this realization is so welcome.

We can do anything

Any improviser has been there. I'd say that as you're reading this there are probably 227.2 improvisers somewhere in the world standing on a stage, in a class, on a street corner trying to come up with something to say in a scene. They are frozen, stuck, unsure of what to do next. What do you do?

It's a question I got asked a lot this term in class evaluations and one that lead me to a similar answer over and over. 

Trust your scene partner and say anything. ANYTHING. 

One of my favorite short form games is sentences. I love it for a number of reasons: in shows where audience members have written sentences it always "hits" because the selfish idiot in all of us loves when our shit gets used in a scene; because we get to use our justification muscle; and because it proves that it doesn't matter as much about what is said as it does about how we react. 

Of course there are a million things that happen in good improv, bold choices, strong point of views, listening, heightening, etc etc. But when you're stuck, when you don't know what to do or what to say, the very simple concept that we can SAY ANYTHING carries a lot of weight. 

Let's face it, one of the enchanting things about learning to improvise is the freedom we find shaking off the rules our internal and external editors have layered on us since we were first told not to fart in Sunday school. We can relax and play. We can say what comes to our mind. We can "be ourselves" to learn to play silly. 

And then so many of us (myself included) find ourselves stuck in our heads trying to think of the "right" thing to say In a scene. 

Are we worried about looking stupid? 

- because walking around the room through imaginary three foot deep hot sand looked so "normal" in warm up exercises. 

Are we worried about saying the right thing?

- because our scene partner is going to hold it against us for hours like our spouse in a tiff. 

Are we worried that our scene partner is not going to know what to say?

-- hmmm

So what just happened?

The scene happened and we were worried about something other than the scene. 

The second reason I love sentences is that it works our justification muscle. We are forced to listen and react to the non sequitur sentence just thrown into the scene. 

We are forced to LISTEN and REACT to the SENTENCE just thrown into the scene. A sentence that had nothing to do with whatever was said before it. 

Proof that you can say ANYTHING because your scene partner is listening to you and will react to what you just said. 

Now. This post raises a couple of other things that I'll save for another post.

- are you listening to be able to react?

- do you trust your scene partner?

- do you trust yourself?

Whatever your answer is.. Say anything and Go!