A man is sitting reading a magazine slowly turning the pages. The sound of each one is all you can hear until the rustle of his pants as he crosses his legs. A woman enters the room and sits right next to him, uncomfortably close. He looks up and back at his magazine trying to ease away from her slightly without being obvious. She exhales with a snort of indignation and stares at him, her face getting closer and closer to his and she says in a low voice….

This summer working with Keith Johnstone we did scenes starting with 20 seconds of silence followed by one character saying something to change the other. Those first 20 seconds were riveting to watch “nothing” happen. However, there was so much that was in that “nothing”. Watching as an audience member I created stories about each character and small traits and gestures took on great meaning – it was engrossing.

The audience is not passive, they are searching for the “reason”

- Keith Johnstone Aug 2009

For the players, these scenes with silence gave time to relax and have “nothing” happen. It was 20 seconds just listen for the offers that were there – a shift in position, crossing legs, a slight glance of eye contact. Then a small bit of dialog (5 seconds) and another 20 seconds of silence.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, something!

- Keith Johnstone Aug 2009

This was a shift for me to think about breaking scenes down to smaller slices of very present, in-the-moment focus. For those short periods, listening, connecting, acting, and focusing on what was already there was easier because it wasn’t for a whole scene – just this short part of one.

It’s so easy to rely on being wordy, but so rewarding to let go, slow down, and enjoy the silence.

© 2009, Improv Notebook. All rights reserved. info@improvnotebook.comi

Can you to stop your thoughts for 1 minute?  Try it now – just sit, breathe and don’t think. I’ll wait… How did it go? Unless you have a daily meditation practice, it can be very hard to quiet your mind. That’s normal for most of us.

Now try the opposite. Pick a nursery rhyme or line from a song you know well – something like “Bah Bah Black Sheep”. Repeat it and raise the volume of your thoughts until you are screaming those words over and over in your head for 1 minute (don’t say the words out loud). 

Both of these exercises are the same in one simple way. It changes the way we look at the world.

“If we stop the verbal thinking, it’s the same world but it’s a much more interesting world.” -Keith Johnstone

When you begin Zen meditation practice you count your breaths. The counting gives you a focus so you notice when other thoughts have come in to distract you. Eventually you leave the counting and focus only on the breath. With some practice you can quiet your mind and become more aware of the world, notice things your brain normally blocks out.

By mentally screaming “Bah Bah Black Sheep” you can disrupt your typical verbal thinking. If you can do this loud enough you can drown out your other thoughts and even make it difficult for you to speak. Try to say your name out loud but never stop the mental phrase. Don’t pause to quickly say the words out loud, say them at the same time.  It may take a few days of trying.

By now, you might be thinking “I thought this blog was about improv…” Here’s where that comes in. The technique of mantras used by meditation experts and can be used by actors.

Mantras

“It is abstract, not your objective. It’s  just used to change the flesh” -Keith Johnstone

Try playing a scene by mentally repeating “I love you” or “I hate you” as a mantra. It will change what you look like, and how you deliver your lines. Just because you are screaming “I love you. I love you. I love you” in your mind, that doesn’t meant you should be in love with the other character. In fact often the opposite is true.  Try thinking “I love you” but to keep away from your partner.  Or, use “I hate you” and want to make them yours. This is similar to playing “covered” emotions like anger covering up the lust in a Jane Austin play.

The point is to distract ourselves from our thoughts, not give time for fear to enter our minds, and give our brain a break. It is similar to being hypnotized or entering a trance state. Athletes call it being “in the zone“, psychologists and business people might call it “flow“, you might have experienced it when “time just flew by” while focused on a project. This can happen for an actor in being deeply in a character or when a performance feels effortless.

“Once you distract your mind, automatic systems start taking over.” – Keith Johnstone

Try walking down the hall without thinking about how you walk. Most likely you will no longer be doing “your” walk, but some other self-aware walk. Mantras can help you act  in a calm way out of instict and not analytical thought. This will produce characters that move naturally and in a human way.

© 2009, Improv Notebook. All rights reserved. info@improvnotebook.comi

All improvisers have played any games. There are books, websites, and games passed on in classes and from player to player. There is a particularly good set of them in my friend Williams Improv Playbook.

The point of the games is to play them. The play them again and again. But not to get better at them, in fact in many cases you are better served by failure. But when you do think about where and when you are using them…

1. Simplicity – Don’t make it harder. In the west, as we pay games we have a tendency to get competitive and make the game harder. Harder is just a way of showing off your intellect and how clever you are.
2. Showing off – If you are performing a game that you have practiced and can play perfectly, it’s not fun to watch. There is no risk.
3. Fail – Play games trying not to fail, but go fast enough that you make mistakes anyway. Playing safe is not as fun to watch or to play.
4. Fail Happy – Let go of your your need to win and then be happy. The success is in the playful part, and in a game there is no need to be unhappy – you can always play again.
5. Stress out – When you feel the stress or are bored as the improviser, break the rules and let yourself be “out” in the game. You know it’s going to end soon anyway – it’s a game.
6. Don’t Stress – Many of the warmup games we play have the effect of stressing us out – not getting us into a happy playful mood to be comfortable on stage. If a game stresses you out, take a look at why you are playing it.

A note on performing games – Not all games are for performance. Some are just “Annoying people for gags” and should only be played every few years as an quick pause while you figure out what to do next.

© 2009, Improv Notebook. All rights reserved. info@improvnotebook.comi

I wanted to learn the unicycle, so I went out and bought one. After 15 minutes I gave up and put it away until a friend of mine told me it takes 6 hours to learn. So I tried again and learned to ride in 5 hours. (paraphrased from Keith’s lecture)

He went on to tell us that in the first 15 minutes he was looking for improvements and that there are no improvements in 15 minutes work on a unicycle. The knowledge that it takes 6 hours means that no improvements in 15 minutes is no big deal, that things will pick up later. As it turned out this was the truth and it took  5 hours in reality in this case.

The same was true of drawing faces. Instead of setting out to draw 200 faces, he decided on 5000 faces. It took one year, one month, and three days to finish and therefore there was no frustration after the first 200 becuase there were 4800 left to do, so the expectations were low.

The trick is to let the audience see you fail and be happy about it.

Improv is creation in the moment in collaboration with other players, there is no risk of failure – there is certainty of it. Failure won’t plague every scene but it is going to happen. Many of the games depend on failure because the audience wants to see you take risks and fail.

If you practice the question game until you have it down and can go for several minutes without making a mistake, there is no risk, and therefore no more game. It becomes a vehicle to show off your intelligence or how superior you are to the audience.

In learning improv, or anything, you need to fail. Most teachers and coaches prevent their students from having failures by trying to help them “get it right”. They are robbing them of opportunities to reflect on their mistakes and gain experience.

As teachers, coaches, performers, or any other pursuit, we must accept the fact that we will also make mistakes, fail, and have opportunities to learn. It is still important to fail with good humor. As coaches we have an opportunity to model the very thing we are teaching.

You can’t win every class as a teacher and you can’t win every audience as a performer.

-Keith Johnstone, Aug 8, 2009

Failure Practice Exercise

Take any comic strip from a newspaper or website and remove the last panel. Now write 5 alternatives of your own. Keep trying with different strips and different days, there’s plenty of practice. If you keep doing this for a month you will have generated lots of ideas. Who knows – one of them might succeed?

© 2009, Improv Notebook. All rights reserved. info@improvnotebook.comi