On Spontaneity

I'm currently re-reading Keith Johnstone's Impro. This is one of the books that really affected me most in my formative years.

Here's an excerpt:

It's possible to turn unimaginative people into imaginative people at a moment's notice. I remember an experiment referred to in the British Journal of Psychology - probably in the summer of 1969 or 1970- in which businessmen who had showed up as very dull on work-association tests were asked to imagine themselves as happy-go-lucky hippy types, in which persona they were retested, and showed up as far more imaginative. In creativity tests you may be asked to suggest different ways of using a brick; if you say things like 'Build a house', or 'Build a wall', then you're classified as unimaginative- if you say 'Grind it up and use it for diarrhoea mixture', or 'Rub off warts with it', then you're imaginative. I'm oversimplifying, but you get the general idea.

Some tests involve picture completion. You get given a lot of little squares with signs in them, and you have to add something to the sign. 'Uncreative' people just add another squiggle, or join up a 'C' shape to make a circle. 'Creative' people have a great time, parallel lines become the trunk of a tree, a 'V' on its side becomes the beam of a lighthouse and so on. It may be a mistake to think of such tests as showing people to be creative, or uncreative. It may be that the tests are recording different activities. The person who adds a timid squiggle may be trying to reveal as little as possible about himself. If we can persuade him to have fun, and not worry about being judged, then maybe he can approach the test with the same attitude as a 'creative' person, just like the tired businessmen when they were pretending to be hippies.

Most schools encourage children to be unimaginative. The research so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their teachers. Torrance gives an eye-witness account of an 'exceptionally creative boy' who questioned the rules of the textbook: 'The teacher became irate, even in the presence of the principal. She fumed, "So! You think you know more than this book!"' She was also upset when the boy finished the problems she set almost as quickly as it took to read them. 'She couldn't understand how he was getting the correct answer and demanded that he write down all of the steps he had gone through in solving each problem.'

When this boy transferred to another school, his new principal telephoned to ask if he was the sort of boy 'who has to be squelched rather roughly'. When it was explained that he was 'a very wholesome, promising lad who needed understanding and encouragement' the new principal exclaimed 'rather brusquely, "Well, he's already said too much right here in my office!"' (E.P. Torrance, Guiding creative Talent, Prentice-Hall, 1962.)

One of my students spent two years in a classroom where the teacher had put a large sign over the blackboard. It said 'Get into the "Yes, Sir" attitude.' No doubt we can all add further anecdotes. Torrance has a theory that 'many children with impoverished imaginations have been subjected to rather vigorous and stern efforts to eliminate fantasy too early. They are afraid to think.' Torrance seems to understand the forces at work, but he still refers to attempts to eliminate fantasy too early. Why should we eliminate fantasy at all? Once we eliminate fantasy, then we have no artists.

This excerpt certainly had an affect on me before I formally became an instructor in any of the subjects that I teach. More than that, I find it important outside of the classroom as well.

For a tenth of a sawbuck!

The reason I've been less active blog-wise is that I have spent every waking minute online working out the schedule for Gamex, which starts in less than a week. I've received compliments and had to fix many, many glitches in the schedule. It's tiring work that usually happens in the middle of the night. It has been remarkably stressful, but it's going to be an exciting event!

I'm most excited about the Worldwide Settlers of Catan Championship pre-qualifier we're holding. We had a ton of people come to Game Empire today for the pre-pre-qualifier, and my friend Dan won his entry into the event next week. If he goes all the way he'll be taking trips to Gen Con in Indianapolis and competing at Burg Wildenstein in Germany for the title of Settlers of Catan world champion!

(I remain impartial for the event that I'm running. I'll root for the winner of the Gamex event as they take their steps on the road to the championship.)

Anyway, I have to thank my pal Kevin Pimentel, who hooked me up with a gift certificate for a one-hour massage. My appointment is tomorrow and I can't wait!

***

After improv class tonight, I scored a hardcover copy of Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares as well as a book of Viola Spolin's Improvisation Games this evening, each for a buck. Also, Mike Wolfe convinced me to add an hour of improvisation games to the Gamex schedule next weekend. We're just going to take over some space and make some theatre. We're guerrilla.

I'll be performing with my Monkey Butler classmates tomorrow night in One Buck Butler! That's the workshop class for the Monkey Butler level one classes. There's not much improv in Los Angeles at a lower price. It costs a buck, or pay $10 and nine of your friends get in for free!

One Buck Butler
5831 W Centinela Ave,
Los Angeles, CA 90045
8pm

Finally, I read Improvise, by Mick Napier, upon many, many recommendations. It's a light book with some genuine nuggets of wisdom in it. I was fairly irritated by it, because I feel that some of the passages can really be misconstrued. It seems like the kind of book that would be better read aloud by the author, but maybe that's just me.

However, the book can also be read in a sitting or two, which makes it easier to read than Keith Johnstone's Impro. Impro to me is a superior book, but Improvise is much more immediate.

However, I have been working on Mick Napier's solo exercises and finding them quite the challenge. I even made flash cards so that I can do them on the run! If you see me talking to myself, it's intentional.

My life in "Yes, And"

When I was newly resuming my studies in improvisation I spent a lot of time at the library printing out as much as I could find on the subject. Originally I intended to post a lot of those links here as well as a video clip or two for my fellow students. Before that I'm going to do a little navel-gazing.

It had been easily fifteen years since I performed comedy improvisation on stage. Nearly twenty years had passed since I floundered in my occasional performances with the Santa Barabara ComedySportz team. Let's be honest, I wasn't a great performer or team player in those early years.

I wasn't really sure what to expect on my return. In many ways things had changed, but who knew what would be the same?

I had dabbled with going out to the local improv houses in town through the years. I'd taken in shows at The Groundlings, Acme Comedy, IO and UCB. It was funny stuff, but it certainly had a different feel to the stuff with which I was most familiar. I hadn't really played or seen any long form improvisation in my early years. Harolds were something I heard mentioned in a sort of "have you heard of..." hush. All of the improvisation I learned at ComedySportz were short form games, improvisations that rarely lasted longer than five minutes at a time. Meanwhile, folks had been developing and building on the stuff that I didn't even know about when I was first performing. Yeah, it's nice to have a mountain to climb.

Even if I'm ambivalent about my own early performances and teamwork, I have to admit that improvisation became a very important part of my life. The "yes, and" impulse for as many years as it took me to learn and understand it formed a pretty strong portion of my worldview. The skill of listening took me even longer... is still taking my work. I could go on longer, but I really want to post some of those links.

***

The Skinny on LA's Impov Training Scene, by David Valdez. This is an article on Brains of Minerva, a cool site for actors in the Los Angeles scene.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at how much I found on Wikipedia. The links I found there at the time aren't visible now, but here's one of them:
The Living Playbook, edited by Randy Dixon. This is a catalog, up-to-date through 2001 in this version of various improv games and forms.

My earliest readings in improvisation were the books of Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin. I've written about Johnstone in previous posts,

Here's a video of Viola Spolin, circa 1987:


From my own experience with ComedySportz, I'd suggest that there isn't really competition in so-called "competitive improv." It's really more of a hook to sell a show to an audience.

One troupe that rose to prominence over the last decade or so is the Upright Citizen's Brigade. This is from their televised Bravo performance that I only caught because I had my DVR programmed to look for Tina Fey.



I'm really glad that this was on YouTube, since I lost the show recording that I made years ago. I've also got the ASSSCAT dvd, which appears to be a show shot directly for DVD at the UCB Los Angeles stage. I really dig it.

And lastly, since I wanted my Monkey Butler friends to see the game Five Things played, here's this:


I really dig the annotations. This game is slightly different than the version I played, but the skills are still the same. This seems like a pretty decent representation of the muscles I was hoping to get students to flex last week.

And again, Monkey Butler. Loving the classes I take each week. It's good to have a place to work out.

edited to add:

BONUS!



I love Tina Fey.

Like Edison's

Here's a short thought:

My bias against discussion is something I've learned to see as very English. I've known political theatre groups in Europe which would readily cancel a rehearsal, but never a discussion. My feeling is that the best argument may be a testimony to the skill of the presenter than to the excellence of the solution advocated. Also the bulk of discussion time is visibly taken up with transactions of status which have nothing to do with the problem to be solved. My attitude is like Edison's, who found a solvent for rubber by putting bits of rubber in every solution he could think of, and beat all those scientists who were approaching the problem theoretically.

From Impro, by Keith Johnstone

I'm re-reading Impro, which can be considered one of the seminal books on improvisation. The last time I read it must have been close to twenty years ago. I consider this a formative book to the way I view the world. Reading about Johnstone's approach to teaching, I see a lot of his ideas have been present in my teaching, theatrical and otherwise.

What I enjoy about the passage is that it implicitly draws a distinction between discussion and communication. Perhaps Johnstone meant to draw a distinction between argument and work. That seems valid to me too.