Improv class

Just today I got a note from my friend Bethany who was once my improv student. She had a dream and my wife and I were in it and were living in her neighborhood and it got her thinking about the great time we all had in my improv class.

Just the other day I was thinking about what happens when a person takes improv to be a philosophy of life. You suddenly let go of all your worries. All you think of is the now, the moment. And when you really allow yourself to do that you see that within each moment is a choice. What do we think, what do we do not later, not tomorrow, not next year, but right now in this red hot moment.

When you sense that there is an amazing opening up of the world of unlimited horizons. That my friends is improv, a philosophy of theater and life, both of which when you come to think of it are one and the same thing.



May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Philosopher J. Krishnamurti who in his last Bombay talk told the massive crowd gathered to her him for the last time: "All time, past present and future is contained in the now."

Yes!

We stand in a circle. I start the game off by pointing to A somewhere in my line of vision. As soon as I point at A, she says YES! and I start moving towards her. She has just given me permission to take her spot. And I intend to take her spot! So as soon as she says yes! to me she finds someone, say B to point to. B says yes! And A starts moving towards B's spot to take it. B must point to C and get a yes! before A gets to B's spot. Now two things: You can't take a single step unless you've asked for permission (by pointing) and received permission (a yes!). Once you have these two things you swiftly move to your new spot. If the person whose spot you are going to has not managed to point and get a yes! and start moving, you have full permission to tickle the hell out of them!

Yes! is an amazing improv game to train the subconscious to accept. In improv theater teachers are always saying accept, accept, accept! Instead of talking about accepting why not play a game? Let the subconscious do the job of learning!

'Accept' does not mean you should do what you are being told to in a scene. All it means is that you acknowledge what the other player is saying and doing. If A says to B, pick that chair up, B does not have to pick up the chair! That does not make the scene interesting. But B must acknowledge that that's what A wants of B. B may or may not do it.

That's what creates dramatic tension. Simplistic following of the 'accept' and other improv 'rules' leads to insipid, forgettable, characters doing insipid, forgettable things.

Let us free ourselves of rules and create. Say YES!

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Yoko Ono's masterpiece. There is a light. Under it is a ladder. You look up and see a magnifying glass hanging by the light. You are curious. You climb all the way to the top of the ladder. You see a squiggle but can't make out what it is with the naked eye. You take the magnifying lens in your hand and look through it. The squiggle comes into focus. It says, 'yes!'. 

Leading the Blind

I still remember it like it was just yesterday. I am walking out of Second City's stone steps into Chicago's Old Town. I feel the cool air of a Chicago evening rushing against my body. I hear a continuous shuffle of passersby as if they are one and I am apart from them. Except that as they brush past me I feel them, feel their impatience. I see nothing. I feel the firm hand of my partner between my shoulder blades guiding me through an experience that will use all my senses. All except one: I am to keep my eyes shut for the entire duration of the exercise.

We walk down the street, cross the busy intersection, walk into a flower shop, smell and touch flowers until we are thrown out, go to a cafe, order coffee with a slice of lemon on the side, sit down, sip coffee, sniff lemon, sigh. It has been fifteen minutes and I have not opened my eyes! Meanwhile my partner has taken me on a guided sensory tour encouraging me to smell things, touch them, taste them, listen deeply for sounds far and near.

We overuse our sense of sight. Giving that one sense a rest allows us to use the other senses and experience the world in its fullness.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Mahatma Gandhi being led by a young boy.

Hot Seat

Three performers are seated roughly in a row, facing the audience. A is in the middle. Although B and C also face the audience, each is angled towards A.

A's task is very simple: to have a conversation with both B and C simultaneously! Now remember, it's a group exercise. B and C are sensing the rhythms of A's conversation and allowing A to actually talk to each of them. But each is also challenging A to listen while talking and talk while listening.

Hot Seat can be played with B and C being given a different topic. What I find particularly satisfying is to ask the rest of the class, our 'audience,' to give B and C not only different topics but also different subtexts. I have talked about subtext in a previous post on this blog.

It is quite a trip for A who looks at B, says a few things while listening to not only B but also C (who is free to talk to the back of A's head, slipping in important details of the conversation) and then turns to face C and does the same! Back and forth, having a conversation with two people at the same time.

Now note: B and C never acknowledge each other! This is not a 3-way conversation. It is strictly two separate conversations between A and B and A and C. They are just happening at the same time! Very soon one conversation may bleed into the other with hilarious effects.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: An old head shot from my archives. 

Trust

We are an ensemble. We are to work together, not as individuals. We are not special, wannabe stars, but a theater group. The business of improvising is very serious. At the bottom of it lies a profound trust. Each of us completely trusts the other. Without trust there's no improv theater.

Trust as any other concept in improv must be developed through the physical rather than the mental. Lecturing you about trust does you absolutely no good. We must allow our bodies to learn to trust.

Catch Me Falling is a wonderful trust building exercise. We visit it often and physically partake of it's wisdom. Each time we do it a little more trust is built. By the time the workshop is over we'll trust each other with our lives. Well, at least we'll trust each other enough not to let anyone fall!

The group stands in a circle. One performer let's call her A stands in the middle of this circle. The circle closes in so that 1. Each person in the circle is very close to A, 2. Each person in the circle has one leg behind them for stability and support, knees slightly bent and hands up, palms facing A. Now A closes her eyes and keeping her knees straight, arms loosely held by her sides, starts falling! Whoever is closest to the direction of her fall works together to catch her and gently pushes her in a different direction. The group standing in a circle work together. When A starts falling towards you, you and your neighbors on either side spring into action to gently and together catch A and just as gently then to push A in another direction. A is simply enjoying the sensation of being gently tossed around like a rag doll trusting that whatever happens the group is not going to let her fall.

Feeling the complete and unconditional support of group in a real, physical way creates the groundwork for creativity and play. By the way, don't be afraid to laugh when playing this game. Just make damn sure whatever happens you never let A fall.

Adjust the size of the circle. Try out various diameters. If A is big and heavy let the circle move in. If A is small and light let the circle expand a bit. Experiment!

The best place to 'catch' A is the back, shoulders, shoulder blades, and upper chest. No grabbing (unless you are saving A from really falling) just soft, caring, open palms.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Stonehenge. 

Subtext

A constraint that brings any performance alive is subtext. A performer is given some information about the character being played that influences how the performer acts. We are creating layers of invisible life events, personality traits, or physical/bodily needs in the moment that are never mentioned but influence everything that the character does. So we are not providing the text, which is after all completely improvised in the moment but rather the subtext, what lies just below the surface.

When I teach I never give the performer the subtext. Instead I ask for a subtext from the audience which consists of the rest of the class. Give us a subtext for Mike, I say, something that he is experiencing in the moment or something from his life or something about him. Mike's never going to talk about this  subtext but it will inform everything that he does. How it informs what he does is not something planned but something that will 'just happen.' Hands shoot up: He has to pee really badly; he was dropped in a vat of magic potion as a child; He and his wife are breaking up after 20 years; He is still in love with his 4th grade school teacher, and so on. I pick one and ask for a subtext for any other actors who will be performing as well. Then we sit back and watch.

Subtext then becomes a powerful tool in freeing the subconscious mind and allows for powerful, original interpretations of how that subtext would shape the character being played. Often what comes through is effortless and surprising, even to the performer!

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Freud explores the unconscious mind by One From RM. 

You can't learn how to be a good actor.

You are born an actor and die an actor. You can't be taught to become a good actor. I think everyone is born being able to act. However in the mysterious alchemy of becoming a social being we lose that memory of being natural-born actors and develop inhibitions, bad habits, and are not ourselves. We lose ourselves.

Our work then is to rediscover our natural inner actors. We start with a very simple exercise called The Chair. A chair is set up across from the audience, facing the audience. A book is placed about ten paces on each side of the chair marking 'the stage.' A performer starts at one end of the stage, standing by one of the books on the floor, gathers herself, then simply walks across 'the stage' and sits down. She faces the audience. Looks at them naturally, then gets up, stands behind the chair, looks once again at the audience, then walks away aware of being on stage until the second book on the floor is passed. I encourage the class to clap when the student leaves the stage.

A very simple exercise but not easy. You are to be your self. Not the you that you project in your daily life but just you with no frills added. If you must laugh while doing it well let it come out, laugh. Don't hold back, don't edit. Just focus on walking across, sitting, looking at the audience, standing, looking at the audience again, leaving.

You can't learn how to be a good actor. But you can unlearn what stops you from being a great one.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Jennilee Marigomen is a photographer living in Vancouver, Canada. 

The why of don't say no!

If a student were to really understand the why of what they are told they should or should not do in improv they would no longer need rules. When you understand something you don't really need rules. You are free!

An old rule of improv says, Don't Say No! Following this rule blindly the young student of improv is ever alert to the possibility that she may blurt out No! at any point and then it's all over. The student is mortified.I think that sort of thing is so 20th Century. We have to move on!

What lies at the basis of the old rule, Don't Say No! is this: In an improv situation we want to move the act, the scene forward. When someone initiates something it helps move things along if you go along with what is being initiated. rather than opposing it. That is the only raison d'etre of this old rule. Now that you understand it you can feel free to forget it! Being your happy, everyday, accepting self is all that is needed to be successful in an improvised play.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Marcel Marceau in SILENT MOVIE (Dir. Mel Brooks, 1976) utters the only word in the entire movie: Non!

Use constraints not rules

I do not like rules. When I see students using the so-called rules of improv I want to say, who made these rules up? Is there an improv God that I am unaware of who says, Thou shalt not say No, and so on?

Rules make the student more inhibited rather than less, more reliant of the conscious editing mind rather than the subconscious pulse or inner impulse. So I say, forget the rules, delve into your play, be present, and see where things go.

On the other hand constraints are wonderful in improv. Charles Eames was once asked if good design is capable of constraints. He replied that good design was dependent on good constraints. A good theater game, a good improv score is crucial for the successful design of an improvised play whether it lasts for an hour or just a minute. So we use well thought-out scores as effective constraints and jettison all rules!

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: A film, made in 1972, that expresses Charles Eames' approach to design.

What tickles me--an improv writing/performance exercise

The four of us get together to inaugurate a friend's new performance space. We are to be teachers as well as students. Each of us will lead one of the four parts of the workshop.

When it is my turn I hand out sheets of writing-paper and pencils. Then I begin:

You are to write for seven minutes. You may write what you want in any way that you want. You may write fast or slow, big or small, right-side up or upside down. You must keep writing for the entire seven minutes without stopping to think.


I will give you a topic and start timing you right away. The topic is

What tickles me?

When time is up I bring out a box of color markers and continue:

Now stop writing. Drop you pencils and pick up a marker. Use any color that grabs you. Underline three sentences that are the most important to you. They don't have to relate to each other. They don't have to make sense individually or together.

When that is done,

Now from the three underlined sentences pick out three words that tickle you. The words could come one from each sentence or they could all come from one sentence. You are picking out a total of three words. Now, circle these three words.

Now scrounge around the space looking for an object you can use in your performance. It could be something that belongs to you or someone else or no one.  

You are to create a one-minute performance using your object and the three circled words. You can move about the space, you can gesture, interact with your object in any way you want to but the only words you can use are your three circled words. 

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Galileo pondered on tickling at some length in his Assayer. 

Gesture & Name

The one thing we can all say is our name. Combine saying your name

with a gesture. Do it in a circle: each person makes a gesture while

saying his or her name.

Now play with this idea. Say your name stressing the syllables in
non-familiar ways. Stretch out some syllables, compress others while
you make a gesture using your entire body. Do it in a circle.

Moving while doing something as familiar as your name, when said in an unfamiliar, exaggerated way allows the subconscious to take over and the pulse then takes you to the unexpected.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Abhay in the performance Bamboo Alley. Photo taken by Toni Gauthier. 

The pulse

The pulse is what improv is all about. In India, where I grew up, we call it prana, or life-force energy. It pulses through the actor while improvising. It is experienced as a strong energy making the actor act and do as she does without thinking, without planning, without trying.

The pulse is also an exercise. We gather together in a circle holding hands. I send a pulse along by squeezing the hand of my neighbor on one side, who then sends it along with a squeeze of the hand and so on. The pulse moves along at a certain rhythm. The group tries to concentrate on keeping to the rhythm while being alert to the pulse. If someone misses it, the pulse dies, and you can feel the group energy drop off instantly.

With practice a group can handle two simultaneous pulses moving in opposite directions. After the first pulse is established I send a pulse in the opposite direction. The group tries to concentrate on keeping both rhythms going. It gets to be challenging and funny. Sometimes we end up on the floor, laughing in a circular heap, barely able to keep going.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Andy Goldsworthy's Pebble Circle. 

Improv in the art of teaching

I often go to class completely unprepared. This gives me a chance to use my improv skills and I end up teaching better than I would if I carefully prepared my classes. This term what is particularly memorable is the history class:

I am standing in front of the class unsure of whether to give them a final exam or a final project. Suddenly the pulse grabs me and I start explaining the final project as I am making it up:

You will be working on a micro-history project. You can focus on your family or on your community. You should find the oldest living relatives (or community members) and interview them. Find out their most happy memory and their most sad one. Then work down the generations interviewing people, finding letters and other objects to use in your project. What I want you to create is a work of art, an installation containing family memories and artifacts. You can use audio and video, make something out of your family or community memories. You can write letters to loved ones who have passed away as if they can hear and read what you have to say.

It is no exaggeration to say that the resulting projects were magical. The idea had come to me in a moment but this was to many of my students the most wonderful project they had had the chance to create.

The idea of being prepared is often misunderstood. Teachers often over-prepare and come across as uninspiring. Why not change our idea of what it means to prepare? Why not train ourselves to enter into an improv state of mind and each day approach life afresh?

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Artist David Ireland whose art was inclined toward 'the unpretentious, and the unrehearsed, the unserious and amusing.'

Why everyone should study improv!

Improv acting is about creating in the moment. Creating live, in the safety of a warm, comforting group of classmates, a multitude of characters and roles using monologues, physical shapes, vocalized sounds, songs, and even gibberish.

As a new student of improv, there is a decidedly delicious moment you experience when you learn to let go of your inhibitions and simply follow your impulses moment by moment. In the carefully moderated environment created by the experienced teacher the student learns to think on her feet and lets go of the need for preparation, planning, and hence lets go of anxiety.

Improv is accessible to all. One needs no special preparation or aptitude for it. As long as a student is willing to trust the teacher and literally play the improv theater games that provide structure for learning, he or she develops skills of being present more fully in the moment.

The skills learned in improv class are ultimately life skills. How to be confident, express your creative self, think on your feet! I have been teaching improv for fifteen years now and have taught a very wide range of students, from artists to nuns, accountants to photographers, astrophysicists to Zen practitioners. They have all enjoyed the experience of learning improv and been pleasantly surprised to find how much it helped them succeed in their fields of work.

I think everyone should study improv. And if you happen to live close to Berkeley, come check out my class!

May the pulse be with you,

Abhay

Image: Cluster balloonist John Ninomiya's creation.

Funny Walk

Funny Walk is one of my favorite improv exercises! Here is how I approach it

Walk. Now develop your own funny walk. You can copy something you see or a part of it. You can change any time. You can use the floor or the table tops, crawl or slide or roll or be up on your toes.

Now add a sound to your funny walk....

Or speak in gibberish......

Or sing in gibberish......

Add words, sing or speak them......

Your eyes are available as you pass others. Sometimes making meaningful eye-contact, having a response, a reaction.

Then we freeze and one person is in focus at a time doing their funny walk and making sounds/speaking/singing/talking gibberish or being silent as they move. When you are done you bump someone else and they take the focus.

Funny Walk works by forcing us to separate the voice from the habitual ways in which we hold ourselves as we talk. It breaks patterns of stiffness that stifle our creative self. It allows the inner goof to speak up and be heard. In song, sound, or just plain gibberish!

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: John Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Play Space: A Manifesto

We are guided along by an invisible force along lines of least resistance. I call this force the pulse. Improvisation involves simply following the pulse down the paths that suddenly appear before us. Artist Frank Stella calls his canvas his working space. I think that a good name for the performance space is play space. Once we tap into the pulse we can feel it vibrate, zoom up and down and sideways at times, linger lovingly on the side at others, sometimes exploding, sometimes still, filling our play space, exploring its boundaries and everything within with a taut, endless continuity.

Far too many approaches to improvisation have made up rules, rights and wrongs. Many even have the cautionary TM label attached to them. I find such approaches limiting and stifling to the natural instinct to find the pulse and follow it.

Stella sees the work of painting in terms of the need to create dynamic space using a still and two-dimensional medium. I see the work of improvisation as the creation of play space, a space where our natural instincts can play. Anything less I find unsatisfactory. Anything more is too much like work.

May the pulse be with you!
Abhay

Image: Marcel Duchamp's playful masterpiece.

Ten Improv Questions Answered

Over the years I have received a number of questions about my approach to IMPROV. I have selected ten of them and answer them below.

Question 1. What is IMPROV?

Improv is short for improvisational theater. It is a performance art, it is acting not from your lines but from your imagination.

Question 2. Is IMPROV basically comedic?

Improv taps into the most basic of human instincts: the need to create something out of nothing. This process unleashes a great amount of energy while letting go of resistance in the form of social inhibitions. The comedic experience comes from the viewer of someone improvising rather than the improviser himself or herself. It is a joy to see someone create in the spur of the moment, letting go of the usual norms of correct behavior and make something they really believe in. Hence, even an intense and serious exploration of a scene by the performer will be interpreted by the audience as an unusually funny performance.

Question 3. Does one have to try to be funny while improvising?

No. In fact trying to be funny does not really work. You just get involved in your world in a hyper-real way, believing in the environment you are creating with your partners, taking unexpected pathways of your imagination. When you do that effectively, thats when your audience has a good laugh.

Question 4. What is the point of IMPROV class?

To come together with other performers of varying levels of experience in a carefully structured environment of scores and exercises with the express purpose of exploring to the utmost your own imagination and co-creating with others using their imaginations.

Question 5. Why do you not teach a traditional IMPROV class stratified into skill levels?

Improv is not a matter of skill. All that we need to know about improvising we already know intuitively. My students are not looking for one more class in which they master certain skills and pass exams. What they are here for it to be able to explore and grow creatively as performers. There are no 'levels' in my classes just individual explorers of the creative imagination expanding their own capacities for self-expression. There is never any comparision with anyone else.

Question 6. What is your background in IMPROV?

I grew up studying experimental theater and pantomime in India. By the time I was in college at the University of Bombay I started my own hugely popular mime group. After moving to America I studied IMPROV at Second City in Chicago with some of the pioneers of the IMPROV renaissance of the 1970s and other theater arts such as Neofuturism and Goat Island method. Once in california my years of study with Cassie Terman in West Coast Improvisational methods led me in the direction of blending all my many influences over the years. I now belive that Improv can not be copyrighted or be prescibed. It is as natural to humans as sleeping and awaking. The trick is in reconnecting with that inner knowing.

Question 7. What is the most important thing for a student to keep in mind or be focused on?

Am I having fun? Do I believe in this world I am creating, however far-fetched it may seem to others? Do I know that I can't get it wrong, that this is something I was born with?

Question 8. You stress physicality in your teaching. Why?

That is the nature of our art form. It is about using our bodies fully to create and then engage in worlds of our imagination. Let us say you create a world in your imagination. Well you can tell us about it. But if that is all you are going to do why not write a book? If you are in my class you are here not to tell us about it but to show us and what better way to show us than to use your entire body to enter into your world fully?

Question 9. You are a teacher who plays and performs with his students in class. Can you comment on that?

That is how I teach. By becoming a student myself.

Question 10. Why do some of your students keep returning to class year after year?

I think it is because my class is a sanctuary where each person's silly, goofy, weird, obsessional, and tender side is given space for expression and exploration. It is the same reason why I keep teaching the class year after year: I feel so good after each class!




Image: Abhay performing in an elevator. 

Improv State of Mind

Improv is not just a performance art. It is an approach to life, a state of mind, that values spontaneity and complete trust in the present moment. I like to imagine that there is a control tower or transmission center that is continuously transmitting the pulse. The improv state of mind involves developing one's abilities to tap into this signal and stay tuned to it.

So how does a person develop this improv state of mind? I have found these three approaches to be most helpful:

1. Keep an improv journal. Keep a blank journal and colored pens (I like Sakura Micron 05) with you wherever you go. Whenever you have a spare moment write, doodle, draw, and color, improvising moment by moment. My student Karen Wang (hi Karen!) left Berkeley and was no longer able to come to the improv class. Wherever she goes she takes her improv journal with her and keeps her improv state of mind active and fresh. Some people like to do this upon waking, first thing in the morning. I like to do it while riding the train to work each day. Remember this is a crazy journal--you can title it that if you want--and nothing is off limits! Just do as your pulse guides you to. It is the improv exercise we do in class called funny walk, except this is on paper!

2. Meditate every day. Many great comic actors practice zen meditation for about 20 minutes each day. Meditation does not have to involve ritual or spiritual/religious aspects. It is simply stilling the conscious mind by focusing upon the breath while seated in a comfortable position with the spine fairly erect. For more on meditation, see my yoga-is-love blog.

3. Participate in Improv Play at least once a week! Regular participation in an improv acting class will keep strengthening your connection to the creative pulse. Many long-time students of mine have noticed that the right brained creative freedom gained in improv class translates into powerful life skills! You evolve into a creative powerhouse not only while playing and performing in class but also at work, in school, and the rest of your life.

So, friends, keep the improv state of mind active! It is the life philosophy that embraces finding joy in the now, as no other.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Moebius band by Charles and Ray Eames

New Improv vs Traditional Improv

It is time to revitalize improv theater. I imagine the New Improv would have to engage the subconscious mind and disengage the conscious mind.

When I watch great performers I see that they seem to be powered by something other than their conscious thinking mind. It is like they have accessed this source of raw creative energy and then are simply basking in it. And I am beginning to think that the reason why watching these great performers is so compelling is because we in the audience get to partake of, even perhaps for just a moment, the delicious and juicy raw creative force.

I believe that the subconscious mind is where the pure, raw energy resides and that the New Improv theater should focus on accessing and drawing out this energy into visible form. On the other hand Traditional Improv has focused far too much and far too long on the use of the conscious mind: quickly framing a scene using words, for instance. There is nothing wrong with the use of language in a scene but when the words come out of the conscious, thinking mind, they contain little power and the actor is not accessing his or her full potential.

In the New Improv I suggest we allow our thinking minds (the conscious mind) to take a hike and allow our bodies to take over the scene, feeling the scene rather than thinking it. You can then feel your mind relax and you give your self a chance to connect with the pulse.

And when you are connected to your pulse and not trying to be clever or quick but just allowing your crazy subconscious self to inhabit your body, you are pure raw creative energy and you surprise your self. When that happens it is such a treat!

The New Improv theater is the theater of the subconscious.

May the pulse be with you,

Abhay

Image: Brian Eno's brilliant creative 'block busters'.

So what's the point of all the exercises?

A student of improv may well ask, what is the point of all the exercises that we do in class? People sometimes assume that the point is to develop certain skills. Develop presence or quickness, for instance.

The truth is that learning improv is really not a matter of learning skills and then honing them. Philosophically, it is not an additive process. It is not as if you come in with skills A and B and then in class you learn skills C and D. If that were the case you could read a book on improv and learn all there is to it.

Learning improv is actually a subtractive art. You are put thorough a carefully, even cunningly, modulated set of exercises that subtract, one step at a time, things that interfere with your perfect and continuous connection with the pulse. One set of execises may work on removing your inhibitions, the next on your resistance, the third on freeing your body to express itself more freely, the fourth on liberating your voice.

You were all born perfect improvisers. We are simply attempting to return to that perfect state.

May the pulse be with you,

Abhay

Image: Radica 20Q Artificial Intelligence Toy

Object Work

Anything that you can create in your imagination, you can create in your improvisation. Have you noticed how your imagination works best if you suspend disbelief and simply allow your mind to create? Well, object work allows you to do just that when you are performing! The essence of object work is believing in the imaginary world you are creating and then inhabiting it to such a degree that it becomes real for you. What becomes real for the performer becomes real for the audience.

Play with this. Pick up an imaginary object. Then answer the following in your mind and feel, really feel the object become real.

1. How would you describe it?
2. How much does it weigh?
3. What color is it?

4. What textures does it have?
5. What is its volume?
6. Is it new or old?
7. Do you like it?
8. Find something odd about it. Can you let the oddness grow?
9. How has the object changed?
10. Do you realise you've just performed improv theater?

It really is that simple! Now play with another imaginary object.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Mathematical peepshow by Charles and Ray Eames

Changing Emotions

Improv exercises dealing with the audience calling out changing emotions are wonderful tools to exploring very different states of being in the same environment. You may have begun a scene using object work to create an imaginary world that you then inhabit. When a new emotion is called you are forced to incorporate the new emotional state into the world you have created. 

How you actually go about feeling the emotions and expressing them depends on where your own individual pulse guides you. However, there is a powerful approach you may want to explore called the Stanislavsky Method. In his book An Actor Prepares, the great director Stanislavsky describes how real acting involves really feeling the emotion on a deep level and refraining from making stereotypical gestures. He values emoting internally and finds external emoting to be fake, something the audience simply will not be affected by. For example Stanislavsky would argue that showing the emotion, anger, by rolling your eyes and clenching your fists would be a fake way to go about it, one that the audience will not buy for the simple reason that you, the performer, are not really experiencing the emotion. Instead you should allow your self to really feel that emotion deeply and allow how you speak, how you move, to simply happen in response to how you feel the emotion.

If this interests you, play with it. It can be a lot of fun.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Wabian 2 developed at Waseda University is able to express emotions.

How I Improvise

I have been thinking about how I improvise a piece. Firstly, I let my body do something. It may assume a static shape or start moving in a certain way. I am following the pulse.

Secondly, once the physicality is established, the pulse will move me to what I call one of the four "S"es: silence, sound, speaking, singing. Speaking or singing can be in gibberish. I do not consciously make a choice amongst the four "S"es. When I trust and follow the pulse I seem to be guided along in making that choice, perhaps subconsciously.

Improv for me starts with the physical discovery of the pulse. There is no room for thinking here. If we were to allow for a simplistic mind-body dichotomy, improv definitely starts in the body and stays in the body.

The body has its own logic and sense of direction. That is why it is pointless for me to worry about being clever, funny, or staying on track. I simply take the leap.

Once I completely accept the primacy of the pulse in the body for creating an improvisation, I am also free to explore improv as more than a narrative art. A narrative performance tells a story. The pulse may well guide me to tell a story or be in one but it may just as well guide me to a very different place. A place that has no stories to tell and yet a place I treasure.

Like the small red bottlecap that I loved as a child and played with more than anything else.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay