Improv is flight; it’s skydiving.
That’s why when I was in acting school I was so scared of entering this world. It felt like every time I got on stage to improvise, I was jumping out of an airplane into the open air and just fell, fell, fell until I inevitably and painfully crashed to the ground. I never figured out what the hell my parachute was, what was supposed to keep me from crashing??
Later, too, during my first years in rehearsals and shows I’d always get that same feeling, a moment before a show my stomach would turn, and I’d feel completely nauseous. By then I had already picked up on some Improv techniques, I was aware of certain rules but still had no clue as to what was supposed to keep me afloat in the air, I still hadn’t figured out the magic that would keep me in the air, hadn’t cracked the formula that would get me to land on both feet time and time again. We opened one show with a sort of singing game, all the performers stood in a half-circle on stage, in each turn one person steps forward and sings a song; at a certain point someone else comes from behind and replaces him or her, starting a new song, using one of the previous song’s final words. So we all stand on stage, and I can feel my legs slowly pulling me back, and my mind starts racing: “you’re not as good as the rest, your song is going to suck, you’ll be boring for sure, not to mention totally unfunny.” She was doing a lot of talking, that inner judge of mine, she kept distracting me that I almost didn’t notice the hand on my back pushing me forward… I suddenly found myself in the middle of the half-circle, the music changed, and I had no choice but to start singing, I had no idea what I’d sing about, but I had no time to deliberate – an entire audience was staring at me. Her, miss judgy-pants inside my head had also disappeared, fled to the mountains, I assume, which is exactly what my legs wanted to do. But my mouth, my diaphragm, and my vocal chords started doing their thing, and I started singing. In front of me – a crowd of people staring at me, behind me I could feel my teammates rooting for me, and the song started shaping into form, I had no time to be clever or witty. I was taken by surprise, so I simply sang out loud the stream of consciousness that was going through my mind at that moment, I sang about the zit that popped on my left cheek and whose presence scared me half to death, I sang about his other zit friend on my other cheek and how they must be gossiping about me, and the song evolved and developed without me even breaking a sweat, I hadn’t really noticed which words were coming out of my mouth, and suddenly I see before me the audience… cracking up, laughing so hard about this song that I think is banal, stupid and so simple and boring, the teammates behind me are all laughs and excitement too, none of them stepped forward to replace me because they were having so much fun. And then it all became clear to me, that thing that would save me from crashing, that would land me on my feet and even to fly – is… me.
We have this tendency to think that we, as we are, are not enough – we’re not smart enough, not beautiful enough, not funny enough, just not enough. We’re sure that to get to that great, smart, funny, witty, original idea we have to think far outside of ourselves. The absurd thing is that the exact opposite is true: the deeper inside we go, the more we express our view of the things, the way we see and perceive the world, that would make us the funniest, most clever, most original selves, that would get us to the “correct” idea. The fact is that all greatest inventions started with one person’s problem.
Where does it come from? At around 6 years old we become aware of our surroundings and the concept of consequences – we realize that if we snort while laughing, we will be laughed at, if we dress a certain way, we will be hazed, etc. And we desperately want to fit in and not get offended. Around that time we each develop our inner judge who’s there to watch over us, to make sure we get as little hurt as possible, that we don’t make fools of ourselves. The thing is that as we grow up, the judge grows up as well, every time we get hurt the judge grows bigger and greater, making us trust ourselves less and less, to be less of who we really are – different in society.
Our inner voice is still there, it simply drowns in: “No, I bet they’d think it’s idiotic, my ideas are never good enough, I’m not a funny woman/man, this is boring…”. As soon as we dare let this inner voice be heard, we’ll discover that people are reacting well to it, or that they’re interested in what we have to say. The more we let this voice be heard, the stronger it will get, the more we trust it, the more it will prove to us that we, just the way we are, are as good as it gets. And the way to achieve that is simple – just go for it, slowly, step by step and gain confidence as you do (what happens if you still fail? More about that on the next post).
So next time you have an idea you wish to share at work, or if you have your own unique way of doing things or anything else that bubbles inside, even if you think it’s banal and boring, even if your inner judge tries to make you drop it, give a chance to that voice that is you, you will most likely surprise yourselves… Because we, just the way we are, are all the funniest, most clever, awesome and original – because no one else has our point of view and no one else shares our quirks – and that’s what keeps things interesting – the different rather than the similar.
Personal Associations is a game that helps strengthen the inner voice:
(You can play it with your family, friends, at work – or even alone)
Step 1: Start off with a round of associations. The first person says a word, the next one says an association to that word, the next says an association to the last word and so on (if playing alone, the next person is always us). And so a chain of thought is created: sun, hot, summer, flip-flops, beach, etc.
Step 2: Do exactly the same thing, only now the associations have to be personal: images, fragrances, sounds, people, memories, perceptions, anything! As long as the association is from each participant’s personal inner world.
For example: sun, shot, shoulder, dislocate, port, etc. (shot to sun because there was a time when I was self-injecting medication that prevented me from being exposed to the sun, shoulder to shot because whenever I try to take a hard shot with a ball, my shoulder hurts, because both my shoulders have dislocated and so on…). The least we understand someone else’s association in the game, the more interesting the game will be for us (which only goes to show that each of our inner worlds is more interesting than anything). Even if to that person the association will be banal and boring, to the rest of the participants it will be fascinating, and they’ll want to understand the context.
Step 3 (A challenging upgrade): After creating a long enough chain of associations, you can unravel them backward in this pattern: “I said _______ because you said _______ . For example: “I said dislocate because you said shoulder” and then the previous participant (who said the word ‘shoulder’) will say: “I said shoulder because you said shot, and so on and so on…
Leave a Reply