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Walking Backward Into the Future

10/21/2011

Merf Ehman once woke up in a snow bank, not knowing where she was. This, she told me, was her low point. She had survived years of drug and alcohol abuse and knew she couldn’t survive long being homeless, and so when she finally got herself together, found counseling, and enrolled in law school, she wanted to leave that dark past behind her. But when she started practicing as a lawyer and fighting for housing rights, Merf found herself drawn to the clients who were marginalized, struggling with addictions, illnesses, or disabilities that made it difficult to fight for themselves.

At first, Merf didn’t let on that she was once just like them. She was no longer a homeless addict. She was a powerful lawyer. But then she realized that the people she was working with didn’t need another person of authority telling them what to do; they needed someone they could trust. That’s when Merf finally opened up and started sharing her personal story with her clients. That’s when she became an amazing lawyer.

In my interviews on KUOW, this theme comes up time and again: Someone faces a challenge that prompts a change, becomes a “new person” on a new path, and tries to escape or hide the “old” version of herself that represented everything she wanted to change. But the real change comes not from a clean break, but a synthesis of what we were and who we’re becoming.

In improvisation, the simplest term for this is reincorporation—picking up something from the past, something you may have discarded, and reviving it in a new context. Looking back often propels us forward.

To illustrate reincorporation, we have a game called Walking Backward Into the Future. While you’re looking away, other members from the workshop find five random objects and place them in a single line behind you, each paced one step apart. You step backwards, look down, and pick up the first object. This is where your story begins. Then, after you’ve established the beginning of the story, you place the first object down, step back again, and pick up the next object to incorporate into your story. As you keep stepping back, picking up new objects and discovering where they propel your story, you’re also looking at the trail of objects and story points in front of you. That way, you’re prompted to refer back to these objects and the narrative elements they represent, even as you weave them into the latest development.

The next time you’re stuck in a story, instead of reaching blindly for non-sequiturs or untethered associations, walk backward into the future for a moment. Pick up an earlier offer again and see where it fits now. If you properly honored the offer in the first place, this should be easy, and your reincorporation will help strengthen the cadence and cohesion of the story for both you and your scene partners. Like Merf did, remember what you left behind, look closely at where you are now, and reach back to carry forth the resources you already have. That’s when your story will finally recognize itself.

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Improv for Innovation: What Are You Doing?

10/13/2011

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by Jeremy Richards

Improvisation has a way of rearranging your brain. Receptivity, listening, suspending pre-conceived notions, building on offers, stringing together a series of small offers into epic stories—we like to claim that improv primes all of these skills. So how can we evaluate games to reveal the mechanics whirring under the surface?

One of my favorite games for cracking open your creative process is called, “What are you doing?” The basic premise is simple:

1.       With two players, start with a suggestion for a physical activity (e.g., washing a car)
2.       Player 1 starts to mime this activity.
3.       Player 2 asks, “What are you doing?”
4.       Player 1 continues the activity but names another activity, one that is unrelated to the mimed motion (so you can’t just say, “Washing a cat!”)
5.       Player 2 then starts miming whatever Player 1 just said. Repeat steps 2 through 5.
6.       Once players get comfortable with it, we turn it into an elimination game, so anyone who repeats, stumbles, or pauses too long is out and the next player cycles in.

I used to preconceive ideas and keep a few in my pocket whenever I played this. But what happened when I ran out? Like anyone else, I went into mental buffering and the little hour glass/color wheel in my brain spun just long enough to lose. Then I discovered a trick to this game that makes it a lot easier, more fun, and an intriguing way to watch how my brain works. Maybe others do this, too, but for most people in my workshops it’s something that never occurred to them. How do I do it? It comes down to 3 different forms of mental mapping.

1. Untethered Association: OK, so the suggestion was, “Washing a car,” you’re miming a sponge and some vague circular movements, and the other player says, “What are you doing?” The first approach looks like this, using the current context as the center circle and the orbiting circles as associations:

Untethered Association

This is what it looks like when you're trying too hard. Since you’re trying to build from nothing, drawing on preconceived ideas, or forcing yourself to be clever, you have a longer mental buffering process. Remember, you can only say “potato salad” once. How can you build on what's already there?

2. Radial Association: After a few rounds, maybe you start to riff on the physical activity and end up one step removed. It looks like this:

Radial Association

OK, so it's a start. Though it's a step up from untethered association and you're building on the immediate offer, you're still anchored to a single step association. Radial association is safe and tidy, but it won’t get you very far. If you say “squeezing a sponge,” it sounds a little too close to what you’re already doing. What if you really want to stretch your associations?

3. Nonlinear Association: Many improvisers do this intuitively, but we don’t always map it out. It looks something like this:

Nonlinear Association

Washing a car to skydiving? To me, it’s a logical sequence, but it happens quickly in a smash cut montage inside my head, and when I say, “Skydiving!” it sounds like it came out of nowhere. I'm not reaching into the abyss to try to force something creative, and I'm not forever tied to the single offer and its orbit of simple associations. I'm just following my intuitive links.

Note that the blue circles are concrete associations and the green circles are attributes—each has a different function in provoking creative leaps. To prime this process, I recommend playing “What are you doing?” and saying your associations out loud: “Washing a car, sponge, soft, musical note …” until you land on a new activity. At first, it may seem odd to reveal your brain’s random associations to others, but soon you’ll realize we’re all a little random, and your leaps will become faster and easier.

This tends to be a favorite exercise among writers, actors, designers, and anyone who has to deal with the constant requests to “innovate.” So where does this fit in when you're brainstorming a new product or facing a creative challenge? To take steps toward application, remember that applied improv is more like lifting weights than operating a flight simulator. You may not find many "real world" circumstances outside of the gym where you're literally lying back and pushing a barbell up and down, but you're building that muscle for the next time you throw a ball, swing a racket, or punch a shark. At the very least, you’re gaining insight into your personal creative process, and you’ll never have to fall back on, “Um … potato salad!” ever again.

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3 Quick Tips on Improvising Shakespeare

10/3/2011

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by Jeremy Richards

If there be nothing new, but that which was before, how are our brains beguiled.

-- Sonnet 59

Today, we address a question we often hear from students and audience members: How in the hell do you improvise Shakespeare?

1. Words, Words, Words. I know a couple of improvisers who confess to reading very little Shakespeare and yet they’re still somehow awesome at improvising Shakespeare. But they’re outliers. These preternatural talents are just so good at listening, mirroring, appropriating the language, and intuitively building the narrative that they can build on the offers of the improvisers who have obsessively read and reviewed and rehearsed the language, form, physicality, and world of Shakespeare, thus giving the savants something to absorb in the moment. The point is, most of the actors in a good improvised Shakespeare play are disciplined readers. If you find yourself thrown into a short form Shakespeare scene without time to prep, at least pay attention to the anchors and Yes And like crazy.

That said, if you want to improvise the genre you should find joy in reading and re-reading Shakespeare’s plays and poems, each time with a different focus and a richer reward. For a grasp of the language, first familiarize yourself with the plot of the play before you read it, so your attention will be free to target the vocabulary and wordplay throughout. I recommend The Folger Library editions for individual plays, which offer a plot summary before each scene and maintain unobtrusive footnotes on language and usage on the opposing pages.

Also recommended for your bookshelf:

The Norton Shakespeare by William Shakespeare and Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton)
Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide by John Barton (Anchor)
Speaking Shakespeare by Patsy Rodenburg (Palgrave MacMillan)
Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion by Ben and David Crystal (especially the FEW’s: Frequently Encountered Words)

2. Listen and Repeat. While still absorbing the language, you’ll find another excellent resource in the recorded plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company and others, which allow you to listen along, rewind, and play the recordings again, this time reciting with each line as if it were a foreign language tape. This offers not only an increasingly familiarity with the lexicon, but a taste of the pacing, inflection, and overall mastery of the words when performed by established greats (Lawrence Olivier, Judi Dench) and contemporary powerhouses (Amanda Root, Samuel West). Inevitably, you’ll move from mimicry to an authentic, personal style, which is the natural expression of any improviser who composes moment by moment.

3. Watch and Learn: In addition to Unexpected Productions, you’ll find excellent examples in Chicago’s Improvised Shakespeare Co. and Seattle’s Lost Folio (Wing-It Productions). Both companies know their Bard, and they each have distinctive approaches, formats, and ensemble dynamics. You can find brief clips online, but I recommend seeing these troupes in person to get the full effect of the performance and the arc of the long form Shakespeare. Naturally, you'll also want to soak up as much live scripted Shakespeare as you can, and there are plenty of classic Shakespeare performances captured on film, available at your local library or via Netflix streaming.

Of course, there is a lot more to cover. Randy Dixon and I started a manuscript on improvising Shakespeare, and we planned at least 9 chapters to cover, including physicality, characters, and plotting. But at first and at last, you have to get over that intimidation factor. Again, the most talented improvisers can drop in out of nowhere with no knowledge of the genre, and as long as the majority of players have laid the groundwork, it’s your fundamental improv skills that will be your first and last resource in creating compelling scenes. Even after years of improvising Shakespeare, I’ve fallen victim to overthinking it, or being so full of my genre cramming that I’m preconceiving or control blocking at every turn. After I got through that phase (I hope), I was able to let go of all of my Shakespeare perfectionism and just flow with the scene, even if someone mixed up a thee with a thou now and then.

We’ve barely scratched the surface in this post, so before we continue with the series, we’d like your feedback: What would you like to know about improvising Shakespeare? What trips you up the most? What tricks or tips help you get into the flow of the form? Post your responses in the comment section and we’ll incorporate them into the next post.

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Walking Backward Into the Future

Improv for Innovation: What Are You Doing?

3 Quick Tips on Improvising Shakespeare

by Jeremy Richards

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