Quick thought on improv with my nephews

by moppezzo

Cat’s post was totally what I was thinking about this weekend. I babysat my nephews, and managed to iphone-video-capture 4 minutes of my 3-year old nephew improv-ing about monsters, and I was struck by the incredible creativity and originality he had (though I’m not sure my research on creativity would allow it to be called that!) I don’t think many adults could generate these different ideas. On the other hand, my older nephew, Chase, was doing a lot of rejecting my bids while playing. None of my ideas were taken up. When playing secret spies, (which is basically a make-it-up-as-you-go as-long-as-there-is-some-air-of-stealth running around), I offered that “now it’s time to go find the treasure!” He replied “no, no, no, cuz NOW it’s time for us to go OUTSIDE and make a plan.” (What the plan was for and what making the plan was never were discovered, we ended up doing something else outside). When I suggested during our plan making that we go rescue the captured Foo Foo, (a partially-ripped, partially stuffed, quite-loved bunny), Chase said “no, no, cuz now FooFoo’s been gone too long. Let’s pretend that now he’s on the bad guy team and we can’t go get him anymore.”  I kept suggesting new things so the game wasn’t so reactive on my part, but he would constantly block my additions to the game, either because he wanted control of the game, or because he couldn’t think enough on his feet to go with my contributions (PS, he’s 6). I don’t know what my observation means– is this developmental, contextual, or just specific to these two kids and I can’t generalize from it? All I know is, A. it wasgreat to witness pure imagination in a 3 year old. and B. I super love my 6 year old nephew just as much and delighted playing with him, but it’s truly bumming to have all of your contributions shot down while in an improv scene!

 

Post-Halloween Post

by moppezzo

My post is sort of a tandem to Lindsay’s excellent point that we have to acknowledge the role of the internal and the external when talking about things like love and ideas. Lemme see if I can tie it into Halloween…

So last night I went trick or treating with my little nephews. Halloween is a crazy holiday, if you think about it: we walk around dressed up as Princess Leahs, angry birds, or even refrigerators, ring the doorbells of neighbors that we’ve never met, and expect some free food. As lore goes, if they DON’T give us candy, we’re supposed to do something devious to them (which is a part of the trick-or-treating that thankfully has been largely dropped out of the tradition, especially since this year I didn’t even have a “take one” bowl!)

Anyway, the media has been flaming out stories about sexual predators and poisoned apples for years, and seemingly conspiring to stop the whole scene. Less and less trick or treaters come each year to houses, and I gotta say, that sucks, and I’ll tell you why.  Last night I truly saw a few really good reasons why we should keep this Halloween thing going.

First of all, here’s a chance for us to pretend to be someone we’re not. Kinda like acting for an evening. It’s freeing in a certain way, it makes pretty much everything OK, and you can take on a new personality and look, and nobody will judge you for it. Ok, Ok, a very trite and shallow reason to like Halloween, but since I have to connect it to improv, here’s a nice parallel environment where judgment and previous filters you have put upon yourself are temporarily gone. Even adults are allowed to wear crazy stuff and even talk with an accent for a bit if they feel like it (though I can see how the latter would drive on my nerves a bit, but I can’t judge, cuz it’s Halloween!)

2 is obviously that kids LOVE it, and they get to learn how to ask for things and say thank you and all of that, etc.etc. But also, it’s a chance for the kids to expand their self-centered little bubble of their life. Sort of like Lindsay’s point of the internal noting the external in a loose way…these kids who never really think of anything outside their own little lives get to see wow, there’s a family that lives in this house I walk by everyday, and look, they also have lives and are people, too, and hey, they have a family room behind that door, sort of like mine!  Maybe not. Maybe it goes right over my nephew’s head as he takes his Reeses cup and shyly blinks out a thank you to the stranger wearing a crazy mask complementing his Luke Skywalker costume, and maybe he could absolutely care less about their family room. But whatever, that brings me to my third reason.

C, I saw more excited elderly people last night than I have in a long time. You practically got blown over by the delight these peeps took in opening their door to new people, a chance to interact with cute adorable little ninjas and ghosts and give them something happy. (How corny sounding, I know, and honestly my grandma was out playing bridge with her bridge club instead of delighting in any of the punks that troll her neighborhood, because actually her life is far more socially active than mine ever was!) But most of the middle-age, upper middle age, and on up really, truly enjoyed getting up every 12 seconds to give these little goblins chocolate for free, even if half of them didn’t really thank them or let them view their costume. These generous people just dug the connection with the little guys and their parents. Neighbors talked to each other for more than a brief hello, or hurried grumble as you almost run over them on the way to work; all these little social exchanges would’ve never happened without this occasion, and it’s kinda sweet to have an interaction with someone with zero stressful expectations of future connections, just some mutual enjoyment of the present one.

Hmmmm. I seem to have lost my thread and point….but anyway, here’s why that reason for keeping Halloween going sort of made sense to me….I heard some neurologist on the radio observe this: laughter doesn’t ever happen alone. You may laugh alone while watching TV, which is vicarious social experience, or laugh while reading a book or recounting a social experience, but this laughter is inherently tied to  other people (or dogs!), and the external influences in your life. So…we are not self-generating, isolated-laughing islands or slippery rocks. We don’t live in a bubble, and the world isn’t all about us and our lives. We live in a world of lots of other peeps and lives, and lots of our ideas and rich experiences and laughs come from interacting with them (see, it’s lindsay’s internal meets external point!) So going out and meeting a few under a safe, improv-like protection of Halloween is kind of a nice way to remind us of that.

OK, I realize that probably sounded really corny, but I get more dramatic when I’m tired and it’s nighttime :). Plus, I really had fun getting tons of candy last night :).

PS- Thanks to Lindsay’s insight for fueling my whole post! As you can see, I did not self-generate… but thanks Linds, for allowing me to join in on your freeze-tag scene.

by moppezzo

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of watching true experts doing an incredibly hard improv challenge: make a movie for 28 minutes purely off the cuff!  What talent!!  It was very Karate Kid wax-on-wax-off-ish to watch the interesting insights we have observed and learned from the class activities actually pay out in spades.

First of all, no one said no. One character (Elf) had determined at the outset of a scene he was a grieving elf at his mother’s grave, but another actor onstage (Wizard) had asserted that Elf was an evil troll. Instead of holding onto his elf identity, Elf and the other characters on stage, took the troll assignment and ran with it: Ok, so I’m not a grieving good elf son, so then I’m an oversensitive troll who discovered his heart.

Empathic Listening = huge. Seven people on stage, all trying to put together a coherent scene, participate, but not step on each other’s toes? A true game of “Yes, Yes, Yes” in action. Everyone accepted everyone’s bids, eye contact was always strong, pickup of declared motives was rampant, and nobody seemed to be lost in the circle looking for some acceptance.

Physical awareness was amazing, and it clearly mapped out the scene and intentions for the audience. You could actually see people fighting while swinging from trees, and nobody let go of one branch, so the image was never shattered. When one actor shook the tree, the other actor immediately shook in reaction. If someone was a dwarf, they were looking up, while the tall elf beside them would always look down, even though they were standing side by side at eye level. Really clever physical awareness of their own body, of objects that do not exist that they carry, but also awareness of other bodies, and their objects they are holding onto or reacting to. Holy working memory!!

Finally, there were no scene stealers. You would expect it’d even be easier if just one person took the reigns, sort of like Betsy with the Improv ball, just lightly batting it to the person next to her. Instead, though, if a scene faltered, a person did not just stand up and alert everyone to a common goal, but instead all worked together to build up a structure they all contributed to.

Anyway, not an entirely profound blog. But I gotta say, it was great to see how all the skills we build manifest in some highly talented improv theater!

Mar’s thought of the day

by moppezzo

Gotta be honest, I don’t blog, I don’t do Facebook, and I refuse to Tweet. So as Lindsay mentioned that this class is stretching her to be open to things she wasn’t previously down with, here I join her! :)! So Yay! my first blog. Ever

I think one of the things I hate about Facebook and Twitter, though, while I’m at it, is the reason why I think I appreciate Improv.   Facebook, twitter, rehearsed speeches, “that guy” at the party that has all the lines and makes people laugh….all of those things have this sort of self-focused / self-importance that totally make my eyes roll back into my head and down into my stomach, subsequently making me vomit up my own eyeballs. (OK, that part is mostly for “that guy” at the party.) But it’s self-presentation and output with no regard for the needs or thoughts of the other people who are receiving it. Acting sort of has that, too. Obviously you respond to the other person, but you respond to the other person in a planned and scripted way, so you don’t have to truly listen as if listening and searching for cues for the first time.

Improv, on the other hand, truly relies on you not only being open to your own responses and ideas, but totally in tune with the other person / peeps on stage as well….sort of like in real life convos and situs.  The special thing improv has over life, though, is that there is this implicit rule that the other has your back. The line in the reading said it best: “A truly funny scene is no the result of someone trying to steal laughs at the expense of his partner, but of generosity- of trying to make the other person (and his ideas) look as good as possible.

I wish real life were more like that (uh oh, is that too dark?) But sometimes we don’t always have others in mind, or we think we do but we totally don’t listen to understand where the other person is coming from. Instead, we— well, at the very least, I — sometimes hold onto my interpretations and just barrel ahead with what I think is right. This class is a cool chance  to be able to practice listening to others and trying to figure out what their thoughts and ideas are, and truly responding with them in mind.  Maybe with some practice it’ll leak out into life, too :)!

On the other end of the spectrum, my dislike of self-importance has caused me to occasionally sprint away from my own ideas and prefer the ideas of others. Improv is not just about listening to others, but also ourselves, and not judging our own thoughts! So here’s to that happening a bit more, too 🙂

Awww…. (Or are you currently digesting your eyeballs?)