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Connection in Improv

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I absolutely resonated with Jimmy Carrene’s blog on emotionally connecting. While there are many different ways to start a scene, connecting emotionally gives the audience an investment in the characters right away. I put a lot of emphasis on this personal connection in my classes.

Here’s what Jimmy has to say:

“What I love teaching the most in improv is connection — players connecting on a deeper emotional level.

So many improvisers focus on trying to be witty and fast and funny, but they don’t realize that you can’t really do any of those other things well if you don’t first form a real emotional connection with your scene partner.

Having an emotional connection with your scene partner is essential to having a good scene, because if you do, you can go over anywhere with your scene partner and your scene will be believable and honest, which is what we are going for in the first place.

Connection between two players happens before the scene even starts. You don’t need words to create a connection. I have actually seen words kill the connection. It’s a sad death, killing the scene before it even gets started.

Whether you’re in person or on Zoom, all you have to do is look into the eyes of your partner, feel the energy going on between you, and trust the clues you are getting from your partner. It’s like a treasure map.

Does your partner look happy? You could be old friends that had a crush on each other who haven’t seen each other in a long time. Does your partner look sad? You could be a couple breaking up.

This is all you need to begin a scene, and then just trust that the scene will unfold.

If you work this way, you will not have to rely on your wit or cleverness, which can always dry up during the scene. Instead, you will be making organic discoveries and not inventing.

It’s truly amazing what you can pick up off another person when you take the time to take someone else in and be affected by them. Spending just a few seconds being present with someone else can give you so much information. Take in their body language, their facial expression, their unspoken energy and then sense how you feel in relation to that.

Although I first learned how to form a connection in a scene from Del Close, I really honed this skill by taking several Meisner acting classes over the years, and I’ve seen how it has made me so much more attune to people all around me and helped me be able to read the unspoken energy in the room. And on stage, it’s been an invaluable tool in creating believable characters and genuine connections.

You might think that forming an emotional connection with your scene partner will always make your scenes depressing and heavy, it’s not true. In fact, being more emotionally connected to your partner just creates a relationship between two people that is more honest, and what’s honest is often what’s the most funny because it’s what resonates with people. People laugh because they recognize themselves in the characters. Even if the scene is set on Mars, if the two players have a believable connection, the audience will laugh because they relate to how the characters are reacting to each other.

So the next time you are about to do a scene in an improv class or in a show, take a couple of seconds to mentally check in with your partner and see what they are giving you before you speak. Then trust that the scene will unfold and see if it takes you somewhere better than you could have planned.”

Source: “I Teach Connection” Blog by Jimmy Carrene, October 1, 2020

Dealing with Failure and Rejection in Improv

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It’s important to know what you tell yourself when you think you’ve somehow failed/made mistakes while improvising. In her blog on this topic the talented Katy Schutte, a UK improviser, takes on her own realizations and gives us a blog worthy of consideration.
Reposting here with permission from Katy whose blog can be found HERE.

Failure is all about the note that follows… 8/3/2021

We were talking in The Improv Place Office Hours yesterday about failure moments in improv scenes. The question was; how do we deal with it in the moment and not let it get us up in our heads and throw us off our game? My revelation was slightly different. I realised that it wasn’t failure that I found uncomfortable, but rejection

When we talk about failure in improv, we’re often talking about missing information; for example, misnaming a character or making a story choice that goes against something that was said before. When we’re new to improv it can feel like blanking or doing something ‘too weird’. We play a lot of games and run exercises in class to make students ‘comfortable with failure’ to allow a larger comfort zone and tolerance of mistakes and miscommunications, to harness errors and to make them part of the tilt or fabric of the reality.

I’ve been doing this a long time, but clangers can still feel bad; after all, the Patriarchy says I should only things it if I’m perfect and indeed if I’m better than the boys. I’m also aware that failures can be the exciting bit, the bit where the magic happens. At the point I mess up, the show gets more interesting. It’s stopped following the train tracks, it’s not prescribed or predictable. My failure has created a place where someone (including me) can take this new information and steer the scene according to a new truth. It’s the place where improvisation justifies itself as an art form. We all know that failure is inevitable in any creative enterprise. The more we fail in fact, the better an outcome we get; iterations give us solutions.

So why does it sometimes feel great and sometimes feel awful? I think that’s all in the reaction to the moment. Firstly, there’s our own reaction; if we broadcast that it’s a mistake with our facial expression, body language or speech, it’s going to be taken as one. That’s commitment 101. Sell every line, every idea like they are excellent. Secondly there is the moment that comes after. Our mistakes can either be embraced, or met with rejection.

“If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” – Miles Davis

I personally never loved games or scenes where students are jokingly told ‘that was shit, get off’ or where there’s an elimination or punishment aspect (unless it’s self-policed, then I’m okay with it). Particularly for women, perfectionism is so strongly baked into us by society that to mess up a silly warm up game can feel like the end of the world if we are being shamed for it. If the failure is celebrated and embraced as an achievement, that puts me in a much better headspace for risk taking.

If the whole jazz band suddenly stop playing and look at you like you’re dogshit, that’s how rejection feels. As Brené Brown tells us, it’s a human need to belong, not just to fit in.

I’ve certainly experienced my failures being both embraced and rejected in improvisation.

I was playing in a teacher show at an (amazing) improv festival. It was getting crazy and I came in with a weird chef character that was a big choice; I was hoping to solve a problem in the scene. One of the other players said “And I have to yes-and that?”. It got a big laugh. It was certainly a way of releasing the crazy tension in the scene. For me – I felt awful and didn’t really make it back on the stage much for the rest of the show. I felt shamed and exposed; I had been told by a well-known improviser and in front of my students and community that my offer (and therefore my improv) was terrible. I don’t bear the improviser any malice, but it is a useful illustration of how rejection influences play.

In contrast, I have a very fond memory of playing in The Improvised Star Trek Podcast that ran for 5+ years and shared some of the cast of the more famous The Magic Tavern Podcast. I was worried about remembering all the names, titles and circumstances of years of backstory. I decided to play a lowly cleaner on the ship so that I wouldn’t have to ‘know’ all of these facts as my character. Rather than let me play in the background for the whole show, the other characters all decided to change jobs and to promote me to captain. Every offer I made felt golden and I had the time of my life. When the offers you receive are fun and generous, all you want to do is be generous back!

I wonder if ‘get off, you’re shit’ rejection is a British Old Boys’ Club embracing of toxic masculinity. It is certainly reflected in some Clown training too. See this great article on Via Negativa. Casual bullying and name-calling was always part of the fabric of my education in school and symptomatic of a society that ranks individuals, breeding a culture that believed tearing another down was the way to rise to the top (whatever the top fucking means).

Perhaps the reason I was so thrilled to learn IO Chicago’s ensemble style was because I wanted to fail with joy and not rejection. To belong, not to filter my behaviour to fit in, to feel like every offer was a gift, not to be judged, but to be embraced.

How do we cultivate a joy over rejection model of improvisation?

Build up trust and be kind before every rehearsal, workshop and show. Make sure that you have exchanged boundaries and foundries (things that fire you up with joy) and warmed up or at least gotten on the same page. People are less likely to throw you under the bus if they trust that you have their back and if they like you.

If you felt rejected or shamed in a show, talk to the person who made the rejection move. They were likely in a fear place and telling them how you felt might change their future choices. Remember not to shame them for their choice, just tell them the story you’re telling yourself about that moment. This is how we grow understanding instead of resentment.

Ideally you’ll be playing with a group that knows how to play that sweet next note, but if not, you need to support your own failure, even if no one else on stage does. If the rest of the band are looking at you like dogshit, play your own kick-ass solo. Repeat the thing you did until it’s a running joke, or elegantly justify it being there. If you get a name wrong once, be a character who gets names wrong. If you made a story move that didn’t make sense, hold onto it and fold it into a clever plot twist at the end. The writer put it there, so there must be a reason.

Remember how you can bring the joy for other people; make their mistakes feel golden. Try not shame others by throwing them under the bus. Justify those tilts so that they are the one note that makes the song.

Improv and Mysticism

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A fascinating article that will resonate with some improvisers, especially those who practice mindful meditation and make it part of their improv journey. Does this article speak to you?  I gain focus, calm, and often joy when I can be in the present moment. It is when ‘flow’ happens, the zen state. Yes, it is a very special feeling.

Reposted with permission from the author,
Thomas Chemnitz, Instructor
Die Gorillas (Theater), Improvisation, Berlin

For a while I have been interested in mysticism, a spiritual way and practice, that can be found in almost all large religions, although most of them (especially Christianity, Islam and Judaism) keep these practices in the shadow or had even forbidden them.

The mystic practices aim at clearing the inner mind and being in the moment. For only by connecting to each present moment, without thoughts and judgements, it is possible to connect to something, which actually cannot be put into words (for words narrow down), yet is often referred to as »the Eternal«, »the Universe«, »the Godly« or »God«.

The most important mystic exercise is meditation, of course (which, by the way, is not only practiced in Buddhism or Hinduism).

»Being in the moment«. »Clearing the inner mind«. This is also what we aim for in improvising. Only that in an improv class we use playful activity instead of meditation. As a matter of fact, many exercises use extra speed or complicated rules, in order to leave the rational and judging mind behind and allow us to act and react spontaneously and »from the bottom of our soul«. If this happens, workshop participants experience it as a liberating moment, usually accompanied by laughter. Sometimes they are also quite astonished to see what has come out of them, in this very moment.

And here is where we come to »the ego« or rather »liberation from the ego«. In the mystic practices, whether in meditation or in the rotating dance of the Sufis, the goal is to stop the constant inner chatter of the ego and let it dissolve, like a wave into the ocean. This is very hard work, for naturally the ego fights hard against this, it’s a bit like dying after all. Although: dissolving doesn’t mean extinction, for – to stay within the image – the ocean needs the wave to express itself.

Dealing with the ego is also quite a topic in improv. Two years ago I wrote a focus on this and don’t want to enlarge on it again (so if you want to read more, go to June 2018). Only this much: if you want to make the experience of truly and successfully »improvising together«, the ego is all too often in the way.

In some partner exercises (i.e. the »mirror exercise«) there is the phenomenon, that at a certain point none of the partners can tell who is leading and who is following at this very moment. We also have the improv-saying »follow the follower«. But who or what are we actually following then?

And then there are these improv scenes, where afterwards it’s hard to tell, how that brilliant idea actually came into the scene, where none of the players could claim it to be his or hers. The idea was »simply there«, it »just happened«. Interestingly enough, these kind of scenes usually seem to be the most rewarding ones, where you have improvised with this special easy flow, and where everyone felt happy afterwards. And whereas most improv scenes vanish quickly from memory, these stay in your mind and you mention them, when after 20 years of improvising you are asked for your »most special improv experience on stage«. 

Now I would go as far as to claim that these improv moments are also a form of »mystic experience«: a bit mysterious maybe, but rewarding and fulfilling, as we have managed to liberate ourself from our ego and truly connect with the present moment. 

And no matter if any form of spirituality means anything to you or not, I do wish you many of these moments when improvising!

Thomas Chemnitz

https://www.die-gorillas.de/improv-school/focus-of-the-month.html

To the Older Improv Student

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I think a lot about the older improv student, since I have many students who are 40+, 50+, 60+ etc.  I am an older student myself. My main message is: It’s never too late to put on your improv shoes and begin the journey. You have so much to bring to the stage, so much to gain yourself. And I do believe you will find that improv makes you ageless.

Then I read Jimmy Carrane’s Blog, I knew I had to re-post it here. Enjoy!

To the older people starting out in improv: You belong
December 14, 2017 / Blog / by Jimmy Carrane

To the older people starting out in improv: You belong. This is for you.
If you are an older person and you are just starting out doing improv, stand-up, storytelling or acting, I want to say to you are in the right place.
You did not wait too long.
You are not wasting your time.
You belong.
We need you.
I know that is not what you think.   Continue reading →