A Sense of Urgency

These next posts are stories and observations on my experience in Viola Spolin's workshop early in my training. I hope you can relate to being a novice improviser and see how her sidecoaching transformed me and how it might transform you.

This entry is about using Slow Motion counteract Urgency.

This happened in a workshop with Viola when we were working on “The Where”.

The scene is a spaceship. I’m the navigator. Andy is the captain, and we have two prisoners from another planet on board. I sit placidly at my controls downstage. The captain yells a heading like a pirate.

“Sou.. by SouWest!”

I say, “Sou by sou west, aye!” Thinking to myself that’s what he wanted me to say, but shouldn’t it sound like a numbers and degrees and bearing call? I’m thinking of how to add to that in when one of the prisoners says “There’s no south in space!”

Who do I support? What does Captain Andy say to that? Should I say something? I think if I support the prisoner - the scene could go into a mutiny, which would be funny. Or do I defend my captain and create an opportunity for doing a captured prisoner scene.

Andy says something I miss. The prisoner shouts, “My people are coming for us!”

I say “What should I do Captain?”

Viola yells “No Questions!!” I understand what she means. Questions signal you abdicate responsibility for adding to the scene and asking for someone else to direct the action. It’s a cop out. Yet I think, that’s a good question. My head swims with possibilities and I’m getting a little flustered. I'm in my head and I feel the pressure to make something happen.

Andy and the Aliens are into some kind of dialogue when they begin yelling “We’re under attack!”

I mess with the dials and run around trying to take ‘evasive action’. I am feeling totally disconnected to what the others are doing.

I start talking about the pounding the ship is under and yell “damage to our hull!” We’re all running around. I can’t even understand what the others are saying. I’m panicking. I try to make my character into a panicky person. I’m panicky, not my character. I am lost in the scene, not really that aware of what others are saying or doing. I’m just acting hysterical - thinking this will add to the scene, somehow. It’s active and big.

I always heard ‘you can use your nervousness to inject energy in a scene.’ I chose panic as a focus or should I say, panic chose me. I was shut off from the others.

I wondered what they wanted. How can I tune in to what they are doing? What could I contribute to the scene? How can I figure out what they were doing and let them know what I was doing?

What was I doing? What should I do? What was going on? "No questions!" I remembered. My breathing got shallow and hurried. My mind raced. No questions! Just react! React to what? Questions again.

“No urgency!” Viola intoned from somewhere 'out there'. The rush of my own urgency was roaring in my head and I barely had time to listen or respond to the other players. I wanted something to happen! I wanted it to be good! I wanted everyone to think I was good at this. I grabbed at any comment or behavior and tried to ‘make something from it.’

Maybe I could say things I thought were funny or interesting and hope the other players would pick up on it. Momentum built as I lost further control and then I heard “SLOOOOOWWWWWWWW - MOTIONNNNNN!” yelled to me from within my vortex. “Everyone! Veeerrrryyyyy Sloowwww Motionnnnn!” Viola coached.

I began to concentrate on slowing the space around me. Slowing my speech. I begin to get that wonderful warm feeling of slow-motion space wrapping around me like a blanket. I begin to notice, the other players jumping on Captain Andy and slowly wrestling him to the ground. I glide over to the door and yank on the wheel to open the hatch. My movements flow and feel natural. I notice that I’m blocking the upstage action with Andy and the Aliens. I need to show the audience what’s going on. I roll in slow-mo toward the door at the side of the stage and a great idea hits me. “We’re going to implode! - Abandon ship!!”

The Aliens let go of Andy and slowly lurch for the door. I open the door and they go for it. I slowly put my foot on the second alien’s behind and nudge all of them out and slam the door.

Since the whole scene took place on a bare stage with two chairs, the aliens could be seen clinging to the outside of the ship in real slow motion, pounding and yelling to be let back in.

The class laughed. I reach for the captain and set him up in his command chair and get back to my console. “Sou -by sou West!” I say over my shoulder, smiling. Thanks for the signal Captain. Andy leans forward and says “Aaaarrrrgh! - now go to warp speed at zero nine four degrees mark three!” aaand blackout.

How many times at auditions or other interviews, you hear “Take your time” and it’s just a bunch of words. You are so nervous you simply nod at the advice but don’t really understand what that means. Everything begins to rush around you and you feel like Keir Dullea, the astronaut in 2001 A Space Odyssey as he travels through the whooshing psychedelic interior of the mysterious black monolith -Speeding up with every passing second.

The world whirls past you in a fever dream and you try your best to not show how scared you are. You are in the grips of panic and fear and all you can do is try to maintain some control. There's no presence of mind. No time to make a connection with others. Very often people feel this out of body sensation. In essence it is a low level panic attack. You can control just enough behavior to not totally loose it, but you are paralyzed creatively. You are in reaction not relation.

Slow Motion is an amazing tool. It gives a focus that allows time for you to take in all you need to, in order to stay in the scene. In many cases it can allow actors to reconnect to each other and the environment while in a scene and take a mundane, trite scene and give it new life.

Many actors 'center' themselves before making an entrance. It is a way of calming and focusing, ridding the mind of 'what to do' thoughts and just being. What can you do once onstage or in a scene? Slow motion is not exaggerated slurring and slowing, but an altered experience of time. It is literally 'taking your time'.

Urgency is a desire to 'make it good', be seen, get a laugh, despite the fact that you have very little awareness of what's really going on. Urgency narrows your field of vision and soon it all becomes about you.

Novice improvisers or poorly trained ones or exhibitionists find ways to use urgency to 'shake it up' or make something happen. What they are really doing is forcing other actors to deal with them. They become the focus of the scene, very much like a drowning person gets everyone on the beach focused on their emergency. Many times the player is unconscious of this behavior. Since it always gets something to happen onstage, it can become a pattern and a habit. Soon other players will find exits when they see this kind of player enter the scene.

Viola recognized urgency as a cry for help. Her first comment was to alert me to the Urgency early in the scene. Sometimes awareness can avert the problem. When urgency overtook me, another focus was needed to counteract the urgency. Since Urgency is about uncontrolled speed, Slow Motion is the perfect antidote.