What's in a Game?

What happens to us when we have fun?

Acting requires presence. Playing produces this state. – Viola Spolin

When I assisted in a workshop with Viola Spolin, author of Improvisation for the Theater, the very first thing we did was play a game of “Swat Tag”.

The game involves a group of people sitting in chairs, a ‘home base’ (a chair or stool set out in front of the group) where the swatter (a rolled up newspaper) is placed. The person who is ‘it’ takes the swatter and moves into the audience and tags someone with the swatter. That person must then jump up and chase the swatter back to home base where the swatter has to put down the rolled newspaper on the home base and try to run back to where the tagged person was sitting and sit down in their chair before the other person can pick up the swatter and tag them back.  If the runner makes it back to the chair without being tagged, the tagged person is now ‘it’ and must tag someone else in the audience and take their chair in the same manner. If the original tagger is swatted before getting back to the seat, they both run back to home base and try again.

This game was a blast! Everyone was involved in it; the runners, and the rest of the audience too. Afterwards, Viola asked us what happened to us. What happened physically and psychologically? The answers came back. “We had fun!”  “We laughed!” “Our hearts raced and we were in a high state of alert.”

“So your body had a physical reaction to it.” Viola asked. “Yes, what else? What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing. Just the game.”

“Would you say the game made you present? Stopped you thinking about your plans for the afternoon, or your past – what you did yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“So a game brings you into the present moment.” She coaxed. “It made your blood circulate, heightened your attention, and so on.”

We all nodded.

“Did you enjoy it just because you were swatted or because you weren’t picked?”

“Both.”

“It’s because you were present to the unfolding of an unknown outcome. That’s part of it. Not knowing what would happen made it fun, right?”

Again we agreed.

“So not knowing caused the excitement and the involvement which caused us to laugh and enjoy it. Would you also say you dropped your judgment about it? In other words you weren’t saying to yourself ‘oh, that person is no good at this.’ Or ‘I’m no good at this.” Or thinking  ‘what a stupid thing to do, to agree to jump up and chase someone just because you were tagged.’ And so on. You all agreed to the rules and once you did, you accepted it instantly WITHOUT JUDGEMENT and started playing.”

We paused to consider that. “Yes” we agreed.

“And” she went on, “You were using your whole self. Plotting who to tag, where to run, how to avoid being tagged, selecting the route to run – what to do to make it back to the chair in split seconds! No pre-planning! All this out of a little game of tag!”

She was showing us what was involved in the having of fun.

• ·         Total involvement
• ·         No judgment
• ·         Heightened alertness
• ·         Rise in energy and focus
• ·         Being in present time
• ·         Using our intuition
• ·         Spontaneously accepting the stated rules without fear or worry.

We all felt able to participate fully in every aspect of the game no matter if we were fast, slow, good or bad at it. (Good or bad never entered into our thinking). Joyously participating in or watching the unfolding of an unknown outcome, cheering and laughing at every attempt successful or unsuccessful. We never for a second thought critically or self-consciously. We were too busy having fun.

We were all filled with a great energy and excitement in the four or five minutes we played.

“Now that we’re talking about it, now that the game is over, what has happened to your heart rate? What is going through your mind? You’re thinking to yourself. ‘Oh, this is interesting. Or maybe it isn’t.’ or ‘When is this class over? I have an appointment, etc.’ Right?”

It was true. In analyzing our experience, we lost the ‘fun’. Our pulses slowed. We went into our head to think critically about our experience. Analyzing our experience was a valuable thing to do too, but it was not as much fun as Swat Tag.

Then she took the swatter up and ran over to someone and swatted them again and began to run. In an instant we were back, laughing and excited again.

“You see how instantly we got it back?” she smiled. “It’s available to you whenever you want!”

This is the essence of fun and games. Playing creates this state. Viola saw this as the most direct way to creativity.

She applied this form to her theater games and not only taught acting and improvisation, but put everyone of us in touch with this area where art is born, inspiration is spawned, where our true nature is allowed to flourish, where we can explore, be curious, adventurous, free of fear and in a state of grace.

This is also where true community exists. Having fun is where we all meet as fellow players on a level playing field. For when we play as a group we are connected to each other as in no other way.

Play was Viola’s platform. From this starting point, she devised games that challenged us to grow as artists. Her teaching techniques were born out of a philosophy of spontaneity and the Tao with a little bit of physics thrown in.

Gary Schwartz

North Bend May 2012

The Genius of Preoccupation

Spolin’s pathway to the Unknown

The [Spolin’s Theater Games] exercises are artifices against artificiality, structures designed to almost fool spontaneity into being--or perhaps a frame carefully built to keep out interferences in which the player waits. Important in the game is the 'ball' -- the FOCUS, a technical problem, sometimes a double technical problem which keeps the mind (a censoring device) so busy rubbing its stomach and its head in opposite directions, so to speak, the genius [spontaneity], unguarded 'happens'. --Tung, in Film Quarterly

Viola Spolin intuited an important principle while developing her ideas of improvisation -- Preoccupation.  Preoccupation games involve paying attention to more than one focus.  By integrating two or more disparate activities in a game the whole self is activated and a doorway to the intuition or X-area[i] opens up.

She found a technique that is now being re-examined and articulated in the book IMAGINE by Joshua Lehrer. One of the ideas the book talks about is that often, single-minded, constant focus on a problem results in pedestrian thinking and may actually prevent a leap of the imagination that leads to inspiration. Some very successful innovative companies ask their researchers to observe the 15% rule, developed at 3M. Work on a problem 85% percent of the time then and devote a certain amount of time (15%) to completely unrelated activities.  Google calls it Innovation Time Off. Somehow it became evident in the study of creativity that inspirational thinking occurs when the mind is both stumped and diverted and relaxed.

Spolin’s games and exercises do just that. Even though they are designed to acquire requisite skills for acting and theatrical improvisation, often they can be doorways to one’s true creative potential. With the proper coaching they are doorways into the realm of the intuitive - the area where inspiration is born. That is why they are so transformational.

The creative act transforms the one who is in it. – Viola Spolin

The idea of preoccupation sets up an instant problem. By pitting two or more disparate skills against each other often results bursts of original work for an actor. When you focus your attention in one area while compounding it with another unrelated focus, something amazing happens.

What that is cannot be predicted or explained, but it is one of the tenets of Spolin Games. Viola called it evoking the genie. One thing is certain though; it brings the individual into a state where one can transcend the bounds of the traditional tried and true ways of thinking.

For example in the game of Contrapuntal Argument, one develops ideas or arguments based on what one already knows and that is combined with forceful, non-stop arguing coupled with simultaneous listening. On the face of it, the game teaches presenting your ideas unselfconsciously, extemporaneously and persuasively. It is also a listening game - Both good skills to have.

This is how the game is played: Two people sit across from each other usually over a small table. (Viola said it helps as a support) and select a topic to argue about or two different topics to pitch to each other. The game is divided into three parts:

Part 1: Each player must pitch his/her idea to the other. Both speak simultaneously trying to penetrate the argument of the other player without letting the other player derail or penetrate his/her own ideas. Each player must continue to talk. Points off for pauses, hesitations, or repetitions. (Audience can keep score)
Sidecoaches to use are things like; Pierce/Penetrate your partner’s argument! Put forth your ideas! Keep talking! Make your points!

Part 2: Each player continues to advance their own ideas or argument by forcing the other player to repeat, pick up or use something from the other player’s diatribe, again continuously advancing their ideas.
Sidecoaches to use are things like; Penetrate! Listen and Speak at the same time! Insert your idea into his argument!  Keep going!

Part 3:  Each player tries picking up from the other player ideas or words that support that player’s point of view. They are to use the word or phrase from the other player and incorporate it in their own argument.
Sidecoaches to use are things like; Penetrate! Listen and Speak at the same time! Use what you hear! Keep going!

The subtitle of Contrapuntal Arguments is Transforming Points of View. It is an interesting thing to watch what happens when we strenuously argue our own ideas and do this progression.
Most people when arguing stay at level one. It is usually a wall of words and it is difficult to allow anything in because you are so attached to your ideas and your way of expressing them.

Some more skillful arguers can get their points across and score on their opponents in round two. A well placed word or phrase or interesting way of saying something can come out of this.

But when both players begin to hear and use the other person’s ideas and incorporate them into their own argument, things change. It stops being an argument! It becomes a dance of ideas. When this exercise is successful, each player transcends their own point of view and both ideas merge into a third thing - True collaboration! And beyond that, a surprising voyage to new ideas and deep levels of connection!

When I first did this exercise in Viola’s class, I remember vividly arguing the value of creative cooking while my partner argued that the highest form of creativity was ballet.

In round one, it was impossible to even hear one word my partner said as I barraged her with the diversity and complexity involved in cooking. I heard nothing of what she was saying. I may have scored a few points by stopping her or getting her to hear ME. I actually don’t remember.

In round two I heard her talk about how dance was something you didn’t need tools for as in cooking. You just need your body. I mentioned something to the effect of food is the fuel of the body and therefore more important than dance and in some cannibal cultures our bodies were food!

In round three all I can remember is we were still arguing, I remember rising to my feet and shouting Bread is LIFE!  At the same time, she was gracefully gesticulating and using my gestures as dance moves.  We were motioning in such a way that it became a sort of ballet. By the end were standing, swaying and singing the praises of motion and movement, claiming food and dance are interdependent and intertwined and that both expressions are vital to life!

I was so preoccupied by the focus of the game that not only did I make a great argument, but I came up with ideas I had no idea were related to my subject.
In the end, I was so connected to my partner that my argument turned into a dance!

I don’t remember the details of my ideas on food (and it doesn’t really matter), but I will never forget that argument. I was transformed by it and was channeling some kind of force I cannot explain or contact in any other way, than by playing.

Postscript: I think many improv teachers have not seen the potential in games to generate this level of involvement…  , nor are they aware of the potential opportunity of transformation in some of Viola’s games.

Many improv games in use today may have been based on Viola’s work, but were not fully understood by the majority of players and coaches. It was only through my own experience in being coached by her and watching her coach others that I saw what she was after. If you read her work closely, it is there in her book. But it must be both witnessed and experienced, then integrated.

In missing this potential, many of Viola’s games have been re-tooled and developed for quick wits and verbal acrobatics. Many games invented by others since mostly develop ‘the head’ which means to say the use of old information in novel ways. Games like Freeze Tag, Ding, Party Quirks, Zip Zap Zop, and the like miss the point of transformation at the heart of all of Viola’s games.

Most new improv games operate on a fun level and therefore have some intrinsic value.  Fun is a primary good. I must admit I have seen these games used to illustrate a point, develop a skill, generate cooperation and create some funny situations and that is fine. 

Most new games help us cope with some things like quick retrieval of information, and a respect for accepting ideas and building upon them. But there’s that ephemeral, will-o-the-wisp – transformation that rarely shows in the typical improv show. Or if it does, it is only by accident and not by design.

Viola’s work charted a course into that X area and many practitioners of improv do not understand what that is. And although she originally taught skills to prepare you for the stage, she was after something more.  The unknown - X.  I believe that was her ultimate goal.

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[i] Viola believed that labeling something stops us from investigating it fully in new ways. She eventually saw that by overusing the word ‘intuition’ robbed it of the magic it represents. So she started calling it X. As in physics and mathematics X represents the unknown. That was what she was always after - the exploration of the unknown.

My Big Breakthrough

My Big Breakthrough

The game was Exits and Entrances. About two years into my study with Viola, I had a breakthrough.

We met every Tuesday afternoon at the El Centro Theater, a small 99 seat equity waiver house just off Melrose. The theater was set up with a set with several doors and curtains leading off stage at floor level. The audience was raked.

“Count off in two’s!” Viola split the group into two teams.

“When an actor enters the scene or exits the scene” Viola announced, “he must enter with energy and presence and exit the same way. In this game we will make exits and entrances the focus. The problem will be to capture everyone’s attention whenever you leave the stage or enter.”

We all nodded. Of course every actor must make the most of his entrance or exit.

“Pick a where with plenty of exits and entrances - A bus station, a department store, or some public place.” She said. “Then you will make as many entrances and find as many ways to make an exit as possible while playing. If you exit the scene without everyone’s full attention, we in the audience will yell ‘Come back!’ and you will have to remain in the scene until you find a way off. Once you are off, you must find a way to enter the scene and get the attention of all the onstage players. If you enter and don’t have everyone’s attention, we will call out ‘Go Back!’”

She smiled. “That’s it. Make as many entrances and exits as you can.”

We counted off. I was a two. (Thank god!) This gave me a chance to see what this whole thing was all about. Let others go first, that way I’ll know what to do.
My fear of doing it wrong and wanting to be ‘good’ at it was still a major issue with me. The first team of eight players huddled together and decided on their ‘where’. Our team did the same. 

Team One went first. They did a restaurant kitchen. Everyone started on stage. The scene started well enough, but it soon got very frantic and loud. Waiters burst in complaining about customers. Cooks threw temper tantrums and stormed off.  Because everyone was busy creating their drama to get off and on it became a free –for-all. Some players made it on and off, and some did not.

 “Give and Take!” Viola shouted.

Cooks were screaming at waiters and managers were yelling to get orders out. Customers burst in complaining of bad service or to congratulate the chef. It was a loud and often fractured scene. There was lots of urgency to get on and off and that put people in their heads.

Viola would holler. “No Urgency!”

We would roar with laughter when we had to call “Go Back!” or “Come Back!” to those poor players who could not grab everyone’s attention.  I sat next to Viola and laughed along with her as she coached.

The scene continued and the noise and action escalated. It became harder and harder to get everyone onstage to notice each exit and entrance. When someone did, it was super theatrical and hilarious. But it was still funny when they couldn’t make it and had to try again.

 “One Minute!” Viola called.

Soon the scene came to an end. She got up and walked out onto the playing area.
 “I have a question. Is it possible to make an entrance or exit without screaming or shouting?”

Silence. We looked at each other. “Of course” I thought to myself. “It can’t all be yelling or shouting.”

“Did your entrances and exits come out of the ongoing action or did you have to invent ways to come on and get off?”

It was apparent that most everyone on team one had to create extra drama and when they tried an exit or entrance; they stopped paying attention to the whole and only involved themselves in their own situation. The franticness came out of needing to create a reason to get on or off for yourself often without being involved in the whole scene. It was obvious that each player was out for him or herself and it became loud and messy. There was no real listening. It became clear that there was little give and take.

“Even in the midst of lots of action, you have be a PART OF THE WHOLE! Can stillness TAKE? Or does it always have to be ya da de da! A bunch of yelling?”

When you see amateur improv it looks a lot like that. Everyone is trying to say to the audience, “Look at me! My idea is funnier! “, Or “I have to make what’s going on about me.” Thankfully most improv training deals with this by asking that you make your partner look good and that takes the focus away from the ‘me, me, me!’ syndrome. But when there are more than one or two other players onstage, it becomes harder.

“Ok, the Twos, now.” Viola sat down.

Our team decided that we would be people in a medieval town square with a market. We could be merchants, peasants, knights  – a whole host of cool characters.


As usual, my mind was racing with ideas on who could I be, and what would I do to get myself on and off. I joined the group and started as a hide vendor. I paraded up and down and tried to interest folks in my pelts. Someone called out that the King was coming. Several of us tried to run off to see.  “Come back!”

 I tried getting sick from some bad water and hurrying off to vomit. “Come back!” I came back on. I can’t remember clearly what everyone else was doing. I was so in my head about what I had to do, I stopped hearing and seeing anything other than my little scenarios. Every time I didn’t make it, I got more and more urgent. Finally I sold a pelt and went crazy with joy! Hysterically happy, I ran off stage. I made it.

Once off stage, I tried coming back on with very little success. I stumbled back on stage with an arrow in my back. “Go back!” Then I tried piggybacking on someone else’s entrance – literally! I jumped on his back and told him to bring me in wounded with an arrow. We both didn’t make it. The scene continued. The Kind and Queen made it on and off. I was stuck backstage. I tried to think what could I do or be to make an entrance. Everything I tried resulted in “Go back!”

“One minute!” Viola called.

I was so frustrated!  I simply gave up thinking about how to get on stage. I was desperate to make it back on before the game was over.  I decided that I would just jump out on the stage from behind the curtain with no idea whatsoever. The only thing I thought to do was to jump as far onto the stage as possible. I only had this last chance and I was going onstage no matter what. I was going to make the biggest entrance possible and I did not have a clue what to do after that. My mind was a blank. I didn’t care what the hell Viola thought or what anyone thought. I was just going to get on stage goddammit! No plan, no nothing.  “What the hell?” I thought. “The game is over anyway.”

I gathered all my strength and sprang through the curtain in a huge leap. It was such a big move that it stopped all action on the stage. I had gotten everyone’s attention. Seeing this sudden attention on me I stood there a second. Then from out of nowhere I boomed “HOW DARE YOU! How dare you not invite me to this festival to greet the King! I, who protect this town with my MAGIC!”

Larry Dilg, another actor in the class played a cowering villager and held up his hand to offer an explanation. My hand shot out with a pointing finger and a look of vengeance. He grabbed his throat and began to strangle. After a few beats, I released him. The rest of the town was struck dumb. No one moved.

I cast a last look around. “You have been warned! Cross me again and feel my wrath!!” I gathered up my cape, which by now had appeared on my majestic shoulders.  I crouched and sprang back behind the curtain, gone in a puff of magic smoke! The room rang out with applause.

I had done it. I made an entrance and exit that wrapped up the village scene in a wonderfully theatrical way. I came out from behind the curtain and climbed back into my seat near Viola, who set up the next game and had the first group get up to set up a new where.

I felt good having achieved the focus and was very relaxed and quiet in my mind. I felt really alive and alert and in my own skin, for practically the first time since I started taking class. It is hard to describe.  I was not proud of myself or relieved or even pleased to have succeeded.  Nor did I look to Viola for approval as I had always done before. Up until this moment, it was very important to me that Viola see me as having done well.  I felt at once calm and thrilled in the same moment.  I just sat there taking in the room and waiting to resume.

Viola was busy with her notes. She was thumbing through the book and making some notations in it, every once in a while glancing over at me. I was sitting a few seats away from her.  I smiled at her. She leaned over to say something to me and then thought better of it and went back to her notes.

She called the class back and began to coach the next game. I can’t remember what it was, but I do remember her glancing at me a few times during it. Finally she leaned over and beckoned me to lean in to her. I leaned over and she said very matter-of-factly, almost off-handedly, “you realize you had a breakthrough there…”

“I know.” I said just as casually.

But I knew at a deep level something shifted.

She nodded, satisfied with my answer and went on with the class. We never spoke of it again.

I knew why Viola struggled with even mentioning it to me. She was worried I would be flattered by her noticing or seeing it as telling me ‘nice work’, putting me back into my (up until then ) very heavy Approval / Disapproval mindset.

My appearance as the wizard was a turning point. This was the beginning of my coming into my own with the work, and my development as an actor.

Up until that point, my work in one way or another was dependent on what other people, especially Viola thought of me. I wanted desperately to be a good actor, a good boy, a good teacher and a nice person and my effort to do anything in class was motivated by that approval/disapproval syndrome and I didn’t even realize it.

Viola did, but she was not about to tell me how to transcend it. She would tell me many things, but never how to do something or praise me for good work in her workshop. I occasionally had flashes good work but it was just a brief respite from my constant prison of approval/disapproval.  She would coach and patiently wait for it to happen to me. And two years in, happen to me it did.

What happened to me that day was this: I gave up the crutch of needing to have something to ‘go with’ onstage - Of having to come on prepared in some way (playwriting) and replaced it with nothing.

Viola was still my teacher and I her student and I believe that day is where our real friendship began.  I became a seeker and fellow player, no longer working for her approval, but for the sheer thrill of that moment of receiving what you need in the space.

What I realized then and from then on, was that stepping out into the unknown will make you available to receive the gift of true spontaneity and you will receive what you need in the moment. It will come to you in a flash! No fear, no pride, nothing but the joy of discovery of the thing itself.

When I leapt onto stage, it was not in defiance of failing. It was not with the expectation of success. It was not to gain the respect of my teacher or fellow students. It was to enter the unknown with confidence that something will happen without having to bring it with me. What shows up in the space is the right thing, no matter what it is.

Others have said it in other ways. “The Universe will provide”, “Let go and let God.”

For me, experiencing the gift of true improvisation by “letting the space support you” is my clarion call.

Gary Schwartz - North Bend, WA