Viola and the Predators

Teaching the Games

Teaching is a cleansing. - Viola Spolin.

While in Viola’s workshop, I taught mime at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was earning a living as a mime.I was eager to teach what I was learning from Viola. After all, I heard the best way to learn something is to teach it. She would get angry every time I brought it up. She insisted I not teach. I grew impatient and wanted desperately to communicate what I was learning to others.

“I don’t want another student who spends a few months in workshop with me then hanging out a shingle.” She barked. “They have no idea what they’re doing!”

By the time I encountered Viola, she had been teaching for twenty years. Many former students did indeed go out on their own, armed with her book and a notion on how to play some of the games. They were not steeped in the work or aware of the profundity of the underlying philosophy. Certainly not to the degree that made Viola feel comfortable. Over the years, this became like the game of telephone. Everyone who taught what they thought was her work came up with their own games and variations to distinguish themselves apart from Spolin.  To Viola’s great distress, many missed the idea of non-authoritarian teaching at the heart of her work. (Lemming, 2011)[1] 

“And they never even think to write me a letter.” Viola complained. “If you go out on your own I won’t have anything to do with you! You’ll just be another predator[2].”

I heard the bitterness in her voice and promised her I wouldn’t teach until she gave me permission. I resolved to not be a predator in Viola's eyes. I think it is one reason she chose to mentor me.

Mollified, Viola told me “A teacher must be vigilant! Teaching is a cleansing!”

I had no idea what she meant for a long time, but as I continued to play and eventually assist her in workshops, I understood that I didn't know what was truly involved in coaching. But time passed and I continued my study with her. I sat by her side and watched her coach all of us into brilliant work. She would sometimes call out a coach like ‘Slooowww motionnnn!’ and remark to me as an aside, “See what that did for him!” or she’d call out another phrase. ‘Use your where!’ or ‘Give and Take!’ and she’d lean over to me. “That didn’t penetrate.’ I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was watching her practice the art of sidecoaching.

I watched and learned what the proper word or phrase at the right time can do for a player. Knowing what to say, having a sense of timing, and throwing in the sidecoach just at the moment it is needed is an art I began to absorb over time. Both by playing and watching others play.

Four years went by and after many workshops, having played in most of them and assisted her in others; I began to absorb her approach to sidecoaching. Viola finally allowed me to teach.

 “You should teach children and you can teach your mimes.” She told me.

She wanted me to teach children because they’re the best group you can work with. They show you what they need immediately, without artifice. I was allowed to teach mimes because I had a great facility with space object work and Viola thought they would benefit from my experience as both a mime and improviser. (see my article “Out of the Head and Into the Space”)

Teaching children is eye opening. They respond so easily to the games with gusto. After all, Viola’s work came out of teaching and directing children and I could see why children were her laboratory.

Their resistance to the focus is easy to spot and, with a good background in having played the same games yourself, you can easily select and play and coach those games that change their behavior. It is very exciting to see what game or sidecoach dissolves resistance in children. I think it is because their nascent adaptation to the approval/disapproval syndrome is easy to spot. Egocentricity, lack of focus, timidity, fear of failing and other ills caused by conforming to a reward based learning system can be countered by selecting appropriate games and presenting them in a non-authoritarian way.

I recommend teaching children as a starting point for any Spolin sidecoach. Adults can fool you and it’s harder to dissolve the resistance in some cases. It takes longer with adults because there’s more to un-do!

"Never be the benevolent dictator. It's hidden authoritarianism. And don't be a know-it-all." - Viola Spolin.

My only caveat: Continually cleanse yourself of ego and desire. Be mindful of your own approval/disapproval syndrome. Have Fun and create fun for others.

But if you have a strong desire to teach. I say teach! But don't be a predator! Nod back to your source. Make your own strides and discoveries too. But never lay claim to an idea you got from someone else as yours! It's good for the soul.


GS North Bend

---

[1] This dilution is described brilliantly in a review of a memoir of Second City by Walter Lemming in his article, Amnesia and the Laugh Track:  Mike Thomas, The Second City Unscripted. It chronicles the devolution of Second City since the departure of Sills and Spolin in the early 60’s. Lemming makes the distinction between “Improvisation” a la Spolin and “Improv” what it has come to mean.

[2] Over the years she simply referred to those who borrowed and changed her work calling it their own, as ‘predators’ and watched the reinterpretation of her work become packaged into a comedy formula. The distortions became popular, giving rise to institutions like Second City, The Improv Olympic and countless others. Sidecoaching gave way to ‘notes’ after the fact, or calling “FREEZE!” to stop the action and redirect it. Both techniques leaving the player stranded without the essential support that good sidecoaching provides.

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