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

NO FAIL NO FEAR

“I don’t believe in success and failure.” – Viola Spolin.

We all approach new things with some trepidation. I’ve been told by new students that they are there in the workshop because Improv terrifies them and they want to face that fear. Bravo to them for their courage, but ‘sheesh!” I tell them that they need not worry. My workshop is not terrifying. In fact it is the opposite. It’s fun.

Dependency on authority obstructs players from directly experiencing self and the world– Viola Spolin.

Fun is the antidote to fear. My goal is to get their mind completely off their fear by making the workshop more fun than fearful. Rather than talking about the value of the work or reassuring them that it’s not all that scary, I start by playing a game right away. Playing reveals that better than any lecture.

One of my pet peeves is when I hear people talk about the principles of Improvisation is “Get used to failure” or “Celebrate failure” or “Expect to fail quite a lot”. . We all fear failing because we are conditioned in our culture to respond to what Viola called the Approval/Disapproval Syndrome. To some degree we all seek the praise and approval of others and wish to be seen as ‘good’. That means on some level we all fear the disapproval of others and want to avoid being bad.

When you lay in fear, you cripple people. – Viola Spolin.

This ‘Get used to failure’ principle is meant to allay people’s fear of failure. You say “Don’t worry about it. Feel that fear and do it anyway.” By mentioning failure you make it part of the premise of improv training. In a way, you make fear an important prerequisite. Tony Robbins refers to this idea of misplaced attention in one of his talks. He says “Ask a race car driver to drive as fast as he can and keep his eyes on the track, but tell him also to watch out for that wall at the quarter mile turn. What does he look at? - The wall!” Bringing up the notion of failure is like mentioning the wall. It keeps students focused on it and makes it an unnecessary hurdle.

Success/Failure is a paradigm that Spolin avoids. This one idea distracts us from joy of the process, and lays in fear. It also sets us up for becoming competitive and seeking a successful result. This can affect the teacher/director who, with the best of intentions, will try to steer students towards their idea of success, praising students for successful scenes and criticizing (or critiquing) the failures. In doing so the teacher unwittingly sets up the students to be mindful of success and failure.

Spolin Games is not about Success or Failure. It’s about fun. Playing creates shared energy and a psychological and social condition that activate our intuition, and makes us part of the whole in a dynamic way that needs no explanation other than the rules.

When you play the game of Tag, you try not to be it, but if you are tagged, you become ‘It’ - you respond happily to being tagged by quickly tagging someone else and making them ‘it’. Everyone enjoys the game in this way. In presenting the game of Tag you simply start out by saying “Not it!” and the last person to say “not it” is “it” and bam! – the game starts. Everyone runs around and enjoys the chase and the challenge. We don’t judge it: “It” or “Not it” - it’s all part of the game. Someone has to be “it” and is happy to be “it” and equally happy to make someone else “it”. The whole game is fun and we play until we tire of it. Not when there’s a looser and a winner. We play Tag for the fun of it.

But if you introduce the game by saying, “Now we are going to play Tag. Some of you will be caught and have to be “it”. Don’t be so concerned with your failure at remaining free, but seek to make someone else ‘it’. You were not good enough to avoid it. Go with it. Accept it. Try hard to tag someone else.”

Now when you are tagged, you think “Oh, shit! I’m it! Dammit! I don’t want to be it! How stupid of me to be caught. I’m not very good at this am I? I failed. Oh, well, I should get used to it. It’s all part of the game.”

The physical action is the same in both cases, but the focus is different. Somehow it’s not as much fun. Of course Tag is fun. It’s just fun - Period. You cannot succeed or fail at Tag unless you don’t play. It sounds silly, but it is an important point.

Can you imagine a workshop where you have Tag – level 1, Intermediate Tag and Advanced Tagging? Play is democratic. This is one reason why Viola allowed players with varying levels of skill in her workshops. Evaluating someone on their merits as ‘talented’ was not her aim. Her goal was to get everybody playing to the fullest. In that state, everyone has what it takes.

Fun is the key

A fundamental premise in workshop is to have as much fun as possible. It is essential for optimal learning. Viola knew that games are intrinsically fun and therefore the perfect form to address the problems of working on stage.

When she talks in her books about creating a good workshop atmosphere, she refers to creating the conditions all games require.

• Freedom to play with enthusiasm and joy
• A willingness to play by the rules
• An eagerness to accept the challenge
• To enjoy playing for the sheer fun of it

The goal is having fun! She never dealt in terms of success and failure – only with questions of focus. Were you able to play or were you in your head? If you were in your head, alright, so be it.

“I don’t want to know why you were in your head!” she’d often say. “There’s always a reason. I’m sure you’ve got very good reasons. I’m not interested in them.” Her focus was to get you out of your head.

When you were in the space, the zone, and really playing, there was no need to do anything but celebrate it and shout hooray! Nothing more is needed. No analysis or deconstructing or debriefing. On to the next game!

When you don’t have time to consider the risks or introspect on the value of the activity, you’ll have more fun. The stakes are what they are (very low) but because the nature of game playing is such that everyone takes them seriously in order for the game to work. The act of playing shuts off the valuing aspect in our head. There simply is no time for it as our entire being is caught up in the organic response to the playing and the enjoyment of the activity.

My two cents…

As a teacher, strive to make every game presented and played in this way. Coach accordingly. Avoid telling your students they’ve done well and don’t tell them why you think they’ve done poorly. You are reinforcing Approval/Disapproval in yourself and in them. Some students will literally beg you for it. They want that ‘pat on the head’. They are conditioned to work for it and value it more than the fun they’ve had. Don’t be tempted. It can make you feel important to hold their worth in your hands and you will even feel good about your dispensing your praise and critique, but you are trapped in the same syndrome. Beware of it. “Don’t do anything about it, but don’t not do anything about it.” as Viola would say.

Begin every workshop with a warm-up game like Tag or Kitty wants a Corner or Red Light-Green Light - any game that is completely fun for its own sake.

When introducing any subsequent game or exercise, do so with the same goal. Present it as another fun experience, regardless. Your players will all enjoy solving the problem if it is presented to them as another opportunity to have fun. They won’t feel the pressure of facing their fear. Or if they do, that’s between them and them. At least you didn’t address it and add to the pressure. Eventually, having enough fun will dissipate the fear. Also, there’s no need to deconstruct or debrief the game if it works. That is just gilding the lily. Let the game teach. You stay out of it.

A penny lecture comforts the teacher more than the student. – Viola Spolin

If a game doesn't work, don’t belabor the point. You may have overestimated their readiness for a particular game, or maybe the game was not so much fun for reasons you should be aware of. I.e., presentation, poor coaching, you chose a game that is not appropriate for the workshop. That’s your job as a teacher. Are your students working for the fun of the game or for your approval? I know for me, I want every student to ‘get it’ so much, I sometimes over coach. It is my desire for a successful outcome that gets in the way. It spoils the fun. Avoid using the word “risk” for the same reason. Risk implies sacrificing something and thus engenders a level of fear.

Omit the words ‘failure’ and ‘risk’ from your workshops and you increase the likelihood of creative growth for both you and your students.

Have fun.

That’s my advice for what it’s worth.

More Zen and Spolin Games: SPACEWALK and Direct Experience

As long as you seek for something, you will get the shadow of reality and not reality itself. - Shunryu Suzuki

To set up what you like against what you don't like -- this is the disease of the mind. Don't seek reality; just put an end to opinions. - Sheng-ts'an

Viola Spolin used many Zen ideas. Many of the concepts she developed within her body of work, pointed the way towards a mind, free of preconceptions, judgment and opinion in the same way Zen asks for the same thing.

“Opinions and judgment are in your head!” she would say. “We are after a direct experience!”

Rather than simply experiencing something without comment, we are conditioned to assign it some value; we are eager to see how it pertains to us; to consider how it affects us. ‘Oh, this is interesting!’ or ‘this is stupid...’ or ‘I don’t understand. Uh oh!’ or ‘what has this got to do with anything?’ We constantly talk to ourselves as we try to experience the world.

We want to know immediately what it is, what it is good for and if how it might affect us. When we do this, we remove ourselves from direct experience and go into our head and label what we are experiencing. This internal commentary on our experience happens subconsciously and continuously and it obscures objective reality.

Viola would counteract this in her Spacewalk exercises. Spacewalks are exercises to increase your awareness. She had a spacewalk for practically everything; one to make you aware of your body, another to make you aware of the environment and another one to make you aware of your relationship to yourself and your fellow players. There are several Spacewalks.

She had one Spacewalk to help us to see in a new way. Viola used to coach us during a Spacewalk, to Look unlabeled - see something without labeling it." Try to do it" she would say. "It’s not easy, but it is possible."

I tried. I would look at a light switch on the wall, I would see a cream colored plastic nub and the next moment, my mind said ‘light switch’. My next thought was something like ‘Damn! I’m commenting to myself! Look for something else and try not to recognize it.’ Nope, I wasn’t getting it.

"When you know you've labeled it, don't do anything about it and don't not do anything about it. Then move on." She coached.

“Don’t do anything about it and don't not do anything about it.” That phrase bedeviled me. More times than not, it took me out of the exercise as I pondered this "koan". [1] I wanted to do what she wanted us to do and this coach was a paradox.

She would also coach us to stop for a second, and close our eyes. Then she’d say “When you open your eyes, take your next step as if it is into a new space you’ve never seen before.” I would try, but when I opened my eyes, all I saw was the theater space and the other students. I thought maybe for a split second, it was something I hadn’t seen before, but in my head I said, “No. You know where you are. This is an improv class and you are here to learn how to be a good improviser.” I was a compulsive thinker.

Eventually I just gave up questioning what I didn’t understand. I ignored the ponderable and just did what I could.

An interesting thing began to happen. I began to relax. I came out of each Spacewalk refreshed and energized.

The minute I stopped trying to get it – I began to get it. It started to work. I could quiet my mind.

When I got this insight, I understood that playing without judgment was the key. Being non-judgmental about myself and my desire to ‘want to get it’ activated my intuitive self and I began to have moments of insight and flashes of truly original work.

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness” Eckhart Tolle

The Information Trap

I have a notion that may explain why a lot of improv bogs down with information and becomes tedious.

We (generally speaking) are no longer capable of easily having a direct experience. It is cultural. We are after all living in the Information Age.

But improvisation has the power to release us from this trance. Simple warm-up games and Spacewalks and Mirror can be used to get a direct experience.

As I’ve said, it is amazing how quickly our mind wants to assign a word, a judgment or opinion on what we’re seeing. We so diligently inform ourselves about what we are seeing that we don’t really see it.

Normally when you see something the first thing you want to do is assign it a name and a function (or non-function) for future reference. ‘Oh, that’s a door,’ or ‘that’s a brown table lamp’. In it goes to the file cabinet of our mind and when we encounter that object again, we refer to that memory. In doing so, you gloss over the reality of the thing itself.

We do the same with people and relationships. They become templates in your head and when you use them you operate from your idea of ‘a relationship’, ‘an occupation’, or ‘a storyline’. Those are all clichés. They are part of your past. Paul Sills called it ‘the trap’ in scene improvisation.

People: A mom is usually a stereotype we work from. So is a cop, a boss, a teacher, a wife, a salesman. Without thinking, we use a template to create these characters. We hardly contemplate what it means to actually be these occupations. We just pull these templates out of our heads. They can only be superficial and stereotypical.
Viola has a game called “What is my Occupation?” It is a variation of “How Old Am I?” In How Old am I? The sidecoaching asks us to put the age in your feet. Put the age in your chest. Send the age to your eyes, etc. And with occupations the same applies. Put the occupation in your hands, your feet, your chest, the tip of your nose. Everywhere, but your head! Your body will respond and this will organically give you your Mom, or Cop, or Butcher.

Relationships: A marriage has a few different templates we think of – unhappy marriage, newlyweds, etc. We typically consider siblings need to be in conflict with each other or are always running to mom and dad to have them mediate a fight. When we play children we jump to a Saturday morning TV version of what a kid is. Family is a template. Customer and salesperson has a template we work from and so on.

Players working this way are in their heads. Players tell what they are seeing rather than seeing it. They tell where they are, rather than truly being in the where. They tell their relationships (usually one - dimensional) to each other rather than being in relation to each other.

Then, as we get more and more information, it piles up and has to be sorted into a story – a familiar one that you remember and can share as a common reference with your fellow players. You may think you’re offering a new character or action but you and your fellow players are labeling what you’ve introduced. You all share these common references and it can only result in tired, trite, simple characters and situations.

Now you’re stuck and have to ‘tilt’ the story or go against the predictable to get a laugh or to shake it up a little. Current improvisation training finds lots of ways to introduce these ‘tilts’ (things like “Ding” or Sit, Stand, Lie Down) - Those little bumps in the predictable. This is what the audience sees as funny. And it is, but it does not have the power of what Eckhart Tolle calls the Now.

This is a major problem when I see students as well as many experienced improvisers create scenes. Good sidecoaching selects a focus that will get the players out their heads and into the Here and Now. A knowledgeable sidecoach will steer players away from old frames of references. In doing so, something new and fresh will emerge. This is what Viola was after.

When players go for jokes and stereotypes I stop them. Sometimes I’ll do a Spacewalk. Spacewalks help you to spend time in the present without opinion or judgment. In doing so, you get out of your head. You practice being in your body. You practice altering your sense of time (slow motion and no-motion); your sense of space. (Space: the material that connects us and surrounds us and which we can utilize to create objects and environments.) You practice seeing – really seeing.

In one particular spacewalk (available at www.spolin.com on the CD Spacewalks led by Viola Spolin) she would say “When you feel you are really seeing something, let what you’re seeing see you!”

This is a wonderful sidecoach. For me, this means that while you are there experiencing the world, the world is experiencing you. You are not the center of the experience, only a part of a larger whole. It takes the “I” out of it and helps moderate the ego.

Then she would say” You are in relation to it, rather than having a relationship with it.”

That one puzzled me for a long time. What’s the big difference between relation to or having a relationship with? I now understand that what she meant. Relation means you are relating to something right now. It is a more potent word and keeps you in present time. Relationship has that static feel and easily puts you back into memory where you can recall a template (reference) of a relationship and act it out.

In its highest form, improvising is a kind of transcendental meditation.

I call Viola’s Spacewalks a kinetic meditation. Just as a martial art is practiced with various physical exercises to develop skills and awareness; the highest achievement being to transcend it and achieve a state of meditation while in the midst of action, so Viola’s aim in improvised theater is the same. Her games are exercises in spontaneity, theatrical skill, and prepare us for true playing.

Meditation itself has a particular connotation. It conjures up an image of sitting blissfully in silence, focused on a quiet, waiting mind - Very passive. But there are other forms of meditation that involve action. Sufi dancers known as dervishes, whirl around for long periods of time to achieve a state of mind that opens them to the unknown.

In the Islamic tradition there is a new pseudo - religion created in the early 1960’s called Subud. It uses a form of meditation called “Latihan”, which means spiritual exercise. A group of individuals sit or stand in a room and consider their connection to a higher power (i.e. God in whatever terms feel right to the individual). In this connection they move, sit, stand or do anything that moves them to stay connected to this experience.

I experienced this practice and I found it to be akin to a Spacewalk and an advanced Spolin exercise called “Excursions into the Intuitive”; a non-directed improvisation with no stated ‘who’, ‘what’ or ‘where’. (pg. 191 “Improvisation for the Theater”) “They are to force nothing, to think of nothing. When and if anyone feels the urge to go up on stage and do something, he is to do so.”

The exercise, Excursions into the Intuitive comes towards the end of Viola’s book for a good reason.

All her previous games prepare us for this. When any game is played successfully we touch the intuitive and create amazing improvised theater.

Wouldn’t it be great if all of us could achieve this state of consciousness regularly, where all players meet on a blank stage where no agenda exists and each player acts on whatever is happening in the moment?

Improvisation at this level becomes a way of life and a practice that makes us truly ourselves – unique beings with inexhaustible creativity.

Can it be done? Viola thought so.

I think so too.

---

[1] A koan (pronounced /ko.an/) is a story, dialog, question, or statement in the history and lore of Zen Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to intuition. A famous koan is, "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?"

“The purpose of the koans is to break the mind of logic. What the master wants of the pupil is not understanding in any usual sense. He wants to "burst the bag," and drive the pupil with whole-souled precipitation into the Great Emptiness, the Great Stillness - where all things stand without being touchable; where all sounds are,

without being heard.” - Mumon

Beginner's Mind

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few...” Zen master Shunryu Suzuki

Beginner’s mind is experiencing a thing for the first time. “Firsts” are always memorable. Improvisation is a constant search for ‘first times’.

I once did a wonderful improv scene in Viola’s class using the game of “What’s Beyond?”

What's Beyond is a game where you keep some event, past or the future, alive (in No-Motion[1]) without ever bringing it on stage or referring to it directly in dialogue. Yet, the holding of the “What’s Beyond” colors the scene and produces a very dramatic, dynamic scene.

I remember doing a “What’s Beyond” scene where my wife and I were setting up the table for a dinner party having just agreed, after a spontaneous fight, that we should get divorced.

Our guests were on their way over and we were going to go through with the party; it being understood we would not mention our divorce. The ‘What’ of the scene was just us setting the table and putting out the h’ors d’ouvres, before our guests arrived.

It was brilliant! It was very dramatic and every action and moment was filled with the ‘what’s beyond’ between us.

I took a vase from the cabinet while my wife cut some flowers. We met at the head of the table to arrange the flowers.

“My Aunt Mary gave us this.” I said.

My wife nodded. “When did she die?”

“Last year.” I said matter-of-factly.

Then she said, “She went quickly - that was a blessing.”

My wife said it with such disdain in her voice. It reminded us of our year of pain as our relationship died. It wasn’t the vase we were discussing. Our marriage died last year. A quick death is better than a year of slow dying. We both knew it. The scene went on in this fashion and our 'What's Beyond’ was clear to the entire class. It was all there. They knew it, felt it and the class applauded at the end. Everyone agreed it was a very powerful scene. I had such a good experience with What’s Beyond, I couldn't wait to repeat it.

We did “What’s Beyond” in class again, some several weeks later. I jumped up first and got another female partner. I used the divorce premise again with a few alterations. It bombed.

My scene partner and I had no dramatic tension. We looked sadly at each other, played a very maudlin scene until the doorbell rang and we called ‘curtain’.

Viola got up and came down onto the stage. I braced myself. Here it comes.

“What were you DO-ing!” Viola yelled. “You just went about your business, da-dee-da… and so what!? You were sad, we got that. You two were acting your heads off!”

“What was your ‘What’s Beyond?” she asked.

I said “We just agreed on a divorce and didn’t want to talk about it while we set the table for guests.”

She stopped. “That’s a good one.” Completely forgetting about the scene we did a month back.

“I know” I said. “I used it with Susan a few months ago. It worked great!”

“You whaaa-t?” Viola said incredulously.

I was bracing for a real bawling out.

“That’s it! You were caught in memory!”

“But isn’t an actor is supposed to be able to repeat a scene with the same intensity?” I came back. “I had the same focus, the same who, what and where and I should have been able to do it again. I really had a strong focus the last time and really had a great scene. Why did it work before and not now?”

"You had nothing to base it on the first time! You had a beginner’s mind!! It was new. You were really improvising.”

I was still a novice actor. I had not developed the craft of finding feelings anew - of going for process and not result. It was a great lesson.

Beginner’s Mind is Zen practice in action. It is the innocent mind that approaches experience free of preconceptions and expectations, like a child who looks at objects and experiences them without any prior knowledge. Every object and interaction is approached with wonder and amazement. It can’t help but be exciting.

Imagine looking at a deck of cards as a child. It is a stack of uniform colored squares. So many of them! Smooth! Funny pictures on the other side: Black and red things and pictures! What can be done with them? So many things. They cover the floor; they slide; they stick to a wet face; they bend and stay bent and on and on.

Adults see ‘a game of Gin Rummy’ or ‘Poker’ or ‘a house of cards’. Why? - Because we’ve used them in that manner before. There’s nothing inherently wrong in that. It is just we now jump to a limited set of possibilities based on past experience.

The same is true of a lot of improvisation. Old frames of reference limit our choices and we’re so often not even aware of it. Even trying to recreate something you once discovered as ‘original and exciting’ because of Beginners Mind, can be eviscerated by trying to capture that lightning in a bottle a second time.

---

[1] Spolin calls No-Motion The eye of the storm (stillness amid action), A state of waiting (not waiting for, but just waiting) Being ready, connected to the ongoing action in stillness. Action at a simmer.

How Viola Spolin Helped Me Overcome Self-Pity

Tales of Viola Spolin:
How Viola Spolin Helped Me Overcome Self-Pity

“Poor me. Nobody loves me.” Underneath my cheerful façade, underneath my very well developed sense of humor, I walked around Hollywood with that deeply embedded in my soul. I was working as a bartender, ministering to and medicating others’ pain with banter and booze while chasing the dream of being an actor in LA along with thousands of others.

My story is typical: I was the product of a childhood filled with family dysfunction - family chaos: Parents who did their best, but were totally unequipped to bring up a child with love and kindness. Instead, they were angry, spiteful and self-involved children themselves, who had created a family before they knew what they were doing. They resented the fact that they were now saddled with children and responsibility. They raised me and my brother and sisters with anger and resentment. How could they not? My childhood sucked. They loved me in their own way I guess, but as a child, I couldn’t see it. Poor me.

As I grew up, I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to get out of my own life and into another, more interesting life. I wanted to be someone else and be rewarded for it with fame and love. That was my goal. A misguided motive for the theater, but there you have it.

When I arrived in Hollywood, I took acting classes and improv workshops - the usual regimen beginners do when starting out. I was a terrible actor. I was amateur and awkward and had no clue what the art of acting was really all about. Still, I was determined to make myself an Actor – capital “A”.

Things changed when I found myself in Viola Spolin’s ongoing Wednesday afternoon theater games workshop. (See the article: How I met Viola Spolin)

We went through many hours of different kinds of games and exercises in that first year. I did my best, but felt frustrated by much of it. I looked at the others in the workshop who seemed to do good work and envied their talent. They are really good actors, I thought. I am not.

“You’re trying to act,” Viola said to me. “You’re acting your head off! Don’t you see that? – It’s not about acting out or imitating. It’s about YOU being there! YOU! Not some idea of how you should be. That’s in your head!”

Intellectually, I knew what she was talking about, but had no clue how to avoid it. I reflexively had to ‘act’. I was in my head. I was not about to analyze my underlying problems (of which I was hardly aware anyway). Nor was Viola. She would often say, “This is not psycho-drama. I’m not interested in your personal emotions. I want to see the emotions and actions of the scene. Don’t work out your personal problems on my stage.”

No, my personal problems were my own cross to bear. I was busy covering up my feelings of inadequacy with humor and charm. (I’m sure I was not alone in this. If this rings a bell with you, dear reader, read on.) I thought, “That’s what you do in improv – use wit, humor and charm. Try to act like those others you see and admire.” Fake it, in other words.

We met once a week at the Cast Theater on El Centro Street near Melrose. It was a small 99-seat theater a few blocks away from Paramount studios. Ah, Paramount - it seemed to me a monolithic ivory tower of success that I would never penetrate, acting-wise. Maybe I could get a job there in the cafeteria or something. Poor me.

Week after week Viola witnessed my struggle to do good work in her class. Sometimes she would yell at me “What am I going to do with you?” I was tempted to ask ‘what should I do, then?’ But I knew better. You never asked “how to” in Viola Spolin’s workshop. Viola was all about you figuring it out.

If you asked ‘how do you want me to do it?’ she would blow up at you.

“I DON’T KNOW! I’m not the answer book!” she would shout.

No, with Viola, it was all about getting out of your head and into the body, into the space and making these discoveries on your own. All she would do is point out when you weren’t doing it and when you were in your head. I did scene after scene, exercise after exercise but could not understand what was in my way. If Viola knew, she wasn’t telling me.

I’d leave class some days so frustrated. I can’t act. Who am I kidding?

Over the year, Viola and I had become friends. (See “How I met Viola Spolin”) and I usually sat next to her while she coached. She could get such incredible scenes out of so many of us. My work was still pedestrian – nothing special, nothing to write home about, but I was there, man. –

We did an exercise called Intensify Emotion, a game where the sidecoach, in this case Viola, watches a scene between two players and calls on them to heighten and intensify the emotions that emerge for each player out of the playing. If one actor is feeling happy and the other is doubtful, she would coach each respectively to heighten that feeling. Viola would call out to the players, “More Happy!” “More! Even more happiness!” “ Feel happy in your chest!” – (to the other actor) “More doubt!” “More!” “Put the doubt in your face! In your fingers!” “More! - Heighten it!”

What began to happen to the players onstage was amazing, funny, exciting and wonderful. Happy turned to joy. Heightening joy became hysteria, hysteria morphed into giddiness and so on. Doubt turned to concern, to worry, to panic, to fear, to terror, etc. Intensifying Emotions created transformation. It was absolutely astounding to see such emotional energy move the players in such surprising ways. Great theater.

Now it was my turn. I was paired with a very attractive, sweet woman named Susan. We chose a scene (who, what and where) that had a good emotional starting point. A scene we knew had built-in emotional potential for both of us. We were in a prison meeting room, separated by a glass window, with phones on either side. I was the prisoner and Susan was my wife coming to break the news that she had fallen in love with someone else. Oh, this was juicy.

The scene began:

Me: Hi honey. (with love) Gee, I missed you.

Susan: (tentative) Hi Gary.

Viola: (to me) Heighten glad to see her!

Me: (sensing something wrong) What is it, darling?

Susan: (eyes downcast) I… I…

Viola: (to Susan) Heighten that feeling! Put it in your shoulders!

Susan: (Crying)

Me: What’s wrong?

Viola: Concern! Heighten concern!

Me: What is it, honey? What’s happened? (deeply concerned)

Susan: I’m in love (still crying) with someone else. I don’t love you any more.

Me: What?? (I have a look on my face of bewilderment and shock. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach.)

Susan: I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so, so sorry. It just happened. I’ve been seeing him for months now… We fell in love.

Me: (crestfallen) Oh.

Viola: (to me) Heighten that feeling! Put it in your stomach, throat, face!

Me: I see… (Completely numb, shocked, sad)

Now I almost stop hearing Susan and what she is saying. All I begin to hear is Viola’s coaching to me.

Viola: (to me) Intensify it! Put it in your chest!

My shoulders slump. I look down at my feet. I bow my head. I think to myself, ‘No one loves me. Poor me.’

Me: Of course, this is what I get, what I deserve. Shit, why does it always have to be me?’

Viola: More! MORE!

I begin to feel sick to my stomach. “Poor me” is coursing through my whole body. I can’t even look at Susan who, I imagine, Viola must be coaching too, but I am too involved now with my own pity to notice.

Viola: More! EVEN MORE! Put it in your nose! Your eyes, your legs!
INTENSIFY IT!

I am covered in self-pity.

Viola: Heighten the self-pity! Poor me! Say it in your feet! Put it in your spine! C’mon, even more! Heighten it!

I am revulsed by self-loathing. I begin to feel exposed. Naked. The whole class is watching this. Seeing me – the real me. I am no longer playing a prisoner in a cell talking to his wife. I’m me and I’m the only one who feels sorry for myself in the whole wide world. I am so sorry for myself I could puke – literally.

I feel so ashamed. Everyone is seeing me like this. My true self - Oh, god, I am so ashamed. I can’t stay here. What am I doing here? I can’t act. Now everyone knows it. I slowly get up. I don’t look up; my eyes are glued to the floor.

The cell window is gone. The phone is gone. The scene has dissolved. I am not in the scene anymore. Susan, I think, is still in the scene playing my wife, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just gawking at me like everyone else.

I have to get out of here. I begin to walk across the stage floor, slowly, deliberately. If I run I am a coward, but if I walk I might be able take the last shred of dignity I possess with me. “Don’t work out your personal problems out on my stage!” Viola’s words echo in my head. I make it to the door. I walk out.

Viola: COME BACK! Come back!

I open the door into the bright, sunny afternoon. It is such a contrast to the dark little theater space, but it is a dull, lifeless bright. The sun cannot penetrate my despair. I get in my car and drive home. I have no thought; I just drive like a zombie. I get home. I lie on my bed. I am a husk; dried up, empty. I have no feeling anymore - maybe a little residual of shame, but it’s hardly worth mentioning.

Time passes, I couldn’t say how long, but it was the same day.

The phone rings. It is Viola.

Me: Hello.

Viola: Gary! What were doing!?

Me: Viola, I had to leave. I couldn’t stay.

Viola: Oh, honey. If you had only stayed…if you had only stayed—I’d have cleaned you out of it!

Me: (listless) Yeah.

I hang up. I lie back on my bed. Soon, I begin to feel unexpectedly better. I put my hands behind my head, look up at the ceiling. I am pensive.

Lying there on the bed, I feel my body, my feet, my legs, stomach and hands. They feel good. They feel new.

I have the distinct image that if I were being filmed, the camera would be above me on a crane, slowly pulling back ever further to see me; me on the bed; me on the bed in the room; me on the bed in the room in the apartment; in the apartment in the building; in the city – in the world.

I feel good. I inspect my emotional self, still lying there on the bed. I feel pretty good. No self-pity; No shame; No embarrassment, even.

Hey! I feel pretty damn good! In fact, I feel terrific. What is going on?

I’m hungry. I get up and go out.

I am going out to get something to eat. I’m alive and I am hungry. I am an actor in Hollywood going out to get something to eat, because I’m famished. I’ve got a career to go after. Hey, life is good!

Epilogue

Ever since that day I have never ever felt sorry for myself. Viola’s coaching and the game itself banished that unproductive emotion from my psyche forever.

Self-pity, many acting teachers will tell you, is the poorest choice you can make for a character. It is an unpleasant emotion to witness, an excuse for the self to stay hidden, a paralyzing emotion. Self-pity keeps you from having any contact with the outside world and useless in real drama. Useless in life.

Soon afterward I began connecting with my acting; going on auditions and getting callbacks and some acting jobs. I still had a lot of other emotional problems (who doesn’t?) but self-pity was not among them.

Postscript: Viola did not intend her work to be psycho-drama. She used to say “Never use your own tears! Use the character’s tears!”

That her work did help me out psychologically was only a side-benefit of her connecting me with my real talent and the beauty and profundity of her philosophy. Yet her work, at a deep level cannot help but be transformative.

Out of the Head and Into the Space!

Out of the Head and Into the Space

Discovering space as substance and a new reality

Preface

I started my performing career as a mime. Mimes in the mid 1970's and 80's were synonymous with corny uninspired white faced buskers who went around mimicking passers-by and asking for money. I became a mime at the age of thirteen in 1964. In the 60's it was still an art.

I copied other performers I admired including Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Danny Kaye and Jackie Gleason. I also got a chance to see the great Marcel Marceau.

I studied dance and mime for a year in college and developed my skill at the National Mime Theater in Boston. When I headed out to California in late 1975 I was already an excellent mime.

I performed mime on street corners and in cafes and because it was LA and not Schenectady, New York (where I'm from), I met a lot of performers who told me to study with Richmond Shepard, a well known mime teacher in LA at the time. I did. And although he did not teach me anything about mime I didn't already know, he did invite me into his troupe and I began making a living as a mime.

I was making an income from mime, performing on the Queen Mary in Long Beach California when I got hired to teach mime at the American Academy of Dramatic Art in Pasadena, CA.

I had been in Viola's class for about a year. We worked on space substance a good deal of the time. I had very little trouble visualizing the where and handling basic space, and Viola knew it. And although I had difficulty with many areas of her work at the time, SPACE was not one of them - or so I thought.

With mime, it's about having a clever idea and then rehearsing it and executing it to perfection. By the time I was 26 I had had enough of this. I was getting bored by my own mime performances. It was another reason I began taking acting and improv.

I wanted my work in Viola’s class to be good! I wanted to be liked and have her approve of me, and so I felt I had to know what to do in a scene before I got up to do it. I realize now that was not the point – at all! I knew it too, but could not help myself. I feared that my getting it wrong or looking stupid for not understanding what she wanted, would disappoint her. I was caught in what Viola called the Approval/Disapproval Syndrome.

In class, Viola would set up a game, describe the focus and then sit down and ask, “OK who wants to go first?"

I never went first. I wanted to see what the game looked like before I would try it. I had to watch while others did the scene. I watched and tried to understand what the game was and what it did for other players first.

While watching, I began to think "Ok, I could be a doctor and Susan my patient…" or "I could come on and say… and then he might answer…X.' Or "I'll come on with a horse to trade…'. I was trying to write the beginnings of a scene so I wouldn't go up 'empty' and look like an idiot without an idea.

"No playwriting!" Viola would shout from the sidelines. She'd see others playwriting an improv when all I could see was a passable scene.

"There are wonderful writers in their garrets with their typewriters and quills - writing things a lot better than you!"

She would often shout "Show us, don't tell us!"

Some players could not help just talking through the whole scene. They were not able to show the where and many players would not understand the difference – they would talk about where they were or what they were looking at instead of using the where and handling objects. Viola would get cranky.

"What are you DOING!!!?" she would yell.

"You’re just talking and telling us! If you can't show us - don't keep talking!!! Use your where! If you can't see it, look for it!" She then would either launch into a lecture or just stop the scene and try something else.

Sometimes she would just ask the two talkers to sit down and ask for two more. She would holler, “The Where will support you! You cannot just talk about it!”

Some players couldn’t take it. They thought she was telling them they were a failure - that they were no good, even though she never ever used words like good or bad when discussing our work.

“Were you able to achieve the focus? No. Sit down. NEXT!”

Although she yelled, many of us understood it was her frustration at not being able to get the game to work. Some took it personally and would leave the workshop, stung by her anger.

Viola's shouting always showed me her passion and I never took her raised voice personally. Still I was not going to go first and frustrate her. I wanted to do well. I'd be up in the last row, knowing I shouldn't playwright but I would do it anyway.

By now I knew enough about improvisation to realize that it is a good thing to go up without a thought. Just go! Trust that something would happen, but I couldn't. My mind was constantly feeding me with ideas – I couldn’t stop it. I was like a harried and desperate writer pitching ideas to a producer who did not want to listen.

Every time I caught myself thinking up an opening or a good line or a situation I could use, I would slap my face just a little, to remind myself to ‘stop it! Stop thinking ahead!’ I slapped myself a lot in the early days.

I wanted to improvise, but I also wanted to be good at it - right now. I had no idea that my all my clever ideas where things Viola had seen countless times before - I never realized it until I began to teach the work.

I tried to be original, funny and clever. And sometimes, in spite of myself, my trite scene premise worked only because Viola would call out some coach that would let me out of my fear and connect me some way to the scene, the other player or the where and I would get out of my head and something new would happen. With her sidecoaching, you often couldn’t help but do wonderful work.

I would get up time after time and try to erase all my pre-planning, often to no avail.

My first epiphany

One day we did an exercise called "Begin and End".

It was a solo exercise - my favorite kind. We were to handle an object, then break it down into 'beginning and ending' sub-movements calling out loud "Begin!" and "End!" then re-do the handling of the object to see if it made more of an 'appearance' in space. To me this was mime - my meat!

Viola developed this kind of an exercise to help people really see space physically and have it be a reality for you rather than pretending.

“Out of your head and into the space!” she kept reminding us.

Being in your head in this exercise, means that an object is referenced rather than actually handling it as a space object. This leads to telling and not showing: Using a pointed finger for a gun, or index and middle finger opening and closing for a pair of scissors or a thumb and pinky being spread apart and held to the ear to represent a phone.

Begin and End would break your movements down into 'beats' to allow time to see the various parts of the action. Once broken down and then reassembled, an object would appear in the space and be seen by the audience. So many players would use space badly and when they did use an object, we often would have no clue as to what it was. Space is tricky.

The undisputed master of this kind of space work was Richard Schaal, a member of Paul Sills' company and an original Second City cast member. He had the ability as Viola would say ‘to make the invisible, visible’. (More on him later).

“We’re going to do an exercise called Begin / End.” She announced.

Again I did not go first, hoping to see what she was after, knowing I could do this, but wanting to make sure. Sure enough, a student came onstage and quickly and clumsily unwrapped a stick of gum. We had no idea what he was doing until he put something in his mouth and started chewing. He then broke it down into Begin – End and then re-did it a third time. The third time we could see clearly the pack of gum, the wrapper and the single stick of gum he popped into his mouth.

"I get it" I thought to myself, feeling very cocky. I decided on pantomiming a cigarette pack and getting one out of the pack and lighting up.

I did it just as I had many times before in mime scenes. I then broke it down using Begin/End and then did it normally the third time.

In my evaluation, after the third time, Viola asked the class “Did you notice any difference from the first to the last time he did it?”

"No." said the class. "It was just as clear as the first time."

I beamed, feeling very pleased with myself. Little did I realize that Viola was not after a mime performance. She got up and came over to the stool I sat on onstage.

"Let me ask you a question." she said.

"Were you actually handling that object or were you drawing us a picture?"

My stomach sank.

"I was drawing you a picture." I said.

"And it was a very nice picture. We all saw it. But did you really see it?"

"Yes."

"No. You saw an outline of it." She said. "You made us see what you wanted us to see without seeing it yourself. You were playwriting!"

She caught me.

"I'm going to ask you to do it again. And this time I'm going to ask you to break it down many more times than you think. I'm also going to ask you breathe out fully on the 'End' part. Expel all your breath and shout very loudly on the 'begin'.”

I had no time to think of what to do. I had to pick a new object and start right away. No forethought. That was good, but that was only part of it.

By asking me to break it down even further, she meant to go beyond my outline. Beyond the gestures that would say just enough about an object so the audience would understand what it was. That was what my mime training had taught me. She also had me focus on breath and volume. I had a multiplicity of focuses, to occupy me and keep me from my old well-trained habits - to shut off my head.

I decided to peel an orange. I dug my thumbnail in and peeled the rind, piece by piece, putting the pieces on my lap.

"Now do it with BE-ginnnnn!" she loudly emphasized "and ENNNNDDDDDuh -!" she demonstrated emptying her lungs of air.

I began.

I found it was not difficult to break the movements into smaller parts.

I began by seeing an orange on the table. Seeing was a BEGIN!

Deciding to pick it up, an ENNNDDDuh!

“BEGIN!” I placed my hand on the orange.

“ENND!” - expelling all my breath, I let my hand rest on the orange.

“BEGIN!” I raised the orange.

“ENNNDDDuh!” I brought it in front of me.

I got occupied with that glistening rind. I saw it.

A shiny orange with a pebbled skin - a large juicy navel orange. I even noticed the 'navel' part.

“BEGIN!” I dug my nail into the orange. I thought to myself, it’s a real oily, ripe orange, this one.

“ENNNNNDuhhhh!”

I pried open the first part where I could see the orange section like a whitish placenta-like embryo with veins and shreds of pulp.

I lost track of how many times I did it, I do remember my voice was wearing thin with all the volume and my breathing was getting me very energized. I gulped in air for 'begin' and expelled it all on 'end'. It was just me and this particular orange. Not a generic orange, but a unique one. I even remember recalling it had a blue stamp on it like some oranges have when picked and labeled by a grower.

"Now go back and peel it again, without Begin / End." Viola instructed.

This is where I have to say, it really happened folks, because it really did. It might sound like some grandiose recollection, but I promise you this is no overstatement or exaggeration. I peeled the orange again. When I stuck my thumbnail into it, I saw, as clearly as I see this computer screen I'm writing on, the spray of orange oil come out of that very ripe orange. The entire class gasped. They saw it too! I continued to peel that orange and I can still see it vividly to this very day.

"There." Viola said. "You saw it and we saw it." She smiled very broadly. "Whoooo! That was something!"

She then turned to the class. "I don't care how skilled you are - if you see it then we will see it. If you don't see it, you're cheating yourself!" she hollered with emphasis.

She turned back to me. "I'm going to ask you whenever you do this exercise, Gary, to do that - break it down as much as possible and breathe! – This is a breathing exercise. And then, in your case, I'll ask the class not only if they saw it, but what color or texture it was."

Later when we did this exercise again, I tied a tie. When I was done Viola asked the group what color it was and what material. The majority of the class said it was a knit tie, maroon or red.

Bingo! It was a maroon, fuzzy knit tie. That’s what I saw. I saw it- Really saw it. And they did too.

This was my epiphany. I had to get out of my head in order to generate energy and true spontaneity. Breaking it down so many times, combined with the breathing and the loud voice put my focus on the object and not the audience or myself (who was still obsessed with how the audience was seeing me).

I had produced, in space, a real orange and a real tie. It was real to everyone who saw it. Invisible space made visible.

I now saw mime as a tired and boring way of moving your body to describe objects – it was just another way of telling and not showing. I immediately began teaching space object work to my mime class at the American Academy, totally doing away with rote exercises in rotations, inclinations, illusions and the like.

I was fired.

So be it. I was on the path to something much bigger.

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.