The Art of Sidecoaching

The most subtle and essential element in Spolin Games is sidecoaching. The sidecoach is at once a fellow player, a grounded teacher and a canny director.

Sidecoaching is as much a skill as it is an art. It therefore requires the same intuitive ability evoked by playing. In addition, the sidecoach has to also be familiar with the advanced levels of playing. This means a good sidecoach must have a substantial amount of experience playing most of the Games in Spolin's canon, hopefully with a good sidecoach to help you make the most of them. I was lucky. I had Viola Spolin herself as a coach and mentor.

Where can a teacher gain this experience?

This only comes through lots of play with the support of a good sidecoach.

Through playing and coaching the sidecoach becomes familiar with what works and what doesn’t. Without someone like Viola to guide you, (except by her book) one needs to accumulate enough experience through play and trial and error mindful of the traps; of showing how instead of allowing the players to grapple with the problem (with support from you). By being a detached observer rather than being a fellow player. Acknowledging what works and what doesn’t while playing and coaching the game. “Hmmm. That one worked… Oh, that didn’t do it.” Knowing what you are shooting for is that spontaneous release of energy true play sparks.

It is also important to use words and phrases that will assist the player at the moment of playing to heighten the involvement in the game and focus.

Viola was very careful to use words of empowerment rather than authoritarian laden words. Phrases like ‘Do it this way’ or ‘It’s like this’ or ‘Don’t do it like that’ all come from an Authority with a capital A.

Action words like ‘use your where’, ‘heighten what’s going on!’ ‘Let the space support you’, ‘keep the space between you!’ are prompts to action rather than directions on what to do. A lot of it comes with experience and a desire to let the game do the teaching.

Observation of the student/players’ participation in a game requires a moment-to-moment diagnosis of several things:

• The resistance exhibited by one or more of the players during play.
• The interaction (or lack thereof) between the players.
• An understanding of what the game is capable of producing. (hard to do if you’ve not seen it work before)
• A familiarity with the variety of coaching phrases that might produce either more energy, less urgency, more connection, or more detachment depending on what might be called for. This is often an intuitive and reflexive response by the sidecoach.
• A familiarity and empathy with the problems faced by the student inside the game based upon the teacher’s own experience playing and/or coaching the game.

The side coach must always be aware and involved with the players as a fellow player! - Encouraging them to become fully involved with the focus, careful not to dictate, nag, or barrage them with unnecessary words.

There are a lot of obstacles and traps for a side coach:

·         Ego

·         Urgency

·         Not understanding the problem posed by the game or its potential

·         No rapport with the players’ experience inside the game

·         Not enough understanding or familiarity with the variety of sidecoaches

It is valuable to know the game from the player’s perspective. Playing a variety Spolin games will educate you to the problems faced by your students and expand your personal experience. Playing will give you a deeper understanding of yourself, the philosophy, and heighten your own self awareness while at the same time, reducing your reliance on intellectually understanding the games and their purpose. Instead you will get a direct experience of the games for you will be transformed by the playing.

This is extremely valuable for you as a teacher/director/workshop leader on many levels. Once you have gained this level of playing and understanding, you stand ready to begin your career as a sidecoach.

The book and the writings of Viola Spolin will continue to be a source for you. The wisdom is there to be mined continually. It is not a book to read through once. It’s because she wrote her prose with a profound knowledge of the players experience and resistances as well as guiding the teacher from her vast experience as a teacher/director. She addresses both the enlightened teacher and the resistant (but open minded) teacher. 

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

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.

---

[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

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