I am currently four weeks into an Improv class. For those of you who don’t know, Improv is short for improvisational, in which, usually an artist, painter, actor, comedian, musician, etc., will develop an idea, a work, a scene, a skit, a sketch, etc., spontaneously. When it is done with more than one person, it requires quick thinking and a trememdous amount of teamwork, listening, attention, etc., amongst each member, and usually on the part of the audience as well, in order to be able to follow along.
In this particular case, I am taking a comedy Improv class, as opposed to music or acting. Having been traveling and having to have had to miss last week’s class, I forgot some of the rules, and proceeded to break them during this weeks class. This ended up being very fortuitous, because, as I was hearing the instructor remind me of the rules, it dawned on me how much they resembled the developing philosophy at LIFEChanges.
By the way, like anything else, they are not rules, rules, but guidelines or suggestions to facilitate not only the best scene or the best laugh, but the most fun, understandable, and funny experience for the audience.
Evidently, the first rule of Improv is to never say no to what is being offered, and to go with it, after all, this is an Improv class. In other words, my scene partner started off the scene by playing a character and suggesting that I was a character, an animal actually, better yet, a porcupine, just like she was.
Instead od going with it, I literally said, “I don’t want to be a porcupine, I’m tired of your silly games.” Though this could have been a great surprise addition to the scene once we had extablished the relationship and possibly that my partner always wants to role play, by saying no at the beginning of the scene, it fell flat on it’s face.
As I am writing about it, I can see, being a musician and having participated in, and lead many bands, if during an instrumental part of a piece, a musician improvised and took the melody to another place, all the musicians would happily follow along and excitedly go with anticipation as to where the current leader was going to go next. If one of the musicians said out loud, “no, I’m not going there,” it of course would have ruined the experience for everyone.
But that is not to say that each musician did not get their opportunity to take the music to different places. What became the most fun for the band and the audience for that matter is for each musician to find a clever way to take what had been offered and play with it and eventually change it to where they wanted to go. And often times, where they would have gone was not as good as where they ended up going because they said yes to the idea that preceeded theirs.
Now that this is all making sense in my mind, I am not sure that I am still capable of conveying what only now makes sense to me, so that it makes sense to anybody else, but I hope I am making some sense.
Another rule was when dropping a “bomb,” be quick about it, don’t beat around the bush or lead up to it for too long. Dropping a “bomb,” refers to saying something about oneself or the other scene partners, or about anything really, that will change the relationship, the circumstances, direction, whatever, of the scene. The bombs can really take the scene to whole new funny, interesting, clever, etc., heights. But if a person hints at it and goes around and about it for too long, the audience that has figured it out gets bored of it, the audience that hasn’t gets confused as to where the comedian is going, and it also makes it hard for the other person(s) in the scene to react to and maintain the energy and focus, among other things.
How much more like LIFEChanges can this be. The first thing is saying yes to life, and accepting things and circumstances as they are. It seems to be the only way to be in the now, and from only that place does it seem that anything can change, not from denying what is offered or going against it, because it is there and it exsits, at least on some dimension. So I got to thinking, how many times am I actually “breaking” this rule in my life? I say, “No,” it has to be like this, “No,” it has to be within this time frame, “No,” it was going to be…!” I wonder what would happen to the big “scene” of life, if I said, yes, “okay,” and then worked with what I had, on the way to it potentially being better than what I thought it all was supposed to be.
Secondly, as far as dropping “bombs,” how often in life do we keep secrets, do we do things that we don’t want to do because we are afraid of what people might think of us, or because we think we are pleasing someone? How often do we want to share something but don’t out of fear? How often do we not make a move or a change in our life that is begging to be made… in essence, “dropping the bomb,” and changing the circumstances, the relationships, the dynamics of our “scene” in life. And how long has the world “audience” been waiting for us to drop that bomb, how long has the other part of the world “audience” been confused about where we are going with this “scene?” How long have we confused our scene partners and didn’t allow them to flurish in their “scenes” of life, because we hadn’t dropped the “bomb” yet.
One has to agree at the same time, that timing is everything, but maybe that is one of the things we need to learn in life is timing. And I wonder if the right timing can only be felt and known by being in the now? And I wonder if we can only be in the now, by saying “yes” to what is currently being offered and knowing that perhaps, only in going with the change can we change anything. And should we say “yes,” that potentially, where we end up taking the “scenes” of our lives, will be better places than where we thought they should go, to the enjoyment and betterment of our scene partners, (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) and our audience, (the world at large).