Find Your Improv!
When you come to the Bovine School of Improvisation you will get in class and the teacher will tell you how the game functions and then you will play it. After everyone has played the game the teacher will usually ask something like”What did you get out of it?” They rarely tell you what you should have done or gotten out of an exercise, especially in the early levels. Some people find this frustrating. They say “Just tell me how to do it.” Here is why we don’t.
I follow Viola Spolin’s philosophy and her belief in essence that we are so hung up on wanting to do things correctly and wanting to please or not wanting to fail that we don’t find our own center. There is an old saying that goes something like “If you meet the Buddha on the street kill him.” The reason being that the Buddha can’t teach you your path. You are the only person who knows your path because it lays inside of you. The Buddha can teach you things that have helped him or her, but they can not be assured what path you need to take because the course you must travail is through your own ego. Your ego is not real. It is your pride, defense mechanisms and insecurities,all of which create a barrier to the real you. We don’t want to show our path, we want you to find your own path, because it is unique.
Spolin’s has a belief that there should be no positive or negative feedback to force one to look inside themselves for if something connects for them or not. You must look inward to find the truth. You find what feels right or wrong to you after you do the exercise. By asking “What did you get out of that exercise?” We have the player first look inside themselves and see what the take away was for them. If you did something and that was easy, fun and seemed to connect for you, then that becomes part of you.
If I get up and tell you what you have to do, to do good improv then I am telling you what you need to to do, to do my improv, not yours. Not only that, you then must understand what I am saying and believe it and strive for it on stage before doing it. Even then it may not be the best, most fun and easy choice for you.
My greatest thrill as a teacher is watching people on stage who I have taught, who bring themselves to this art. They play their way. They have found out what works for them. They are all different as performers and that makes the group stronger. They are playing near to who they are which is easier, but also makes it easier for them to be effected by choices made on stage.
So if you come here for classes the teachers will ask you things like:
“What did you get out of that?”
“What connected for you?”
“What did you feel on stage”
“When was it fun and easy for you or not”
“What were you doing that made it fun or not fun?”
“So what was going on with you when you were playing?”
The teachers will stay away from evaluative questions, like “Did you like that?” and “How would you rate that?”. The reason we shun those questions is because they evoke an evaluative answer. Like something or dislike something it doesn’t matter to us as much as what you can take away from it. I can learn a lot from my mistakes. What you experienced and how it felt in the moment is the only thing we are really looking for you to connect with.
We also ask players to answer in “I” statements. “I did this…” “This really seemed to work for me.” “When I did ‘x’, it felt ‘y’.” We want people to look at their experience. So many players start of with “You have to do …” To which I reply “I wasn’t up there.” Instead of looking at how they liked it or what behaviors will lead to ’success’, we ask them to discover what they experienced and found to be true for them in the moment.
In this way they find the path to their own improv that is real for them. As we get deeper into the levels we start to look at thinking, controlling and avoiding. These are the behaviors we look at and try to remediate. Thinking, evaluating, judging, controlling and avoiding are all things that keep you from a direct experience.
Now, as far as no positive feedback goes, I don’t think that we are the same society that Spolin taught in. I teach with a focus on positive reinforcement. Someone does something brave or outstanding we applaud (Viola is spinning right now). We encourage the people who are having a tough time who have made a brave choice. We salute each of our students, because taking class is a brave choice in and of itself.
I also give feedback, counter to Spolin. Spolin’s belief of whatever the group gets out of it the group needs to get out of it. I believe that is true, but especially with some adults the only passage to the intuitive side of their mind goes right through the rational side. So after we ask what you got out of it, we sometimes say “Did you see this?” “Did you feel that?” “What happened when she did that to you?” “Why did you make that great choice?”. We try to not tell you what to think or do, but to explore what we saw as significant and see if it made a connection to you.
So the funny thing is that although one of the big focus of Improvisation is “group mind” that the focus on classes is the individual finding their own unique improvisation.