Spontaneity
1
'I was given the part of poor Armgard, so I stood in front of the class and as I began with "Here he cannot escape me, he must hear me", I suddenly noticed a warm friendly feeling in the region of the stomach, like a soft hotwater bottle in a cold bed, and when I got to "Mercy, Lord Governor! Oh, pardon, pardon", I was already on my knees, tears streaming from my eyes and nose, and sobbing to such an extent that I could only finish the passage "My wretched orphans cry for bread" with supreme difficulty. The fishhead was in favour of a more restrained performance and her cutting voice drove me to the back of the class room with words of "Un-German hysterical conduct". It was a nightmare. I almost died of shame and prayed for an earthquake or an air raid to deliver me from the derision and shock . . . apart from the nagging voice all went still, the others stared at me as though they had unwittingly harboured a serpent in their midst. The rest of my days with Weise were torture. I was afraid of the others and myself for I could never be certain that I wouldn't again throw myself down in tears because of the orphans. . .' (Hildegarde Knef, The Gift Horse, André Deutsch, 1971.)
It's possible to turn unimaginative people into imaginative people at a moment's notice. I remember an experiment referred to in the British Journal of Psychology---probably in the summer of 1969 or 1970---in which some businessmen who had showed up as very dull on work-association tests were asked to imagine themselves as happy-go-lucky hippy types, in which persona they were retested, and showed up as far more imaginative. In creativity tests you may be asked to suggest different ways of using a brick; if you say things like 'Build a house', or 'Build a wall', then you're classified as unimaginative---if you say 'Grind it up and use it for diarrhoea mixture', or 'Rub off warts with it', then you're imaginative. I'm oversimplifying, but you get the general idea.
Some tests involve picture completion. You get given a lot of little squares with signs in them, and you have to add something to the sign. 'Uncreative' people just add another squiggle, or join up a 'C' [shape to make a circle. 'Creative' people have a great time, parallel lines become the trunk of a tree, a 'V' on its side becomes the beam of a lighthouse, and so on. It may be a mistake to think of such tests as showing people to be creative, or uncreative. It may be that the tests are recording different activities. The person who adds a timid squiggle may be trying to reveal as little as possible about himself. If we can persuade him to have fun, and not worry about being judged, then maybe he can approach the test with the same attitude as a 'creative' person, just like the tired businessmen when they were pretending to be hippies.]
Most schools encourage children to be unimaginative. The research so far shows that imaginative children are disliked by their teachers. Torrance gives an eye-witness account of an 'exceptionally creative boy' who questioned one of the rules in the textbook: 'The teacher became irate, even in the presence of the principal. She fumed, "So! You think you know more than this book!"' She was also upset when the boy finished the problems she set almost as quickly as it took to read them. 'She couldn't understand how he was getting the correct answer and demanded that he write down all of the steps he had gone through in solving each problem.'
When this boy transferred to another school, his new principal telephoned to ask if he was the sort of boy 'who has to be squelched rather roughly'. When it was explained that he was 'a very wholesome, promising lad who needed understanding and encouragement' the new principal exclaimed 'rather brusquely, "Well, he's already said too much right here in my office!"' (E. P. Torrance, Guiding Creative Talent, Prentice-Hall, 1962.)
One of my students spent two years in a classroom where the teacher had put a large sign over the blackboard. It said 'Get into the "Yes, Sir" attitude.' No doubt we can all add further anecdotes. Torrance has a theory that 'many children with impoverished imaginations have been subjected to rather vigorous and stern efforts to eliminate fantasy too early. They are afraid to think.' Torrance seems to understand the forces at work, but he still refers to attempts to eliminate fantasy too early. Why should we eliminate fantasy at all? Once we eliminate fantasy, then we have no artists.
Intelligence is proportional to population, but talent appears not to be related to population numbers. I'm living in a city at the edge of the Rocky Mountains; the population is much greater than it was in Shakespearian London, and almost everyone here is literate, and has had many thousands of dollars spent on his education. Where are the [poets, and playwrights, and painters, and composers? Remember that there are hundreds of thousands of 'literate' people here, while in Shakespeare's London very few people could read. The great art of this part of the world was the art of the native people. The whites flounder about trying to be 'original' and failing miserably.]
You can get a glimmer of the damage done when you watch people trying out pens in stationers' shops. They make feeble little scribbles for fear of giving something away. If an Aborigine asked us for a sample of Nordic art we'd have to direct him to an art gallery. No Aborigine ever told an anthropologist, 'Sorry, Baas, I can't draw.' Two of my students said they couldn't draw, and I asked, 'Why?' One said her teacher had been sarcastic because she'd painted a blue snowman (every child's painting was pinned up on the walls except hers.) The other girl had drawn trees up the sides of her paintings (like Paul Klee), and the teacher drew a 'correct' tree on top of hers. She remembered thinking 'I'll never draw for you again!' (One reason given for filling in the windows of the local schools here is that it'll help make the children more attentive!)
Most children can operate in a creative way until they're eleven or twelve, when suddenly they lose their spontaneity and produce imitations of 'adult art'. When other races come into contact with our culture something similar happens. The great Nigerian sculptor Bamboya was set up as principal of an art school by some philanthropic Americans in the 1920s. Not only did he fail to hand on his talents, but his own inspiration failed him. He and his students could still carve coffee tables for the whites, but they weren't inspired any more.
So-called 'primitive painters' in our own culture sometimes go to art school to improve themselves---and lose their talent. A critic told me of a film school where each new student made a short film unaided. These, he said, were always interesting, although technically crude. At the end of the course they made a longer, technically more proficient film, which hardly anyone wanted to see. He seemed outraged when I suggested they should close the school (he lectured there); yet until recently our directors didn't get any training. Someone asked Kubrick if it was usual for a director to spend so much care on lighting each shot and he said, 'I don't know. I've never seen anyone else light a film.'
You have to be a very stubborn person to remain an artist in this culture. It's easy to play the role of 'artist', but actually to create something means going against one's education. I read an interview [once in which Grandma Moses was complaining that people kept urging her to improve her snow scenes by putting blue in them, but she insisted that the snow she saw was white, so she wouldn't do it. This little old lady could paint ]because she defied the 'experts'. Even after his works had been exhibited in court as proof that he wasn't in his right mind, Henri Rousseau still had the stubbornness to go on painting!
We see the artist as a wild and aberrant figure. Maybe our artists are the people who have been constitutionally unable to conform to the demands of the teachers. Pavlov found that there were some dogs that he couldn't 'brainwash' until he'd castrated them, and starved them for three weeks. If teachers could do that to us, then maybe they'd achieve Plato's dream of a republic in which there are no artists left at all.
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children. Many 'well adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing.
2
Many teachers express surprise at the switch-off that occurs at puberty, but I don't, because first of all the child has to hide the sexual turmoil he's in, and secondly the grown-ups' attitude to him completely changes.
Suppose an eight-year-old writes a story about being chased down a mouse-hole by a monstrous spider. It'll be perceived as 'childish' and no one will worry. If he writes the same story when he's fourteen it may be taken as a sign of mental abnormality. Creating a story, or painting a picture, or making up a poem lay an adolescent wide open to criticism. He therefore has to fake everything so that he appears 'sensitive' or 'witty' or 'tough' or 'intelligent' according to the image he's trying to establish in the eyes of other people. If he believed he was a transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what his talents really were.
We have an idea that art is self-expression---which historically is weird. An artist used to be seen as a medium through which something else operated. He was a servant of the God. Maybe a mask-maker [would have fasted and prayed for a week before he had a vision of the Mask he was to carve, because no one wanted to see ]his Mask, they wanted to see the God's. When Eskimos believed that each piece of bone only had one shape inside it, then the artist didn't have to 'think up' an idea. He had to wait until he knew what was in there---and this is crucial. When he'd finished carving his friends couldn't say 'I'm a bit worried about that Nanook at the third igloo', but only, 'He made a mess getting that out!' or 'There are some very odd bits of bone about these days.' These days of course the Eskimos get booklets giving illustrations of what will sell, but before we infected them, they were in contact with a source of inspiration that we are not. It's no wonder that our artists are aberrant characters. It's not surprising that great African sculptors end up carving coffee tables, or that the talent of our children dies the moment we expect them to become adult. Once we believe that art is self-expression, then the individual can be criticised not only for his skill or lack of skill, but simply for being what he is.
Schiller wrote of a 'watcher at the gates of the mind', who examines ideas too closely. He said that in the case of the creative mind 'the intellect has withdrawn its watcher from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.' He said that uncreative people 'are ashamed of the momentary passing madness which is found in all real creators . . . regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea that follows it; perhaps in collation with other ideas which seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.'
My teachers had the opposite theory. They wanted me to reject and discriminate, believing that the best artist was the one who made the most elegant choices. They analysed poems to show how difficult 'real' writing was, and they taught that I should always know where the writing was taking me, and that I should search for better and better ideas. They spoke as if an image like 'the multitudinous seas incarnadine' could have been worked out like the clue to a crossword puzzle. Their idea of the 'correct' choice was the one anyone would have made if he had thought long enough.
I now feel that imagining should be as effortless as perceiving. In order to recognise someone my brain has to perform amazing feats of analysis: 'Shape . . . dark . . . swelling . . . getting closer . . . human . . . nose type X15, eyes type E24B . . . characteristic way of walking . . . look under relative . . .' and so on, in order to turn electromagnetic [radiation into the image of my father, yet I don't experience myself as 'doing' anything at all! My brain creates a whole universe without my having the least sense of effort. Of course, if I say 'Hi Dad', and the approaching figure ignores me, then I'd do something that I perceive as 'thinking'. 'That's not the coat he usually wears,' I think. 'This man is shorter.' It's only when I believe my perceptions to be in error that I have to 'do' anything. It's the same with imagination. Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be 'wrong', which is what our education encourages us to believe. Then we experience ourselves as 'imagining', as 'thinking up an idea', but what we're really doing is faking up the sort of imagination we think we ought to have.]
When I read a novel I have no sense of effort. Yet if I pay close attention to my mental processes I find an amazing amount of activity. 'She walked into the room . . .' I read, and I have a picture in my mind, very detailed, of a large Victorian room empty of furniture, with the bare boards painted white around what used to be the edge of the carpet. I also see some windows with the shutters open and sunlight streaming through them. 'She noticed some charred papers in the grate . . .' I read, and my mind inserts a fireplace which I've seen in a friend's house, very ornate. 'A board creaked behind her . . .' I read, and for a split second I see a Frankenstein's monster holding a wet teddy bear. 'She turned to see a little wizened old man . . .', instantly, the monster shrivels to Picasso with a beret, and the room darkens and fills with furniture. My imagination is working as hard as the writer's, but I have no sense of doing anything, or 'being creative'.
A friend has just read the last paragraph and found it impossible to imagine that she's being creative when she reads. I tell her I'll invent a story especially for her. 'Imagine a man walking along the street,' I say. 'Suddenly he hears a sound and turns to see something moving in a doorway . . .' I stop and ask her what the man is wearing.
'A suit.'
'What sort of suit?'
'Striped.'
'Any other people in the street?'
'A white dog.'
'What was the street like?'
'It was a London street. Working-class. Some of the buildings have been demolished.'
[' Any windows boarded up?']
'Yes. Rusty corrugated iron.'
'So they've been boarded up a long time?'
She's obviously created much more than I have. She doesn't pause to think up the answers to my questions, she 'knows' them. They flashed automatically into her consciousness.
People may seem uncreative, but they'll be extremely ingenious at rationalising the things they do. You can see this in people who obey post-hypnotic suggestions, while managing to explain the behaviour ordered by the hypnotist as being of their own volition.
People maintain prejudices quite effortlessly. For example, in this conversation (R. B. Zajonc, Public Opinion Quarterly, Princeton, 1960, Vol. 24, 2, pp. 280-96):
MR X{.small}: The trouble with Jews is that they only take care of their own group. MR Y{.small}: But the record of the community chest shows that they give more generously than non-Jews. MR X{.small}: That shows that they are always trying to buy favour and intrude in Christian affairs. They think of nothing but money; that's why there are so many Jewish bankers. MR Y{.small}: But a recent study shows that the per cent of Jews in banking is proportionally much smaller than the per cent of non-Jews. MR X{.small}: That's it. They don't go for respectable businesses. They would rather run nightclubs.
In a way this bigot is being very creative.
I knew a man who was discovered stark naked in a wardrobe by an irate husband. The wife screamed, 'I've never seen this man before in my life.' 'I must be in the wrong flat,' said my friend. These reactions aren't very satisfactory, but they didn't have to be 'thought up', they sprang to mind quite automatically.
I sometimes shock students who have been trained by strict 'method' teachers.
'Be sad,' I say.
'What do you mean, be sad?'
'Just be sad. See what happens.'
'But what's my motivation?'
'Just be sad. Start to weep and you'll know what's upset you.'
The student decides to humour me.
'That isn't very sad. You're just pretending.'
[' You asked me to pretend.']
'Raise your arm. Now, why are you raising it?'
'You asked me to.'
'Yes, but why might you have raised it?'
'To hold on to a strap in the Tube.'
'Then that's why you raised your arm.'
'But I could have given any reason.'
'Of course; you could have been waving to someone, or milking a giraffe, or airing your armpit . . .'
'But I don't have time to choose the best reason.'
'Don't choose anything. Trust your mind. Take the first idea it gives you. Now try being sad again. Hold the face in a sad position, fight back the tears. Be unhappier. More. More. Now tell me why you're in this state?'
'My child has died.'
'Did you think that up?'
'I just knew.'
'There you are, then.'
'My teacher said you shouldn't act adjectives.'
'You shouldn't act adjectives without justifying them.'
If an improviser is stuck for an idea, he shouldn't search for one, he should trigger his partner's ability to give 'unthought' answers.
If someone starts a scene by saying 'What are you doing here?' then his partner can instantly say, without thinking, 'I just came down to get the milk, Sir.'
'Didn't I tell you what I'd do if I caught you again?'
'Oh Sir, don't put me in the refrigerator, Sir.'
If you don't know what to do in a scene, just say something like, 'Oh my God! What's that?'
This immediately jerks images into your partner's mind: 'Mother!' he says, or 'That dog's messed the floor again', or 'A secret staircase!' or whatever.
3
At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination wasn't 'good' enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene;
(3) unoriginal.
[The truth is that the ]best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal. My best known play---a one-actor called Moby Dick---is about a servant who keeps his master's one remaining sperm in a goldfish bowl. It escapes, grows to monstrous size, and has to be hunted down on the high seas. This is certainly a rather obscene idea to many people, and if I hadn't thrown away everything that my teachers taught me, I could never have written it. These teachers, who were so sure of the rules, didn't produce anything themselves at all. I was one of a number of playwrights who emerged in the late 1950s, and it was remarkable that only one of us had been to a university---that was John Arden---and he'd studied architecture.
Let's take a look at these three categories.
Psychotic Thought
My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people---and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way.
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. It's a matter of presenting yourself as safe. Little old men wander around London hallucinating visibly, but no one gets upset. The same behaviour in a younger, more vigorous person would get him shut away. A Canadian study on attitudes to mental illness concluded that it was when someone's behaviour was perceived as 'unpredictable' that the community rejected them. A fat lady was admiring a painting at a private view at the Tate when the artist strode over and bit her. They threw him out, but no one questioned his sanity---it was how he always behaved.
I once read about a man who believed himself to have a fish in his jaw. (The case was reported in New Society.) This fish moved about, and caused him a lot of discomfort. When he tried to tell people about the fish, they thought him 'crazy', which led to violent arguments. After he'd been hospitalised several times---with no effect on the fish---it was suggested that perhaps he shouldn't tell anyone. After all it was the quarrels that were getting him put away, rather than the delusion. Once [he'd agreed to keep his problem secret, he was able to lead a normal life. His sanity is like our sanity. We may not have a fish in our jaw, but we all have its equivalent.]
When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than of one's mental processes, students are often hysterical with laughter. They agree that for years they have been suppressing all sorts of thinking because they classified it as insane.
Students need a 'guru' who 'gives permission' to allow forbidden thoughts into their consciousness. A 'guru' doesn't necessarily teach at all. Some remain speechless for years, others communicate very cryptically. All reassure by example. They are people who have been into the forbidden areas and who have survived unscathed. I react playfully with my students, while showing them that there are just as many dead nuns or chocolate scorpions inside my head as there are in anybody's, yet I interact very smoothly and sanely. It's no good telling the student that he isn't to be held responsible for the content of his imagination, he needs a teacher who is living proof that the monsters are not real, and that the imagination will not destroy you. Otherwise the student will have to go on pretending to be dull.
At one time I went from a class of mental patients in the morning to a class of drama students in the afternoon. The work of the drama students was far more bizarre, because they weren't so scared of what their minds might do. The mental patients mistook even the normal working of the imagination as proof of their insanity.
I remember the psychologist David Stafford-Clark criticising Ken Campbell at a public meeting. Ken had said that he encouraged his actors to act like lunatics, because then people would find them amusing. Stafford-Clark was upset at the idea that mad people should be thought 'funny', but that's hardly Ken's fault. Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it. We suppress our spontaneous impulses, we censor our imaginations, we learn to present ourselves as 'ordinary', and we destroy our talent--- then no one laughs at us. If Shakespeare had been worried about establishing his sanity, he could never have written Hamlet, let alone Titus Andronicus; Harpo couldn't have inflated a rubber glove and milked it into the coffee cups;^1^ Groucho would never have threatened to horse-whip someone---if he had a horse; W. C. Fields would never have leapt out of the aeroplane after his whisky bottle; Stan Laurel would never have snapped his fingers and ignited his thumb.
We all know instinctively what 'mad' thought is: mad thoughts are [those which other people find unacceptable, and train us not to talk about, but which we go to the theatre to see expressed.]
Obscenity
I find many things obscene, in the sense of repulsive or shocking. I find the use of film from real massacres in the titles of TV shows pretty nasty. I find the way people take pills and smoke cigarettes, and generally screw themselves up, rather awful. The way parents and teachers often treat children nauseates me. Most people think of obscene things as sexual like pubic hair, obscene language, but I'm more shocked by modern cities, by the carcinogens in the air and in the food, by the ever-increasing volume of radioactive materials in the environment. In the first seven months of 1975 the cancer rate in America seems to have jumped by 5.2 per cent, but few noticed---the information didn't have 'news value'.
Most people's idea of what is or isn't obscene varies. In some cultures certain times are set aside when the normal values are reversed---the 'Lord of Misrule', Zuni clowning, many carnivals--- and something similar happens even in this culture, or so I'm told, at office parties for example. People's tolerance of obscenity varies according to the group they're with, or the particular circumstances ('pas devant les enfants'). People can laugh at jokes told at a party that they wouldn't find funny on a more formal occasion. It seems unfortunate to me that the classroom is often considered a 'formal' area in this sense.
The first school I taught at had one woman teacher. When she went out shopping at lunchtime, the men pulled their chairs round and told dirty stories non-stop. Down in the playground, as usual, the children were swopping similar stories, or writing 'shit' or 'fuck' on the walls, always correctly spelt; yet the staff considered the children 'dirty little devils', and punished them for saying things which were far milder than things the teachers themselves would say, and enjoy laughing at. When these children grow up, and perhaps crack up, then they'll find themselves in therapy groups where they'll be encouraged to say all the things that the teacher would have forbidden during school.^2^
Foulkes and Anthony (in Group Psychotherapy, Penguin, 1972) say that a therapeutic situation is one 'in which the patient can freely voice his innermost thoughts towards himself, towards any other person, and towards the analyst. He can be confident that he is not being judged, and that he is fully accepted, whatever he may be, or whatever he may [disclose.' Later they add: 'We encourage the relaxation of censorship. We do this by letting the patient members understand that they are not only permitted, but expected to say anything that comes to mind. We tell them not to allow any of their usual inhibitory considerations to stand in the way of voicing the ideas that come to them spontaneously.']
I was at school more than twenty years ago, but in education the more things change the more they are the same. (Recent research suggests that the old 'monitor' system may be one of the most efficient teaching methods!) Here are some answers that headmasters gave to a questionnaire about sex education in their schools. (Reported in the New Statesman, 28 February 1969.)
'I'm against all "frank discussion" of these matters.'
'Those who are determined to behave like animals can doubtless find out the facts for themselves.'
'I am sick, sick of the talk about sex. I'll have none of it in my school.'
'Everything that needs to be done in my school is done individually, and in private by a missionary priest.'
Notice the use of 'my school' rather than 'our school'. Recently a young girl burned to death because she was ashamed to run naked from a burning house. To some extent her teachers are to blame. Here's Sheila Kitzinger on some effects of middle-class prudery.
'In Jamaica I discovered that the West Indian peasant woman rarely feels discomfort in the perineum, or minds the pressure of the baby's head as it descends. But from the case studies of English middle-class women it appears that many of them worry about dirtying the bed and are often shocked by sensations against the rectum and the vagina in labour---sensations which they may find excruciating. They feel distressed, in fact, at just those sensations which the peasant woman meets with equanimity.
'Some women find relaxation of the abdominal wall difficult, and especially so when they experience any pain. They have been taught to "hold their tummies in", and sometimes it goes against the grain to release these muscles.' (Sheila Kitzinger, The Experience of Childbirth, Gollancz, 1962.) She adds that women with prolonged labours tended to be 'inhibited', embarrassed by the processes taking place in their bodies, ladylike in the extreme, and endured what they were undergoing stoically as long as they were able, without expressing their anxieties. It was not these women's bodies that were causing them difficulties; they were being held up by the sort of people they were. They were not able to give birth.'
[When I have been teaching in universities, I haven't experienced any problem with censorship---at least not on 'sexual' grounds---and I'm not saying that fear of obscenity is the most important factor in making people reject the first ideas that come to them, but it does help though, if improvisation teachers are not puritanical, and can allow the students to behave as ]they want to behave. The best situation is one in which the class is seen as a party, rather than a formal teacher-pupil set-up. If it isn't possible to let students speak and act with the same freedom they have outside the school, then it might be better not to teach them drama at all. The most repressed, and damaged, and 'unteachable' students that I have to deal with are those who were the star performers at bad high schools. Instead of learning how to be warm and spontaneous and giving, they've become armoured and superficial, calculating and self-obsessed. I could show you many many examples where education has clearly been a destructive process.
My feeling isn't that the group should be 'obscene', but that they should be aware of the ideas that are occurring to them. I don't want them to go rigid and blank out, but to laugh, and say 'I'm not saying that' or whatever.
Originality
Many students block their imaginations because they're afraid of being unoriginal. They believe they know exactly what originality is, just as critics are always sure they can recognise things that are avant-garde.
We have a concept of originality based on things that already exist. I'm told that avant-garde theatre groups in Japan are just like those in the West---well of course, or how would we know what they were? Anyone can run an avant-garde theatre group; you just get the actors to lie naked in heaps or outstare the audience, or move in extreme slow motion, or whatever the fashion is. But the real avant-garde aren't imitating what other people are doing, or what they did forty years ago; they're solving the problems that need solving, like how to get a popular theatre with some worth-while content, and they may not look avant-garde at all!
The improviser has to realise that the more obvious he is, the more original he appears. I constantly point out how much the audience like someone who is direct, and how they always laugh with pleasure at a really 'obvious' idea. Ordinary people asked to improvise will search for some original idea because they want to be thought clever. They'll say and do all sorts of inappropriate things. If someone says 'What's for [supper?' a bad improviser will desperately try to think up something original. Whatever he says he'll be too slow. He'll finally drag up some idea like 'fried mermaid'. If he'd just said 'fish' the audience would have been delighted. No two people are exactly alike, and the more obvious an improviser is, the more himself he appears. If he wants to impress us with his originality, then he'll search out ideas that are actually commoner and less interesting. I gave up asking London audiences to suggest where scenes should take place. Some idiot would always shout out either 'Leicester Square public lavatories' or 'outside Buckingham Palace' (never ']inside Buckingham Palace'). People trying to be original always arrive at the same boring old answers. Ask people to give you an original idea and see the chaos it throws them into. If they said the first thing that came into their head, there'd be no problem.
An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He's not making any decisions, he's not weighing one idea against another. He's accepting his first thoughts. How else could Dostoyevsky have dictated one novel in the morning and one in the afternoon for three weeks in order to fulfil his contracts? If you consider the volume of work produced by Bach then you get some idea of his fluency (and we've lost half of it), yet a lot of his time was spent rehearsing, and teaching Latin to the choirboys. According to Louis Schlosser, Beethoven said: 'You ask me where I get my ideas? That I can't say with any certainty. They come unbidden, directly, I could grasp them with my hands.' Mozart said of his ideas: 'Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. Those that please me I retain in the memory, and I am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them.' Later in the same letter he says: 'Why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or in short, makes it Mozart's, and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality.'
Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre.
4
Let's see how these theories work out in practice. Suppose I say to a student, 'Imagine a box. What's in it?' Answers will flash into his mind uninvited. Perhaps:
'Uncle Ted, dead.'
If he said this then people would laugh, and he'd seem good-natured and witty, but he doesn't want to be thought 'insane', or callous. 'Hundreds of toilet rolls', says his imagination, but he doesn't want to appear preoccupied with excretion. 'A big fat, coiled snake'? No---too Freudian. Finally after a pause of perhaps two whole seconds he says 'Old clothes' or 'It's empty', and feels unimaginative and defeated.
I say to a student, 'Name some objects.'
He tenses up. 'Er . . . pebble . . . er . . . beach . . . cliff . . . er . . . er . . .'
'Have you any idea why you've blocked?' I ask.
'I keep thinking of "pebble".'
'Then say it. Say whatever occurs to you. It doesn't have to be original.' Actually it would be very original to keep saying the same word: 'Pebble. Another pebble. A big pebble. A pebble with a hole in it. A pebble with a white mark. The pebble with a hole in it again.'
'Say a word', I say to someone else.
'Er . . . er . . . cabbage,' he says looking alarmed.
'That's not the word you first thought of.'
'What?'
'I saw your lips move. They formed an "O" shape.'
'Orange.'
'What's wrong with the word orange?'
'Cabbage seemed more ordinary.'
This student wants to appear unimaginative. What sort of crippling experiences must he have gone through before he came to me?
'What's the opposite of "starfish"?'
He gapes.
'Answer, say it,' I shout, because I can see that he did think of something.
'Sunflower,' he says, amazed because he didn't know that was the idea that was about to come out of him.
A student mimes taking something off a shelf.
'What is it?' I ask.
'A book.'
[' I saw your hand reject an earlier shape. What did you want to take?' 'A tin of sardines.']
'Why didn't you?'
'I don't know.'
'Was it open?'
'Yes.'
'All messy?'
'Yes.'
'Maybe you were opting for a pleasanter object. Mime taking something else off a shelf.'
His mind goes blank.
'I can't seem to think of anything.'
'Do you know why?'
'I keep thinking of the sardines.'
'Why don't you take down another tin of sardines?'
'I wanted to be original.'
I ask a girl to say a word. She hesitates and says 'Pig.'
'What was the first word you thought of?'
'Pea.'
'Tell me a colour.'
Again she hesitates.
'Red.'
'What colour did you think of first?'
'Pink.'
'Invent a name for a stone.'
'Ground.'
'What was the name you first thought of?'
'Pebble.'
Normally the mind doesn't know that it's rejecting the first answers because they don't go into the long-term memory. If I didn't ask her immediately, she'd deny that she was substituting better words.
'Why don't you tell me the first answers that occur to you?'
'They weren't significant.'
I suggest to her that she didn't say 'Pea' because it suggested urination, that maybe she rejects pink because it reminds her of flesh. She agrees, and then says she rejected 'Pebble' because she didn't want to say three words beginning with 'P'. This girl isn't really slow, she doesn't need to hesitate. Teaching her to accept the first idea will make her seem far more inventive.
The first time I meet a group I might ask them to mime taking a hat off, or to mime taking something off a shelf, or out of their pocket. I [won't watch them while they do it; I'll probably look out of the window. Afterwards I explain that I'm not interested in what they did, but in how their minds worked. I say that either they can put their hand out, and see what it closes on; or else they can think first, decide what they'll pick up, and then do the mime. If they're worried about failing, then they'll ]have to think first; if they're being playful, then they can allow their hand to make its own decision.
Suppose I decide to pick up something. I can put my hand down and pick up something dangly. It's and old, used rubber contraceptive, which isn't something I would have chosen to pick up, but it is what my hand 'decided' to close on. My hand is very likely to pick up something I don't want, like a steaming horse-turd, but the audience will be delighted. They don't want me to think up something respectable to mime, like a bucket or a suitcase. I ask the class to try doing the mime both with and without 'thinking' so that they can sense the difference. If I make people produce object after object, then very likely they'll stop bothering to think first, and just swing along being mildly interested in what their hands select. Here's a sequence that was filmed, so I remember it pretty well. I said:
'Put your hand into an imaginary box. What do you take out?'
'A cricket ball.'
'Take something else out.'
'Another cricket ball.'
'Unscrew it. What's inside?'
'A medallion.'
'What's written on it?'
' "Christmas 1948."'
'Put both hands in. What have you got?'
'A box.'
'What's written on it?'
' "Export only."'
'Open it and take something out.'
'A pair of rubber corsets.'
'Put your hands in the far corners of the box. What have you got?'
'Two lobsters.'
'Leave them. Take out a handful of something.'
'Dust.'
'Feel about in it.'
'A pearl.'
'Taste it. What's it taste of?'
'Pear drops.'
[' Take something off a shelf.']
'A shoe.'
'What size?'
'Eleven.'
'Reach for something behind you.'
He laughs.
'What is it?'
'A breast . . .'
Notice that I'm helping him to fantasise by continually changing the 'set' (i.e. the category) of the questions.
5
There are people who prefer to say 'Yes', and there are people who prefer to say 'No'. Those who say 'Yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say 'No' are rewarded by the safety they attain. There are far more 'No' sayers around then 'Yes' sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the other.^3^
'Your name Smith?'
'No.'
'Oh . . . are you Brown, then?'
'Sorry.'
'Well, have you seen either of them?'
'I'm afraid not.'
Whatever the questioner had in mind has now been demolished and he feels fed up. The actors are in total conflict.
Had the answer been 'Yes', then the feeling would have been completely different.
'Your name Smith?'
'Yes.'
'You're the one who's been mucking about with my wife then?'
'Very probably.'
'Take that, you swine.
'Augh!'
Fred Karno understood this. When he interviewed aspiring actors he'd poke his pen into an empty inkwell and pretend to flick ink at them. If they mimed being hit in the eye, or whatever, he'd engage them. If they looked baffled, and 'blocked' him, then he wouldn't.
There is a link with status transactions here, since low-status players tend to accept, and high-status players to block. High-status players block any action unless they feel they can control it. The high-status [player is obviously afraid of being humiliated in front of an audience, but to block your partner's idea is to be like the drowning man who drags down his rescuer. There's no reason why you can't play high status, and yet yield to other people's invention.]
'Is your name Smith?'
'And what if it is?'
'You've been making indecent suggestions to my wife.'
'I don't consider them indecent!'
Many teachers get improvisers to work in conflict because conflict is interesting but we don't actually need to teach competitive behaviour; the students will already be expert at it, and it's important that we don't exploit the actors' conflicts. Even in what seems to be a tremendous argument, the actors should still be co-operating, and coolly developing the action. The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner's imagination. What happens in my classes, if the actors stay with me long enough, is that they learn how their 'normal' procedures destroy other people's talent. Then, one day they have a flash of satori---they suddenly understand that all the weapons they were using against other people they also use inwardly, against themselves.
'Working' Someone
Bill Gaskill used to make one actor responsible for the content and development of the scene, while his partner just 'assisted'.
'Have you got it?'
'Here it is, Sir.'
'Well, unwrap it.'
'Here you are, Sir.'
'Well, help me put it on.'
'There, Sir. I think it's a good fit.'
'And the helmet.'
'How's that, Sir?'
'Excellent. Now close the faceplate and start pumping. I shall give three tugs on the rope when I find the wreck. Can't be more than twenty fathoms.'
If you concentrate on the task of involving your assistant in some action, then a scene evolves automatically. In my view the game is most elegant when the audience have no idea that one actor is working the other.
'Good morning.'
'Good morning.'
[' Yes . . . shall I sit here?']
'Oh, yes, Sir.'
The first actor sits at a slant in the chair and opens his mouth. The second actor 'catches on' and mimes pumping the chair higher, like a dentist.
'Having some trouble, Sir?'
'Yes. It's one of these molars.'
'Hmm. Let's see now. Upper two occlusal . . .'
'Aaaauuuggghh!'
'My goodness, that is sensitive.'
The trick is not to think of getting the assistant to do things, but of ways of getting each other into trouble.
'The regular dentist is on holiday, is he?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'I must say, you seem rather young.'
'Just out of dental school, Sir.'
'Will you have to extract it? I mean, is it urgent?'
'I'll say it's urgent, Sir. Another day or so and that would have exploded.'
The audience will be convinced that it's the dentist who is controlling the scene. When improvisers are anxious, each person tries to 'carry' the whole scene by himself. Putting the responsibility all on to one person helps them work more calmly.^4^
Blocking and Accepting
Blocking is a form of aggression. I say this because if I set up a scene in which two students are to say 'I love you' to each other, they almost always accept each other's ideas. Many students do their first interesting, unforced improvisations during 'I love you' scenes.
If I say 'start something' to two inexperienced improvisers, they'll probably talk, because speech feels safer than action. And they'll block any possibility of action developing.
'Hallo, how are you.'
'Oh, same as usual. Nice day, isn't it.'
'Oh I don't think so.'
If one actor yawns his partner will probably say 'I do feel fit today.' Each actor tends to resist the invention of the other actor, playing for time, until he can think up a 'good' idea, and then he'll try to make his partner follow it. The motto of scared improvisers is 'when in doubt, say "NO".' We use this in life as a way of blocking action. Then we go [to the theatre, and at all points where we would say 'No' in life, we want to see the actors yield, and say 'Yes'. Then the action we would suppress if it happened in life begins to develop on the stage.]
If you'll stop reading for a moment and think of something you wouldn't want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then you'll have thought of something worth staging or filming. We don't want to walk into a restaurant and be hit in the face by a custard pie, and we don't want to suddenly glimpse Grannie's wheelchair racing towards the edge of the cliff, but we'll pay money to attend enactments of such events. In life, most of us are high-skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action:
'Sit down, Smith.'
'Thank you, Sir.'
'It's about the wife, Smith.'
'She told you about it has she, Sir?'
'Yes, yes, she's made a clean breast of it.'
Neither actor is quite sure what the scene is about but he's willing to play along, and see what emerges.
At first students don't realise when they're blocking or yielding, and they're not very good at recognising when it's happening with other students. Some students prefer to yield (these are 'charming' people) but most prefer to block, even though they may have no idea exactly what they are doing. I often stop an improvisation to explain how the blocking is preventing the action from developing. Videotape is a great help: you replay the transaction, and it's obvious to everyone.
A: Augh!
B: What's the matter?
A: I've got my trousers on back to front.
B: I'll take them off.
A: No!
The scene immediately fizzles out. A blocked because he didn't want to get involved in miming having his trousers taken off, and having to pretend embarrassment, so he preferred to disappoint the audience.
I ask them to start a similar scene, and to avoid blocking if possible.
A: Augh!
B: (Holding him) Steady!
A: My back hurts.
B: No, it doesn't . . . Yes, you're right.
B has noticed his error in blocking, which resulted from his wishing to [stick to the trouser idea. A then blocks his own idea by shifting to another.]
A: I'm having trouble with my leg.
B: I'm afraid I'll have to amputate.
A: You can't do that, Doctor.
B: Why not?
A: Because I'm rather attached to it.
B: (Losing heart) Come, man.
A: I've got this growth on my arm too, Doctor.
During this scene B gets increasingly fed up. Both actors experience the other as rather difficult to work with. They can say 'The scene isn't working', but they still don't consciously realise why. I've written down the dialogue while they were playing the scene, and I go through it, and explain exactly how they were interacting, and why B was looking more and more depressed.
I get them to start the scene again, and this time they've understood.
A: Augh!
B: Whatever is it, man?
A: It's my leg, Doctor.
B: This looks nasty. I shall have to amputate.
A: It's the one you amputated last time, Doctor.
(This is not a block because he's accepted the amputation.)
B: You mean you've got a pain in your wooden leg?
A: Yes, Doctor.
B: You know what this means?
A: Not woodworm, Doctor!
B: Yes. We'll have to remove it before it spreads to the rest of you.
(A's chair collapses)
B: My God! It's spreading to the furniture! (And so on.)
The interest to the audience lies in their admiration and delight in the actors' attitude to each other. We so seldom see people working together with such joy and precision.
Here's another scene I noted down.
A: Is your name Smith?
B: Yes.
A: I've brought the . . . car.
I interrupt and ask him why he hesitated. A says he doesn't know, so I ask him what he was going to say. He says 'Elephant'.
'You didn't want to say "elephant" because there was one mentioned in the last scene.'
[' That's right.']
'Stop trying to be original.'
I make them restart the scene.
A: I've brought the elephant.
B: For the gelding?
A: (Loudly) No!
The audience groan and cry out with disappointment. They were enthralled with the possibilities latent in a scene about gelding an elephant, the elephant suddenly fizzing down to nothing at the first cut, or cutting the trunk off by mistake, or a severed penis chasing the actors about the room. But of course this is why A felt impelled to block. He didn't want to be involved in anything so obscene or psychotic. He resisted the very thing that the audience longed to see.
I call anything that an actor does an 'offer'. Each offer can either be accepted, or blocked. If you yawn, your partner can yawn too, and therefore accept your offer.
A block is anything that prevents the action from developing, or that wipes out your partner's premise.^5^ If it develops the action it isn't a block. For example:
'Your name Smith?'
'What if it is, you horrible little man!'
This is not a block, even though the answer is antagonistic. Again:
'I've had enough of your incompetence, Perkins! Please leave.'
'No, Sir!'
This isn't a block either. The second speaker has accepted that he's a servant, and he accepts the situation, one of annoyance between himself and his employer.
If a scene were to start with someone saying 'Unhand me, Sir Jasper, let me go', and her partner said 'All right, do what you like, then', this is probably a block. It would get a laugh but it would create bad feeling.
Once you have established the categories of 'offer', 'block' and 'accept' you can give some very interesting instructions. For example, you can ask an actor to make dull offers, or interesting offers, or to 'overaccept', or to 'accept and block' and so on.
You can programme two actors so that A offers and accepts, and B offers and blocks.
A: Hallo, are you a new member?
B: No, I've come to fix the pipes. You got a leak somewhere?
[A: Yes, oh thank goodness. There's three feet of water in the basement.]
B: Basement? You ain't got a basement.
A: No, well, er, the boiler-room. It's just down a few steps. You've not brought your tools.
B: Yes I have. I'm miming them.
A: Oh, silly of me. I'll leave you to it then.
B: Oh no. I need an assistant. Hand me that pipe wrench. (And so on.)
Sometimes both actors can block as well as offer. Bad improvisers do this all the time, of course, but when you tell people to block each other their morale doesn't collapse so easily. This again suggests to me that blocking is aggressive. If the order comes from me, the actors don't take it personally.
A: Are you nervous?
B: Not at all. I can see that you are.
A: Nonsense. I'm just warming my fingers up. You're taking the piano exam, are you?
B: I'm here for my flying lesson.
A: In a bathing costume?
B: I always wear a bathing costume.
Me: You've accepted the bathing costume. (laughter.)
An interesting offer can be 'The house is on fire!', or 'My heart! Quick, my pills!' but it can also be something non-specific. 'All right, where's the parcel?' or 'Shall I sit here, Doctor?' are interesting offers, because we want to know what will happen next. Even 'All right, begin' is OK. Your partner can beat you on the head with a balloon, and you thank him, and the audience are delighted.
Here's an example in which A makes dull offers, while B makes interesting offers.
A: (Dull offer.) Good morning!
B: (Accepts.) Good morning. (Makes interesting offer.) Great heavens! Frank! Did they let you out? Have you escaped?
A: (Accepts.) I hid in the laundry van. (Makes dull offer.) I see you've had the place redecorated.
B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) Yes . . . but . . . look . . . about the money. You'll get your share. It wasn't my idea to cut you out. I've . . . I've got a good business here . . .
[A: (Accepts, makes dull offer.) Yes, it's a step up in the world.]
B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) It was different in the old days . . . I . . . I didn't mean to rat on you Charlie . . .
The actors have automatically become involved in some sort of gangster scene, but all they actually worry about is the category the offers fit into. The scene 'looks after itself'.
Scenes spontaneously generate themselves if both actors offer and accept alternately.
'Haven't we met before?'
'Yes, wasn't it at the yacht club?'
'I'm not a member.'
(Accepts the yacht club. A bad improviser would say 'what yacht club?')
'Ah, I'm sorry.'
'School!'
'That's right. I was in the first form and you were one of the school leavers.'
'Pomeroy!'
'Snodgrass!'
'After all these years!'
'What do you mean, after all these years? It seems only yesterday that you were beating me up every lunchtime.'
'Oh well . . . boys will be boys. Was it you we held out of the window by your feet?'
'Butterfingers.'
'I see you're still wearing the brace.'
Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks prearranged. This is because they accept all offers made---which is something no 'normal' person would do. Also they may accept offers which weren't really intended. I tell my actors never to think up an offer, but instead to assume that one has already been made. Groucho Marx understood this: a contestant at his quiz game 'froze' so he took the man's pulse and said, 'Either this man's dead or my watch has stopped.' If you notice that you are shorter than your partner you can say 'Simpkins! Didn't I forbid you ever to be taller than me?'---which can lead on to a scene in which the servant plays on all fours, or a scene in which the master is starting to shrink, or a scene in which the servant has been replaced by his elder brother, or whatever. If your partner is sweating, fan yourself. If he yawns, say 'Late, isn't it?'
[Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the action. When someone's chair collapsed Stanislavsky berated him for not continuing, for not apologising to the character whose house he was in. This attitude makes for something really amazing in the theatre. The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it's the most marvellous thing about improvisation: you are suddenly in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit.]
By analysing everything into blocks and acceptances, the students get insight into the forces that shape the scenes, and they understand why certain people seem difficult to work with.
These 'offer-block-accept' games have a use quite apart from actor training. People with dull lives often think that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone chooses more or less what kind of events will happen to them by their conscious patterns of blocking and yielding. A student objected to this view by saying, 'But you don't choose your life. Sometimes you are at the mercy of people who push you around.' I said, 'Do you avoid such people?' 'Oh!' she said, 'I see what you mean.'
6
Here are some games I've used with my students.
'Two Places'
You can play very funny scenes in which one character plays, for example, waiting at a bus stop, while another character claims that the stage is his living-room, and so on. Such scenes exploit blocking very successfully. (This game comes from the Royal Court Writers' Group, circa 1959.)
'Presents'
I invented a rather childish game, which is now often used with small children, but works really well with grown-ups, if you coax them through their initial resistance.
I divide people into pairs and call them A and B. A gives a present to B who receives it. B then gives a present back, and so on. At first each person thinks of giving an interesting present, but then I stop them and suggest that they can just hold their hands out, and see what the other person chooses to take. If you hold out both hands about three feet apart, then obviously it will be a larger present, but you don't have to [determine what your gift is. The trick is to make the thing you are ]given as interesting as possible. You want to 'overaccept' the offer. Everything you are given delights you. Maybe you wind it up and let it walk about the floor, or you sit it on your arm and let it fly off after a small bird, or maybe you put it on and turn into a gorilla.
An important change of thinking is involved here. When the actor concentrates on making the thing he gives interesting, each actor seems in competition, and feels it. When they concentrate on making the gift they receive interesting, then they generate warmth between them. We have strong resistances to being overwhelmed by gifts, even when they're just being mimed. You have to get the class enthusiastic enough to go over the 'hump'. Then suddenly great joy and energy are released. Playing in gibberish helps.
'Blind Offers'
An inexperienced improviser gets annoyed because his partners misunderstand him. He holds out his hand to see if it's raining, and his partner shakes it and says 'Pleased to meet you.' 'What an idiot', thinks the first actor, and begins to sulk. When you make a blind offer, you have no intention to communicate at all. Your partner accepts the offer, and you say 'Thank you.' Then he makes an intentionless gesture, and you accept that, and he says 'Thank you' and so on.
A strikes a pose.
B photographs him.
A says 'Thank you.'
B stands on one leg, and bends the other.
A straddles the bent leg and 'nails a horseshoe on it'.
B thanks him and lies on the ground.
A mimes shovelling earth over him.
B thanks him . . . And so on.
Don't underestimate the value of this game. It's a way of interacting that the audience love to see. They will watch fascinated, and every time someone says 'Thank you', they laugh!
It's best to offer a gesture which moves away from the body. When you've made a gesture, you then freeze in the position until your partner reacts.
Once the basic technique has been mastered, the next step is to get the actors to play the game while discussing some quite different subject.
'A touch of autumn in the air today, James,' says A, stretching his [hand out. 'Yes, it is a little brisk,' says B, peeling a glove off A's hand. B then lies on the floor. 'Is the Mistress at home?' says A, wiping his feet on B . . . and so on. The effect is startling, because each actor seems to have a telepathic understanding of the other's intentions.]
'It's Tuesday'
This game is based on 'overaccepting'. We called it 'It's Tuesday' because that's how we started the game. If A says something matter of fact to B, like 'It's Tuesday', then maybe B tears his hair, and says 'My God! The Bishop's coming. What'll he do when he sees the state everything's in?' or instead of being upset he can be overcome with love because it's his wedding day. All that matters is that an inconsequential remark should produce the maximum possible effect on the person it's said to.
A: It's Tuesday.
B: No . . . it can't be . . . It's the day predicted for my death by the old gypsy!
(It doesn't matter how crummy the idea is, what matters is the intensity of the reaction.) Now B turns white, clutches his throat, staggers into the audience, reels back, bangs his head on the wall, somersaults backwards, and 'dies' making horrible noises, and saying at his last gasp:
B: Feed the goldfish.
A now plays 'It's Tuesday' on the goldfish remark. Maybe he expresses extreme jealousy:
A: That's all he ever thought about, that goldfish. What am I to do now? Haven't I served him faithfully all these years? (Weeps on knee of audience member.) He's always preferred that goldfish to me. Do forgive me, Madam. Does . . . does anyone have a Kleenex? Fifty years' supply of ants' eggs, and what did he leave to me---not a penny. (Throws spectacular temper tantrum.) I shall write to Mother.
This last remark introduces new material, so that B now plays 'It's Tuesday' on that.
B: (Recovering) Your mother! You mean Milly is still alive?
He then plays passionate yearning, until he can't take the emotion any further and throws in another 'ordinary' remark. Any remark will do. 'Forgive me Jenkins, I got rather carried away.' Maybe Jenkins can [then do a five-minute 'hate' tirade: 'Forgive you? After the way you hounded her? Turning her out into the snow that Christmas Eve . . .' and so on.]
Three or four sentences can easily last ten minutes, when expanded a little, and the audience are astounded and delighted. They don't expect improvisers, or actors for that matter, to take things to such extremes.
I would classify 'It's Tuesday' as a 'make boring offers, and overaccept' game.
'Yes, But . . .'
This is a well known 'accept-and-block' game (described in Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theatre). (Its twin game 'Yes, and . . .' is an 'accept-and-offer' game.) I'll describe it because there are two ways of playing which produce opposite results, and which tell one a lot about the nature of spontaneity.
A asks questions that B can say 'Yes' to. B then says 'But . . .' and then whatever occurs to him. To play the game badly, B should think of his reply before he begins to speak.
'Excuse me, is that your dog?'
'Yes, but I'm thinking of selling him.'
'Will you sell him to me?'
'Yes, but he's expensive.'
'Is he healthy?'
'Yes, but you can take him to a vet to check him out if you like.' (And so on.)
Probably the audience do not laugh, and probably the actors don't enjoy the experience much. This is because the more logical, rational part of the mind is in control.
If you reply 'Yes, but . . .' with enthusiasm, as soon as the question is put to you, and then say whatever comes into your head, the scenes are quite different. I'll play it with myself now, typing as quickly as possible.
'Don't I know you?'
'Yes, but I'm going.'
'You took my money!'
'Yes, but I've spent it.'
'You're a swine.'
'Yes, but everyone knows that.'
This time an audience would probably laugh. It's worth teaching both ways of playing the game. It can demonstrate to uptight people [exactly how cautious they usually are. Also it's funny to launch out strongly on 'Yes, but . . .', and then ]have to complete the sentence off the top of your head.
Verse
If the students are in a really happy mood, I might ask them to improvise in verse. At first they're appalled. I'll already have made them play scenes in gibberish, and as impromptu operas, but they'll have been turned off verse by school, while at the same time retaining an exaggerated respect for it.
To me the most enjoyable thing about verse is its spontaneity. You can 'fake up' verse by deciding what to write, and then thinking up the rhymes, but if you're asked to improvise it you just have to abandon conscious control, and let the words come of their own accord.
I start to talk in verse, and explain that it doesn't matter whether the verse is good or bad, and that anyway we're going to start with the worst possible verse:
'Tom and Else take your places,
A happy smile on your faces,
Don't start wondering what to say
Or we will never start today!
We'll have Tom come in and propose
'Cause Else's pregnant, I suppose . . .'
The worse the verse I speak, the more encouraged the actors are. I get them to stop thinking ahead, and just say a line, and trust to luck that there'll be something to rhyme with it. If they're in trouble and can't think what to say, they're not to rack their brain, and try and force their inspiration. I get them to say 'prompt' and then either I shout something out, or one of the audience does.
Once a scene starts, the verse has to control the content and the action. Someone says:
'At last I've got you in my clutches:
I'll keep you here and take you crutches.'
He won't make any attempt to mime taking crutches away from his partner though, until I yell 'Take the crutches!' Then his partner falls over and says:
'Oh, please Sir Jasper, let me go!
You must not treat a cripple so . . .'
'Oh no! I'll not be robbed of my revenge!
I'll sacrifice you here in old Stonehenge.'
He makes no attempt to sacrifice her, I have to tell him:
[' Do it---it's what you said!]
Everyone wants to see her dead.'
'Lie down on yonder block and pray . . . prompt?'
'I'll kill her at the break of day . . .' suggests someone in the audience.
No one in their right senses would think up a scene about sacrificing a cripple at Stonehenge, but the verse precipitates it. My job is to get the actors to go where the verse takes them. If you don't care what you say, and you go with the verse, the exercise is exhilarating. But if an actor suddenly produces a really witty couplet, you'll see him suddenly 'dry' as his standard rises, and he tries to produce 'better' verse.
7
Reading about spontaneity won't make you more spontaneous, but it may at least stop you heading off in the opposite direction; and if you play the exercises with your friends in a good spirit, then soon all your thinking will be transformed. Rousseau began an essay on education by saying that if we did the opposite of what our own teachers did we'd be on the right track, and this still holds good.
The stages I try to take students through involve the realisation (1) that we struggle against our imaginations, especially when we try to be imaginative; (2) that we are not responsible for the content of our imaginations; and (3) that we are not, as we are taught to think, our 'personalities', but that the imagination is our true self.
NOTES{.small}
[1 .] I don't know who originated the rubber glove gag, but in his book King of Comedy (Peter Davies, 1955) Mark Sennet attributes it to Felix Adler.
[2 .] Teachers are obliged to impose a censorship on their pupils, and in consequence schools provide an anti-therapeutic environment. In Interacting with Patients (Macmillian, New York, 1963), a work intended for nurses, Joyce Samhammer Hays and Kenneth Larson describe therapeutic and non-therapeutic ways of interacting. Here are their first ten 'therapeutic techniques'.
Therapeutic techniques Examples Using silence: Accepting: Yes. Uh Hmm. I follow what you said. Nodding. Giving recognition: Good morning, Mr S. You've tooled a leather wallet. I notice that you've combed your hair. Offering self: I'll sit with you a while. I'll stay here with you. I'm interested in your comfort. Giving broad openings: Is there something you'd like to talk about? What are you thinking about? Where would you like to begin? Offering general leads: Go on. And then? Tell me about it. Placing the event in time or in What seemed to lead up to . . .? sequence: Was this before or after . . .? When did this happen? Making observations: You appear tense. Are you uncomfortable when you . . . I notice you are biting your lips. It makes me uncomfortable when you . . . Encouraging description of Tell me when you feel anxious. perceptions: What is happening? What does the voice seem to be saying? Encouraging comparison: Was this something like . . .? Have you had similar experiences?
Obviously the book has psychiatric nurses in mind, but it's interesting to compare it to teacher-pupil interactions. Here are the first ten 'non-therapeutic techniques'.
Non-therapeutic techniques Examples Reassuring: I wouldn't worry about . . . Everything will be all right. You're coming along fine. Giving approval: That's good. I'm glad that you . . . Rejecting: Let's not discuss . . . I don't want to hear about . . . Disapproving: That's bad. I'd rather you wouldn't . . . Agreeing: That's right. I agree. Disagreeing: That's wrong. I definitely disagree with . . . I don't believe that. Advising: I thing you should . . . Why don't you . . .? Probing: Now tell me about . . . Tell me your life history. Challenging: But how can you be President of the United States? If you're dead, why is your heart beating? Testing: What day is this? Do you know what kind of a hospital this is? Do you still have the idea that . . .?
I'm doing the book an injustice by quoting out of context, but it's widely available, and it analyses many interactions. Schools make it difficult for teachers to interact therapeutically. Thinking back to my own schooling, I remember how isolated the teachers were, how there were only certain areas in which you could communicate with them at all. If teachers were allowed to interact in a therapeutic manner, then the adjective 'school-teachery' would not be disparaging.
[3 .] When I meet a new group of students they will usually be 'naysayers'. This term and its opposite, 'yeasayers', come from a paper by Arthur Couch and Kenneth Kenison, who were investigating the tendency of people answering questionnaires to be generally affirmative, or generally negative in attitude. They wrote in Freudian terms:
'We have arrived at a fairly consistent picture of the variables that differentiate yeasayers from naysayers. Yeasayers seem to be "id-dominated" personalities, with little concern about or positive evaluation of an integrated control of their impulses. They say they express themselves freely and quickly. Their "psychological inertia" is very low, that is, very few secondary processes intervene as a screen between underlying wish and overt behavioural response. The yeasayers desire and actively search for emotional excitement in their environment. Novelty, movement, change, adventure--- these provide the external stimuli for their emotionalism. They see the world as a stage where the main theme is 'acting out' libidinal desires. In the same way, they seek and respond quickly to internal stimuli: their inner impulses are allowed ready expression . . . the yeasayer's general attitude is one of stimulus acceptance, by which we mean a pervasive readiness to respond affirmatively or yield willingly to both outer and inner forces demanding expression.
'The "disagreeing" naysayers have the opposite orientation. For them, impulses are seen as forces requiring control, and perhaps in some sense as threats to general personality stability. The naysayer wants to maintain inner equilibrium; his secondary processes are extremely impulsive and value maintaining forces. We might describe this as a state of high psychological inertia---impulses undergo a series of delays, censorships, and transformations before they are permitted expression. Both internal and external stimuli that demand response are carefully scrutinised and evaluated: these forces appear as unwelcome intruders into a subjective world of "classical" balance. Thus, as opposed to the yeasayers, the naysayers' general attitude is one of stimulus rejection---a pervasive unwillingness to respond to impulsive or environmental forces.' ('Yeasayers and Naysayers', Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 160, No. 2, 1960.)
[4 .] My impro group used to set up a 'say "Yes"' game using a tape recorder. We would record a one-sided dialogue, and then play the tape during a show, and get an actor who did not know what was on the tape to improvise with it. It means you have to accept the tape or fail totally, since the tape can't adapt to you. One tape ran like this:
'Hallo. (Pause.) No, no, me, I'm down here. On the footpath. (Pause.) I'm an ant. (Pause.) Pick me up, will you? (Pause.) Go careful. (Pause.) We want to [surrender. (]Pause.) We're fed up with being stepped on, bloody great things. Dictate your terms. (Pause.) Excuse me interrupting. Can you see what I'm holding? (Pause.) Hold me up to your eye. (Pause.) Closer. (Pause.) Now. Pick up Willy. Put your hand down and he'll climb on. Feel him. (Pause.) Put him on your shoulder. (Pause.) You may feel him climbing up into your ear. What's that Willy? He says there's a lot of wax here. (Pause.) Right now you may hear a sort of crinkling noise. (Pause.) That's Willy blowing up a paper bag. Any trouble from you and he'll burst it against your eardrum. (Pause.) (Huge explosion.) Do it again, Willy, just to show him. (Explosion. Pause.) Well? What have you got to say, ant-murderer? (Pause.) We'll talk later. Get moving. Walk. Left, right, left, right . . .'
[5 .] A Japanese text compares, two actors who block each other to 'two mantids eating each other. They fight with each other; if one puts out a hand it is eaten off; if one puts out a leg, it is eaten off, so that it is natural that in the end they destroy each other.' (The Actor's Analects, translated by Charles J. Dunn and Bunzo Torigoe, Columbia University Press, 1969.)
A problem for the improviser is that the audience are likely to reward blocking at the moment it first appears.
'Your name Smith?'
'No!'
(Laughter.)
They laugh because they enjoy seeing the actors frustrated, just as they'll laugh if the actors start to joke. Jokey TV or radio programmes usually stop for a song, or some animation, every few minutes. The improviser, who is committed to performing for longer periods, gags or blocks at his peril, although the immediacy, of the audience's laughter is likely to condition him to do just this. Once the performers have been lured into gagging or blocking, the audience is already on the way towards irritation and boredom. More than laughter they want action.