Getting Better All the Time
I’ve been coaching high school Harold teams for six years. They’re awesome, and I learn so much from working with them. Wanna hear something cute they like to do when they first start doing improv? Like, invariably? Okay, I’ll tell you:
High school kid #1: Hey, I baked you this cake for your birthday.
High school kid #2: But don’t you know I’m allergic to chocolate (or vanilla or strawberry or whatever the hell the cake is made out of)?!
And that’s when I usually stop the scene and ask them why a person who is close enough to someone to a) know their birthday and b) bake them a freaking cake would not know that this person is allergic to its main ingredient?!
Then, after they stand there sheepishly for a moment I lovingly explain that what they were attempting to do was to create what we’ve learned is important for a scene between two people: conflict. This is a good instinct, but there’s a difference between conflict and contradiction (in fact, I explain, what they’ve just done is really in the category of denial, because they’ve denied the basic premise of a relationship where someone knows you well enough to bake you a cake on your birthday). They understand all this, and they promise never to do a “But I’m allergic to x!” scene again.
And then, once they’ve got that under their belt, they’ll move on to more refined sort of variations, such as this one:
High school kid #1: Wow…I’ve never had Indian food before. Thanks for taking me here.
High school kids #2: Yeah, well, I really like you and I wanted to do something special for our anniversary, so I thought we’d come to the place where we had our first date.
On paper, this mistake sounds pretty obvious, but when you’re learning to improvise, and you’re at the point where you’re remembering not to say “no,” you can still get tripped up by saying “yes”. Again, the motive is a good one: to establish a relationship and a context. So I stop the scene and point out the inconsistency, and they laugh at themselves and realize what they’ve done and promise never to do a “I’ve never been here before”/”Remember when we came here together that one time” scene again.
Strangely, and without fail, both these kinds of mistakes recur each year as new student join the team. The kids seem to gravitate to them like a moth to flame. And recently it’s made me realize something that I think we sometimes like to forget: just as all adults are just grown up kids, all adult improvisers (whether by age or experience) are just grown up kid improvisers. And while most of us probably know enough at this point to avoid those overt sorts of fumbles, we’re all still just students trying to master the basics and avoid mistakes at deeper and deeper levels.
Because it seems to me that as you become a more skilled, more adept performer, your mistakes simply become more refined and subtle. So maybe instead of flat out denying the relationship, you notice that your body language is betraying a lack of 100% buy-in to the scene. You’ve got “But I’m allergic to x!” crossed arms, or a “Wait so have we been here together before or not?” look on your face. No one is going to call that out, but you feel it and you know it’s keeping you from connecting. And you have to ask yourself why you let yourself do that and where it was coming from and correct it. And the corrections get smaller and smaller—they become tiny tweaks instead of giant leaps, but it’s always the same stuff and always in the same direction.
The bottom line is this: I highly recommend you watch high school long-form improvisers if you ever get the chance. It’s adorable, first of all, and often as funny or funnier than many grown-up Harold teams I’ve seen. But it’s also a reminder of where you came from, how far you’ve come, and how, in the end, we’re all on the same journey.
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agapelavida reblogged this from thehousethatdelbuilt and added:
My current improv coach posted this.
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