Johnstone: Impro

I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age just as the lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

I've since found tricks that can make the world blaze up again in about fifteen seconds, and the effects last for hours.

For example, if I have a group of students who are feeling fairly safe and comfortable with each other, I get them to pace about the room shouting out the wrong name for everything that their eyes light on. Maybe there's time to shout out ten wrong names before I stop them. Then I ask whether other people look larger or smaller-almost everyone sees people as different sizes, mostly as smaller. 'Do the outlines look sharper or more blurred?' I ask, and everyone agrees that the outlines are many times sharper. 'What about the colors?' Everyone agrees there's far more color, and that the colors are more intense. Often the size and shape of the room will seem to have changed, too. The students are amazed that such a strong transformation can be effected by such primitive means-and

They believed school was something middle class being forcibly imposed on to the working-class culture. Everyone seemed to accept that if you could educate one of these children you'd remove him away from his parents. Educated people were snobs, and many parents didn't want their children alienated from them.

Some of the ten-year-olds couldn't write their names after five years of schooling. I'm sure Professor Skinner could teach even pigeons to type out their names in a couple of weeks, so I couldn't believe that these children were really dull: it was more likely that they were putting up a resistance. One astounding thing was when the kids were cleaning out the fish tank, they looked fine. When writing a sentence, they looked numb and defeated.

One day I took my typewriter and my art books into the class, and said I'd type out anything they wanted to write about the pictures. As an afterthought, I said I'd also type out their dreams— and suddenly they were actually wanting to write. I typed out everything exactly as they wrote it, including the spelling mistakes, until they caught me. Typing out spelling mistakes was a weird idea in the early fifties (and probably now—but it worked. The pressure to get things right was coming from the children, not the teacher. I was amazed at the intensity of feeling and outrage the children expressed, and their determination to be correct because no one would have dreamt that they cared. Even the illiterates were getting their friends to spell out every word for them. I scrapped the time-table, and for a month they wrote for hours every day. I had to force them out of the classroom to take breaks. When I hear that only have an attention span of ten minutes, or whatever, I'm amazed. Ten minutes is the attention span of bored children, which is what they usually are in school-hence the misbehaviour.

He'd found my class doing arithmetic with masks over their faces-they'd made them in art class and I didn't see why they shouldn't wear them. There was a cardboard tunnel he was supposed to crawl through (because the classroom was doubling as an igloo), and an imaginary hole in the floor that he refused to walk around. I'd stuck all the art paper together and pinned it along the back wall, and when a child got bored he'd leave what he was doing and stick some more leaves on the burning forest.

The first thing I do when I meet a group of new students is to sit on the floor. I play low status, and I'll explain that if the students fail they're to blame me. Then they laugh, and relax; and I explain that really it's obvious that they should blame me, since I'm supposed to be the expert; and if I give them the wrong material, they'll fail; and if I give them the right material, then they'll succeed.

I view people as phobic instead of untalented, and this changes my relationship with them.

I constantly return to the first stages of the work to try to pull in students who remain in a terrified state.

Volpe relaxed his phobic patients and then presented them with a very dilute form of the thing that scared them. Someone terrified of birds might be asked to imagine a bird, but one in Australia. At the same time that the image was presented, the patient was relaxed, and the relaxation was maintained (if it wasn't maintained, if the patient started to tremble, or sweat or whatever, then something even less alarming would be presented). Relaxation is incompatible with anxiety; and by maintaining the relaxed state, and presenting images that gradually neared the centre of the phobia, the state of alarm was soon dissipated-in most cases.

Students use many techniques to avoid the fear of failure. Students learn to get round problems, not solve them - such as the student who learned to screw their face up and bite on their pencil to show they’re trying and hopefully the teacher writes out the answer for them. I explain to students the devices they’re using to avoid tackling the problems and the release of tension is often amazing.

• Look inadequate and play for sympathy. However easy the problems students will start with this - starting a scene in a feeble way for example is supposed to make onlookers sympathize if they fail or bring greater results if they win. But nobody has sympathy for adults who take this attitude, even if it worked as a child. Once they realize this, students who look ill suddenly look healthy

• Another common ploy is to anticipate the problem and try to prepare solutions in advance - like the student who was assigned a paragraph to read aloud and starts preparing early. I ask students to have an empty head and just watch, not try to control the future or win.

If I'm playing with my three-year-old son and I smack him, he looks at me for signals that will turn the sensation into either warmth or pain. A very gentle smack that he perceives as 'serious' will have him howling in agony. A hard 'play' slap may make him laugh. When I want to work and he wants me to continue playing he will give very strong 'I am playing' signals in an attempt to pull me back into his game. All people relate to each other in this way but most teachers are afraid to give 'I am playing' signals to their students. If they would, their work would become a constant pleasure.

An exercise: fix your eyes on some object, and attend to something at the periphery of your vision. You can see what you're attending to, but actually your mind is assembling the object from relatively little information. Now look directly, and observe the difference. This is one way of tricking the mind out of its habitual dulling of the world.

Status exercise: 'Try to get your status just a little above or below your partner's,' I said, and I insisted that the gap should be minimal. The actors seemed to know exactly what I meant and the work was transformed. The scenes became 'authentic', and actors seemed marvellously observant. Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really 'motiveless'. It was hysterically funny, but at the same time very alarming. All our secret manoeuvrings were exposed. If someone asked a question we didn't bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked. No one could make an 'innocuous remark without everyone instantly grasping what lay behind it. Normally we are 'forbidden' to see status transactions except when there's a conflict. In reality status transactions continue all the time. In the park we'll notice the ducks squabbling, but not how carefully they keep their distances when they are not.

The rigid teacher who filled us with terror was a compulsive high-status player. The third was a status expert, raising and lowering his status with great skill. He would joke with us, then impose a mysterious stillness. In the street he looked upright, but relaxed, and he smiled easily. Jokes on a teacher were aimed to drop his status. He could cope easily with any situation by changing his status first.

Status is a confusing term unless it's understood as something one does. You may be low in social status, but play high, and vice versa.

I should really talk about dominance and submission, but l'd create a resistance. Students who will agree readily to raising or lowering their status may object if asked to 'dominate' or 'submit'. The rigid teacher committed to never submit.

We found that people will play one status while convinced that they are playing the opposite and many of us had to revise our whole idea of ourselves. In my case I thought I was being friendly but I was actually being hostile when someone said 'I like your play', I said 'Oh, it's not up to much', perceiving myself as 'charmingly modest' but In reality I would have been implying that my admirer had bad taste.

A further early discovery was that there was no way to be neutral. The 'Good morning' that might be experienced as lowering by the Manager, might be experienced as raising by the bank clerk. The messages are modified by the receivers.

If I'm trying to lower my end of the see-saw, and my mind blocks, I can always switch to raising the other end. That is, I can achieve a similar effect by saying 'I smell beautiful' as 'You stink'. I therefore teach actors to switch between raising themselves and lowering their partners in alternate sentences; and vice versa. Good playwrights also add variety in this way.

Hm

We want people to be very low-status, but we don't want to feel sympathy for them— slaves are always supposed to sing at their work.

Another way is to examine jokes, and analyze their status transactions. For example:

CUSTOMER: 'Ere, there's a cockroach in the loo!

BARMAID: Well you'll have to wait till he's finished, won't you?

Or:

A: Who's that fat noisy old bag?

B:That's my wife.

B: Oh, I'm sorry ...

A: You're sorry! How do you think I feel?

The man who slips on the banana is funny if he loses status (high status falling; not low status falling/staying low). If nixon slipped on a banana peel on the white house steps it would be funny. If your blind grandpa did it wouldn’t.

Tragedy’s subject is the ousting of a high-status animal from the pack. Even when Oedipus was being led into the wilderness he wouldn't whine, and he'd keep his tail up and play high status at all times. If he crumbled into low-status posture and voice the audience wouldn't get the necessary catharsis. The effect wouldn't be tragic, but pathetic. Even criminals about to be executed were supposed to make a 'good end', i.e. to play high status.

When a very high-status person is wiped out, everyone feels pleasure as they experience the feeling of moving up a step.

I've seen a misguided Faustus writhing on the floor at the end of the play, which is bad for the verse, and pretty ineffective. Terrible things can happen to the high-status animal, he can poke his eyes out with his wife's brooch, but he must never look as if he could accept a position lower in the pecking order. He has to be ejected from it.

The victim is raised in status before being sacrificed. The best goat is chosen, and it's groomed, and magnificently decorated.

A human sacrifice might be pampered for months, and then dressed in fine clothes, and rehearsed in his role at the centre of the great ceremony. Elements of this can be seen in the Christ story (the robe, the crown of thorns, and even the eating of the 'body'). A sacrifice has to be endowed with high status or the magic doesn't work.

Social animals have inbuilt rules which prevent them killing each other for food, mates, and so on. Such animals confront each other, and sometimes fight, until a hierarchy is established, after which there is no fighting unless an attempt is being made to change the 'pecking order'. This system is found in animals as diverse as human beings, chicken, and woodlice.

Authoritative - long “er” at the beginning of speaking to hold you space.

Keep your head still when you speak. You can talk and waggle your head if you play the gravedigger, but not Hamlet.

Keep hands away from face.

Slow, smooth movements.

A person who plays high status is saying “don’t come near me, I bite”, a person who plays low status is saying “don’t bite me, I’m not worth the trouble”

In order to enter a room all you need to know is what status you are playing.

The actor who understands this is free to improvise in front of an audience with no given circumstances at all!

Once you can accept being insulted (the insult is the verbal equivalent of the custard pie), then you experience a great elation.

The most rigid, self-conscious, and defensive people suddenly unbend.

The actor or improviser must accept his disabilities, and allow himself to be insulted, or he'll never really feel safe.

Your body takes up more space than the surface of your body.

Yat talked about people who were cut off from sensing areas of themselves.

'He has no arms,' he would say, or 'She has no legs', and you could see what he meant. When I investigated myself I found many areas that I wasn't experiencing, and my feelings are still defective.

When I panic, this parabola crushes in, the space is like a plastic skin pressing on to you and making your body rigid and bound. The opposite of this is seen when a great actor makes a gesture, and it's as if his arm has swept right over the heads of the people sitting at the back of the audience.

A master-servant scene is one where both parties act as if all space belongs to the master. A servant’s primary function is to elevate the status of the master. Footmen can't lean against the wall, because it's the master's wall. Servants must make no unnecessary noise or movement, because it's the master's air they're intruding on. The preferred position for a servant is usually at the edge of the master's parabola of space'. This is so that at any moment the master can confront him and dominate him. The exact distance the servant stands from the master depends on his duties, his position in the hierarchy, and the size of the room.

When the servant's duties take him into close proximity with the master he must show that he invades the master's space

'unwillingly'. If you have to confront the master in order to adjust his tie you stand back as far as possible, and you may incline your head. If you're helping with his trousers you probably do it from the side. Crossing in front of the master the servant may 'shrink' a little, and he'll try to keep a distance. The servant has to be quiet. Servants' costumes are usually rather tight so that their bodies take up a minimum of space. The servant should be near a door so that he can be instantly dismissed without having to walk round the master. You can see servants edging surreptitiously into this position.

Interesting, number one must

1. In moments of active rivalry threaten your subordinates aggressively

2. suppress squabbles that break out between your subordinates.

3. You must protect the weaker members of the group from undue persecution.

4. You must make decisions concerning the social activities of your group.

5. You must reassure your extreme subordinates from time to time.

a good play is one which ingeniously displays and reverses the status between the characters. Many writers of great talent have failed to write successful plays (Blake, Keats, Tennyson, among others) because of a failure to understand that drama is not a literary art. Shakespeare is a great writer even in translation; a great production is great even if you don't speak the language because a great play is a virtuoso display of status transactions.

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 than 'Yes' sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the other.

Interesting

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.

Everything is either a block or an accept. Good improvisers accept all offers made—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?' If your partner is sweating, fan yourself. If he yawns, say 'Late, isn't it?

Fun game to play with children - A gives a present to B who receives it. B then gives a present back, and so on. They just hold their hands out, and see what the other person chooses to take and tries making the thing you are given as interesting as possible. You want to over accept 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. When they concentrate on making the gift they receive interesting, then they generate warmth between them. Playing in gibberish helps.

Offering general leads

• Go on

• And then?

• Tell me about it.

• What are you thinking about?

• What seemed to lead up to…?

Free association makes for a weak story since you are waiting for the next event

Ex. I make up a story about meeting a bear in the forest. It chases me until I come to a lake. I leap into a boat and row across to an island. On the island is a hut. In the hut is a beautiful girl spinning golden thread. I make passionate love to the girl ...

I am now 'storytelling' but I haven't told a story. Everyone knows it isn't finished. I could continue forever in the same way: there's no place where it can stop, or rather, that it can stop anywhere.

Reincorporation is the secret to a strong story since everything ties together

Ex. Let's begin the story again: I escape from a bear by rowing across to an island. Inside a hut on the island is a beautiful girl bathing in a wooden tub. I'm making passionate love to her when I happen to glance out of the window. If I now see the bear rowing across in a second boat, then there was some point in mentioning him in the first place. If the girl screams 'My lover!' and hides me under the bed, then this is better storytelling, since I've not only reintroduced the bear, but I've also linked him to the girl. The bear enters the hut, unzips his skin, and emerges as the grey old man who makes love to the girl. I creep out of the hut taking the skin with me so that he can't change back into a bear. I run down to the shore and row back to the mainland, towing the second boat behind me (reintroducing the boats). Then I see the old man paddling after me in the tub. He seems incredibly strong and there's no escape from him. I wait for him among the trees, and pull the bearskin around myself. I become a bear and tear him to pieces-thus I've reincorporated both the man and the skin.

Play a game with a kid - you tell them you made up a story but you won’t tell them what it is. They have to guess step by step and you tell them “yes” “no” or “maybe”

people who claim to be unimaginative would think up the most astounding stories, so long as they remained convinced that they weren't responsible for them.

This is why the netflix comedy specials do this… it makes people feel smart or something…

The improviser has to be like a man walking backwards. He sees where he has been, but he pays no attention to the future. His story can take him anywhere, but he must still 'balance' it, and give it shape, by remembering incidents that have been shelved and reincorporating them. Very often an audience will applaud when earlier material is brought back into the story. They couldn't tell you why they applaud, but the reincorporation does give them pleasure.

One version of the game-which I still play occasionally-involved telling a story around a circle as quickly as possible. Sometimes we did it to a beat. Anyone who 'blocked' we threw out until only two people were left. You can have each person who speaks point to the person who is to say the next word, there's no way to anticipate when your turn will come. 'There'.. 'was' 'a' 'man' ‘people'...'who'... 'loved' ... 'making' …'happy'.

She was claiming to be ‘uncreative’ but was just terrified she’d give something away

An improviser can study status transactions, and advancing, and reincorporating', and can learn to free-associate, and to generate narrative spontaneously, and yet still find it difficult to compose stories. This is really for aesthetic reasons, or conceptual reasons.

He shouldn't really think of making up stories, but of interrupting routines.

Sailors travel across the ocean then X.

Walking through the forest then a bear…

A 'playwright' begins a story by saying: 'Dennis, sit on the chair, and look ill. Betty, say "Are you feeling well?". Dennis, say "No, could you get me a glass of water." Betty, get Dennis a glass of water.

Drink it, Dennis. Betty, say "How do you feel?". Dennis, say "Much better now"..'

I stop the playwright and explain that he's cancelled everything out. He introduces the idea of sickness, and then he removes it.

We have instinctive responses to faces. We try and be rational and assert that 'people can't help their appearance' , yet the truth is that we learn to hold characteristic expressions as a way of maintaining our personalities. Adults lose this vision in which the face is the person, but after their first Mask class students are amazed by passersby in the street suddenly they see 'evil' people, and 'innocent' people, and people holding their faces in Masks of pain, or grief, or pride, or whatever. Our faces get 'fixed' with age as the muscles shorten, but even in very young people you can see that a decision has been taken to appear tough, or stupid, or defiant. (Why should anyone wish to look stupid? Because then your teachers expect less of you.)

Interesting

Meditation teachers in the East have asked their students to practise placing the mind in different parts of the body, or in the Universe, as a means of inducing trance.

With your center in the middle of your chest (pretend it's a few inches deep), you will feel that you are still yourself and in full command, only more energetically and harmoniously so, with your body approaching an "ideal type".

But as soon as you try to shift the centre to some other place, you will feel that your whole psychological and physical attitude will change, just as it changes when you step into an imaginary body. Put a soft, warm, not too small centre in the region of your abdomen and you may experience a psychology that is self-satisfied, earthy, a bit heavy and even humorous.

Place a tiny, hard centre on the tip of your nose and you will become curious, inquisitive, prying and even meddlesome. Move the centre to one of your eyes and notice how quickly it seems that you have become sly, cunning and perhaps hypocritical. Imagine a big, heavy, dull and sloppy centre placed outside the seat of your pants and you have a cowardly, not too honest, droll character. A centre located a few feet outside your eyes or forehead may invoke the sensation of a sharp, penetrating and even a sagacious mind. A warm, hot and even fiery centre situated without your heart may awaken in you heroic, loving and courageous feelings. You can also imagine a movable centre and let it sway slowly before your forehead and circle your head from time to time and you will sense the psychology of a bewildered person

Normally we keep altering our faces to reassure other people. We continually reassure people by making unnecessary movements, we twitch, we ‘get comfortable’, we move the head about, and so on. I start the actors against the wall which they lean on for support. This means that they don’t wobble, or shake. It’s amazing how few people can stand really still; yet nothing is more powerful than absolute stillness on a stage.

When actors insist on 'thinking' about the Mask, I tell them to ‘attend' to it instead. I say, 'Imagine you're in a great forest and you hear a sound you can't identify quite close to you. Is it a bear? Is it dangerous? The mind goes empty as you stay motionless waiting for the sound to be repeated. This mindless listening is like attending to a Mask.