Thinking over thinking

I thoroughly enjoyed this video, posted last week by Ze Frank.

In life -- especially in church -- I view people telling me, "Don't think so hard! You're thinking too much!" as a giant red flag. I don't appreciate being asked to turn off my brain.

Phillip Carey summarizes the problem well in the chapter of Good News for Anxious Christians entitled, "Why You Don't Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart."

"The new evangelical theology, like all forms of consumerist religion, ... requires you to be afraid of engaging in critical thought, so that you're easily manipulated and easily pressured into wanting to feel what everyone else feels. ... So it's hardly surprising that a misleading piece of rhetoric ('don't split your head from your heart'), which has the effect of making you feel you're thinking too much, is pretty popular in evangelical circles these days."

I often tell improvisers I'm coaching, "Get out of your head!" At first glance, that seems to be the same thing as "You're thinking too much!"* It's not. But I can see them get stressed out when they misunderstand me, because then they start thinking about their thoughts, which is an unhelpful internal spiral of nothing happening.

What I actually mean is, "Think in a different way!" Or, more actively, "Do something! Think about it as you go instead of agonizing about your actions beforehand."

Most players I've coached have been college students at a competitive school. They spend all day at taking notes on lectures, writing papers, doing research, and conducting experiments. They use their analytical brains all day.

When I tell them to get out of their heads, I'm not asking them to turn off their brains. I'm asking them to use a different part of their brain than they use in philosophy class. I'm asking them to use the intuitive part, the playful part. The logical part doesn't disappear, it just takes second chair for a few hours. That the players are smart, logical people makes the play that much richer.

So I like how Ze Frank says this:

It is possible to overthink, but first you have to think and try and talk and do. And after that, if you're still at an impasse, maybe then you let go. 

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I also liked this:

Laughter is the release of suddenly unnecessary emotional inertia.

(See this post on why death scenes are funny in an improv show.)



*If I ever tell you you're thinking too much, you have permission to kick me in the shin.

Plateau: a criminal oversimplification

This summer, I've been working with my friend Brendon on a two-person show* called Flash Fiction. We had our first show a couple of weeks ago after about 8 weeks of practice.

This is a mathematically precise chart** of our progress over the summer:

You know what communicates mathematical precision? Paintbrush.

A is our first two or three practices. We were figuring out what we wanted the show to be and getting our scene legs. While we have 18ish years of improv experience between us, neither of us had ever done a two-person show. The initial learning curve was huge. It took us a couple of practices to loosen up and articulate our goals.

B is the middle several practices. Let's call it practice 4, 5, and 6. I realize that, on the chart, it is MUCH LONGER than A, even though it represents a similar period of time. This chart is not following calendar time. It's following how the time felt. We plateaued for a few weeks, and that plateau felt like it lasted forever and ever amen. We weren't bombing; we just weren't getting better very quickly anymore. Everything we did was ok. Just ok.

C is our last three weeks of practice before the show. Every piece felt amazingly better than the piece that came before it. We played hard and smart. It was the kind of playing that reminds me why I do improv in the first place. I don't know exactly how we pushed out of that plateau; good coaches and a Jet Eveleth workshop certainly helped.

D is our show. It was not our best work, but it was not our worst, either. It was on par with our plateau. This is consistent with several other troupes I've played with and coached. Even if you have experience, it takes a few performances for a troupe to really find its legs. A show introduces variables -- a different space, an audience, logistics -- that can throw you. I thought they wouldn't throw me this time, but they did. The space was unexpectedly weird, the audience was larger than we'd anticipated, and the tech was rocky. It takes practice not to be distracted by those things.

We have another show in a few weeks, so I'm excited to see what E looks like.

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This post was inspired by Bill Arnett's classic post, Analysis and Synthesis, which I've found hugely encouraging. Please read it. Bill Arnett would say that what looks like a plateau is actually a very gentle upward slope, so subtle that it's hard to notice while you're on it.

That’s it. A criminal oversimplification of something that is born from our souls. I’ve ascribed numbers to art, the most sacred and challenging, the most human, of all of our endeavors. I’m just playing my part in the history of western civilization, I guess.

- Bill Arnett

*It takes a conscious effort for me to say this. I default to "two-man show," even though I'm half the troupe and also a girl. 

**No it is not. 

It's not called stealing.

When I get home from taking an improv class, coaching a troupe, teaching a workshop, or playing in a practice, my first impulse is to write. I don't know really know what I think about anything until I've written it out and looked at it.

(When I finish performing a show, however, my impulse is to stay out too late eating junk food with my friends, then come home and crash. I don't know why this is, but I think it's a good thing not to over-analyze your own shows. Let someone else do that.)


When I've taught and coached, some of the more proactive students/players have emailed me to ask me for more personal feedback than I could give in front of the group. If you're one of those wonderful people, I hope you don't mind that I'll be borrowing from some of my responses to you.


If you've ever been one of my teachers or coaches, I've probably written down things you've said. I hope you don't mind if I share them with other people. I'll do my best to remember who said what.

But my favorite teachers have gotten so deeply into my head that I may steal from them without realizing it. I think I'm ok with that. If you're one of those teachers, I imagine that you're ok with it, too, because you know that this art form will wither and die if we don't let other people take our ideas and run with them. That's how we're trained to act toward each other on stage, anyway.
 

"In the arts, it's not called stealing. It's called being part of a movement." -- Noah Gregoropoulos