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.

Women in improv: Support vs. Submission

I've heard a couple of different improv friends lately mention a person being "the kind of player who takes good care of her partner" or "the kind of player who takes good care of himself." (I don't think the pronouns were arbitrary; more on that further down.)

I'm going to suggest that this is not the most helpful distinction. It's important to take care of yourself AND to take care of your partner, but you can kill both of those birds with one stone by making strong choices. What we need here is a deeper understanding of the word "support."

In Improvise, Mick Napier puts it this way:

If the first thought in your head when you approach an improv scene is "Support your partner" ... [w]hat are you supporting them with?

Are you supporting them with thoughts about supporting them? That's very nice but not very supportive. ... Do you say nice things to them, do you uber-agree, do you pat them on the head, offer them a chair, rub their shoulders? No, the most supportive thing you can do is get over your pasty self and selfishly make a strong choice in the scene. Then you are supporting your partner with your power, and not your fear.

If you want to support your partner in an improv scene, give them the gift of your choice.

So, what's the best way to take care of myself? To make a strong choice. No brainer.

And what's the best way to take care of my partner? Also, to make a strong choice. Not deferring to them, saying "yes" a lot, and keeping your own ideas to yourself.

For me, the latter concept was difficult, because I confused 'support' with 'submission' for my first couple of years of improv. I'm sure there are guys who deal with this, too, though I haven't met many. I have seen this over and over with evangelical women.

Conservative evangelical gals grow up being told that good Christian girls are polite and deferential. We're told, for instance, that the only reason Deborah and Jael were allowed to lead is that Barak and the rest of the Israelite men were too wimpy to step up. A woman could only be strong if all nearby men had abdicated their manhood.* Even if you don't consciously buy into these ideas, they're in the water, and they need to be fought.

Being polite will not serve you or anyone else. Being generous will. It means giving of yourself, not abdicating yourself. Generosity means making strong choices.

It's not as though strength is a single cake, and for one woman to have more of the cake, it means a man or another woman has to have less.

Strength is NOT a cake.** It's more like the widow of Zarephath's oil, which never dried up during the famine; she always had enough to give some food to Elijah.

Or like the other widow's oil, which Elisha told her to divide into other jars. She took all the jars in the neighborhood, and no matter how many jars she poured her oil into, there was always enough to fill another jar.***

In God's upside-down economy, giving things away doesn't necessarily mean you have less for yourself. Grace isn't a zero-sum game. The more I give of myself, the more I have. That's how we're supposed to live, and good improv is a small, concrete example of how it can play out.

Making strong choices yourself doesn't mean your scene partner can't. My strong choices should make it easier for you to make strong choices, which will make it easier for me to make strong choices, in an endless loop of strength and support.


 *Here is a more reasonable interpretation of that story, preached earlier this summer by Rev. Karen Miller. I highly recommend investing 20 minutes of your day listening to this.

**THIS IS A WAY IN WHICH IMPROV IS NOT LIKE CAKE. My world may collapse.  

***Elijah and Elisha had a thing for widows and oil, I guess?

In which Piglet, a Very Small Animal, is more important than he thinks

There's a player who tends to hug the back wall during workshops and shows, either because of fear or because he wants to make sure everyone else has had a turn. Too often, though, he never takes a turn himself. We'll call this players Piglet.

Dear Piglet,

I want to see more of you, but you seem afraid to leave the sidelines.

It's a little Anxious to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by players who think they have more Brains and more Bounce than anyone else. You may think, "If they want me in their scene, they'll ask me, or they'll pull me in. They look like they have everything under control on their own. I don't want to rock the boat."

Piglet, you can't stay in your corner of the Forest, waiting for others to come to you; you have to go to them sometimes.

I know you're worried about The Worst happening. Maybe it would help to say The Worst out loud. Supposing The Worst happened, what then? And what would happen after that? Usually, The Worst thing that can happen if you take a big risk is that you'll look silly and people will laugh at you. But this is an improv show, so that's actually a good thing. That means you can give all your Supposings a rest.

Here's a secret: Other players could stand to be a little more like you. I know you're Very Small, but you're thoughtful. You are willing to give away the spotlight, and that can be a Noble Thing, as long as you're doing it to build someone else up and not just to hide yourself.

Some of those Brainier, Bouncier players need to learn a little Consideration, a little Thought for Others. Because you have those things, I'm going to ask you to be very brave and to take lots of turns next time you play with your troupe. You know how much you need all of them; now you need to realize how much they need you, too. 

Love,
Alyssa

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. 

Question: Can improv be as deep as more traditional theater?

Did you know you can tell me what you want to read about, and I'll try to write accordingly? You can! And my good friend Marty has done just that.

Marty asks:

Do you think improv can reach the same psychological/emotional/conceptual depths as more traditional theater? 

No and yes.

Can improvisers make situations, settings, and plots as tight and complex as Arthur Miller or Yazmina Reza? No. I've never, ever seen a group do this on the fly. So my answer on the "conceptual depth" part is: Probably not.

But the psychological/emotional depth part? Yes. The potential is there. The players have to be in sync, with heightened focus, vulnerability, and amazing amounts of patience. Then, sometimes, you can reach those depths. Not always. But sometimes.

I don't think that's different from more traditional theater. Not all produced plays are as successful, artistic, and moving as the greats. Not every script is God of Carnage or August: Osage County. For every Tracy Letts, there are countless Corky St. Clairs:



The same is true of any art form. For every masterpiece, there's a daunting volume of worthless crap. When it comes to books, movies, and scripts, we trust time to separate the wheat from the tares.

Improv shows don't have that chance. They're like fireworks*: Dazzling, then gone. Or underwhelming, then gone. Time doesn't preserve the good ones. No matter how good or bad an improv show was, no one will ever see it again.

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I also want to address the connotation that "deep" means "solemn" or "intense." Solemnity and intensity depend on setting, not on content or quality.

Let's say you're watching a solid two-person scene. One of the characters is dying. Maybe he even dies by the end of the show. Do you laugh or cry? That depends on where you are. Are you in a black box theater or a cabaret? The space you're in shapes your expectations, and your expectations shape your responses.**

People associate improv with comedy. They expect to laugh. So when they feel any reaction at all to what is happening on stage, that emotion manifests itself as laughter.

In a more solemn, black box setting, complete with costumes and lighting, that same emotional connection could manifest itself as crying or as a deep, attentive quiet.

In a way, improvisers have it easier. If you're performing a death scene in a tragic play in a black box theater, laughter is the worst thing that could happen. It probably means your show is a flop.

But if you were do to that same serious, tragic death scene in an improv show, and the audience laughed -- well, you're probably in a comedy club, so laughter isn't bad. It might not be what you were going for, but it's not bad. It doesn't mean you've failed.


If we aim for depth, for greatness, we might miss, but we will hit "interesting" or "funny" or "smart" along the way. If we aim at funny but miss, we just hit "corny" and "irritating" and "boring."*** We might as well aim high. 

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What do you think, Marty? Or anyone? Is improv inherently shallower than other kinds of theater?




*This may be a Del Close quote. A teacher said that another improviser said that Del Close told her once ...

**For an upsettingly bizarre case study of this effect, read about the date rape monologue scandal at last year's Del Close Marathon. And watch it, if you have the stomach. Once audience member wrote: "I also think [the performers] assumed ... that the story would have a twist, a hilarious revelation that nullified the intense creepiness of the first, oh, I don’t know, 500 minutes of it. If they thought that, it is because they are comedians who expected a comedic story with jokes in it." People laughed, not because it was funny, but because they had prepared their bodies and brains to express emotion through laughter, even if the emotion was disgust.

***Possibly a David Pasquesi paraphrase. A teacher said that ...