Tag: improv

Status Interactions in Everyday Conversation – Keith Johnstone on

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.

Here’s a conversation quoted by W. R. Bion (Experience in Groups, Tavistock Publications, 1968) which he gives as an example of a group not getting anywhere while apparently being friendly. The remarks on the status interactions are mine.

MRS X: I had a nasty turn last week. I was standing in a queue waiting for my turn to go into the cinema when I felt ever so queer. Really, I thought I should faint or something.

[Mrs X is attempting to raise her status by having an interesting medical problem. Mrs Y immediately outdoes her.]

MRS Y: You’re lucky to have been going to a cinema. If I thought I could go to a cinema I should think I had nothing to complain of at all.

[Mrs Z now blocks Mrs Y.]

MRS Z: I know what Mrs X means. I feel just like that myself, only I should have had to leave the queue.

[Mrs Z is very talented in that she supports Mrs X against Mrs Y while at the same time claiming to be more worthy of interest, her condition more severe. Mr A now intervenes to lower them all by making their condition seem very ordinary.]

MR A: Have you tried stooping down? That makes the blood come back to your head. I expect you were feeling faint.

[Mrs X defends herself.]

MRS X: It’s not really faint.

MRS Y: I always find it does a lot of good to try exercises. I don’t know if that’s what Mr A means.

[She seems to be joining forces with Mr A, but implies that he was unable to say what he meant. She doesn’t say ‘Is that what you mean?’ but protects herself by her typically high-status circumlocution. Mrs Z now lowers everybody, and immediately lowers herself to avoid counterattack.]

MRS Z: I think you have to use your will-power. That’s what worries me—I haven’t got any.

[Mr B then intervenes, I suspect in a low-status way, or rather trying to be high-status but failing. It’s impossible to be sure from just the words.]

MR B: I had something similar happen to me last week, only I wasn’t standing in a queue. I was just sitting at home quietly when …

[Mr C demolishes him.]

MR C: You were lucky to be sitting at home quietly. If I was able to do that I shouldn’t think I had anything to grumble about. If you can’t sit at home why don’t you go to the cinema or something?

Bion says that the prevailing atmosphere was of good temper and helpfulness. He adds that ‘A suspicion grows in my mind, that there is no hope whatever of expecting co-operation from this group.’ Fair enough. What he has is a group where everyone attacks the status of everyone else while pretending to be friendly. If he taught them to play status transactions as games then the feeling within the group would improve. A lot of laughter would have been released, and the group might have flipped over from acting as a competitive group into acting as a co-operative one. It’s worth noting how much talent is locked away inside these apparently banal people.

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
Keith Johnstone

RIP – Keith Johnstone

Keith Johnstone, a pioneer in improvisation who trained a generation of actors and comedians in impromptu performance and creativity, on and off stage, has died. He was 90.

Johnstone passed away at Rockyview Hospital in Calgary on Saturday, according to his personal website, with no cause of death specified. The creator of Theatresports and co-founder of The Loose Moose Theatre Company was born in Devon, England on Feb. 21, 1933.

Johnstone trained at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The Royal Court Theatre commissioned a stage play from Johnstone in 1956 and he remained a part of that prestigious live stage troupe over the next decade.

Summing up his philosophy, the key to improvisation is not to be prepared, Johnstone told a TEDx event in Calgary in 2016. “Improvisation is high risk. People think it’s like show business. It’s much more like sport,” he said, before adding the best performance calls for reaching for the obvious, not the clever. “The clever is an imitation of somebody else, really,” Johnstone added.

Keith Johnstone, Improv Trailblazer, Dies at 90
The creator of Theatresports trained and inspired a generation of actors, screenwriters and comics in improvisation and in-the-moment creativity, including ‘Better Call Saul’ star Bob Odenkirk.

Highly recommend Johnstone’s book – Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

Finding the Game – Meaning Of, Improv Concept

From the wide spectrum of opinions emerge two fundamental definitions of game, based mostly on its relative importance to the scene. The first definition is associated with the improv community of Chicago, and the second is associated with the community that it birthed, the UCB.

1. The game is any pattern that emerges within a scene that the improvisers may follow while exploring the relationship between the characters.

…

2. The game is the single pattern of unusual behavior that defines the scene.
WILL HINES: [The game is] a consistent pattern of behavior that breaks from the everyday pattern of behavior. The reason we say that is we want games that are based on an unusual thing, something that’s different from reality, that repeats in a consistent way. That’s our mathematical way.

KEVIN MULLANEY: For me game of the scene is a metaphor: Games have rules, and so can scenes. It’s up to the players to figure out those rules as the scene develops. The rules can be ways in which the characters behave or react, patterns to the way they think, or rules governing the situation or even the world in which the scene exists.

Matt Visconage, Vulture

Philosophy of Jazz / Miles Davis Handles a Wrong Chord

Ron Carter’s fingers are flying up and down the neck of his bass, and Wayne Shorter’s saxophone is just screaming. The five of us have become one entity, shifting and flowing with the music. We’re playing one of Miles’s classics, “So What,” and as we hurtle toward Miles’s solo, it’s the peak of the evening; the whole audience is on the edge of their seats.

Miles starts playing, building up to his solo, and just as he’s about to really let loose, he takes a breath. And right then I play a chord that is just so wrong. I don’t even know where it came from—it’s the wrong chord, in the wrong place, and now it’s hanging out there like a piece of rotten fruit. I think, Oh, shit. It’s as if we’ve all been building this gorgeous house of sound, and I just accidentally put a match to it. Miles pauses for a fraction of a second, and then he plays some notes that somehow, miraculously, make my chord sound right. In that moment I believe my mouth actually fell open. What kind of alchemy was this? And then Miles just took off from there, unleashing a solo that took the song in a new direction. The crowd went absolutely crazy.
…
It took me years to fully understand what happened in that moment onstage. As soon as I played that chord I judged it. In my mind it was the “wrong” chord. But Miles never judged it—he just heard it as a sound that had happened, and he instantly took it on as a challenge, a question of How can I integrate that chord into everything else we’re doing? And because he didn’t judge it, he was able to run with it, to turn it into something amazing. Miles trusted the band, and he trusted himself, and he always encouraged us to do the same. This was just one of many lessons I learned from Miles.

We all have a natural human tendency to take the safe route—to do the thing we know will work—rather than taking a chance. But that’s the antithesis of jazz, which is all about being in the present. Jazz is about being in the moment, at every moment. It’s about trusting yourself to respond on the fly. If you can allow yourself to do that, you never stop exploring, you never stop learning, in music or in life.

Hancock, Herbie. Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
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