less showing off, more connecting
Transcript of this video:
When I was making the career transition from advertising
to facilitation, I got really interested in improvised
theatre because what those actors had to do struck me
as a really powerful example of good teamwork
and working with groups doing training and facilitation.
I’d often explain improv theatre to those
who hadn’t come across it by referring to the TV game show.
“Whose Line is it Anyway?” as a quick way
of explaining what improv is.
Gradually over time, I make that reference less and less
because I think it sets up
what can sometimes be quite un unhelpful idea
that improv is about performing to an audience,
about being funny and about being quick thinking.
And those aren’t necessarily things
that are actually very helpful to a group of people trying
to figure out the complex business of how to work together.
I remember working with a team a year
or two ago who’d asked explicitly for me to come
and work with them using improv ideas,
but I realised some of them found that rather intimidating
and I had to work to make sure
that I didn’t present it in that way.
And I remember we went for a lunch
and it was a very hot summer’s day
and the restaurant was a bit disorganised
and they hadn’t set up the table for us
and we had to kind of organise it for ourselves.
And we had to sort of figure out, well, do we ask permission
to move the tables or do we just do it anyway?
Um, are we gonna sit in the shade or the sun?
Because some of us wanted to be in the sun
and others like me needed to be in the sun for a bit
and then move into the shade
and we had to kind of muddle through
and figure out how to get served on time.
And we did it successfully
without really thinking about it.
And when we came back, I said,
and I think this was a surprise to some people, so
what we did at lunchtime was improv.
It’s something that we are doing all the time,
that it’s actually not a special thing done on
stage to impress people.
It’s not about showing off or being clever.
It’s about negotiating
and noticing the small gestures we are making to figure out
what we do when we’re doing stuff together.
With that in mind, I sometimes do an activity
with groups where I show them a scene with two lines
of dialogue between two characters
and when I did it with a college here, the lines
of dialogue were… Player A: Good morning. player B:
Good morning. Player A: Have you done your essay? Player B:
No, I haven’t. So I get people to play the scene just as is
and then I’d ask them to play it again.
And each time I would offer a small whisper in the ear side
coach to one of the players.
So I might say to one of them, uh, do the scene again only
squint your eyes a little bit,
or do it with your eyes wide open…
And if you squint your eyes
and say the line, “Good morning,”
it creates a different scene with the other player.
And then you’d ask the audience, what was the side coach?
And they would often guess wrong
because they would say, oh, well he was impatient.
You told ’em to be impatient.
Well, you told them to be curious.
And what you begin to realise is what appears
to be a very straightforward scene of two lines
each of dialogue has all sorts of different meanings
to the players and to the audience, depending on very small
Changes you make in
what you might call the starting conditions.
And more
and more I think the joy
of improv is in noticing the sensitivity
of all our human relationships to these very small gestures
that we’re making to each other.
.
Photo by Antoine J. on Unsplash
