Yet another letter from Bob the Corinthian to St. Peter...

Hi,

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003 23:38:44 -0600 Peter Rogers <hujhax@austin.rr.com> wrote

At 11:24 PM 2/24/2003 -0600, you wrote:

From the ancient (1967) tome of improv, I found this in the chapter "Living and Responding" under the section "Aims and values of Improvisation" in the topic "Growth of the individual as a person". All the signs of touchy-feely goop:

Yeah, I've got no problem with the touchy-feely goop, I just feel like what I want to get out of improv is to do good scenes. If no amazing, Lifetime-Channel-Movie-of-the-Week epiphanies of self-discovery result from it, y'know, that's okay. I have a great time just exploring the problem space of doing passable scenework.

Hmm... One of the deficiencies in the books I'm reading is that each book either assumes you're studying improv for the same reason the author did or the books just gloss over the ultimate goal of your study, figuring it's not important or it's too difficult a topic to tackle since there's no way for the author to get it right. Usually it's phrased in the Introduction as:

"Whether you're an aspiring actor or comedian or you got a discount on classes because of a defensive driving class you took, we're going to teach you improvisation according to <insert dogma here>."

I took a stab at it tonight and came up with the following goals:

I want to learn to improvise because:

creative, commercial, or personal life

Any others? I need to read more introductions to these books. I want to get the top five of these, state them clearly, and consistently approach improv practice and theory from each viewpoint. If you have each of these goals but to different degrees at different times, it's irritating to have to jump from book to book to get the appropriate perspective on each problem or bit of theory.

Gah, I'm off in the weeds again. Moved to http://www.cynistar.net/pwiki/index.php/PrincipiaImproStudentAgenda

(And this from the guy who gave the whole 'suicide speech' when asked to relate a story from his real life. :) )

Hey, that inspired me to do my Dead Grandmother story.

FWIW, I remember that monologue. I don't remember the rest of that show.

If I wanted spirituality, I'd go to church, thankyouverymuch.

Heh. I can get mine just by folding socks. I may not get any major epiphanies, but at least my socks are folded by the time I'm done. And I'm pretty sure my socks don't have a political agenda.

Of course, I realize now that I'm responding to a completely different argument than the one put forth by the quote. I kind of like their quote, now that I read it carefully, especially because it implies (to me) that there is some part of your mind that is semi-consciously deciding what to do with a scene, as opposed to having it all subsumed entirely in one's subconscious....

'Xactly. And if by practice and talent you intuitively create platform, character, endowments, you can devote some concious thought to storyline. What makes this story worth telling? How can I use the offers made to change myself or tilt the narrative? And if you can see that, then objective, dialogue and emotion should naturally fall out if you have any talent as an actor.

Or a statistical/psychological approach: if there's no concious self-direction of the narrative and it's all organic and subconcious, wouldn't we expect to see a lot more bizarre plots or narratively-broken scenes from good improvisors? Or does this imply that if we've reached improvisor enlightenment, we will emit only good stories because that's all that's in us? Maybe it's like Scientology; you need auditing and brainwashing to remove all the bad scenes that are in you (your 'reactive improvisor'?)

Or even further, maybe we're mistaking good performers from good improvisors, the difference is that good improvisors occasionally gibber like street people because the scene that organically formed was incoherent crap (but it was totally improvised in-the-moment intuitively-produced incoherent crap). Maybe good performers only improvise enough to generate enough elements for an interesting narrative and then spend the rest of the time reacting and adjusting the narrative to make or keep it compelling.

Urgh. I'm getting the feeling that improvisation and good narrative are at odds with each other and it's sinful to mistake one for the other.

Now see what you've done. This is starting to make sense to me and the future is becoming bleak, bleak, bleak! Though if I can make a concious separation between the skills to make good narrative and the skills to improvise well and focus on one set, I might be able to make some forward progress. Like climbing a ladder, you can't move all your limbs at once.

My head hurts, it's late, and I have to pull a gallon of fresh chili off the stove. I hope you're happy now. :)

-- Bob

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