19th
Guest Writer: Remy Bertrand (London)
Remy Bertrand runs imprology, a London-based training company and Friendly Fire, a performing group using physical, musical and verbal improvisation.
Mirrors and status, let’s all be friends.
There is a great divide in improvisation between comedy and, well… non-comedy. Lets mend the rift because we’re all brothers and sisters after all, or at least cousins, or maybe our mums used to shop at the same store. I’m doing my bit here to reconcile two staple games on the opposite corners of the ring in an attempt to show that status games and mirroring games are very similar in nature, even though one is more often played by the wordy, all in the brain, comedic brigade and the other by lovely arty people who would never ever dream of gagging on stage. Both games require players to be completely focused on each other. If the rules are different, the skills being developed are almost identical and I will prove it now. So wish me luck.
Mirroring games in improvisation were popularised by Viola Spolin. The basic rule couldn’t be simpler: two players, facing each other and keeping eye contact, have to stand or move in perfect synchronisation. Everything in this description is key to success. Spolin advises to start with designated leaders and followers, then to swap leadership between players and finally to allow players to lead and follow at will so long as they stay in synch. When players are brave enough to overcome their fear of the unknown, this last stage will induce a state of effortless flow where the action of following the follower finally dissolves self-consciousness into the here and now.
Apart from gazing at a baby or a lover, in no other situation are we invited to give so much attention to someone else. Like all great impro games, mirroring relies on a small set of instructions and can generate an infinite number of behaviours and possibilities. It can also be played in groups and, as such, is a precursor to the chorus. Used extensively in Playback Theatre, the chorus induces a bunch of players to behave in a highly synchronised manner. It has many applications in improvisation and, in its most basic form, can serve as a warm-up to ease players into a common space. Any form of mirroring performed in a follow the follower manner can help players to find presence and honesty in their game.
The use of status in improvisation was pioneered by Keith Johnstone but it seems that, more than 30 years after his book “Impro” was first published, including a crystal clear chapter on the subject, some practitioners still have misgivings on the subject. A lot of people find the concept of status and pecking order diminishing, if not oppressive. It has been described as something disgraceful and to avoid at all cost if we are to build better ways of being together. But avoiding pecking orders makes as much sense as avoiding breathing or metabolising. It’s what we do, our primate way to avoid endless conflicts of presence. We are such sophisticated players and the behaviour is so pervasive and self-deceptive that we can spend all our status-dependant life ignoring it altogether. Once we “get it” of course we start seeing it everywhere, and this new self-awareness helps us to avoid being so readily oppressed or oppressive. We don’t stop “doing it”, we can’t, but we can start governing it better. This is one of the great gifts that improvisation bestows upon regular practitioners. Amen.
Johnstone’s best known status game is status switch, where two players start a scene with their status clearly defined as one (dominant) and two (sub-servant). They then have to switch status by the end of the scene. This game can also be played as status swing, where the switch is gradual and must happen at the same time and pace for both players. This is starting to resemble a mirroring game since both players have to be very aware of each other for the swing to be synchronised.
Another game I thought, in my infinite vanity, to have invented is status war, where both players are given the same status and must outdo the other in being the most dominant or sub-servant one. It turned out the excellent Steve Roe from Hoopla, London, invented it as well, as have no doubt other practitioners around the world since it’s such a brilliant game to help players understand and practice the concept. What’s more, this game is impossible to play without blocking like no tomorrow or using your opponent ideas. Like in the mirroring game, only when we relax and let go of our own ideas do we found inspiration in everything.
Yet another status-based game is one we call status infection, where two or more players have to occupy the same space, status wise, and follow any accidental variation. For a long time I thought that all human groups, given enough time, would self-organise in some sort of pecking order, being very obvious or very subtle. Then it struck me in a dentist waiting room. No one wanted to be on display. Everybody wanted to disappear into the walls. We were all playing status infection. If someone a bit more ostentatious entered the space we would all impalpably up our game to let them know that we were having none of it, until we all got on the same page again. Similar behaviour can be observed on public transportation.
Status infection is probably the closest we can get to mirroring. It requires complete abandon and operates beyond any form of exhibitionism. It’s a very subtle and elusive game and most part of the time, players will fall in and out of it. But when it works, it’s magical. Other incarnations of this game can be played more energetically but one has to be careful for it not to degenerate into status war.
Status doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It expresses the position of an agent in relations to its environment. Environments are dynamic and status will be affected by changes. Position, reaction, leadership, followship, the vocabulary of status is also the vocabulary of mirrors. All we are doing in both cases is learning to react without judgement, learning to flow. In mirroring, like in status games, the most important person in the room isn’t us. And the best results can be expected when we stop playing for the gallery. Voila.
Previous guests: Caspar Shjelbred, Sean Michaels, Kareem Badr, RobYn Slade, Ian Parizot, Rachel Klein, Dave Morris, Alex Wlasenko, From the old blog
