26th
In and Out of The Space
Howdy, y’all. My name’s Alex, and I’ve been asked to blather on while the boys are having their European adventure. Blather on about what? Let’s find out…
Get in the Space!
As improvisers, here are some of the things that we are taught:
- Empty your mind.
- Be aware, attentive, and open.
- Be present.
- Don’t have an agenda.
- Don’t judge.
- Don’t control.
This will put us in the mindset where we are effortlessly, thoughtlessly, and spontaneously creative. This is the place we want to play from - what Kenny Werner calls, “The Space.” Kenny Werner is a Jazz Musician who teaches musicians to improvise with effortless mastery. I found some of his videos before I finished writing this thus saving me a whole lotta typin’. Phew! Sweet serendipity. Here’s a good example: There are no wrong notes!
I advise poking around the site to check out his other videos and then swiping his wonderful turns of phrase about improvising and repurposing them for yourself. Instead of liberating yourself from the tyranny of the right note, you can liberate yourself from the tyranny of the right choice or right word. In any case, the general principles he’s outlined are well-articulated, but probably familiar to anyone that’s had some improv training. What we all practice in one way or another is getting into The Space and playing there.
What I find is most often neglected by improvisers once they discover how to get into The Space, is how to practice outside of The Space (which Mr. Werner also discusses in another video) When we aren’t on stage performing, that is the time to bring our thoughtfulness, judgment and planning to bear. Then we can bring what we accomplish in this mindset into The Space. Otherwise, you end up with the things that dissatisfy me the most when I watch “okayish” improv:
- Lack of variety
- Lack of progress
- The proliferation of lazy, sloppy amateurism
“Okayish” improv kills me more than bad improv because the ability and training of the performers makes me acutely aware of the heights that could be achieved and the territory that could be explored. Too much improv has slipped into a complacent plateau. There’s a shrug, and someone says, “Hey, it’s just improv. If I put thought and effort into it, it messes it up.” True… in the moment.
What is great while you are performing in the moment, is not always great in improving the broader context of the work as a whole. The culture of improv is so steeped in the non-judgemental, non-thinking, non-controlling world that it is always in danger of slipping naturally into comfortable monotonous mediocrity. When not enough judgement, thought, and effort is invested outside of this effortless endeavour, that’s when Improv needs to consciously step out of The Space.
Get out of The Space!
Being in The Space, everything is comfortable and easy. When we improvise it’s effortless because we will naturally play to our strengths. If that’s all we do, we won’t work our weaker muscles. When we force ourselves to play to our weaknesses, it feels awkward, but that’s what we need to do to grow and challenge ourselves. We need to consciously develop the instinct to put ourselves into discomfort, and then sit in it. We need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. To progress, we need to put effort into new and unnatural things until they become familiar, effortless, and natural. At that point, we’ve absorbed something new and broadened The Space.
If you are a theatrical or comedic or dramatic improviser (or whatever you want to call yourself,) and you aren’t working on performing, writing, and directing outside of an improvised show, you are cutting yourself off from an invaluable resource… the unimprov. Every short story we work on, every play we rehearse, every dance we choreograph, and every scene we direct is building muscles and skills. By labouring over these things until they are in our bones, we will have a richer vocabulary that we can effortlessly draw upon when improvising. Feed your improv! Let it grow!
One of the obstacles I’ll sometimes encounter in bringing unimprov into improv is the “purist” attitude, “Hey, I’m an improviser, not an actor,” as if the two are mutually exclusive. Coltrane never said, “Hey, I’m an improviser, not a musician.” First and foremost we have to be actors, writers, directors, clowns, musicians, dancers, athletes, performance artists… whatever we need to be to create the work. Improvising refers to the process, not the product. (Okay, not entirely true… in improv, process and product are often intertwined in very obvious ways and sold as part of the package of improv shows that stress the fact that they’re improvised. Maybe that’s a digression for some other time…)
So that’s one of the things I’m currently interested in: going outside The Space and bringing more unimprov into improv. Sounds like something to blather on about for the next few days, don’t it?
-a
