28th
Notes on notes
Last time, I suggested that some things we seek to be free of during performance (judgment, conscious control, any sort of agenda…) might be useful outside of performance. How can we make these horrible horrible despicable awful things work for us?
Judgment Ain’t So Bad
Whenever possible, record your performances and watch them later. Judge, analyze, and be critical. Make notes. Hopefully, you’ve also got a director in the audience who’s watching the show and ready with notes to incorporate into your next workshop. Notes. Yuck. None of this sounds like a lot of fun, but lets try to get some perspective on what notes and critical thought can bring to your work.
When you’re in an audience, you want to enjoy yourself. You aren’t analyzing or judging, you’re just experiencing. The mindset of an audience member is a similar mindset to the one performers want to be in when they are on stage. But as soon as you experience something that you don’t enjoy, or if the performers on stage somehow communicate that they did something “wrong,” that’s when the brain revs up and starts to think-thinkety-think. “This part of the plot doesn’t make any sense.” “Why doesn’t anyone address the fact that a bottle just broke?” “I can’t make out what that actor is saying.” The other extreme is when something is so surprising and masterful that you consciously think, “Wow! That triple backflip was amazing!”
What might the note-taking part of the mind remember after the show?
- Everything from satisfactory to good could be summed up in the statement, “Good show.”
- Each element below satisfactory would be remembered with specific nit-picky details.
- Each element that was amazing would also leave a strong specific impression.
This is why we often hate notes. If an audience member were forced to give you honest notes, those notes would naturally be skewed to the negative even if they enjoyed the show overall. The good things in a show that don’t stand out to the analytical part of our brain are often taken for granted, and the details of that work become transparent. That’s actually what you want: a performance that doesn’t draw too much attention to itself. If someone is left with the vague impression, “That was great/hilarious/moving/fun” and doesn’t articulate it further, that means they were immersed enough to experience the goodness and not to be pulled out of the moment to start think-thinkety-thinking. “Good show” actually encompasses more than you might be consciously aware of. Similarly, you usually have no need to articulate why ice cream tastes good. It just does. But when the brain is bothered by something, it seems to effortlessly try to pick apart why that is. That probably helps the “human-as-problem-solver” but it can make performers feel kinda shitty.
Remember this: You are not your work. If you’ve just done the worst show of your life and can articulate why without beating yourself up, that’s a triumph that will help you grow and persevere through the tough times. Keep some perspective. You’re not a surgeon or a UN peacekeeper. Nobody died. Nobody got hurt. The biggest thing at stake is usually your ego. This can be difficult to internalize, but is a valuable attitude to try to cultivate in yourself. No one likes the feeling of being judged, but you can work on focusing on the fact that notes should always be about your work, not you as a person.
Notes are not personal attacks. When you get a note, just try to receive it. You don’t need to get defensive or apologize or explain your intentions. Even if you don’t agree with the note, you can at least get some insight into others’ perception. Later, there might be time for a discussion about philosophical differences concerning a particular note (try to be honest with yourself that that’s really what it is), but I find it helpful to think of that as a separate issue from the act of simply receiving the note.
Have an Agenda and Move Forward
So far it seems like I’ve been making the argument of how and why to tolerate notes and self-analysis, but it has to go further. Notes should be embraced as a gifts. You should also take heart from the fact that you are engaging in self-analysis: the satisfaction that you are working towards improvement. If the price you pay is that awful not-always-fun effort, your rewards are the satisfaction of progress which is documented in your videos. In other words, you’ll cringe less at your new videos than your old ones. If you’re ever feeling down about where you’re at, take heart in where you’re headed. Good notes are not about the past - what you should have done. Good notes are about the future - what you can work towards. Until you invent a time machine, notes like “you should have made this choice instead of that choice” are useless. You want notes that will help you move forward.
When you watch a video of yourself or get notes, it gives you perspective that you can miss from the stage. Awareness of how the show actually looks from the audience is the first step in improving your work in the future. What are your bad habits that you need to work on? What are your automatic goto crutches? What are areas you find lacking and want to develop?
These observations will naturally skew to the negative as mentioned above. However, an analytical mind can also give you positive insight that a casual observer would miss. Hopefully, an audience will have a good impression of what just happened without trying to understand why. You, on the other hand, should be on the look out as you review your video for the happy accidents that aren’t the obvious great moments. They help to lead to those obviously great moments. What are the things that you did this show that you normally don’t that gave a positive bump to the show? These might be hidden in that satisfactory-to-good range mentioned above that we take for granted. Outsiders’ perspectives are especially helpful to pinpoint some emerging strengths of yours that you might have a blindspot for. Hidden treasure is everywhere - be on the lookout.
Some people are afraid to question these magical gifts from the Improv Gods. It’s a sort of superstition that might feel like you’re cutting open the goose that lays the golden eggs to find out how it works, and then you end up killing it. Great moments might seem like magic, but if you can figure out what lead to them, you’re on your first step to cultivating lightning in a bottle. However, even if you’ve expanded your insight into your art, there will be something new that is now living on the edge of your understanding where the magic happens. Don’t be afraid. Understanding will always be in shorter supply than magic. Understanding the old magic helps you discover the new magic as it emerges.
Armed with your new insight from your analysis, you can set out an agenda of things to work on. In improv you’re told not to have an agenda during your performance, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an agenda ABOUT your performance. Notes are one component that helps you focus on what you want to retain or weed out of your work, but you should also figure out the things you want to work towards to give more depth to your performance and consciously control the direction of where you’re headed. What are some of those things you can specifically work on? Maybe that’s something to write about some other time…
-a
