February Reading; “Off the Cuff”

One of the more curious and technical conversations I sometimes fall into comes when someone experiences my work and says some variation of “wow, you’re so good at improv!”

To which I invariably reply “oh I don’t do improv.”

While it’s true that I instinctually avoid compliments, this is actually a genuine statement. I regard the work I do as being separate from improv. I see improv as either a specific performance form (“performers using a shared structure/rules to generate content together”) or as a verb/thing I’ve had to do when something went wrong in someone else’s performance (“just make something up on the spot”). I see myself in a different tradition, where you have a fixed premise and rules that only the performer needs/is expected to master, and an established and ever-growing set of tools the performer builds and deploys in somewhat predictable patterns; the great Jeff Crocker calls it “the strike zone,” and compares someone doing theme park character work to a baseball player taking thousands of pitches a day and learning to hit as many as possible as well as possible.

Still, obvious parallels exist, lessons are always there to be learned, and a book recommended will haunt my coffee table until read, so since I’ve spent this month thinking about how to refine and express the techniques I use, let’s dive in

Impro; Improvisation and the Theatre

Keith Johnstone 

This book is a rare one, and can be hard to grab a copy; I had the good fortune to have one passed to me, and it’s been a fascinating read. If you’re familiar with improv (or have read any theater book written by a man in the 70s), you’ll recognize a lot in here, for better and for worse. But the striking parallel for me is how Johnstone strove to get his actors to stop thinking and allow themselves to act spontaneously, despite how revealing that act may be. Ultimately I think that reflects some of the intentions (and even approaches) of my work creating introspective spaces for audiences, and designing works that invite participants to respond but not “perform.”

Related Readings

A note: I’ve been wrestling with these related readings, in part because this month has made me realize how little I’ve revisited the acting texts of my education for the core of my work. Many texts I read in school helped me as a designer, but as a performer, it’s been a long time since I cracked any of those books looking for an answer. You can expect some deeper searching on this as I continue a very nascent process of developing some exercises towards running a workshop on performance, but for now, enjoy some lighter fare

Sir Ian McKellen on Acting

Extras; Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant

But how DO you ACT, anyway?”

To drastically oversimplify, the running schtick of Extras is that Ricky Gervais’ character meets a stream of real life celebrities who play absolutely horrendous versions of themselves. This leads to endless great bits, but Sir Ian McKellen’s appearance as a condensing professional explaining the very basics of “how to act” is both hilarious and surprisingly functional. I was once in a theater production with a bunch of non-professional actors, and the director put this on as a joke; by the end of the video, when the laughing subsided, the director reflected; “honestly though, just do that.” It proved to be quite grounding, and I return to this often as a reminder that maybe it’s not that complicated.

Mouthsounds : how to whistle, pop, click and honk your way to social success

by Frederick R. Newman

“Mouthsounds is a book as much about listening as it is about imitating sounds. To imitate, we must first cultivate our ability to listen”
- p. 11

But also

“The Ocean liner Blast is a rich sound. Although not particularly useful, it is certainly impressive and lends exotic mystery and intrigue to any get-to-gether”
- p. 45

 I’ve long identified as a “toolbelt” actor: someone who doesn’t have one approach, but instead a lot of different ways to accomplish a lot of different things. While the tools in Mouth Sounds are particularly … specialized… it is a phenomenal example of the methodical approach to conveying very niche skills (and also of the serious attempt at doing silly things, which I am always fond of). The book includes detailed anatomical and physical diagrams and breakdowns, step by step clear instructions for making a range of bizarre noises, and light, pithy copy that makes the contents amusing and very appealing to try. All in all, it’s a masterclass in instructional material — and you’d be surprised how often a “Slap Pop” comes in handy.