Laughter For A Change

The Poem That Changed My Life

2009-04-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, and felt like I needed to get out of the house, I would jump on my bicycle, pedaling along while contemplating the big important philosophical questions running through my eight year old brain, such as “Why can’t people just be happy all the time?” I would usually end up at the base PX (my father was a career Air Force officer) in front of the magazine stand, where one day I discovered MAD Magazine. In one issue, I found THE POEM THAT CHANGED MY LIFE. It was an absurd riff on something I had been made to learn in school, and it read:

“Thirty days has Septober

April, June and No Wonder,

All the rest have peanut butter,

Except for my grandmother

Who has a little red tricycle.”

And there was a goofy little picture of a grandmother on a tricycle. This poem was a revelation! Deep in my DNA I recognized a “masterpiece” -- a simple piece that turned conventional logic on its head and… made me laugh. Made me happy! I could do stuff like this I realized! I could make other people laugh. Maybe people can’t be happy all the time, but helping them laugh, as my grandmother would say, “It couldn't hurt!” And I imagined her on a little red tricycle, and I laughed again.

Music and Improv

2009-04-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Music and Improv –

I’ve been talking a lot lately to my students at Laughter for a Change about improv and music. In part, because it seems that a lot of the improvisers I work with are also musicians.

The other night, I was talking to a new student (a wonderful addition to the school with a natural talent for listening) who also plays drums. He studied jazz in school. I talked about how I’ve been influenced in my work in improvisational theater by the music of John Coltrane. “Listen to Coltrane” I said. “You can hear him reaching for the next new sound in virtually every note.”

This morning I found out that, after a brief illness, a dear friend has passed away. Now, a few hours after this sad news, I am writing, while I’m listening to another great improviser, Johann Sebastian Bach – Janos Starker’s version of Bach's Cello Sonatas.

As the music fills the space, I am moved, comforted, and grateful for the music in my life. Laughter is music too. When we improvise, we must play like musicians. Filling in the spaces when we are needed, supporting each other because – because life is too short for anything else.

TIME AND SPACE AND IMPROV

2009-03-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

TIME AND SPACE AND IMPROV - Saturday, March 21, 2009

Spent a lot of time this past week driving around Los Angeles. Listened to two audio books – Walter Isaacson’s biography “Einstein: His Life and Universe,” and Alan Lightman’s
“Einstein’s Dreams,” a poetic rumination on the dreams Einstein might have had while experiencing the burst of genius which led to his Theory of Relativity.
Anyway, I had a really exhausting week last week -- too much to do, too little time to do it. Sound familiar? Not enough time to think, to ponder, to let the creative juices flow of their own accord to some new insight. NOT ENOUGH TIME!! That’s when a new insight hit. It’s not that I don’t have enough time. I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH SPACE!

That’s a great way to look at it. Space is more generous than time. Time is unrelenting. It marches forward. I have no control over time. But space – space is available. I can pay attention at any instant, be in the space that I’m in and honor it. Supported by the space inside me and the space around me, trusting in the space to reward me for my attention, I can open up to my own intuition. Confident that when I return to it, time will have moved forward and I will be more “here” than I was before, when I thought that I was a victim of time, rather than a participant in space. The old cliché in comedy is that "timing is everything.” But think about it. Comedy timing is as much about space as it is about time. An improviser, in order to find the right “timing,” is really being informed by the interplay in the space between him/her and the other players and, to a very large degree, between performer and audience. In
that space is the intuition regarding how to “time something.” By “playing” the space, the great comic actor gets his “timing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS!

2009-03-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS

Today is my birthday. Tomorrow Del Close would have been seventy-five years old. For years, until Del’s death, no matter how far away we were from each other or how long it had been since we’d spoken, Del and I would have two phone conversations in the space of two days, one on March 8^th and one on March 9^th -- happy birthday phone calls. I miss those calls.

As a young improviser at The Committee, my favorite moments were being on stage and hearing Del’s deep, loud laugh coming from the back of a full house, laughing at something I’d said that I didn’t know was going to come out funny. Today and tomorrow there will be no birthday phone calls. But I thank Del for continuing to challenge me to play harder and dig deeper to hear, however faintly, his laugh, still cutting through the crowd from the back of the house.

THANK YOU, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – BLOG 2/01/09

2009-02-02T21:26:00.000-08:00

The other night in a Laughter for a Change improv class, the students spontaneously created a parody of "King Kong!" That’s right, and in the third class of the session. And the whole piece, complete with final scene on the Empire State Building, lasted about a two minutes! It was hilarious.

In talking about it afterwards, I said that the only real problem was it was so noisy and there was so much screaming (the girl, the airplanes, the Great Ape) that it was a little hard to follow. Not enough listening, I said. One of the players said “But it’s improv. Isn’t the nature of improvising something that big and with that many people that it will be very noisy?” “NO.” I answered. “Not if you’re fully committed to the moment, as you guys were, AND listening to the other players and to the space at the same time. It’s like music.” I’ve thought about that moment a lot since then. Trying to put into words what exactly was necessary to really make that almost glorious moment truly glorious. Then this morning, Super Bowl Sunday, in the New York Times, there was an interview with Bruce Springsteen, talking about his performance later today at the half-time show and other big performances he does. “Those moments are an opportunity for a very heightened kind of communication” he said.

That’s what I’ll tell them next week when we re-stage our mini-epic improv version of "King Kong." It doesn’t have to be noisy. In fact, moments like that – in our little theater, in a two-person conversation or at the Super Bowl – are an opportunity for “a very heightened kind of communication.” Thank you, Bruce Springsteen, once again, for supplying the right words at the right time.

“DON’T FORGET THE CIGARETTE”

2009-01-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

In a Laughter for a Change Improv class on Thursday night, one of the players created a character that was smoking a “space” cigarette. Good choice – the way he handled the cigarette gave a lot of detail to the character. It was a real example of how a space prop and physical acting can bring reality to an improv. In the midst of the improv, the player became so excited, gesturing wildly with his arms, that the space cigarette totally disappeared. His commitment to the character was there, but his attention to the “physical reality” of the cigarette he created flew out the window. I coached him – “Don’t forget the cigarette” and he refocused on it, harder than before. That’s when the scene got funny.

His attention was not on trying to create a funny character, but just to give reality to the physical choice he had made, and when he truly did that, the scene took on new life, the character got richer and the laughs started coming. With his attention to the space work, all this “business” with the cigarette came to life spontaneously. He discovered how to make the character real, which is to say funny, by staying true to the physical reality he had created.
Incidentally, the FDA has determined that smoking imaginary cigarettes is not harmful to your health.

Laughter for a Change Improv School Opens

2009-01-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

Last night was the opening night of the Laughter for a Change Improv School. I love the first night of new improv classes. You have a group of people who don’t know each other and in eight weeks will be a team -- friends, some friendships that will last a long time.

Once, in a twelve-week improv class I taught at UCLA (one three hour meeting per week), there were two students who met as strangers the first night and twelve weeks later -- engaged to be married. In last night’s class, at 7 o’clock there were fourteen strangers, slightly tentative, politely introducing themselves to each other, and three hours later, laughing, joking, discussing surprising connections of mutual friends, similar histories and shared beliefs.

Class finished at 10 pm, and at a quarter to 11, I wandered out with the half dozen former strangers who were still hanging out in the theater. No one wanted to leave – that’s always a good sign.

What's the Game?

2008-11-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

“He’s (or she’s) got game,” “put on your game face,” “I’m game” – just a few of the expressions in daily life that express positive and active states of being and doing through the use of the word “game.” This sense of the game aspect of life is crucial to the forward movement and clear thinking necessary to achieve the objective at hand.

Earlier this past week, I was feeling pretty unfocused. Started out with a little flu, a little fight with a loved one and a lot of procrastination on boring tasks that needed to be completed – long story short, I was “off my game.” Fortunately, like a super-hero come to save the day, my inner improviser kicked in to ask -- “What’s the game here?”

Just like you do in improv – find the game and the scene will reveal itself. “What’s the game?” Once the question was on the table, I was able to take a simple “adjustment” – there’s a game here, and I have to get “out of my head” and “into the game” -- back to that state of play, where the difficult tasks at hand had a definable purpose, a clear focus, and a playful sense of self-competition, as in – “Okay, self, I dare you to get this done and enjoy it.” Once I had “found the game” I was “on my game” and moving happily and productively forward!

Tavis Smiley on Jazz

2008-11-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

This week, on Tavis Smiley's PBS talk show, Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times talked about Jazz and improvisation. At the end of the interview, Tavis said what he loves about jazz is that in playing together, "everybody finds his own voice."

This is the beauty of improvisational acting as well. As you work with the other players, as you focus on your interaction with others, you find your own voice.

That's what we do at Laughter For A Change -- encourage and celebrate people finding their own voice.

THE POWER OF MISTAKES

2008-10-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

THE POWER OF MISTAKES:

Mistakes are the improviser’s friend. They are not bad. They are not just another chance to beat your self up. Mistakes are opportunities for discovery. Playing the mistake, making something out of it, can be a great moment in an improv. When you make a mistake, the audience laughs. Play the laugh. To often, what happens is – player makes a mistake, audience laughs, player thinks, “Oh, my god, I messed up, they are laughing at me, this is not good!” MISTAKES ARE GOOD! The mistake is a gift to you and to the audience. It shows that you are human. The audience is impressed that you have the courage to make the mistake in front of a room full of people. They are impressed and they are empathetic because every one makes mistakes and the audience identifies. The sound of their recognition and identification is laughter. Your mistake has created an EMPATHIC CONNECTION between you and the audience. Congratulations!

"An imbecile painter is painting. Color drops from his brush. A gaudy stain spreads over the page. The imbecile painter, in despair, tears up his sheet and starts over. On the contrary I am, if I may say so, a painter of talent and as the stain spreads, I smile, look hard at it, turn the sheet over and over again and, deeply moved, begin with sheer delight to take advantage of that accident. It is from that blot that inspiration is born." -- Pablo Picasso

So, when a mistake happens on stage, “DON’T LOSE IT, USE IT.”

Rebel Without A Cause

2008-07-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

REASONS WHY IMPROVISERS SHOULD WATCH “REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE”

To expand your reference level – it’s an iconic film.
James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Beverly Long who plays Judy’s (Natalie Wood) best friend and is in my Senior Improv Class
Archetypal scenes can be used for improv (great to stick your own version of them into the middle of Harolds) – for example, James Dean’s fight with his father, the knife fight in the parking lot of Griffith Observatory, the “chicken run” scene. And all those moments showing kids not getting along with their parents – makes for great parody.
James Dean’s throw-away impersonation of “Mr. Magoo” who was voiced by Jim Backus, who plays his father in the movie.
The way the story is put together – action sequences mixed with Actor’s Studio moments that never leave you bored. Keeps moving forward and raising the stakes. Great screenplay by Stewart Stern.
Did I mention James Dean – talk about commitment!

On Listening

2008-05-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

The ability to listen is the most important tool in the improviser’s toolbox. This has been said in one way or another so often that it seems to be a cliché as well as common knowledge. The assumption usually goes that it refers to listening to the other player so that you can take his or her choice and go with it. But, in fact, listening works on at least three levels. First, you listen to the other actor. It takes off a lot of the pressure to be funny, clever and brilliant (which if you’re listening you already are those things). When you listen to the other actor, you just respond honestly, and the rest will happen. Second, you are listening to yourself. Develop the ability to pay attention to your own impulses and intuitive choices and the ability to sort out the noise of self-judgment that gets in the way of those intuitive choices, and you’re “good to go.” Thirdly, there is the listening to the audience – their response will help you know what choices to continue to explore, and which to let go of. So, develop the ability to listen simultaneously to the other player, to your own intuition, and to the audience. In the shared space between you, the other players and the audience imagination becomes reality and the space is transformed. It’s a surprise to everyone and the sound of that surprise is laughter.

Senior Reflections

2008-04-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

Senior Reflections Improv Workshop
Originally uploaded by laughterforachange

What I’m hearing from my students:

Members of my Senior Improv Group (who incidently HATE being referred to as “Seniors” or even worse “Older Adults” unless there’s a significant discount involved) have reported some interesting results of their work as improvisers. Here are a couple of examples:

A student in his 70’s, who enjoyed a career as a stand up comedian, suffers from very bad rheumatoid arthritis and walks with the help of a cane. One day, after being a member of the workshop for a couple of months, he volunteered to go on stage to be part of an improv. When he got to the stage, he and the other actor took a suggestion for the improv. Just as they were about to begin, he yelled “Stop! I have to go get my cane” which was as usual, slung over the back of his chair where he had been sitting. He took one step towards his chair and it dawned on him – he hadn’t needed his cane to walk to the stage, and in fact, he had done his last couple of improvs without the use of his cane. He shared this realization with the class. No one else had noticed that this student, who came to the class totally dependent on the use of a cane, was now going to the stage and acting in improvs completely caneless. To this day, he uses his cane to move around in his daily life, except when he is on stage improvising.

Conclusion: When I tell my students in warm up exercises, to borrow Viola Spolin’s phrase “Let the space support you”, who knew how literally this direction could be taken!

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In 2006, a few days before we were about to begin rehearsal for our first multi-generational improv show with the “Broadway Braves” from Van Nuys, California Birmingham High School Theater Department, one of my senior improvisers, a former psychotherapist, who still volunteers to do psychological counseling for low income groups, at hospitals and where ever she is needed, suffered a light stroke. She told me a week later that the first thing she asked her doctor when she had gotten her speech back, and he diagnosed what had happened to her, was “Will I still be able to do improv”. He told her it would be a while. But she was not willing to wait a while. She had strong instincts about the elements of her own healing process. She was back the next week and with a slight limp, slightly slurred speech and more than ready to take on the rigors of rehearsing the mostly improvised show. She told me she wanted to be in as much of the show as I would let her be. I had no qualms about putting her in pivotal roles in a few scenes. As shows almost always go, there were moments when people had their doubts about whether it would all come together for opening night. But one thing was clear from the very beginning. Improv and the responsibilities of being there for the rest of the actors was working wonders on my “post stroke” student. Her speech was improving, her face which had been slightly limp on one side was getting back to normal and day by day her eyes increasingly glowed with their normal bright intelligence as she took on the job of “acting coach” helping some rather nervous fifteen year olds get into roles they were having problems with – ironically enough, playing rather nervous fifteen year olds.

The show was a solid success and this student was one of the main reasons. She was a director’s dream. All I had to do was suggest slight adjustments to her acting and never hold back on telling her the truth – that she was making an amazing recovery.

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One day, a young woman (who I’ll call Jill), looking haggard, much too thin and just plain sick came to the class driven there and escorted by a slightly older woman (I’ll call her Annie), very attractive, vivacious and cheery, who turned out to be Jill’s older sister. Jill, I learned, was battling cancer. Annie, her primary caretaker, had no interest in doing improv herself, but felt that an improv class might give her younger sister a chance to laugh, lift her out of her depression and who knows, maybe have some healing effect. Though sick, Jill gave it her all. She came to classes for a while, chauffeured by Annie, who sat and watched. until one day when she was coaxed into getting up to perform with the group, and turned out to have excellent improv instincts and natural stage presence. Jill and Annie became regular members of the class. One day, Annie came alone. She explained that Jill had taken a turn for the worse. The students embraced Annie, and told her to please keep coming to our class. She did, regularly giving not very encouraging reports on Jill’s situation, but always bringing great humor and charm to all her stage work.

Then Annie stopped coming. Her classmates got emails with news about Jill’s worsening condition and that Annie was back east, trying to help. Just last week she returned, after attending to Jill’s burial. Annie was in mourning, but in class. The class members, who by this time had celebrated New Year’s Eve, birthdays, and “wrap parties” together, now celebrated Jill’s life. My students told Annie how much they admired her for standing by her sister and being a source of love and support for her. Annie responded with humility.

“Jill gave me a lot,” Annie said. “I first brought her here because I thought that improv might help her heal. It turns out, she was the one who was bringing me here to this class. This has been such a tough and painful year, and you guys are helping me to heal.” There were hugs, tears, and then later, with everyone on the stage, there was laughter.

Agreement & Conflict in Improv

2008-03-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

It has always baffled me why so many people who come to my improvisation workshops have such a hard time grasping the concept of playing “agreement” instead of “conflict”. Part of it is, if they come from a traditional theater background, they don’t quite get how theater can be done without conflict. But a lot of people I work with have no theater background. So the answer for not grasping the concept of “just saying yes” must come from a more fundamental factor – fear. That fear is based on the misconception that improv is hard to do and you’ll look stupid when you try. Therefore, you have to work really hard to do it right. So people get in their minds that they must come up with a really clever idea and play that and somehow try to control the improv with an unspoken (or sometimes spoken) insistence that the other player get on board with their idea (which is only legitimate if the improv takes place on a boat.) Wait! Make it easy on yourself, I say. Just listen and when the other person says something, accept that and go with that and then say something back and let the moment be between the two of you instead of feeling the responsibility to make the scene work. It’s called “trust” – trust of the other person and trust in the moment to happen with out your manipulating the hell out of it. When people do that, they are surprised how easy it is, and how much less stressful improv becomes, how their fear is replaced by fun and how much better, and funnier, by the way, the results are.

I have this one student who starts every scene with an argument. She thinks that that will make something happen. She has in her head an idea that if she plays an angry wife and the guy plays a cheating husband some resolution will come out. But how often does that happen? All you have to do is the math on the marriages and divorce rates of angry wives and cheating husbands and you’ll see that set up won’t lead to any satisfying resolution in life or in improv. My student feels it’s her responsibility to carry the burden of the scene and that introducing conflict will do that.

It’s not your responsibility! Make it easy on yourself, trust the other actor to take the improv to the next level. As counterintuitive as it might sound, conflict in an improvisation will come from agreement. If the characters in a scene have an argument (and since arguments happen in real life so it should be able to happen in improv), the players must keep their “improv eyes” open for the agreement and how the conflict can resolve itself. The conflict in improv is really a search for agreement. And, as an improvisational actor, you move through the scene committed to what your character’s goal is. With that focus, all you have to do is play that objective strongly and come up with obstacles to place in the way of your goal. The comedy comes from overcoming the obstacles on the way to the goal. You don’t have to go for jokes, just go for the conclusion of the scene, playing all the bumps on “the crooked road to comedy”. Again just like real life. As you try to attain what you want, obstacles arise. That’s another thing you can trust.

When I went to do “Comedy in Rwanda” one of the things I was interested in learning about was what is universal in comedy. I learned something trying to teach the concept of “agreement” to Rwandans. In Rwanda, bartering is still an accepted practice. Not realizing this, I had them play an “agreement” game where a player would go into a customer service desk and ask for anything he or she wanted and the service/salesperson must help them by strict agreement, going with, agreeing to and “over accepting” everything the customer wanted – the “yes/and” adjustment. But in Rwanda the scene didn’t get past “I don’t want to pay too much” and the back and forth of the barter. This turned out to be the perfect metaphor to explain how to improvise using agreement. Even though they are bartering and “arguing” over the price, in the back of each person’s mind, they both know that they want to reach an agreement, so the shopper gets the item and the seller gets his money. They are arguing, but with a sense of finding the agreement at the end. Conflict in improv is like bartering. How do you get to the agreement? The Rwandans understood agreement in improv in these terms and were able to move forward.

In fact, my young Rwandan improvisers, more like “zoomed” forward than “moved” forward. But more about that later…