Don't Try

Oh man. For Week 3, my group had Joe Bill. Crayon did a workshop with him during spring tour '10, so I'd heard about him before the intensive started. He's a genius. He started improv in 1977, before Del came to Chicago. He's been teaching forever and was able to almost immediately tune into our individual strengths and weaknesses. Awesome.

I think what I'm going to do is split this up into a few posts. This post is going to be about Joe Bill's general improv philosophy. The second post is going to be about Wednesday's class, because it was probably the best day of improv I've had, both in terms of structure and outcome, and the third post is going to be aboutthe activities we did on Monday and Tuesday. Then, if I can get around to it, a fourth post on the new editing techniques he taught us on Thursday.

So. Joe Bill is about total character immersion; instead of using your character to further your goals as an improviser, you should entirely cease to be aware of your existence as an improvisor. That means relinquishing control, not trying to plan out the next step, not trying to think of the right thing to say, etc. According to Joe Bill, you shouldn't even consider what the other improviser in the scene is trying to do (as an improvisor), because you shouldn't think of your scene partner as anything more than another character—and once you've given up control, you're able to live completely in the moment as your character, allowing yourself to be changed by (but also pushing for what you want with/from) your partner. When it comes to thematic/structural/narrative questions, that's where you have to just let go and trust the backline. If you're doing your job (i.e. existing in character), what you say WILL MATTER to the set, and if the backline is doing its job, they'll be listening to you and storing all the information you put out there, be it circumstantial or thematic or anything in between.

I think this type of improv is appealing. According to Joe Bill, if you can be in character, you don't have to worry about any of the "rules." You can ask questions, go negative, talk about someone or something that isn't there, talk about the past, talk about the future, say no, whatever. As long is it's what your character would do (and as long as you're playing from a place of love), you're fine.

But the more I tried on Tuesday, the worse it went, and that led me to finally internalize Joe Bill's huge insight: DON'T TRY; BE. He'd been hammering it in, and it was confusing at first, to be told that trying will inevitably result in failure. But now it makes sense; as soon as you try to do anything on stage ("I'm trying to be sad" or "I'm trying to get a laugh"), your self-consciousness ("I am an improviser") kicks in, and once you're self-conscious, you can't be in character. And then everything is messed up. So don't worry about what your scene partner is trying to do as an improvisor, because (a) that takes you out of character and (b) your scene partner shouldn't be doing anything "as an improvisor" in the first place. So just be yourself and trust that that will be enough.

If this all sounds reminiscent of Annoyance philosophy, it's probably because Joe Bill was one of the founders of the Annoyance (another improv theater here). When I first heard the Annoyance ideas of "protect yourself onstage" and "you're your top priority" I thought they were selfish. And I still think that without the IO harness, they probably are. Annoyance, by itself, ignores listening and cooperation; IO, by itself, has you ignore yourself in the pursuit of helping your scene partner. But what if you take those Annoyance mantras and wraps them in the spirit of IO? Like a ball of cookie dough wrapped in bacon. The result is a vision of improv in which you thoroughly know what you want (Annoyance) and are able to pursue that want single-mindedly (Annoyance) with the trust that your team is there supporting you (IO) and that everyone, no matter how vile the characters on stage, is coming from a place of love (IO).