New. Year.

I have felt for a long time that the Jewish new year is placed more appropriately on the calendar than the one on January 1st. Perhaps that’s because the academic calendar is so deeply ingrained in my consciousness. Or maybe it’s because that - as an actor - I felt the fall was the season of beginnings: new shows, new rehearsals, new events. But mostly I think it’s because the Jewish new year is in synch with the changing of the seasons. This new year begins and the world slowly transforms from heat and green to cool, and orange, red and brown. It’s as if the world reminds us: change and transformation is inevitable. After January 1st it just stays cold and dark for a couple more months . . .

Speaking of change and transformation, I believe we are in an era of cultural change unlike anything we have witnessed since the sixties. The similarities are striking. Both eras are focused on racial justice and the rights of those victimized by American capitalism and systems of oppression. Both are characterized by progressive politics and led by our youth. Both include a challenge to sexual and gender norms. And both are fiercely resisted by reactionary cultural and political forces. We live in an era in which it is impossible to remain neutral. We must align ourselves somewhere on the spectrum defined by the poles of these opposing forces.

What does improvisation teach us about this state of convulsive change we are in? Several things it seems to me:

• Listen before speaking. Great improvisors are exquisite listeners and observers. They will say “My job is to make my partner look like a genius.” It is in this deep listening that extraordinary co-creating can take place. I make my creative offers based on what I hear and see from and in you. Today it’s really hard to listen to someone who is on the spectrum far away from you. But more than ever it’s essential. The goal is not to come to agreement. The goal is to feel where the words are coming from, and ask: why? Why is this person saying these things?

• Let go of the need to know. When we are confronted by a threat we work feverishly to construct a future in which that threat is diminished. We are tempted to say: I know exactly how this is going to turn out, and perhpas engage in a pre-planned “prophecy.” But we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, or what the future holds, plan as frantically as we might. Then what are we left with? This very moment. That’s it. What is right in front us, where our feet are standing, and who we are accompanied by. Improv lives creatively in this tension between spontaneity and planning. Improvisors live in the present moment, and yet some part of our brain is playing out a series of what-ifs. The trick is not getting attached to any of them. As Dr. Angeles Arrien said, “Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.”

• Conflict kills progress. Which is not to say, “don’t have a conflict.” Sometimes in a scene and in life a conflict is essential. Conflict is a part of the DNA of change and transformation. What is being left behind will cry defiantly and attempt to prevent change. Improv doesn’t teach us to avoid conflict, it teaches us not to get stuck in it. Watching an improv scene in which two people are locked in an endless conflict is a little like non-anaesthetized dental work. Improv thrives when it evolves, it dies when it doesn’t. I submit the same is true for our human species. I tell my ensemble and students, the conflict must evolve. Sometimes that means someone “loses”. Sometimes it means someone shouts “Look! A unicorn!” And sometimes it means the two amazing actors improvise their way into something truthful; something which doesn’t deny the conflict, allows for both characters to have integrity, and somehow gives birth to a way forward.

• Avoid the addiction to intensity. When a scene heats up emotionally, we sometimes throw gasoline on the fire by inauthentically stamping our feet, raising our voices, squeezing “emotion.” Some of us can become addicted to this state of fake noise and wheel-spinning anxious energy. In this state, listening usually goes out the window and conflicts are invited. But your intensity isn’t interesting to anyone, not even to you. If you’re honest with yourself, you will acknowledge that it is a burden. It misrepresents you. It is a useless energy drain. Because here’s the hardest lesson improv teaches us:

• You are enough. You don’t need extra energy, some missing brilliant idea, ten fewer pounds or more hair. You don’t need to prove to your teacher, parent, colleagues that you deserve to [ have that opinion / make that creative offer / lie down and rest / trust your gut and go for it / be here now. ] These eras of momentous change are like amazing and challenging improv scenes we find ourselves in, the ones Del Close used to tell us to “follow the fear” in. When we meet them, our natural human insecurity will tell us “you can’t do this, you don’t have what it takes.” But you do. You really do. Just as you are, breathing, listening, observing.

“Follow the fear” is often misunderstood to mean “do something outrageous and offensive.” No, all it means is that improv is a pathway to discovering innate (meaning you already have them) virtues in yourself. The four virtues of improv as I see them are courage, empathy, creativity and faith. Three out of the four need to have an event or encounter to be felt. Improv provides that encounter. Only creativity can be accomplished fully by yourself.

Perhaps the era we are living through, this new year, is an opportunity for us to feel the virtues we already have. I have adopted the inherently optimistic energy of improv, I admit it, but perhaps this new year is a canvas, or a stage, waiting for us to make our brave, empathetic, faithful and creative offers.

George Floyd, Whiteness and Improv

PAINTING OF GEORGE FLOYD

Bright Invention unequivocally denounces the murder of George Floyd and stands with those who are protesting for an end to racist policing, institutional racism and the systemic oppression of people of color in this country. It may seem odd for a small, creative non-profit based in improvisation to make a statement like that. But in my opinion we would be complicit in Mr. Floyd’s murder if we did not.

It’s worth noting that performed theatrical improv is a white male world. As such, theatrical improv more often than not fails to represent the diverse experience of people of color (and, it’s worth noting, other marginalized populations, such as the LGBTQ and disability communities.) This week has made it clear to me as a leader of an improv group that only intentional and focused work by straight, cis-gender white people will make this change happen.

Yesterday I took part in a short online focus group through the weekly online Open Space facilitated by the Applied Improvisation Network, which I am a member of. AIN is a worldwide collective of professional practitioners of applied improvisation, which means using improvisation for ends other than the delight it brings when performed. We are therapists, workshop leaders and trainers. And for the most part, our clients are white and well-off, as are we. The focus group I was in was about white privilege. I wish I could report that the 12 of us white people in that focus group came away with a unified response to the inequity we represent. At best, we had 30 minutes to have frank conversation and experiment with one exercise. It was paltry, but it was a start. I thank Mallory Penney for having the courage to offer this space for us.

PROTEST IN PHILADELPHIA, MAY 30,2020. PHOTO BY SARAH BLOOM.

My goal for funding a more diverse application of our work uses money made through our Creative Corporate Training program to subsidize workshops offered to marginalized communities. Last year, we were able to offer an eight-week structured improv class to The Village: Hope in Action for Children and Families as the beginning of this vision. Kiersten Adams (one of the two people of color in our ensemble) and I led this class for 20 - 25 young women, predominantly black and latina. In order for Bright Invention to be a force for diversity, equity and inclusion we must offer more programs like this to marginalized communities, and continue to diversify our ensemble of performing artists.

Today I will participate in board and staff meeting for Bright Invention. We are considering ways to raise money to get us through the pandemic, which has put our organization in jeopardy. I intend to raise up the issues described in this post, and to suggest that a funding priority for money raised be on diversifying our ensemble and subsidizing workshops offered at little or no cost to marginalized communities. This is the only way we will lift those voices up and hear the stories they tell. This is the only way we will begin to dismantle institutional racism and awaken to the roles we as white people have played in preserving it.

PROTEST IN PHILADELPHIA, MAY 30,2020. PHOTO BY SARAH BLOOM.

TJ Jagodowski is one half of the legendary longform improv duo TJ and Dave. I heard TJ interviewed on a podcast once and he was asked about the famous improv exercise “Yes, and . . . “ This exercise is usually described as one that teaches students to accept their partner’s offers, and build a story based on it. In this interview, TJ described his slightly different take on it. He said he feels that the “Yes” part is about acknowledging that “this is really happening”, and the “And” part is about going more deeply into what is really happening.

People of color are being systemically oppressed, and sometimes murdered, by a white majority culture defended by racist policing. This is really happening. Let’s go more deeply into it, so we can begin to come out of it.

PROTEST IN PHILADELPHIA, MAY 30,2020. PHOTO BY SARAH BLOOM.

Sarah R. Bloom is a professional photographer that takes our ensemble portraits. Please check out her remarkable photos of the Philadelphia protest here.