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The Four Virtues of Improvisation
How improvisation leads to the discovery of innate virtues we all possess.
I have a thing for the number four, which is weird because most actors have a thing for the number three. Three is the magic comic number. When constructing a gag based on repetition, do it three times building somehow to the third occurance and you are nearly guaranteed a laugh after #3. There is a library full of various “comic three” sequences, from simple escalations, to elaborate gags involving audience reaction. I love comedy and the techniques that drive it, but there’s something soothing to me about four.
Empathy: Kiersten Adams listens to Shea Sonsky (2020 Improvathon.)
Maybe it’s because I am reminded if the four corners of a room, holding and protecting me. Maybe years of listening to popular music in 4/4 time has brainwashed me. Maybe it’s that as an even number, four contains balance and symmetry. Or maybe it’s my devotion to Angeles Arrien’s Four Fold Way, which has formed a way of living and creating for me since my mom first shared it with me twenty years ago.
Whatever the reason, over years of acting, improvising and teaching I have come to define four virtues awakened by the practice of improvisation (and I do not restrict this to the kind that I practice - long form theatrical improvisation - I believe it’s true for all kinds of performed improvisation.) Here’s what I mean by virtue. To me, a virtue is potential. It is a beneficial way of behaving that is awakened into action by external conditions. A virtue is a reply, a response, an offer. We don’t experience and display virtues until we are stimulated by someone or some situation. And that person or situation needs to be challenging - even uncomfortable - for your virtue to appear.
Courage: Eric Walker improvises a monologue. (2020 Improvathon)
So. The Four Virtues of Improvisation.
Courage. Anyone who has taken any kind of improv class will have the sense memory of being a beginner there. I’ve never bungee-jumped, but I submit it’s a similar sensation. Or maybe it’s more like this: a kindly person points you and someone else towards the beginning of a trail through the woods. You can’t see the end but the kindly person says, if you help each other out you will not only find your way, you will have a great time doing it. When you ask for a map, they laugh at you. Discovering your own courage isn’t only a beginner’s experience in improv. The deeper you get into it, the longer the path is, and the greater the obstacles.
Empathy. There are so many empathetic engines at work in improvisation it’s hard to know where to begin. First, there’s the empathy you feel for your fellow student and performer. How dazzling and brave they become to you headed into the woods like that (and how they inspire you to sense your own dazzle and bravery.) Then there’s the empathy of character, both the one you discover and the one you’re on stage with. Because of the “yes, and” mindset improvisation drives relentlessly towards cooperation. So even the most despicable character cannot be denied. Somehow, some way you find a way to accept who they are and co-create with them to get to the end of the trail through the woods. And in doing so, your empathetic virtue is revealed and strengthened.
Creativity. Not the kind you plan for, the spontaneous kind. The kind where you have no idea what to say so you say the first thing that comes to your head, and it turns out to be amazing. Or you fall on your face and it’s still amazing. The practice of improvisation shows you that your imagination is limitless, which turns out to be a terrifying truth. Improvisation pushes you beyond convention, politeness, and tact. Improvisation pulls you outside of the box and invites you into the cave, as Del Close put it. If you’re being supported in the right way, you will find the most amazing ideas in there . . .
Faith. There is no quitting in improvisation. The scene is not over until the offstage actors say it is. So no matter how boring, stupid, banal or embarrassing you feel in whatever disaster of a scene you are co-creating, you cannot escape. Most of the rational parts of your brain may be shouting, “this is hopeless!”, still you have to say the next thing, whatever it is, and have faith that somehow it will lead the two of you to someplace less embarrassing. Or, you have a spasm of crazy courage and you decide to go all-in on the embarrassment. In either case, you will not have a clue about where you will end up. Improvisation is “ready, fire, aim!” Faith is the virtue that keeps you creating, even in when any reasonable person would forgive you for walking off the stage.
Creativity: Eric Walker, Owen Corey and Aimee Goldstein help Shannon Hill give birth (2020 Improvathon.)
If I’m right, then you can understand why those of us who are devoted to this art form feel like it has answers to many social, professional and interpersonal dilemmas. Perhaps you can see why we feel practicing improvisation is a kind of on-going personal self-improvement. I hope you will see why many of us apply it to situations that have nothing to do with entertainment. Maybe you will understand it as I do not as a genre, but as a movement.
Oh look! A handy infographic! I created this a while back so the descriptions of each virtue are a little different from above, but feel free to print it out anyway and put it up on your fridge. Your virtues will thank you for it.
Faith: Aimee Goldstein, Kiersten Adams and special guest Mary Carpenter creating the path they are following (Improvathon 2020.)
Rick Horner, new Ensemble Director
Rick Horner is named Ensemble Director of Bright Invention.
Rick Horner (photo: Jennifer Gershon)
With over 25 years experience teaching, coaching and performing improvisation, Rick Horner has been named Ensemble Director for Bright Invention for the 2022 – 2023 season. After being a member of the ensemble for two years, Executive Director Benjamin Lloyd felt this was a logical next step for Rick. Ben said “we have been fortunate to have Rick’s experience in the ensemble. Now it feels like this is the right time for new creative leadership, and Rick was the obvious choice. I’m thrilled he is stepping in!”
Rick rehearsing with ensemble member Aimee Goldstein
Since 1997, Rick has been involved in studying, performing, coaching, and leading various improv groups in Philadelphia proper. Rick was one of the Founders of the Philadelphia Improv Festival and was sole Founder of the F. Harold Improv Festival. Rick was one of the first House Team Directors at Philly Improv Theater (PHIT) (Team Activity Book), who created monthly long-form shows to sold-out audiences. Rick also created and has facilitated the Improv Incubator, which has been running weekly for almost seventeen years and which is open to anyone who is willing. Rick performs virtually with Vintage Improv (Timeless and the Merritt House Team), Ricochet Illustrated Improv and two teams in Improv College. Rick is also half of two different virtual duos; Holdwater and PortmanTwo. Rick created LCR, the progenitor of the fledgling Blue Bell / Ambler improv community scene, focused on creating a healthy improv community in the Philadelphia suburbs. Rick also coaches and directs a musical long form improv team (coming soon to a screen near you!) When not coaching or doing improv, Rick is re-watching Planet of the Apes movies, looking for meaning.
Rick rehearsing with ensemble member Eric Walker, Jr.
Rick is interested in assembling the diverse, talented folks in and around the Philadelphia area into an improv community. “I have been inspired by the Bright Invention mission and am excited to develop new and innovative long form improvisation with the ensemble,” says Rick. “Improv encourages us to focus our attention on the present moment. We listen to each word that is spoken and watch each movement in order to understand who, where and when you are. This is great exercise for our brains and teaches us to trust ourselves. Improv is made up mostly of trust. Trust feels wonderful and lack of trust feels terrible.”
Ben will step back from creative leadership to focus on developing the company’s corporate training work, and to launch some new initiatives serving marginalized communities. Bright Invention will debut a new show under Rick’s leadership later this fall at their new performance venue at the Arden Theatre Hamilton Family Arts Center in Old City, Philadelphia. “I can’t wait to see what they come up with!” said Ben. “I believe it will be improv like you have never experienced it before.”
Avila
The global conference of the Applied Improvisation Network was held in Avila, Spain in July. I was there!
A group of improv nerds in Spain . . .
In late July of this year, the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) held its global conference in the sun-drenched medieval town of Avila, Spain. For about a week, people from all over the world met to share the ways they use improvisation to improve the lives of others. This conference was supposed to have happened in 2020, and then again in 2021, postponed both times for health and safety concerns. So those of us who made it there in July were like kids for whom a birthday party had been delayed, and then delayed again. We were giddy with excitement and overjoyed to be in each other’s company, off screen and in person.
At the end of my “quest” at the beginning of the workshop.
What is applied improvisation you ask? Think of it this way. Performed improv is used as entertainment. Applied improv is when improvisation and the exercises, games and mindset supporting it are used for any other purpose. Most commonly, applied improvisors work in the business consulting marketplace as coaches, team builders and workshop leaders. But we also work in the fields of healthcare, education and therapeutic research. We have found that the potential application of improvisation to improve the lives of people extends to any field where human beings strive to be in healthy, creative and dynamic relationships with each other.
I was invited by AIN to deliver a workshop on “Using Structured Improvisation with People with Disabilities.” I had an hour to condense the years I have spent with people with autism, cerebral palsy and other disabilities, co-creating structured improvisations and devising pieces of theatre. I delivered the workshop to a small group Saturday morning and it went well. I was even able to squeeze in a short slideshow of our Ability In Action classes at the end. On the last day I led a spontaneous session examining the issue of diversity and inclusion at AIN, which remains a very white network. That has led to an ongoing relationship with like-minded AINers and a commitment to hold each other accountable as we work towards a more diverse AIN.
First night dinner out. Nations represented: Norway, France, New Zealand and the U.S. Waiter looks pissed but he was actually nice.
But if I’m honest, the most meaningful aspect of the trip were the connections I made with applied improvisors from Norway, The Netherlands, Bermuda, New Zealand, Sweden and other places. These were my tribe, and we spent many hours over meals, walks and late night drinks and coffees connecting, sharing, listening and rejoicing in our shared commitment to this extraordinary art form. And yes, the Spaniards stay out late. Speaking of Spaniards: the whole event was organized and facilitated by group of Spanish applied improvisors who were heroic, both in their accomplishment and also in their cheerfulness under duress. Ole tu!
For weeks now I have been trying to distill some punchline, some “moral of the story” to put a neat little bow on this experience. But I can’t. Like improvisation itself, the event was ineffable. But I will say that the world is waking up to the value of skillfully facilitated group experiences grounded in the innate optimism and problem-solving of improvisation. Bright Invention is part of a worldwide movement and, like improvisation, the possibilities are limitless.
Next year, the conference will be in Vancouver. I plan on being there. In the meantime, visit the AIN website and look for ways you can get involved!
Who are you anyway?
How improv is a personality laboratory in which we play with various identities. And we discover authenticity in a fiction.
Last week I asked you how you were doing.
This week I’m asking you who you are.
This is me improvising someone authoritative with Shea. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m doing and she’s instructing me? I forget.
Oh, you think you know, do you? I submit to you that this assuredness that you, in fact, know who you are is a compendium of things you have been told about yourself, and wishes of ego fulfillment. In the first group - what you’ve been told about yourself - are the messages you have received from the culture at large (entertainments, commercials, the news), your friends and colleagues and your childhood. It’s this last one that takes an entire lifetime to disentangle. Take me for example. My mom left me (this is how I experienced it) when I was three, and so I have been trying to get her back through other relationships ever since (label me exhibit A under “Mommy Issues.”) Some of what others have told you about yourself is true and useful. But a great deal of it is total bullshit, and has more to do with other people’s needs and desires and not your well-being.
Here I’m improvising smoking a cigarette with Owen after sex . . . maybe?
The other category - ego wish fulfillment - are all the ways you want to be. And sometimes you are. And sometimes you’re not. I try to be who I want you to think I am, whether it’s true or not. Even more distressing, the longer I live in this self-delusion, the less chance I have of sensing that it is indeed a delusion. I begin to act and behave as if I am who I want you to think I am. Unfortunately I am occasionally successful at this. People actually believe the nonsense I trumpet about myself in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. And then I’m trapped. Because I know, deep in my core, that I am inauthentic when I am like this. And inauthenticity is a kind of psychic cancer that slowly destroys the ability have real human connection with anyone.
Take a moment and think about all the ways you don’t want the world to know you. Here, I’ll go first:
vulnerable
insecure
afraid
vain
grandiose
and some more, but that’s a good start . . .
Authenticity is owning accepting these parts of myself too. Even more harrowing, authenticity means sharing from these places with other humans, so others can know me when I’m especially vain or vulnerable. Only then can I take the biggest risk I know: ask to be accepted as the damaged and imperfect creature that I am. I’ve done this a few times and guess what? I have never been refused. Those moments of acceptance of me by others when I am weak or wrong in some way are transformative, healing, revelatory.
So what does all this have to do with improv?
Not sure who I am in this picture, but Bob is definitely someone pretty awesome.
The kind of improvisation I practice is long form improvisation. As I understand it, it has to do with realistic people in deep relationship with each other, telling a story together that extends over time. Sounds heavy, but it can actually be quite hilarious. But it doesn’t have to be. And the removal of the requirement to be funny opens up breathtaking possibilities. Long form improvisation is a kind of personality laboratory. If I trust the people I am playing with, I have the opportunity to inhabit “my self” in any variety of characteristics. I can be the most wounded and awful person, the most appalling self-centered egomaniac, the most toxically masculine manly-man, and why? Because I am playing with someone who accepts my offer.
So when you hear an improv zealot like me tell you the practicing improv changes your life, this aspect of it is one of the reasons why. We are given the opportunity to experience all of ourselves, in collaboration with an accepting partner, witnessed by a group of affirming fellow explorers. The calcified mold of identity we have been trying to fit into in our “regular lives” shatters, and we briefly see the pieces of it on the floor of the stage as we take authenticity for a walk. Such a paradox isn’t it? Finding authenticity in a fiction.
It would be nice to report that the inauthentic mold of identity we temporarily escape from practicing improv stays in pieces on the floor. But It doesn’t of course. Under the weight of memory, habit and the crush of external messaging we find ourselves inside that mold again. But less and less. And then comes the day when we break out of it without an improv class, and those around say . . . wow.
Clearly being a Dad here with Aimee and Kelly - not a stretch for me.
Practicing improv is way to explore ourselves in a safe creative setting. And even though I was playing “someone else” a good coach will point out that it all came out of me. This is why Del Close told his students to “to get the hell out of their own way!” At its apex, improv allows all those parts of me I don’t want the world to know about to come out and play. And when I am seen and accepted like that, behind the thin veil of a co-created fiction, something deep is released.
So who am I? Well, I can tell you today. But ask me again tomorrow, and the answer will change. I am not a solid, I am fluid. And I bend and ebb and flow around the people and objects I encounter. Sometimes I am steam and sometimes I freeze. But if you are kind, you can dip your toes in. The water’s fine.