If you teach improvisation, how much of what you say to your improvisation students can you say with equal assurance to students in other groups?
There are a couple of things that many improvisation teachers say that do not transfer smoothly – and perhaps not at all. And that’s a crucial issue for the field of Applied Improvisation – the application of improv principles beyond the stage.
Raise the stakes
One of the top messages I give to improvisation students who are about to perform on stage is to ‘raise the stakes‘. Audiences want to see increasing tension, greater risks, more heroic successes or tragic downfalls. So if you are making up a scene you do well to put your characters in deeper and deeper trouble as the story progresses.
In life, less so. If I’m working with leaders, facilitators or coaches, for example, I know they are professionals whose success depends on making things better. They are the opposite of dramatists who benefit from making situations worse before their possible resolution.
With organisations, we’re better advised to treat the world as real, with real consequences, rather than realistic with relatively trivial consequences. In a situation of conflict, there’s every difference between wanting to avoid a fight or agitating to create one; just as there’s a significant difference between a real gunshot and pretend.
Celebrate mistakes?
Similarly you can’t offer one of theatre improv teachers’ favourite slogans – ‘celebrate mistakes’ – to a car driver (or pedestrian) while still sounding like an intelligent, caring human being.
You can though take the lessons of LIFEPASS with very few caveats. There’s no reference in them to theatre. It takes the principles and concepts of improvisation directly into real life applications.
You’ll learn for example to let go of perfectionism when it’s not needed – to free yourself up to have a go and take appropriate risks.
And rather than applaud mistakes, you are encouraged to spot successes – which in a dramatic scene might be shortcuts to raising tensions and in a family party might be short cuts to reducing them.
Context matters!
