Improv for Writers

I was at the bottom of a long wait list with faint hope of getting in. But just days before the start of a four-day improvisation workshop last month I got a call from BATS (Bay Area Theatre Sports) asking whether I’d like to join its intensive class led by the legendary teacher Keith Johnstone.

I dropped everything and did some swift scheduling improv of my own. I pushed an interview for a newspaper story I was researching into the following week and found other parents to drive my teenagers around. As it turned out, my last-minute scramble was worth it. It helped me regain my spark.

My mother had died two months earlier and my normally deep reserves of playfulness and creativity had vanished over the summer. I wasn’t laughing much and couldn’t seem to see beyond my own sadness. I mourned the loss of my mom, who had been both my biggest critic and my most outspoken fan.

I also felt daunted by the prospect of getting up in front of a bunch of strangers and play-acting on stage, especially while grieving. I would have forgiven myself if I’d chosen to skip the workshop. But I’m glad I didn’t because it helped pull me out of my fog of sadness. For the first time in months, I found myself laughing so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks.

Keith Johnstone, who is British, began his career in the scriptwriting department of London’s Royal Court Theatre in the late 1950s. In the half century since then, he has been teaching people to unlock their creativity. He’s worked with famous actors as well as writers. His techniques are about the psychology of performance – letting go of a fear of failure and relaxing enough to make sure you and everyone around you are having fun.

Keith is the author of books that improvisational companies all over the world have turned to for inspiration:  Impro, first published in 1979, and Impro for Storytellers. But getting up on stage in front of a famous teacher wasn’t the only reason why I felt dread. Making up stuff during some of his exercises intimidated me – after all, my writing as a journalist and a writer of history is all about not making stuff up.

Keith’s disarming charm and willingness to make himself vulnerable (he was taking some new medications which were making him dizzy, which he referred to frequently) transformed my reluctance into enthusiasm. By day three, my hand kept shooting up – almost against my will — to volunteer for exercises designed to foster spontaneity.

Yes, that was normally prudish me – mother of two, happily married to the same man for many years — taking part in the early stages of a rather curious threesome with another woman and a man. I was also a wantonly abandoned mistress luxuriating in an imaginary bubble-bath and urging her manservant to scrub her harder. Other sketches were pretty ordinary, but it was fun to play a naughty vixen on stage, as well as the matriarch of a large Israeli family, a teenage daughter facing the wrath of her parents for coming home late, and a robot controlled by a human.

Some of my favorite moments over the four days involved the exercises involving status transactions, which are a crucial topic for improvisers. We’d play high status characters who looked people directly in the eyes, threw their shoulders back, kept their toes pointed outward, and held their heads steady as they spoke  — and then switch to low-status characters who averted their eyes, stuck their teeth over the lower lips, turned their toes inward, and talked breathlessly.

Master-servant skits endlessly entertained us, especially when we switched roles back and forth in what Keith calls the “see-saw” principle, which is at the root of most great comedy and tragedy (think King Lear, who begins as a high status character and descends about as low as possible into madness following the storm on the heath.) After class, I’d find myself noticing status interactions in real life: at the check-out counter on the grocery line or back-to-school night.

We had a few talented ringers in our class, who revealed themselves in an evening performance directed by Keith half-way through the workshop. These are people who are deeply devoted to improv and have regular troupes of their own in Japan and elsewhere. It was a pleasure to work and learn from them, as were the shorter classes held at the end of each of the four days led by the gifted coaches William Hall and Rebecca Stockley.

Facing the prospect of doing more public speaking in a few months, when my next book Lost Kingdom, is published, Keith’s workshop reinforced the idea that mistakes are okay. It might be even be more fun to occasionally toss out the script and just see what happens once in a while.