Problems often stem from having internalised or introjected (clever depth psychology word), a very literal model of life, the universe, and everything! So that what always happens is this. Example. You feel stimulated and alive, say as a teenager. Then you get a bit older and through habit or whatever, you lose that feeling. To regain it you start drinking more stimulating drinks, like tea and coffee. Problem solved! Or is it? Well, in truth, as we all discover, stimulating yourself is fine, but there does come a point where the toxic nature of this forces you to stop. So there is big drawback with this method and, there is also the fact that stimulating yourself leaves you feeling empty and hollow. It like Chinese water torture. This is a stimulant which over time turns into a nightmare of pain. Problem being that it doesn’t spring from within you. It just a delusion, or what we could term delusional behavior. Somehow or other we have become conditioned into accepting it as the real deal. It is a dogma. Creed. Belief. We say, I will create or make the way I feel. I will not simply accept the way I feel. But to accept a feeling state you forced on yourself! as being real, the ’authentic’ you, is a delusion! We go on doing it though, for we have invested so much faith and trust in it, we really can’t imagine a world without it. It is our comfort, our balm, our pint of bitter and a packet of crisps! Try and remove it and the weeping and wailing begins. Or rather, THE ANXIETY! And people, even big strong men, do not want to feel their fear. Now I said at beginning, rather dogmatically, that all problems stem from being too literal. How does this apply here? Well stop. Think, Horatio!
1. We don’t feel stimulated.
2. Stimulating drinks stimulate us so we drink one.
3. We feel stimulated!
In other words, our way of solving the problem IS QUITE LITERAL! It is simple cause and effect. A + B = C! But as I have demonstrated, this literal model is not helping you. You’ll end up feeling hollow and empty and toxic, and is that what you want really want, really want?
Here is another way to look at it. Suppose you have a problem with John. You get an angry unfocussed feeling when you near to him. So literal model states you must go straight to the problem. So you must confront John about this. But fact is, John is gay. You are a straight bloke. This is real problem area. So you confront John and say, “I’ve got a problem with you. You must do something.” So john says, “Yes. I’ll stop being gay.” Problem solved! But truth is, he just humoring you, and even if he isn’t, what about when you meet other gay men?
Now. Here is yet another example. Suppose you don’t understand yourself. Your subjective world. So, Literal Model states, you go straight there. You take a drug. A mind altering substance. This forces the hidden part to emerge. It unlocks the door. Hey presto! Problem solved! But is it? And this the hard part to understand. There is big difference between experiencing something and working with it. It therapy terms it the difference between what is ‘acting out’ and what is ‘resolving’. This difference is not one though that the rational mind can easily grasp. Only thru experience can you begin to grasp the difference here. Bear in mind, experiencing is not experience. Experiencing is what is constantly happening, whereas experience is something looked back on which we have learnt from. I can corroborate this from my own experience. As a teenager I experimented with LSD. I remember vividly, on one trip, looking in a mirror and seeing a monster starring back at me, and at the time thinking, I will not deal with that now. Now is not the moment to try and deal with this monster inside me. And it wasn’t. I was experiencing. Years later, when I started therapy, I began to work with this monster. Which was not a monster at all, but simply my latent potential.
Moving on to Theatre Impro. You can see this same thing quite clearly. Scenes always tend to go in an unproductive, in the sense of not developing in a more psychological or interesting direction, i.e. not just comedy, because people approach things head on, or in too literal a manner. If scene starts with ‘A’ in a room. ‘B’ will enter and direct his focus and attention onto ‘A’.
(A in room painting a wall. B enters.)
B. What are you doing?
A. I’m painting the wall.
Now this is really a block, it impedes development, as we can see what A is doing and speech told us nothing about B. If on contrary, B enters and does not direct his focus onto A, i.e., is not literal or head on, and instead sits on a chair with his head drooped, we have..
(A in room painting a wall. B enters. Sits with head drooped.)
A. (Painting.) You’re not still depressed are you?
B. Yes I am.
Now this not a block. It tells us stuff about the characters and points the way forward; we must now learn why B is depressed, and what the relationship is, and all because it arose from a non-literal model. Think! Literally speaking a scene which begins with a man painting a wall is about wall painting, and the man’s relationship to it. Just as a play about injustice, has a man wrongly accused of crime and being sent to prison. THIS IS THE LITERAL MODEL!
HOWEVER. None of the above is a hard and fast rule. These are rather guidelines or areas to think in. Generally speaking, when entering a scene, it is more about feeling around something, rather than looking straight at it. It is like crossing your eyes. Shifting the focus. Ask yourself, how do I feel here? Literally, you may be in a shop buying trousers but non-literally you are feeling impatient because…????? You’re late? You’re tired of wearing trousers???? The shop assistant loves you but won’t admit it?????
To recap. You enter a scene in which it is not decided yet what scene is about, but in which some action is happening. Say a man reading the paper. So, Literal Model states, you go straight there. You approach man and say, “ Why are you reading the paper?” This version A. But in version B. The non-literal model. You enter scene where man reading paper and it not decided what scene about and you ignore the man, go over to window, draw curtain, look out, and say, “They’ll be here in ten minutes. Don’t you think we should get ready?”
Now. Which version will lead to a more interesting outcome. A or B?
Another impro issue is naturalness. How can I act natural in a scene? How is it done? Again, taking a literal model we say to ourselves, what is my memory of naturalness or other people’s behavior? I’ll imitate that! This means every shop assistant you play will be modeled on some behavioral model you’ve witnessed and remembered. This is natural. Real. You remember how shop assistants are so if you imitate that and it will, WILL, be natural. It stands to reason.
But think Horatio. This is yet another LITERAL model. It’s literal because there is a literal connection between observed behavior and your performance because it is an imitation. It is the same. However, the audience will not see it as natural for they know shop assistants are also people, regardless of behavior and people are all different. They all have agendas based on their own quirky and idiosyncratic feelings and ideas. So again, the literal approach will convince you, you ARE being ‘natural’, when in reality, you’re not, Horatio! NO YOU AINT!
If through lack of experience of doing impro you find all this hard to understand, don’t worry. Important thing to understand is that it is possible to work with issues of authenticity in a theatre or impro context. And this not psycho-drama. In psycho-drama, negative feeling states are enacted to identify with them. In our work we use the non-literal model in order to detach from these feelings states and see beyond them. So we can, see ourselves ‘acting out’. ‘Identifying.’
It is only normal though, that people have trouble accepting this. We do live in a very ‘literal,’ ‘more is more,’ ‘things go in straight lines,’ world. To move beyond that is a real leap of faith. Imagination. It is worth leaping though, for in impro terms, or theatre terms, or just in living your life terms, contacting the authentic you will put you in touch with where all the really juicy scenes are, HORATIO!
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