IMPRO ARCHETYPES

Judee Sill, the genius 60’s folk singer/songwriter, called an archetype, ‘that universal mould from which we are all poured.' In other words, something pre-programmed, at a deep level, in all of us. And these archetypes often surface in impro. I’ll look at three of them.

ARCHETYPE NUMBER 1 The Futility Scene.

The first is a scene you see again and again. People are engaged in some kind of activity, but no one knows why they are doing it. The number of people may grow, doing the activity, but no matter how many people doing it, no one knows why they are doing it. People make huge efforts to make scene go somewhere, or find out what activity is for, but it just carries on.

So what is happening? To answer this we must ask ourselves the question, what does development in our lives spring from? And the answer here, is acknowledging the reality of things. Not until we say that, for example, the reality is, I am no good at say, being sensitive to what others are feeling, can I possibly develop in that area. How could we work with some issue, if we don’t first acknowledge it? We can’t.

Translated to impro this then, is about acknowledging the reality of the scene you have created! Often the space is named, a dentist’s office, but this reality not acknowledged, accepted, or agreed upon. What happens then is that scene floats off into nowhere. It is set in a Dentist’s Office, and yet people play a scene about Egyptians building a pyramid! And no one really knows where they are with that scene, for it is not grounded in a truth. So. When people invent something, and then fail to acknowledge what they have invented, that’s when the futility scene can begin. So. How can we work with this?

The answer is to acknowledge the reality of what you create! If it decided that scene happens in a Hairdressing Salon, then someone must have a hair do!!!!! If it a shop, someone must buy something!!!!!!!!!! If at a funeral, someone must get buried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But don’t misinterpret my ‘must’. It is really, ‘must until you have enough experience to stay with the reality of a scene, even when you don’t directly stay with it. You can develop the way you work with the truth of a scene, but that comes with time and experience!! Wanting to run before you can walk, is a common thing, but we need to have FOREBEARANCE. Take it slowly, and be patient in our learning. Suspend our judgement, and just follow the guidelines given to you. If you by-pass these early stages, because you find them too boring, you will not get the grounding that you need to build on, to become good solid improviser.

ARCHETYPE NUMBER 2 Appearance of the Monster!

Often when scenes are not really developing in a useful way, a monster of some kind will appear. It will then be necessary to fight it, and the scene will end. In relation to this, it would be a good idea not just to fight the monster and get rid of it, but to try and find out what it is. What it wants. Where it came from. But still, it’s a monster and it probably just wants to eat you, and not sit chatting. So what is this archetype?

Well. This is really just the monster of our stupidity or lack of awareness. What happens is that on some other level, people realise they are being stupid, or lacking in some fundamental awareness, that would help scene to be more effective, and the monster appears to corroborate this. It’s just saying STOP! THINK! So what is this lack of awareness? Well it is just obvious stuff like lack of intelligent co-operation. Lack of trust. Inability to shift the focus. Failure to acknowledge reality, as we said earlier. Basic stuff that requires we do have awareness about what impro is. That we don’t take it at face value, but do make a serious effort to see that it has deeper levels.

ACHETYPE NUMBER 3 failure to make someTHING HAPPEN!!!!

Why is it so hard to make things happen? To do things. Go places. Fight the dragon? Example. A man wakes up. Goes out of his house. There is a big dragon in the road. He notices he is holding a lance. He goes back in his house and makes a cup of tea. Does a bit of dusting. Reads the paper. Goes out again. Notices dragon still there, and lance still in his hand. Goes back in house. Sorts his stamp collection. Eats a sand-which. Watches T.V. Goes out again. DRAGON STILL THERE!!! Lance still in his hand. He goes back in the ….etcetera. Now this is really not going anywhere. Nothing is happening. Our story exists somewhere down the road, but to get there, we must fight the dragon. But somehow that is just not, going to happen. What it all means is, we must engage with things. We must. People act as if there is a choice, but in impro terms there isn’t. You must fight that f***ing dragon!!! Now what this does is mirror a truth that belongs rightly to the self-development world. And that is that for a client to make progress with their issue or neurosis, they must submit to change. CHANGE! They must let go of a rigid position. They must surrender to something greater than themselves. Read Irvin D Yalom, if you don’t believe me. Here change is symbolised by the dragon. Why? Because to fight it would involve pain. Think. Pain. And pain is what is being avoided. The pain of learning. Now there is no intrinsic value in pain as such, and yet still if pain avoidance is dictating all your choices, it will completely inhibit the learning of life’s deeper truths. But pain avoidance is so deeply internalised in all of us, that even in an impro scene, which is not part of actual life, it will still be the most influential thing”!!!

But put more broadly, we fall into the trap of thinking we can have things on our own terms. We want impro to be just good fun. A way to perform and express ourselves. A way to impress people. We do not want it to be anything else, or relate to anything else. Unfortunately life’s deeper levels exist whether we acknowledge them or not. So if you intent is set, on avoiding change, it will be mirrored in the scene you create, and no amount of clever technique will eradicate that. And because things work on more than one level, it would also be possible to internalise the rule, ‘I must always engage with change,’ which means you will fight the dragon and travel down that road, and create stories which do appear to go somewhere, and yet these stories will still only stay on the surface. They will have the appearance of stories, but lack that deeper magical element, which makes a story uplifting, worthwhile and truly satisfying. Which is of course what impro is at the moment. It is like a ready meal you buy in a supermarket. It looks good on the shelf. It looks good on your plate. But when you eat it, it is not quite as satisfying as you thought it would be.

So again we can see, it is a mistake to take impro at face value. Or to think impro is just about impro. This is the typical compartmentalised, polarised way of looking at things, and if you want to make progress, to develop your abilities as an improviser, you would do well to see beyond that way of seeing!!! But if you say, but change is too much! I’m not that type! You should consider the sometimes deceptive nature of words. For here we are too fixated on the word ‘change’ itself. Shift the focus and we can redefine change as a state of fluidity. The ability to flow with. Not a definite stopping being one thing and then becoming the absolute opposite of it. No. Change can be just a small and very gentle shift. We do not need to take such an extreme or extremist view, and then reject change out of hand. Instead we can put it in perspective. It’s also true that change at another level is an illusion, for although we can change our behaviour, we cannot change our essence. This, for good or ill, will always remain the same. The wise course here is to embrace change, the unknown, safe in the knowledge it may broaden your view of the world, whilst leaving you at the same time, the same, at a deeper level! Of course this is a truth that in the interests of marketing impro, to would be workshop goers, is ignored. Passed over, or perhaps simply not understood at all. Teachers will not, NOT, point out these deeper levels which imply deeper responsibilities, because they do not want to alienate would be students and improvisers. However, as Mouldy and Scullery know, the truth is out there, and we are all on a journey to meet that truth, or destiny, and we can put that off till tomorrow, or we can work to understand it today. A much more satisfying option.

ARCHETYPE NUMBER 4 the 'poo' archetype

If exercises are connecting on a deeper level, then the poo archetype will appear. Mountains of the stuff. In this connection I think of De Sade, who does a much more literary and negative version of this in his book, ‘120 Days of Sodom’. Here people do with innocent poo, every conceivable thing imaginable and some things quite unimaginable. What this indicates is the deep power and truth of this archetype. As Mouldy and Scully would say, ‘The poo is out there!’ But why? What is the symbolic significance of poo? Well, in symbolic terms it represents a combination of something prohibited from view and waste. Pooing is a private or secret thing and it is done to expel waste matter. Now we know waste matter can be recycled. Put to good use. So over all, we are looking at something which is pushed away from us, hidden from our awareness and that could be put to better use. Now in the impro context the thing we work with is emotions and feelings. So if the poo archetype does appear it is saying symbolically that we need to look at how we use emotions and feelings. How aware of the way we use them are we? Do we ever waste them? Do, for example, we see our anger as just waste, and something to be got rid of, or could it be seen more positively, and then re-cycled? Could feelings and emotions indeed be used like a compost in order to make new things grow?

Now this way of looking at things, you might complain, is too abstract. Too esoteric. In response to this all I can say is that we are very conditioned to only valuing the ‘real’. The ‘concrete’. The ‘material world’. A truth that is borne out in impro when we see players not respecting their imaginative creations. Not investing those creations with value. So it is not that this way of looking too esoteric, it is just that this imbalance exists and the appearance of this archetype is really seeking to redress that. It is jus saying, ‘Look! There is something you ignore, which you could be more conscious of, and I will keep drowning you in poo, until you realise that!!!!!!!!!!



ARCHETYPE NUMBER 5 the 'psycho' archetype


Well, we’ve all enjoyed Norman and his Motel. In impro he will often turn up particularly in games where we use stream of consciousness techniques like the one word story. And when the psycho appears he is allied to our previous archetype. It is of course simply a thing or entity which is completely devoid of feeling or emotion. It exists simply to sabotage or do harm. It is the cipher of our robotic desensitised selves and again when it appears we have to look at this area and ask ourselves just how versatile we are in regard to that? Do we empathise?  Do we simply identify with a feeling state, or are we conscious of the way we use that feeling state creatively? Remember. You put that archetype in front of yourself. It was something the group channelled for its own benefit, so it is pointless to complain and deny its existence.

It would also be useful to acknowledge that ‘The Psycho’ became perhaps the favourite character or plot mechanism in last 100 years. proof positive of the need for us lal to wake up to the significance of his existence!!!