HUNCHBACK IN THE PARK

IMPRO & SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Impro and Self Development

To begin with we must again look at our compartmentalised thinking. People do not feel that impro’ and ‘self-development’ have anything in common. We are not educated to know that there is really only one life, manifesting in a myriad of different forms or areas, so we discriminate against, rather than between.

This means we discriminate in favour of what we identify with, be it theatre, therapy, banking, or, whatever, and discriminate against what we don’t. The huge irony though is, that to become more successful or effective at some particular area, we must develop. Develop our abilities. Like it or not self-development is key to all our ambition.

Viewed another way, in terms of the normal prejudice, people will say, but isn’t self-development just for people who can’t function in the world? Unstable types? People with issues? In short, someone else and not me. Well think. If this is true, it means we are born with no hidden or latent potential that we need, in this particular lifetime, to materialise. To bring out. To ‘develop’. We are just realised, as we are. Everything contradicts this though. Think of how if people lose a faculty, through illness or the like, how they will then develop in another area to compensate. They will develop an ability they never had before.



It might help as well to ask yourself, when did I feel most in touch with the world? Answer is; probably as a child, for as a child, we in process of constant development. That is what it is, to be a child.

Having said all this, and hopefully having decided in favour of development, we must ask ourselves what it is we are developing???? What is it within us that needs to be more comprehensive or effective? That we need greater control over. More awareness of?

Well, this has to be our perception of what is taking place in our lives, for if we do have a false perception of something, some area we need to work in, which persuades us say that we don’t need to work in it, or not as much as we should, then, definitely then, we are not helping ourselves! We are fighting a battle that is of no use to us, and that is not yielding any reward of true knowledge.

(Notice I say ‘true’. There’s a big difference between gathering information and true knowledge.)

In fact, it is simply keeping us stuck in our view of the world, and it must be remembered, at a very fundamental level, happiness a product of our ability to flow with things. To be ‘un-stuck’. Fluid. An analogy could be that of train and car. The train running on a fixed track is perhaps less work to drive, whereas the car is more work to drive, but the car does have the ability to avoid objects in its path, a thing the train doesn’t.

But of course, because our view of the world being fixed, most people will say their perception is right. Correct. They will say it feels right, and they are comfortable with it. If you point out that they are being inflexible, they will disagree and say flexibility is not an issue, if you are right. (The self-sustaining argument.)

In other words, this not something where words can really bridge the gap of understanding. It like story of the man who parachutes into an enclosed valley, where a tribe has lived totally cut off from rest of world, for a long long long time, and man says, “Hey, outside this valley is a world of giant skyscrapers! jet air travel! virtual reality, made by machines that go inside your briefcase! Ocean Liners! Disney Land! engines that spontaneously combust!!!!!!!!!!” And they would say, (Disgusted expression,) “Yeah. Right. And the clouds are made of candy floss.” And they lock him up, and throw away the key. “He’s just some harmless nutter. Ignore him.”

And this is because we are dealing with perception. And perception is one of those quantum things. What we are convinced of something one minute, but we can become unconvinced of it the next. And this is uncomfortable, when it happens, for it does not yield to analysis. It is just annoying. Unpleasant. Confusing. The world is not what we were convinced it was. HEERRRRRUMPH!!!!!!!! It not surprising this makes us more dogmatic and not less. More convinced of the rightness of our judgements.

So in what context does impro tackle this? Well, in impro, we willingly embrace the quantum option. Instead of saying I know, we say I don’t know. Let’s try it now.

ALL: I don’t know.

(Louder.)

ALL: I DON’T KNOW!!!

(Louder.)

ALL: I DON’T KNOW!!!

We suspend our belief in the fixed nature of things. We allow an area of doubt. We say, I don’t know, but I will get a better idea of what I don’t know, by flowing with what I feel, and not with what I think or ‘believe’ in. In this way I am practising a ‘not-doing’, by working with the negative, which in this case is my uncertainty. My lack of knowledge. In this way I am also working with our terrible habit of reaching closure on everything.

EXAMPLE. (We decide we need to be more spiritual. We shop around for a brand. Say Buddhism. We learn that system. Then we are finished, and we go around telling everyone we are now a Buddhist, with a smug expression on our faces.)

What has happened here is, that we made a good choice, but quickly reached closure, thus nullifying that good choice. And in doing this we are simply reproducing something we have been taught. Namely that closure is necessary and right. We must ask ourselves, is the goal of life, simply to reproduce this moment, keeping it exactly the same, endlessly, for ever, if, big if, this moment has given us what we want???? Would it be enough to be happy, if that is still just exactly how we were before, an exact copy and a reproduction of the previous moment? Would it? Now in conventional wisdom, or the thoughtlessness that passes for that, the answer would be YES! Party on dude! Bring on the dancing girls! Which is all fine and dandy except, that there is no development.

NO DEVELOPMENT

No forward movement. Nothing has changed if this moment is the exact copy of the last one. It needs to be different, even if it means a moment of happiness is followed by, heaven forbid, a moment of unhappiness. GULP! And this is essentially what happens in impro. Scenes continually don’t go where they should. There is a lack of reproduction simply in the amount of failure! And this is a beautiful thing for it is about newness!! Think of yourself in a new set of clothes. Brand spanking new just off the peg. Now, does that thought feel good? Answer is yes. Newness feels good. Inherently good. Looked at another way we can ask ourselves what boredom truly is? Is it some one particular thing, or is it simply the same thing, over and over again?

BOREDOM

We could also view life as a kind of addiction. An addiction to reproduction or to finding the ‘right’ way to do something and then endlessly repeating it, because that is the way that works. (“Trust me. I’m an expert.”) Put in more prosaic (Prozac?) terms, self-development is a greater awareness of the areas in which we lack awareness. It is the unknown self. And do we encounter that self in impro? Well, we do if we are prepared to honour our own feelings, value them without prejudice as guides to what is hidden. But not if we insist on keeping it mental and within our prejudices. Then of course impro is not about self-development at all, it is simply about you, and your view of the world, in relation to your talents.

So in final analysis, the question I set at beginning was really anundecided-able question. It belongs with Russell’s famous barber, for impro is simply an empty vessel, and we can fill it with what we like. There is no one static right answer.

DON’T REPRO THAT MO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!