I might have done better in Geometry Honors (how did that happen?) in ninth grade if Mr. Camp, who was also my driver’s ed instructor, had been able to take us on a field trip to the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore. Here is what geometry can be:

Beautiful, endlessly repeating shapes that meld into greater patterns that shift in significance depending of perspective. I clearly have earned an “A” in Pretentiousness Honors, but I’m going to let that slide. There’s no way to describe the beauty of this place without resorting to hyperbole and poetry. Same with the newly restored Shahi Hammam, also in Lahore’s Old City:

This must be what it’s like inside the minds of brilliant mathematicians. I’ll bet they see expanding interconnections that rest of us can’t. Math and I came to an abrupt dissolution after Mr. Camp’s class (he didn’t hold this against me in driver’s ed, to his credit), but I’ve found that improv is about finding the game, honoring the patterns that emerge, discovering the shapes of the scenes as they unfold. I do know some truly brilliant improvisers; this must be what their space work looks like in their mind’s eye. I imagine it would be overwhelming. I also know that, as much as I loved being in this mosque and this bath house, I was also dumbfounded and proved, again, that “wow” can ultimately be an insipid mantra (“Wow! This mosque is amazing!” “Wow! We’re almost out of waffles!”) (although, if you look at a waffle, it’s all about geometry as well).

I had the best time in Lahore. My Lonely Planet guide, which I left in Islamabad, describes the city at “the Pearl of the Punjab.” This fits. After going to Theatre Wallay’s show On Common Ground (in Urdu; still, very powerful for this English speaker), the cast invited me to dinner at a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the Badshahi Mosque on one side and the red-light district on the other. If this, then that, if I’m remembering Mr. Camp’s chalkboard proofs correctly. There was a crescent moon hanging over the mosque. It was after midnight and some Bollywood music was playing. I ate my weight in biryani and palak paneer. All these words about domes and moons and pearls don’t do this place justice. Here’s an unedited photo of our view:

On the drive back to the hotel–the Pearl Continental, where I said, “wow” a whole lot–we passed goats and donkey carts and a brightly lit camel cart being pulled by a camel whose photo is in the dictionary under “undulate.”

The next morning the cast took me on a tour of the Old City (see above) and to the Bibi Pak Daman shrine, an unusual place, I’m told, for several reasons. Shia Muslims are a minority in Pakistan; this shrine, which is also a mausoleum, does not enforce gender segregation; I was able to enter. My guides from the cast explained the symbolism of the black draping and the flowing water and the silver cradles suspended like swings, all connected to the story of the Battle of Karbala where water was denied to the besieged, where these women were swallowed by the earth rather than suffer disgrace. My Theatre Wallay friends patiently and with justifiable pride tried to explain the nuances of this dramatic place; my favorite line of the entire day was when a cast member, pointing out the complexities of the religious connotations (again, wow), said, “of course, there are compelling counter-narratives.”

What a great term: counter-narrative. Is anything linear? I doubt it.

I got to do an improv workshop above a cardiologist’s office on Sunday afternoon. The group was an informal collection of people from Theatre Wallay and a media group. We played Word Pizza, a free-association game where you also pretend you’re tossing pizza dough into the air (the description does the game justice, for the record).  My mind unleashed words like “horse” and “run” and “boat.” The Pakistani group offered “Shopenhauer” and “nihilism,” among others. I like to think I provided the counter-narrative.

They want to form their own improv troupe in Lahore! I hope they do.  On the way to the airport I got to wander around the Lawrence Gardens for about an hour. It was heaven. I loved the parks in Kolkata and Delhi and Yangon. So much attention to beauty, and on such a human scale. Lawrence Gardens, just as the sun was about to set, was as peaceful and expansive as it could be.

I’m leaving Pakistan tonight.  I’ll miss Javed and Ali and Sikandar and Nadeem (who took such good care of me) and the folks at Theatre Wallay and everyone at USEFP who helped make this possible. Thank you to my friends and family who supported me in this endeavor. I am a lucky man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Carly Simon?  Yes:

The pendulum swings both ways/and I lose my equilibrium/I sway so fast inside its motion/that I become the hum/I become the hum…

I’ve been trying all day (really, since I got to Islamabad) to make sense of this experience, but when you’re in the middle of something and time hasn’t had its chance to give some perspective, it seems like all you (or I) can do is ricochet between feelings and observations and biases and attempts to ground these impressions in anything that is familiar. Today I was driven to the Diplomatic Enclave to meet with some people who oversee the grant and all I could think was, “huh.  Those buildings look like a Bullock’s Department Store.”

My mind is like a beehive today because so many impressions have piled up on each other that all I can hear is a buzzing hum.  And, again, since this is about improv, today also feels like that moment on stage when I know I need to latch onto something in order to do decent scene work, but everything feels equally important and I just want to spout gibberish.  So, consider this gibberish:

When I left the Fulbright House at 9:00 this morning it was 65 degrees and raining. It felt like winter in California. Sikandar, the driver, took me to a coffee shop that wouldn’t have been out of place in West Los Angeles.  This picture is actually from Pakistan:

I was driven to this coffee shop to meet with a young man–a refugee in this country–who took a van for three hours just to have breakfast with a friend of a friend of his mother’s. (That would be me).  I’m being purposefully cryptic because refugees have very uncertain status here in Pakistan, and I’m not sure how much attention his tenuous arrangement could bear.  How hard to have your life be an arrangement, though, to be caught up in circumstances that are mystifyingly bureaucratic and, as he said without irony or bitterness, “unfair.”  We talked about his family from which he is painfully separated. His gratitude for my friend who has shown such kindness to his mother and sister was profound. He showed me photos of his twin (I thought of you, Eddie.  And of you two, Bobby and Patty).  He scrolled through the photos on his phone and showed me pictures of his own beautiful children.  I bought his breakfast–woefully inadequate, given that he’d left his town before dawn to meet with me, a total stranger–and when I tried to pay for his way back to his town he was offended.  He said it was an honor to meet me, that he couldn’t accept any money.  In the end, all I could say was thank you. It’s humbling to be in the presence of such dignity. I’m glad I was able to shut up because if I’d kept talking I would have bawled.

It’s not enough.  Nothing is enough.  But here’s a link to the American Refugee Committee in Minneapolis: http://arcrelief.org.  And here’s much love to Gloria for arranging this meeting.  Thank you.

After lunch at the Fulbright Office I went to the American Embassy to meet with the State Department officials who oversee this grant.  The place is enormous, marbled, and fortified; I talked about how much I loved teaching improv at Theatre Wallay and how I’d like to come back and do some more work with them and with the high school counselors I’d met yesterday:

I’d been part of a three-person training workshop for Pakistani high school counselors.  It was a blast.  I followed two speakers who focused on identifying mental health issues and reducing stress.  The USEFP staff had asked me to create a scenario in which I demonstrated how an improv mindset could deepen the therapeutic relationship.  In other words, I got to play a teenage boy whose father had moved to Dubai and whose mother had found his stash of marijuana in his dresser drawer.  Two brave Pakistani participants agreed to play the role of counselor and so we began. The scene was a success on several levels. This whole blog experience is a bit horn-tootish, but if I can encourage you to gaze with me into the narcissistic pond at my aging reflection (good grief) I will say that one woman in the audience gasped and said, “he is so believable at being an adolescent boy!” Clearly her diagnostic skills were very advanced.

In the debrief session I asked the audience to identify the “gifts” in the scenario that would deepen the counselor-client relationship.  I’d made allusions in the scene to problems at home, how my mother had accused me of being just like my father, how she could smell my clothing but still be shocked when she rifled through my stuff and found the contraband.  The conversation was fascinating; we dissected the scene (and praised the volunteer counselors, who did a good job in front of their peers) and kept emphasizing that each moment can hold really illuminating information if we just slow down and listen to what’s being said, both verbally and physically.  It became clear how much pressure Pakistani high schoolers are under, what with punishing (and career-defining) exams and rigorous parental expectations.  It also became clear that abandonment and self-medication don’t recognize nationality.  I was grateful for my own parents who allowed me to amble while I figured out that my career would include being an adolescent trapped in amber in front of paying audiences. I was also an English major and an English teacher, which doesn’t entirely excuse that last sentence.

The people at the Embassy thought this was a worthwhile use of the grant’s funding, which was a relief.  And I got to witness what felt like a hundred different lifetimes in the past 24-hours.  I am so lucky to be here, deservedly or otherwise. I got to talk to my mom today on WhatsApp.  I’ve talked to Dennis almost as much as I do when I’m at home, and I’m free to visit Eddie, Patty, and Bobby whenever I want. My family is pulled apart and brought together by choice and good fortune.  That other people don’t have these ready connections because of politics and retributions and inequities is heartbreaking and, in the moment, irreconcilable.

Here’s a memoir by my friend Kim Schultz about the refugee experience and its entangling consequences:

You can order it here: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Days-Damascus-Kim-Schultz/dp/0995535108.

 

 

 

The thunder and rain outside are impressive tonight (would be even more impressive if they were inside, I suppose).  Right now it feels good to be in my room at the Fulbright House and away from the elements.  I’ve chomped at the bit a few times here, wanting to get beyond the walls of this garden and shake myself free from the people who have insured my safety. My trip to Taxila this morning was not approved and so I spent a good three hours at the Fulbright Office, making lots of headway on a script for a show I’m in on May 3 (hello, Susan Shehata!) and jiggling my restless legs in fits of frustration. Here’s what Pakistan looked like, to me, this morning:

I also did laundry, earlier:

And I goofed around with the camera (photo credit: Javed!)

I had a similar feeling when I was working in the Off-Beat Comedy Club on the Disney Cruise Line.  I could see the shore (Florida! Grand Bahama!) but I couldn’t get there without diving off the side of the Disney Magic and creating an international maritime incident.  Time stood still.  I did justify my English degree on that ship, however, mostly by reading lots and lots of Virginia Woolf.  I stand by this statement: Virginia Woolf is not depressing, but I’m not sure she’s the author to pursue if you have lots of time on your hands and don’t want to ruminate on the fleeting nature of existence.  Still,  I needed something new to read after finishing three of Mohsin Hamid’s books and so I got another copy of To the Lighthouse, one of the most beautiful novels on the face of the planet. In it, Mrs. Ramsay, the heartbeat of the book, is listening to the waves on the beach and has these thoughts:

…[the waves] had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in a quick doing after another that it was all as ephemeral as a rainbow–this sound which had been obscured and concealed under other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror.

I got antsy this morning, and I’m not sure if reading Virginia Woolf helped.  But then, after a delicious meal of dahl and boiled rice at the Fulbright Office (it was really good) I went to a place called Therapy Works and lead an improv workshop for counselors-in-training.  Arsalan, my very helpful contact from Theatre Wallay, had estimated that there would be about 15 people in attendance.  When I arrived there were 52.  And because Therapy Works focuses on holistic models of psychotherapy the students were ready to give Virginia Woolf a run for her money when it came to processing. Simple games mirrored parent-child interactions; physical movements became the embodiment of intra-psychic dynamics. I showed them how to do space work so that it looked like they were holding a ball in their hands; they made the space ball into a metaphor for defense mechanisms and oppositional identity development.  And we laughed a lot and ran out of breath and proved that cultural caricatures are, by their nature, two-dimensional.  Take a look:

After the workshop (and some good samosas which I covered with ketchup) (I told myself, “ketchup must mean something else in Pakistan”; it does not), I was able to sit in on the first half of an Introduction to Counseling class.  It was run like a seminar with the professor questioning the students in between far-flung but fascinating observations.  The main focus of the class was on Jung’s shadow, that (often) undeveloped and unclaimed part of our personality that we unconsciously conceal out of shame and fear. He asked the students to try and access their shadow and, if possible, give it voice.  I don’t want to violate any of the students’ confidentiality or imply that anything particularly shocking was revealed, but I was moved by how open the students were with the struggles they faced.  Nothing that was said would be out of place in a classroom in the west, but what did strike me was how much familial expectations dominated the decisions the students faced. When the professor asked me for input (what?) I said that many people I know in the States struggle with being alone and isolated, that the claustrophobia of over-invested families wasn’t nearly as common as the loneliness of individualism.

Not exactly the stuff of improv, but not completely separate, either. I do think the only scenes that really engage us are the ones that cast a shadow; if the darkness isn’t there then nothing is at stake and the scene is just silly.  Even with the heavy talk in class today there was also a lot of laughter, often out of relief and recognition. And, of course, there was anxiety and worry and bravery in the face of these demons, at the sound those waves make when all the chatter dies down. The professor was kind and direct: he said we can’t work with others in their pain if we’re not willing to look closely at the pain in ourselves.  And if we can’t access our pain–and our shame–then all we have to offer is sympathy and advice, both of which offer cold comfort.

I’m on the verge of saying something like “we’re much, much more alike than we are different,” and I think that’s usually true, but if I said something like that my shadow would assert itself at being revealed for being kind of trite and then it would project this fear of being over-earnest onto others and allow me to question their intentions and decide that they’re really just looking for attention, like actors and improvisers do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My heart is full tonight after the premiere of “Improv on the Farm,” our 90-minute improv show at Islamabad’s Theatre Wallay that was funny, smart, energetic, subtle, bold, relaxed, vital, accessible, revealing…all the things you’d want live theater to be.  For most of the cast this was their first time doing improv–for at least two of the players this was their first time ever on stage–and you’d never know it.  Here they are, just before they stepped off a cliff and into the moment:

(The next morning): I tried to write more about my weekend with Theatre Wallay after I posted the photo above, but I was feeling satiated and satisfied and all I could come up with were lofty bromides that either didn’t do justice to the show or made it sound like we’d solved Every One of Humankind’s Dilemmas for All Eternity, and somehow both of my impulses seemed false.

I will say this: I love watching people come alive on stage when they realize that their cast mates are supporting them and that the audience wants them to succeed.  Improv, as I’ve said, is an ensemble act.  It’s about connecting deeply with your scene partner and working together to make each other look good.  This effort can be playful and competitive; it ought to be empathetic (or empathic, which seems truncated) and it has to be truthful.  More to the point: it has to be in the service of truth.  The word “improvise” gets tossed around a lot when describing the style of a certain world leader, but that’s an incorrect use of the word.  Improv is about supporting your partner, working to the top of your intelligence, “punching up” (as in NOT making fun of people who are less powerful, disenfranchised, struggling, different, oppressed, disabled), and having honest reactions.  It’s about discovering the truth of the moment, not trying to craft a reality that will disorient and demoralize the audience in order to protect the improvers’ fragile egos.

I said I wasn’t going to indulge in bromides?  Oh, well.  Here’s one: maybe we should lay off the punching altogether.  Maybe I should. Here’s some culturally appropriated punch:

Theatre Wallay also hosted my improv workshop on managing anxiety. This was on Saturday, the night before the show, and was attended by cast members and some mental health professionals from the Islamabad area.  I did get their permission to take this photo (see below) after we had spent three hours exploring how the improv mindset (see above) can keep us focused in the moment and away from the dread that fuels anxiety.  At the start of the workshop I talked about the connection between improv training and various treatments for anxiety, emphasizing what I think could be a great name for an improv troupe: Exposure and Response Prevention (Every Friday, weather permitting).  It’s exactly what it sounds like. In improv we intentionally expose ourselves to ambiguous, anxiety-producing situations, and then we don’t allow ourselves to follow the tempting response of leaving. We have to–we get to–solve the situation, or at least stay in it until the tech booth cuts the lights.

This can be a powerful experience for people, and if a supportive, encouraging, celebratory environment is in place, it can be awakening.  I’m always humbled when I watch people jump into these situations. I also know that anxiety isn’t something to be cured–we need it for motivation and ethics and energy–and that it’s a much deeper problem with persistent societal roots that grow much, much deeper than can be addressed in a three-hour workshop.  For example, before I went to the workshop I read the Auntie Agni advice column in Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper.

In the column a 21-year-old Pakistani man asked Auntie Agni for marital advice.  He told her he’d fallen in love with a young woman he’d met at a wedding and that their subsequent relationship–conducted through social media–had become serious. Both sets of parents were unaware of the relationship, and both sets of parents wanted to arrange a marriage for their children with local villagers. The boy was in agony (appropriate for this column) and wanted to know if he should go against his parents’ wishes and reveal his relationship with his true love. He was in a truly anxious place. Auntie Agni advised him to consider the consequences of alienating his parents in hopes of marrying a woman he had come to know primarily in the digital atmosphere.  She didn’t discourage him, but she let him know that an impulsive decision carried life-altering risks and that he should “have a serious discussion with [the online woman] and ask her whether she wants to marry [him] and if she will be ready to weather any storms to get there.”  Seems reasonable.

Auntie Agni added this addendum: “Please ignore all of the above if marriage will pose a danger to you or the girl’s life.”

Sobering.  We have to be careful with words, with what we promise, with whom we punch and with whom we align ourselves. I try to stress in these workshops that nothing is simple, advice is always suspect, there may be reasons for anxiety that have everything to do with the outside world and with a person’s most intimate relationships. Our loneliness and social isolation in the States can make us anxious, too, and all the Zip-Zap-Zop games in the world won’t address that systemic problem. We can change ourselves, maybe, but if the setting for the scene–to use improv language–isn’t safe, then proceed with caution.  Improv is just one way to think about these situations. I think it’s a fertile way, a liberating way, but it’s just one way. That’s all.

I don’t trust self-help gurus or people with all the answers. Sometimes I don’t trust myself, and that’s fine. We can never know,  as Carly Simon says, about the days to come.  I do trust Carly Simon. She doesn’t flinch from her own fears, nor does she hold herself up as a role model.  What she does offer is honest: “So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now/And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days.” She’ll try and stay right here because she’s an improviser.

One more:

 

I can’t say I really know the song “I Never Do Anything Twice” by Stephen Sondheim, but I do remember hearing it when I was 23 and living in New York and understanding, maybe for the first time, the humor of a double entendre.

Once, yes, once for a lark/Twice, though, loses the spark/One must never deny it/But after you try it you vary the diet…

 I hope I’d heard the term double entendre before I’d heard that song, but it’s entirely possible I hadn’t.  This brings me to the Whorfian hypothesis, that discredited notion that language determines perception, that people can’t conceive of things for which they lack the vocabulary.  The Eskimo people got dragged into this debate–and clumped into a single language group–because Whorf (and Sapir, uncredited) said Eskimo people experience snow differently insofar as they have a much more refined and extensive vocabulary for snow.  They have specific words for the first snow of the season, the snow after a rain storm, the snow that portends an early spring. This linguistic precision allows them to see the world differently from those of us in Minnesota who just see snow.

So, if I lacked the word for a double entendre, then Whorf  posits that I’d never understand one, that I’d remain forever a corn dog, and that I’d continue to do things more than once instead of learning from Sondheim’s song that it’s best to relish the experience and then move on before time and repetition dull the blade.

I had my second rehearsal with my new improvisers tonight.  It was tough. If I’d left after Wednesday’s workshop they would have thought that improv was fun and liberating and easy.  Tonight I showed them that it can be hard.  Our show is in 48 hours, and so I leapt into scene work before I’d really emphasized the fundamentals.  Shoot.  Here they are when improv still seemed new:

There is no “after” picture because the sun set and hope faded. Yes, I exaggerate, but the second time for any class, in my experience, is always a bit of a drag. The excitement is blunted and habits already start asserting themselves. I tend to rush things for fear of losing the students’ attention. My old stories get louder to make sure I haven’t forgotten them (“they’ll think this is too easy”; “they’ll think this is too hard”; “I don’t know what I’m doing”). We all get to taste the struggle that goes with anything worthwhile.

Of course, it’s the struggle that makes us stronger (stop me if you’ve heard that before), the repetition that helps us dig deeper to find new ways to keep things fresh.  I know what tired old slushy snow looks like, how it is like a dirt slurpy, how it’s like a metaphor for the second time even if some of us don’t have a specific word for it.

And yet.  And yet.

We say in improv that everything is a gift, even this deflated balloon feeling. There is a lot to learn, especially in the grist-for-the-mill classes.  My students felt the silence of the joke that didn’t land (and the fact that jokes, in improv, shouldn’t land; quit planning!). They learned the cul-de-sac quality of scenes where everyone is drunk or high and that playing intoxicated on stage to justify slurry choices doesn’t give you a whole lot to work with. They saw that scatological humor shouldn’t be funny, but somehow transcends culture and language and age and race:

I got to ask myself, again, what the value might be in teaching improv.  It’s a good question.

And so I’ll need to recalibrate and trust that doing things twice is necessary. This group did do some eye-opening work for this American corndog. We had scenes about revenge and polygamy and ballroom dancing and erotic uses for cooking oil (I am in Pakistan.  I am in Pakistan) and phallocentric building codes that served the purpose of a sadistic state.  A quantum physicist did the Michael Jackson moon walk to demonstrate that life isn’t linear.  Why am I complaining?

I had lunch this afternoon with a Pakistani friend-of-a-friend (lots of hyphens today). He was a wonderful conversationalist; we talked about Urdu and the Pakistani press and cultural misperceptions and xenophobic myopathy and why political trauma can be necessary because, hard as it is, it shows us where our fault lines are and how deep they really run.  The food was Persian (hello, Laressa and Ali and Edie!) and completely satisfying. Here’s a photo of my placemat:

And here’s an art nouveau illustration from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to make up for the earlier picture, the one above the champagne:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not the best place to start an improv scene, standing on the side of the stage wondering, “what should I say?”  This question, by its very nature, puts us in our heads and makes us think and worry and judge.  Ideally we should just  jump and do the first thing that comes to mind.  If we’ve been trained enough–or we understand improv in our bones–our tendency will be to make a strong declaration that will give the scene and our scene partners energy and inspiration. But sometimes we’re simply standing on the sidelines with nothing but air between our ears.  In the absence of inspiration, we should begin with something–with anything–and have faith that way will lead on to way and the scene will take on a life of its own and we’ll discover associations and characters and relationships. Improv is about trust. It’s about starting with no idea where you’re going to end up.

Here’s a picture of William Tell and his son Robert:

All day long I’ve been thinking about an English professor I had at UCLA who told us that the true sign of sophistication was the ability to listen to The William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger.  It must have been agony for him to look out at a sea of blank faces and then have to sing The Lone Ranger Theme so we’d get his point. I hadn’t realized that there was even a thing called The William Tell Overture and so I proved his point both by staring at him blankly and then, when he sang The Lone Ranger Theme, turning to one of my classmates and saying, “I know that song!”

Oh, well. I wish all of you could have been at my improv workshop last night at Theatre Wallay in Islamabad.  Only two of the students had previously taken an improv class, but the whole class–including a 13-year-old-girl–was genuinely sophisticated.  Before I give some examples, here’s a photo of the courtyard where we held our class.  I’ve posted pictures of it after dark before, but this is what it looked like before this group started dropping casual references to jazz musicians and Urdu poets and rap artists and politicians from other countries:

And there was this:

And this:

There is so much attention to detail at this theater.  Everywhere I look something beautiful appears, something that suggests that there is more going on than meets the eye.  Like this:

This is the wall on the passageway between the theater and the art gallery next door, also a part of this converted poultry farm. It’s a huge mural that seems to be emerging from the whitewash.  Maybe surrounding themselves with hidden things that demand attention has made these improvisers so attuned to one another. Maybe they’re just theater people who really love words and, clearly, love each other.  Of course they struggled with some of the improv exercises (“Die, Not Today” nearly did them in) (it’s a complicated pattern game involving James Bond, spaghetti, falconry, and frisbee) (easy), but they were never sloppy or distracted.  I could be making more of this than is warranted, but I was impressed at how easily they employed irony and allusion.  One guy said during introductions that he was going to be “more meta than meta” and another friend took that comment and made a joke that connected the guy’s name with some lyric from a famous Urdu song and everyone laughed because the whole thing was meta and I had no idea what was going on.

Zip!

I’m happy to be here and I made it to both the Heritage and the Natural History Museums today, so I’ve seen a bit more of Pakistan, even if it’s curated.

And Javed is teaching me the Urdu names of the fruit he’s serving at meals.  Today he told me he is my “food doctor” because his cooking–which is delicious–will cure my traveler’s ailment, which is an allusion to something we don’t need to discuss here, even though I’m willing to talk about it for hours with anyone.

The Urdu word for apple is “sape,” like the fruit William Tell placed on his son’s head and then shot through with an arrow.   Here are some arrows:

One of us is trying too hard.  Good night!

 

 

 

 

 

I love E.M. Forster.   When I taught English I never assigned Howards End because I felt protective of it, particularly after most of my students were underwhelmed by A Room with a View.  And I even showed them the movie!   I could never impress upon them that Forster is, along with being humane and brave and satirical, truly funny.  So, I failed.  At least Forster’s legacy hasn’t spawned a marketing machine that spits out mugs and totes and  ironic tee-shirts.  Perhaps E.M. Forster’s obsession with the “muddle” isn’t an inviting brand. His characters tend to find themselves in messes of their own making, messes Forster describes with knowing empathy that defy, for the most part, tee-shirt slogans. We have this improv warm-up that’s actually called “Tee-Shirt” where one person describes the image on another person’s shirt and then that person provides the witty caption that goes beneath.   We could play that game here in honor of E.M. Forster.  Here’s the image that might go on a very large tee-shirt:

If E.M. Forster were providing the caption, it might be this one:

Wearing this tee-shirt would require a lot of explaining (and a lot of material), so I’ll let it remain in the imagination. Forster, however, was with me this afternoon, if only in spirit, which was enough…it would have been weird if the actual man showed up. Anyhow.  I got permission to go to the Heritage Museum today in Islamabad and, like any good museum, it was closed on Mondays.  Today was Monday.  A ForsterMuddle, I guess.  But the area around the museum was open and Ali, the driver, was a willing model and camera man, so we had a really good time.  We had the life that was waiting for us outside the museum.  And that was just fine. Here’s some photographic evidence:

Forster was also with me while I finished Mohsin Hamid’s Discontent and its Civilizations.  Before I say anything here, I need to emphasize that I know very, very little about the complex political history of Pakistan, although this book helped me get a dim understanding of some basic patterns.  As with most countries, Pakistan has lived out a tug-of-war between transparency and corruption, democracy and militarization, inclusion and tribalism.  Some of Hamid’s observations about Pakistan too easily transfer to our current situation at home (a president, for instance, who bolsters and then relies upon a shallow and jingoistic media network whose relation to the truth is quite distant).  Hamid, like Forster, despairs over strongmen who “serve” their constituents by pitting one against the other without regard to the violence they unleash.  Painful.

These two quotes, one by each author, have been in my head. I think they’re linked:

“I believe in aristocracy, though–if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it.  Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.  Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet.  They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names.  They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but power to endure, and they can take a joke.”  (E.M. Forster: Two Cheers for Democracy)

And:

“In Pakistan, my friends and family are frightened, as they should be when the most powerful military in the world is sent to do a task best accomplished by schoolteachers, police forces, persuasion and time.” (Mohsin Hamid: Discontent and Its Civilizations)

I’ve been thinking about these quotes because of what many Pakistanis have said to me about Americans (and I don’t think this was just flattery):

“I’ve never met an American who was rude or unkind.  They are humble and helpful and they may not know where Pakistan is on the map, but Americans are nice, generous people.”  (Condensed: Me)

Likewise, I’ve been surrounded by people here in Pakistan who know how to take a joke, even when mine are muddled sight-gags that aren’t particularly funny:

I’m not saying that comedy could save the world (honestly, though, why not give it a try?), but I am always taken aback at how kind and forgiving we can be when given the chance.  The soft diplomacy (stupid term) of teaching and listening and joking and waiting seems vastly underrated in our current situation.  And before anyone accuses Forster of being a “snowflake,” of needing to “get over it,” bear in mind he wrote the above quote for broadcast during the Second World War, hoping to give hope to the beleaguered British population who had suffered immeasurably at the hands of strongmen who had contempt for the human race and a deep fear of seeming “weak.”  Our “true human condition” reveals itself more fully when we recognize that the “secret understanding” we could share is a lot more potent than the Powerful would like us to believe.

Not that we can’t be jerks.  I was brusque today because I can’t stop eating and am now paying the price.  It’s hard to keep others in mind when reality demands that you look out for yourself first:

Well, then. Forster is known for his epigraph in Howards End, one that would look nice on a coffee mug or a chip-clip:

I’d have added an exclamation point (“Only connect!”) which is why it’s better that Forster got to it first.  I’ll force an improv observation here as well: improv is all about connecting with each other, listening deeply and enthusiastically, and when we don’t hear one another, we get to work out the muddle together. On stage.  In front of lots of people who probably paid money to watch us do this.  What a weird endeavor.

Before I go: A third quote, kind of about improv, has been on my mind.  It’s by filmmaker Sophie Fiennes in Melena Ryzik’s piece in the New York Times (not the media I referenced earlier), and it’s about the singer Grace Jones:

“Grace is always living the limitless possibilities of being–the possibilities of every moment, that you could live it more extremely…I always remember when she saw my film, she stood up and said, ‘I love the smell of your film’.”

That’s inspiring, although I can’t yet figure out why.  Only connect!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather report in the English-language newspaper DAWN reported that Islamabad would be “gripped by thunder and rain” today and it’s proved to be right.  Kind of nice to wake up to the rain and the booming thunder, and being “gripped” by the elements adds some additional drama.  A dust storm is in the forecast as well.  Maybe it will “overtake” or “pillage” us.  One of the things I love most about living in Minnesota is watching the weather approach; I grew up where the sky was obscured by the mountains or, more often, the smog (damn you, Scott Pruitt), and so the weather seemed static (we’ve discussed this, Michelle Hutchison; the marine layer? Again?).  The sky here is not as blue and wide-open as it is in Minnesota, but it does dominate in a particular way.  It’s eerie to be sitting outside while enormous hawks (are they falcons? Kites?) circle overhead.  Keeps you humble, like we’re all prey.  Happy Sunday!

On a less morbid note, I started teaching at Theatre Wallay last night.  Here’s a photo of my students; they were remarkable!

And another:

What becomes more obvious with every class I teach is that we are all improvisers regardless of our training.  Only one student had taken an improv class before, and yet everyone did impressive improv, right off the bat.  This group was especially good at listening to each other and being supportive.  We played “Clams are Great” (you know, “Clams are Great”), an exercise where one person stands in the middle of a circle and lists all the reasons clams are great (“they wear suspenders”; “they speak English and Urdu and Pashto”; “they don’t feel the need to blog about every single thing”).  Everyone surrounding the speaker says “YES!” after each statement, encouraging the person in the middle to keep listing reasons why clams are, well, great.  Inspiration will fade, naturally (this game becomes diagnostic after about the third declaration: “clams are great because the knew their parents actually loved them”; “clams are great because they have genuine self-esteem and don’t look outside themselves to be reinforced by groups chanting “yes!”; “clams are great because I have always known, deep down, that I’m biologically a clam”), and so someone from the circle needs to jump in, tag the person out, and begin listing new reasons why clams are great. It’s great for creating an ensemble and getting out of your own head.

I always tell my students to trust their bodies in this game.  When a classmate starts to founder (or flounder) our shoulders move forward and we want to jump in and help them (unless you’re a sociopath: “Clams are great because they don’t care about protecting the environment and are willing to dismantle regulations so they can line their own pockets at the expense of the citizenry’s pulmonary health”). “Follow your shoulders,” I yell, and then someone will be naturally impelled to step in and take over.  Usually new groups will be self-conscious and watch their new classmate wither on the vine and dissolve into dust before putting themselves on the spot, but this class jumped in immediately and never let the clammer go longer than four or five statements. They watched out for one another with real energy and commitment, and that’s vital for improv.

A long set of paragraphs (with too many parentheses).  Here’s a respite:

Of course, there is value in formal improv training (please don’t rescind my grant).  Theatrical improv does require an understanding of strong declarations, intelligent choices, deep and authentic listening and a respect for the ensemble. But in order to learn all of these things, students have to feel free to take risks.  When my students were introducing themselves last night (they laughed at all the rhyming names; I wonder if “rhyme” means something else in Urdu), one man said, “I’m here to make a fool of myself,” and everyone chuckled, nervously and with obvious empathy. I told him not to worry, we’d all be fools together, and then spent the first hour of the class doing exercises where we literally said “yes” to everything that happened. During the debriefs (why did that game work?  what skills were we using? what did you like about the game? dislike?) many of the students remarked that they  didn’t feel foolish, that the games worked because everyone lost themselves in the moment and simply played (brilliantly, I might add).  My favorite part of teaching is creating this kind of open environment, sometimes at the expense of content (I’m trying to channel you, Michelle Hutchison, again). It’s a fine balance, asking people to be open and vulnerable and then offering them constructive criticism, and trying to find that balance is what has always interested me most about teaching. I fear I have a reputation for being an easy grader.  Dang.

It also goes without saying that I learned, again, that we have a very limited view of Pakistan in the West (and yet things that go without saying seem to need to be said repeatedly).  Maybe it’s the nature of our new, condensed media (if only Twitter were always pithy) or the fact that our imaginations can only handle so much complexity (I doubt that) or our unwillingness to be vulnerable in front of people who have been portrayed singularly as predators (see: Hawk!), but most of us–in this case, yours truly–would be confounded and chastised by the multiple realities of this place.  Am I making sense?  Here’s a sample of what my students said last night:

“I’ve never improvised, but I do spoken word and poetry slams.”

“The arc of this story (it was a one-word story about Rex, the vanishing dinosaur) didn’t follow the traditional pattern of set-up, building tension, climax, and denoument.  I found this dissatisfying.”

“This is all too simple” (same student as above; for her the class was all denouement without the climax).

“I’ve only done Tartuffe, but it was in Urdu” (apparently people do really care about Moliere, Shanan!).

“This reminds me of Gestalt therapy.”

Oh?  Me: “Here’s a game called Zip-Zap-Zop.  I think you’ll get it.”

I’ll write more about Theatre Wallay soon.  For now, I’ll just say that I’m really lucky to be associated with such a welcoming, exciting, unusual place. The scope of the work they do is mind-boggling (music, dance, classical theater, film making, visual arts and much more).  What’s equally exciting is the theater itself; it’s housed in a place called “The Farm” and was, originally, a poultry farm.  My dad sold chicken wire and other poultry supplies, so perhaps I am coming full circle.  We had our workshop in the central courtyard as the sun set and, by the time we’d played out our clam declarations, we were using flood lights. It was beautiful.

After dinner Sikandar, the night driver, took me up to a restaurant in the Margalla Hills above Islamabad where I met Safeer, a director at Theatre Wallay, for dinner. The place was glamorous. I had biryani. The wait staff was contemptuous. Everyone assures me that Islamabad is “not Pakistan,” just as Los Angeles is not America. So many things overlapped and expanded last night that it’s hard to pin down any one impression. Nothing is that simple: the Pakistani restaurant where we ate could easily have been on Mulholland Drive on a cool spring evening:

For the record, Scott Pruitt, here’s my hometown at its best.  Don’t mess with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A wise improv friend of mine, Keren Gudeman, observed that one of the benefits of the “yes, and…” approach is that it gives the word “no” real power.  On those rare occasions when “no” must be said, the word stands out and is emphatic and intentional. It means something, as in “no means ‘no'” and “what part of the word no didn’t you understand?”  This doesn’t mean “no” has to be punitive or sadistic or exasperated, not at all, but saying “yes” as a discipline gives gravity to this other word that has become reflexive and weightless.  There is an essential place in the world for “no.”

I had a very stringent lesson in “no” today.  The Fulbright Office in Pakistan was crystal-clear on the travel restrictions that come with this grant.  I can’t travel on my own, not even to walk a block or so to the shopping center (Super Market) near the Fulbright House.  If I go with the drivers–and I have to go everywhere with the drivers (who are wonderful)–I need to get permission from the Fulbright Office who, in turn, needs to check with the US Embassy about security threats.  I was warned, advised, prepared, and consulted about this policy. I was not hoodwinked.

Which is why I really can’t be upset that today’s trio of plans was squelched. I was going to go to the Heritage Museum, but it’s Kashmir Solidarity Day and a demonstration is happening in front of the museum. This map may be illuminating:

Likewise, the alternate plan to visit some hiking trails in the Margalla Hills above Islamabad was nixed because I have to avoid public places. To be fair, I have been approved for a visit to a restaurant in the Margalla Hills tomorrow night after my first improv workshop, so I will get to see these trails up close.  Besides, Javed has fed me so extravagantly I doubt I’d have the stamina to heft my girth up the trails without an oxygen tank and a pack mule for my dignity.

I was approved to see the Pakistani movie “Cake,” but just not for a weekend night.

And so I had lunch at the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP) and had a really nice time.  The conversation was wide-ranging and interesting (theater; the value of reunions; cultural misunderstandings; life as an expat; helicopter parenting and the role of student affairs staff members; overly cautious security restrictions; our current president; their current president; the uses of yogurt) and, again, I was moved by the hospitality of my hosts (“have some tea!” “more tea?” “tea is good for your digestion!” “you don’t like tea?”).  I was made to feel welcome and I lingered long beyond the lunch hour.  The biryani (with mint yogurt) reminded me of the incredible late night street food I’d eat after teaching classes in Yangon, and no one would accept my apologies for putting a damper on everyone’s appetite by sweating like a sponge after eating not one, but two, round chili peppers (“it’s nothing! Have more tea!”).  The picture below was taken 8 years ago in Dhaka, Bangladesh, but it approximates today’s lunchtime performance (and Bangladesh was, for a brief time, East Pakistan, so there’s that):

I had to laugh when everyone asked me what I thought of Pakistan.  I’ve seen about four blocks of Islamabad (including a popular Afghani restaurant last night where I had gorma sabzi and green tea) (hello, Caspian friends) and so my impressions are limited.  And, to be honest, I hope my faraway world here can expand beyond these rooms and the car. But being forced (very graciously) to slow down and stay put gave me a wonderful afternoon with some wonderful people whose company I would have missed had I been tearing around town with an agenda.

In improv, we talk about vertical versus horizontal scenes.  Horizontal scenes tend to be plot-driven with each scene member adding new information without developing much of the previous declarations. These are scenes–sometimes very funny scenes–that involve the pirates on Mars who speak French and have adopted Tahitian dachshunds that will become the dark overlords of a society that can only move on tip toe (someone, cut the scene! Please!).  Vertical scenes tend to be narrower in scope but they also tend to be deeper: by concentrating the focus on one moment the improvisers can explore and heighten what’s right in front of them. They don’t have to struggle to create activity.  The plot evolves organically out of the moment at hand. We can discover what’s right in front of us and don’t have to labor to create something outlandish. To clarify, the scene can become about the dachshunds, and that’s enough. So, I suppose today was some kind of vertical scene.  My focus was narrow, but really rewarding.

There’s a lot of really fascinating stuff in the four blocks between the Fulbright House and the USEFP office. Maybe I would have missed this stuff if I’d been hurtling past like I tend to do.  Ali pulled over and walked with me while I took these photos.  He’s a great chaperone.

Improv instructors are constantly asking students to “leap into the unknown” and “embrace ambiguity” and “sit in discomfort.”   This is essential to doing good scenes.  Getting stuck in ruts; relying on schtick; pushing an agenda: all of these default positions guarantee a stale scene that will leave the audience complacently amused (at best) or dissatisfied and hostile (at worst).  It will definitely leave the improviser empty and ego-driven.  I’ve been down this road many times and know the difference between a grim, workmanlike evening and one in which both the performers and the audience make discoveries together.  The latter is preferable.

Maybe improv relies on joyful bewilderment.  I know that sounds like a bumper sticker (“Ask me about my joyful bewilderment!”) (“Thanks! What?!”) but it’s a rare and exciting state of affairs when performers get lost in the moment and invite the audience along with them.  Twin Cities people:  have you seen the group Foley Moley (sp) at HUGE?  They create a 25-minute scene that incorporates a series of pre-recorded sound effects that only the person in the tech booth has heard before.  Watching this group discover plot, relationships, and characters based on random noises is thrilling, and it works so well because the cast embraces these disorienting gifts with abandon.  It’s not that the cast doesn’t get thrown by the unknown.  It’s more that they seem genuinely delighted by being off-balance and uncertain.

Which leads me to my second day in Pakistan.  The sound track is different here and I’m aspiring to find joy in my bewilderment.  It’s about 2:00 and I’ve done okay.  Here’s a photo to provide some context:

After graduating from high school I was a foreign exchange student in Bangkok for a summer (Go Poly! Thank you, AFS) where I learned the essential lesson that wherever I went I would eventually show up.  My Thai teachers took good care of me. My Thai family didn’t kick me out.  I made friends that I’ve kept for over 40 years (hello, Pongsak! Gloria! Hernan!) (and Barbara, belatedly!).  And yet my primary memory of that time was being flattened by homesickness, by being astonished that EVERYTHING was different and I couldn’t find my footing.  There were moments when I could see the beauty of Thailand and feel the affection of the people around me, and there were moments when I cracked up laughing because it was absurd that I was a hairy, six-foot-something American in a Thai school uniform sitting in a math class that wouldn’t make sense even if it were in English, which it wasn’t.  There were many moments, usually after the fact, when I realized that I was SO LUCKY to have been chosen for this exchange program.  And yet if my summer in Bangkok were an improv scene, I’d have entered it and sat down and said, “no! no! no!” and then wept with regret when it was over.  Which I did.

And now, in another stroke of luck, I’m in Pakistan and I am currently bewildered and I am very grateful that I’ve had hundreds of nights of improv to help me navigate and, yes, enjoy this baffling and beautiful place.   Some examples:

So far today I’ve eaten enough (delicious) food to sustain an entire neighborhood over the course of a week-long harvest festival.  Javed, our cook, has kept me company at the long, otherwise empty table, and I appreciate his good humor as much as I do his dahl and aloo and the eight different kinds of fruit whose Urdu names I repeat once and then forget (I do remember the Urdu word for “glass,” however; it’s “glass”).  I’m eating this much because I made a stale quip about “eating the entire kitchen” and then confusing matters further by trying to explain and apologize for (exologize?) my leaving leftovers on the table, all of which was served again along with a whole other meal in the 90-minute break between breakfast and lunch.  On top of this, I agreed to eat with the Fulbright people at the Fulbright office but then was sent home (with Ali, the driver) for being vegetarian even though I said, sincerely, that I’d be happy to eat whatever had been prepared.   And this is in a country where hunger is a very real, very pressing problem.  I am the problem.

A similar thing happened at the Fulbright office where I met with dozens of people who treated me like a beloved guest (I was introduced as “Dr. James Arthur” many times; in Thailand I was given the name “Ahtorn” because it almost-rhymed with my middle name.  And because, in Thai, ahtorn means “worry.”  I think the Thai people understood me better than I did myself).  It was really exciting to meet with them and talk about the upcoming three weeks and all the different groups I’ll get to work with (counselors, psychologists, actors, teachers, rehab technicians, students, and the Fulbright staff) and then, after I promised I’d email them with times that would work for all these wonderful opportunities, my gmail account has betrayed me and shut down because of insecure security.  Come on!  I panicked, and not because I had come face-to-face with the fact that security is an illusion but because I now would have to find ways to get this information to them and not appear like an ungrateful guest who eats all the food (or doesn’t eat it, which feels a bit more obscene) and then vanishes. I guess I’ll have to improvise.  Hmmm.

I exaggerate for (mild) comic effect.  I came back to the Fulbright office to be around people (and give Javed a break) and was given an entirely empty office that had to be cleared by three staff members so that I could have the swivel chair that both faces the window and benefits from the air-conditioner.  I am not worthy.

And yet, in improv terms, each of the generous and confusing gifts is an actual gift, and so I want to stay open to all the embarrassment and confusion and real gratitude that these situations offer.  I do want to say “yes” like a real improviser, both to the excitement of being with these gracious hosts and to the mind-frying realities of culture shock.  I do want to be worthy of this scene, to serve it well and not be such a heavy presence when it doesn’t go how I expect it to go.

(On another note: I teach students at home who have had to leave their countries because of war and oppression and torture.  They haven’t chosen to expose themselves to bewilderment, haven’t chosen to try to learn new words for absolutely everything.  These people need our respect and our good graces.  That they are currently demonized by powerful people is perverted.  Immigration is a complex issue, of course, but decency ought to be the order of the day.  How wretched to be treated like a burden instead of a gift).

I did meet with one of the program directors who volunteered that she had worked with an actor before and that she liked him less and less the more she was exposed to him.  “It’s all schtick,” she said.  I grinned and grimaced and thought, “I’d better shut up.”  And so that’s all for today.

I lied. One more: