Do Something

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!