Bromides

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: