Yes, and … Islamabad (and Beyond)

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:

 

 

I’m here (can you be anywhere else?) (a shaming question, ultimately).  Bill Bryson said this of foreign travel: “Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”  Not sure if my guesses have been interesting (“we have those kind of trees at home, I think”), but Islamabad has been fascinating, all 16 hours of it.  So, without any real understanding of what’s going on, here’s what I’ve done:

I found my way to the Fulbright House with the help of Sikandar, the night driver and a really engaging tour guide.  I like arriving in the middle of the night (3:00 am) because the morning is such a revelation.  Here’s what I woke up to, along with wonderful birdsong and the faint scent of smoke: 

Not bad, ya think? (Hello, Heather Meyer).  For the foreseeable future I’m the only resident in the Fulbright House, along with a cook, two drivers, and three guards.  Javed, the cook, has made me two delicious meals (including yellow dahl,  an okra and eggplant dish, and rice that seemed like it could float if gravity were different).  It’s strange to be sitting alone at a huge table with three English-language Pakistani newspapers.  I feel like Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane,” although I’ll be more like the Orson Welles of the Paul Masson wine commercials if I keep eating like this.  To distract from that image, here’s what the outside of the house looks like:

It’s odd having this many people devoted to my well-being.  An imbalance, to say the least.  The day driver (Ali, also very nice) took Ahsan (from the Fulbright office) and me out to do some errands, all of which would have been mundane at home but were fascinating here in Pakistan.  I got a SIM card for the cell phone and actually figured out how to add a contact on a Pakistani device.  I should go home now because this is the achievement of the century (for me).  There are armed guards and metal detectors everywhere, and the phone outlet was no exception.  Same thing with the super market (called Super Market) where Javed, who joined us, took me to get some shampoo, tooth paste, and corn flakes.  As a vegetarian I didn’t buy the delicacy in the photo below, although I have to say they sound tempting:

Before dinner Sikandar took me on a tour of the Red Zone which is where all the governmental buildings are.  Photography is forbidden, so I can’t post any photos of the beautiful, stark, angular, glowing-white supreme court building or the turreted office of the prime minister.  Islamabad is a concocted city; it only became the capital in 1961 and was built specifically for that purpose.  I read in some travel blog that parts of it look like a wealthy Southern California suburb.  That’s kind of true.  The architecture is all very horizontal and angular with gleaming white surfaces flecked with quartz, but the crazy vegetation and the brash neon signs undercut the Mission Viejo-ness of it all.  (No offense, Mission Viejo) (well, a little offense, actually).

(Imagine a photo of a government building here)

After dinner Sikandar took me to Saeed Book Bank (“Book Sellers to the Nation: Making Books Accessible and Knowledge Affordable”) where I bought two more Mohsin Hamid books.  Truly wonderful to amble around this enormous, three-story bookstore.  If they called it a Book Emporium I would applaud that choice.  The Barnes and Noble in my neighborhood (“Book Sellers to the Ambivalent: Making Independent Bookstores Vanish and Coffee-Drinks Unaffordable”) was replaced by a mini-Target and so I’ve missed wandering about the stacks and coming across something I didn’t know I needed.  Here’s something I didn’t even know existed until tonight, which is a consequence of ambling without a target/Target (sorry):

Tomorrow I meet with someone from Theatre Wallay, the organization that is hosting me here in Pakistan.  I’m looking forward to getting started.  I also realize how incredibly lucky I am to be here.  All day I kept thinking, “I’m in Pakistan.”  How weird.  I do like feeling unmoored and uncertain.  Everything feels like it’s slightly beyond my control.  This morning I poured honey into my lap instead of on for the toast.  For instance.

Sweating and dehydrated in the Abu Dabhi airport, but happy to be on my way. I like long flights, mostly because I’m accomplishing something tangible through patience and passivity.  Not sure if this reflects well.  Read “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid (thanks, Barbara) and felt a lot of sorrow for our disrupted world, and yet the way he described displacement–both by geography and by time–was moving.  Also watched “Phantom Thread” and appreciated both my sister who is not creepy and my wardrobe that is not punishingly impeccable. The airplane food was hot and soft and salty and I realized, again, that I do better in situations where people observe lines.  Those who travel with kids are brave.

And, since this blog is about improv, I think I had a call-back of sorts today (we called them “lotuses” when I started in the Monday Company at the Brave New Workshop; a scene or a character or a single line would keep reappearing throughout the show, gaining traction with each iteration).   Here it is: when I moved to Minnesota in 1992 I arrived by way of Fargo; the Mall of America was opening that weekend (dang) and every hotel room from Alexandria to Rochester was booked.  This was frustrating, and when I found out that the high-pitched screaming sound that was blaring whenever I got out of the car was a tornado siren I was unnerved (I asked a guy at a gas station what I should do; he said, “go inside,” and then drove off).  However, in Annandale, MN  a man overheard me talking to a check-in clerk and said, “stay the night in our church.  We have a cot and a music room.”  And so I did, along with a Vietnamese couple and their 3-month-old child.  It was perfect.  I’m not one for supernatural signs, but I did feel like Minnesota was going to take care of me, and it has for over 26 years.  I love my adopted state; for all the frigidity it has been kind and gracious and welcoming.   I know this isn’t always the case (do read “Exit West”), but sometimes, for all sorts of reasons, it is.

And then today, at Heathrow Airport, I heard my name over the loud speaker (it wasn’t a tornado warning) (see: a call-back) (or a lotus) and went to the Etihad desk where the gate agent wanted to see if I had a proper visa for Pakistan.

After I showed it to her she said, “you look disoriented!  Let’s get you on the plane right away.”  Now, I am sweaty and dehydrated, but apparently I also looked dazed (that “Phantom Thread” movie was unsettling), and so she ushered me onto the plane before boarding began.  I felt weird and kind of guilty that I was singled out for this special treatment (and I do wonder if my American-going-to-Pakistan status makes me unusual or suspect), but it also felt humbling to have people I don’t even know watching out for me.  Just like the guy in Annandale.

I’m also humbled at how  much of the world speaks English.  We big, sweaty Americans take up a lot of room. Just ask my latest seat mate.  He could answer because his English is perfect.

 

 

When I was a teenager I used to harangue my mother with questions about hypothetical situations, many of them involving Eleanor Roosevelt (“would you rather have dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt or be able to breathe under water?”). Eleanor Roosevelt impressed me; she was a fearful kid who grew up to be the most powerful woman of her day.  “Do one thing every day that scares you,”  she wrote.  I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m really excited and, well, kind of scared because I don’t know what’s going to happen.  Like in improv.  Here’s a picture of the young Eleanor Roosevelt, whose maiden name and married name were exactly the same.  More when I arrive in Islamabad.

Leaving for Islamabad in eight days; sitting at Dennis’ house trying to figure out how to post a blog.  No pronouns but lots of gerunds.  More soon!