Impro
is
a
book written by Keith Johnstone in the 1970’s. It’s fairly
well-known in theatre circles and has been a bible for theatre
practitioners (and scriptwriters too) for many a year. A number of
original ideas are contained within its covers which are a boon to
improvisers and indeed to any creative person. It’s a funny book
and instantly accessible to the reader. The exercises which Johnstone
describes were dreamed up during a spell at the Royal Court Theatre
in London, where he presided over script writing classes and decided
the best way to test whether a play was working was get it on the
floor and act it out. He devised Status
games as
a method to help improvisers generate stories for the stage. These
were very simple and effective. He split human transactions into a
sort of game of one-up-manship (and one-down-manship!) in which
characters were forever trying to get a bit lower or higher than the
person they were acting with. Characters do this in two ways – by
what they say and by their body language. I guess we are all familiar
with the sort of person who trumps every sentence we say in a manner
which somehow belittles us.
A:
I bought some new shoes yesterday.
B:
Those are new?
Or
A:
I seem to be lost.
B:
Haven’t much of a sense of direction have you?
Or
A:
I can’t do long division.
B:
(Breezily) Oh, it’s simple enough.
Johnstone
set out the physical characteristics of the high and low status
character thus: high status characters hold eye contact and won’t
break it. They have an open body posture, stillness, don’t um and
ah. They speak slowly and project the voice. Low status, is the
opposite. A low status character can’t hold eye contact long, their
posture in its extremes might include pigeon toes, knock knees,
slumped shoulders. Their voice is meek and their gestures, fidgety.
As Johnstone says in a later book, Status is really about attitudes
of dominance in human behaviour. He got actors to play different
status’ to develop scenes, with hilarious results.
As
an actor and director, I did alot of work when I was in my twenties
around the concepts and exercises in Impro.
At the same time, I was going on a journey into alternative education
through the works of John Holt and AS Neill. (There is an interesting
cross-over in
Impro
when Johnstone describes teaching at a primary school and how his
work was influenced by John Holt’s ideas.) With the two interests –
impro and alternative education - running side by side, I began to
notice how adults routinely played high status to children,
especially in educational institutions. Having been belittled and
humiliated myself in school for many years by adults, I found myself
watching the body language of teachers and educators. I was
fascinated by their continual attempts to guard and maintain their
status before the young people they were teaching. I could see
clearly that the high status teacher (however ‘nice’ they might
be) is continually attacking the status of the class. In other words
lowering their status and making them feel small. This is incredibly
destructive. The teacher, often terrified of chaos and a class
running riot, keeps the young people down by frightening and subtly
belittling them – ie making them feel less ‘clever’ than the
teacher. I suppose, in schools, as children are forced to go there
and forced to learn things they are largely uninterested in, teachers
ultimately have no choice but to use this methodology. But these
continual attacks on a child’s status and feelings of self-worth
(attacks that go on for ten years of their childhood) have a
devastating affect on their ability to learn – and live. They
probably are the cause of all the anxiety related ‘learning
difficulties’.
It
is well documented that an important component of learning is
confidence, not least having the confidence to keep trying when you
don’t initially succeed at something. To play a musical instrument,
you must fail to play it well for a few months before you begin to
make sounds that another person might want to hear. The ability to
try again when your last attempt at the Moonlight Sonata sounded like
the Devils Mass, fingers bashing all the wrong notes, is essential.
Trudging up the steep learning curve of a musical instrument, the
learner must have the self-confidence and self-esteem to pick
themselves up when they fall over. This mental and emotional approach
to learning demands that the learner has something of an adventurer
about them, it demands a small amount of indomitability. Good
learners don’t care if they fail, they know they’ll get there
eventually. But this is not an attitude that can easily develop if
the status of a learner is being continually diminished,
Being
in the company of somebody who can already do what you are trying to
learn and who is belittling you (often unintentionally, or
unconsciously) or testing you as you do it, erodes confidence in many
people and destroys a learner’s morale. Going back to John Holt, he
tells a story of two musical instruments he took into a primary
school class. One day, he brought out a flute and played it to the
children. He was fairly good on the instrument and was a little
surprised when he offered the instrument to the children and none of
them were interested in attempting to play it. He realised belatedly,
that they were worried about failing to play it. They knew their
playing would seem hopeless in comparison to what they had just
heard. In a school class, even a humane one run by John Holt, they
probably already felt small enough. Some time later, he took a
trumpet into the class. He couldn’t play this, and this was obvious
from the terrible noises he made. This time, the children leapt to
their feet and clamoured to try it out.
Being
around an expert can be handy at times when you really, really
want to do something, but if they are always there, judging you,
marking you, correcting, the learners status can plummet
irretrievably and they will give up, or not even attempt to learn
things. It is often better for a learner if they are not around
somebody who knows it all.
I’m
not suggesting here that adults should falsely bolster a child’s
self esteem with lots of well
done,
or you
can do it.
If you think about it, that still leaves an adult in a position of
high status encouragement, offering rewards and incentives. I’m
suggesting that adults get out of the way and that they don’t
elevate themselves or bolster their own prestige around young people
or learners. There is a large temptation to do this. Many a teacher
feels that they won’t be taken seriously by a learner unless they
look really impressive and come across as an expert. Maybe so. But it
will also whittle away at the learners belief that they can ever be
so good. And that temptation to elevate oneself, is usually more
about the teachers need to be taken seriously, to be esteemed, to
feel BIG, than it is about helping someone to learn. It is more about
a teacher’s fear of not being thought worthwhile by those they are
teaching. It is about the teacher’s own insecurity. Atticus Finch
in To Kill A Mockingbird is the best shot in town, but he never tells
his son and his son doesn’t know. Atticus doesn’t need to elevate
his status over his son because Atticus is already big inside. I’m
suggesting teachers do as little as possible around those who are
learning, and intervene when asked and then not for too long. And
also in a way that doesn’t elevate themselves into some wonderful
high status expert. Dropping one’s status around other people,
especially children, when they are learning is nearly always helpful
to them. (By this I mean quite literally changing our body language
and watching that we are not always raising ourselves above them by
what we say.) It might not be so gratifying to that part of us that
feels small ourselves and wants to be esteemed, but I think it leads
those we help to learn, to have a different form of respect for us:
that which we always feel towards those who treat us with the dignity
that every human being deserves, no matter how young or old or
insignificant they may seem.
Keith
Johnstone’s book Impro is widely available. It’s the only book
about creativity I have ever read that is genuinely useful. It also
has in it, many games that are great to play, for young and old,
which foster the imagination, spontaneity, storytelling, and above
all laughter.
