Blocking.
Blocking is saying ‘No’ and accepting is saying ‘Yes’,
right? Well, hold on now, partner. I’m going to go ahead and have to… disagree…
with you on that one. As I wrote in my last post, blocking is the negation of
an established reality in a scene. So what does that mean? The reality of any
scene changes as quickly as 24 frames a second. If we accept, which we should,
that making an offer is doing ANYTHING at all on stage, AND we accept that
offers define the reality of an improv scene, which they do, THEN the reality
of the scene is being molded ALL THE TIME. A quirk of an eyebrow, a change of
direction in movement, breaking or creating eye-contact with a scene partner,
throat clearing, being too pre-occupied with a physical task to respond to your
scene partner’s verbal offer, all of these things are offers to the scene that
affect the reality that is being co-created moment by moment. To BLOCK an offer
is to ignore or disregard or shut down or negate what’s been given to the
scene. This frequently occurs with improvisers who are not present in the scene, instead being elsewhere in their mind
wondering about where the story is going to go or what on earth they are going
to do if they actually have to improvise climbing a mountain or something.
I’m going to switch gears here and interject on my own thoughts because I’d like to clarify that I don’t think blocking is evil and totally destructive to a scene. Frankly, some offers deserve to be blocked. BUT, the point of this post is to bring blocking more into conscious awareness, so that we may make informed decisions while improvising. It’s like driving a car… there are rules of the road which should be followed and you shouldn’t flip a U-ey or turn brodies in the parking lot or speed or drive the wrong way on a One Way street… BUT SOMETIMES THAT’S FUN TO DO and more importantly sometimes it’s necessary. Have you ever driven the wrong way down a One Way? Did you do it on purpose or was it on accident? When you drive the wrong way on a One Way on accident, I think the tendency is to feel like an idiot… this is largely due to the fact that there are other drivers honking at you or looking at you like you’ve farted in their personal elevator. Who likes that feeling? It’s pretty similar to the feeling you get when you’ve blocked a scene or offer in a BIG WAY. When you’re going to be late getting to an interview and you can see your destination a half a block away on the wrong end of a One Way street, and no traffic is coming, and your alternative is to loop around the three city blocks it’ll take to go the LEGAL way and be late for your chance to get a job, you might drive the wrong way and feel AWESOME about it. Seriously, though, follow the rules of the road people; there are enough bad drivers out there. Point is, blocking doesn’t end a scene and sometimes it serves the scene by giving it forward progress or adding crucial information. I love this (paraphrased) quote from Randy Dixon about offers and I think it applies to blocks too: There are no bad offers, only bad follow-throughs.
I’m going to switch gears here and interject on my own thoughts because I’d like to clarify that I don’t think blocking is evil and totally destructive to a scene. Frankly, some offers deserve to be blocked. BUT, the point of this post is to bring blocking more into conscious awareness, so that we may make informed decisions while improvising. It’s like driving a car… there are rules of the road which should be followed and you shouldn’t flip a U-ey or turn brodies in the parking lot or speed or drive the wrong way on a One Way street… BUT SOMETIMES THAT’S FUN TO DO and more importantly sometimes it’s necessary. Have you ever driven the wrong way down a One Way? Did you do it on purpose or was it on accident? When you drive the wrong way on a One Way on accident, I think the tendency is to feel like an idiot… this is largely due to the fact that there are other drivers honking at you or looking at you like you’ve farted in their personal elevator. Who likes that feeling? It’s pretty similar to the feeling you get when you’ve blocked a scene or offer in a BIG WAY. When you’re going to be late getting to an interview and you can see your destination a half a block away on the wrong end of a One Way street, and no traffic is coming, and your alternative is to loop around the three city blocks it’ll take to go the LEGAL way and be late for your chance to get a job, you might drive the wrong way and feel AWESOME about it. Seriously, though, follow the rules of the road people; there are enough bad drivers out there. Point is, blocking doesn’t end a scene and sometimes it serves the scene by giving it forward progress or adding crucial information. I love this (paraphrased) quote from Randy Dixon about offers and I think it applies to blocks too: There are no bad offers, only bad follow-throughs.
When I had been improvising for about 5 years I took a big ol’ Tour and
traveled to a bunch of cities and sat in on workshops and watched all sorts of
teachers teach and students improvise. At first, I was really bothered by the
amount of low-level blocking being done (Why can’t you just accept that you
wrecked the car?), but then I had a conversation in Winnipeg with a good friend
of mine, Mr. Sim, and he reminded me that regardless of what another improviser
“does to me” on stage with their offers or blocks, it’s up to me to choose how
I respond. It’s the follow through that is important. If I’m in a scene and I
make a sweet-ass offer to my scene partner and their head is elsewhere and they
absently block my offer, the audience is either going to hate them or love them based on MY RESPONSE.
If I react with anger and call them out for blocking me, I’ve made them look
bad (and sure, they may have deserved to look bad) but if I ACCEPT that their block
is the new reality of the scene I have no time to make them pay, only time to exist
in the new reality.
So here, let me get back to the example I gave in my previous post:
So here, let me get back to the example I gave in my previous post:
P1 walks out on stage and sits on a block and begins whimpering
while holding their hand. P2 walks out and stage and they strike up a
conversation. P1 tells P2 that they’ve slammed their hand in the door and it
hurts real bad.
P2: That sounds horrible, here, let me cut it off for you.
P1: Yes, and after you’re done I’d like my stub wrapped up real nice with Toy Story bandages.
P2: That sounds horrible, here, let me cut it off for you.
P1: Yes, and after you’re done I’d like my stub wrapped up real nice with Toy Story bandages.
And I asked the question: If P1 had said: “No thank you, I’d
prefer to keep my hand.” would that have been a ‘Yes’ or a block?
“No thank you, I’d
prefer to keep my hand.” Is an acceptance of the reality of the scene; which is
that someone, in this case a stranger, has offered to cut off a perfectly good
hand that has only been hurt in a door-slamming. There is no ‘and…’ involved in
the line, but it certainly accepts the reality. To further the example to a
‘Yes, and…’ the line could be, “No thank you, I’d prefer to keep my hand. I’m
just waiting on my pain medication.” This could inspire the psychopath (P2) to
slam his hand in the door to get some pain meds, or maybe indicate that he is
here for a job interview and he only asked to severe the hand because he wanted
some job experience. Accepting moves the scene forward, blocking stalls the
scene… generally. If you are in a scene and it feels stalled, rest assured some
blocking has happened.
Trust.
Trust is wonderful and lack of trust is terrible. Most often
I see improv trust in the relationships between performers, determined, of
course, by past experiences that no longer mean anything. Someone who trusts me
as a fellow performer will improvise with me differently than they improvise
with someone they don’t trust as a fellow performer. I will let that person
down, from time to time, but because I’ve built a lot of “past performance”
trust, it’s “That’s cool man, didn’t work this time.” The person they don’t
trust, however, just can’t do anything right. Every time they are let down by
someone they don’t trust, it’s “OF COURSE they just destroyed that, OF COURSE
they did.” This is all just personal judgment, and my preference is to not allow
that to come into the equation at all. Every scene is a new scene. Every show is a new show. Every moment is a
new moment. A decision shouldn’t be made on how much to trust the people you’re
improvising with, you just keep your set point at full trust. And if you
are let down again? Just full trust again. And again? Full trust again. Does
this sound difficult? Impossible? That’s all on you, bro. It’s all up to you to
give trust, it’s not up to your fellow improviser to gain it back. And what if
you don’t want to? Well, that’s the problem.
For me, my toolbelt is made up of -Be Present- -Be Playful- -Be Confident- and my improv suit is made up of -Trust-
Trust in improv extends WAY beyond just interpersonal trust, it extends to trusting that the lights will come down when they need to, to trusting that the scene won’t be victim to an ill-timed edit or trusting that the scene WILL get edited when it needs to be, or trusting that the audience will “get it” and you don’t have to over-explain yourself, or trusting that the audience is with you even when they are quiet, or trusting that the scene doesn’t need to be saved by a crazy 3rd character entry that’s super funny. My bottom line here is that as improvisers it serves us to trust and it limits us to distrust. It can feel risky to trust so unconditionally but I promise it pays off huge in possibilities for the scene, show, on-stage relationship.
An improv game that trust is consistently on display is Freeze Tag. This is the game where 2 people are in a scene and they go about their business and get frozen by an offstage improviser who comes in and takes a player out and starts a brand new scene. Sometimes this game will be a collection of scene snippets, lasting no longer than 3 lines before another FREEZE is called and a new scene snippet starts. (Sidenote: 3 line freeze scenes are FINE, but not if every freeze scene is 3 lines. Variety is key here, people. I’ll post about variety in a future blog post!) So what happens to make all the scenes 3 lines? Individuals in the group start to believe that if they DON’T call FREEZE early in the new scene they won’t get a chance to get into the game, because EVERYONE is calling FREEZE to get into the game. There is no consideration for the fact that maybe the audience was really enjoying the beginning of that scene and maybe it had some legs to run on, instead the trust deteriorates and it’s every improviser for themselves. This doesn’t happen all the time. Hardly. But when it DOES happen, it’s glaringly obvious that no one trusts anyone else to allow a scene to progress. This can happen in longform improvisational pieces too, but the Freeze Tag is a great example of a shortform game where you can SEE THE TRUST. Beyond just the editing from scene to scene, you’ll see distrusting improvisers initiate even when they aren’t the ones tapping into the scene. “They didn’t say anything when I thought they should have, so I just started talking.” TRUST that the scene isn’t going to play out like you expect, and be okay with it. I said something cool once in a workshop, on accident I bet, and I’ll put it here because it ties into trust. Don’t have expectations, have anticipations. Anticipating what your scene partner may do is a wonderful tool and mindset, while expecting what they will do sets you up for continual disappointment in your scene partners.
How is it, do you think, that some improvisers who have never met can take the stage for an improv set and come away with an inspiring piece of theatre full of moments of deep trust and support? Are they just that good? Maybe they have learned to trust unconditionally and it leads them to being able to improvise with anyone.
Mutual trust, shared between scene-partners in improvisation will lead to magical, glorious improv moments. Unexpected beauty in silence, only achieved through the trust that silence is okay, is not possible if one of the improvisers is distrusting. Trust opens up the doors of possibility; distrust prevents the scene from leaving the room.
For me, my toolbelt is made up of -Be Present- -Be Playful- -Be Confident- and my improv suit is made up of -Trust-
Trust in improv extends WAY beyond just interpersonal trust, it extends to trusting that the lights will come down when they need to, to trusting that the scene won’t be victim to an ill-timed edit or trusting that the scene WILL get edited when it needs to be, or trusting that the audience will “get it” and you don’t have to over-explain yourself, or trusting that the audience is with you even when they are quiet, or trusting that the scene doesn’t need to be saved by a crazy 3rd character entry that’s super funny. My bottom line here is that as improvisers it serves us to trust and it limits us to distrust. It can feel risky to trust so unconditionally but I promise it pays off huge in possibilities for the scene, show, on-stage relationship.
An improv game that trust is consistently on display is Freeze Tag. This is the game where 2 people are in a scene and they go about their business and get frozen by an offstage improviser who comes in and takes a player out and starts a brand new scene. Sometimes this game will be a collection of scene snippets, lasting no longer than 3 lines before another FREEZE is called and a new scene snippet starts. (Sidenote: 3 line freeze scenes are FINE, but not if every freeze scene is 3 lines. Variety is key here, people. I’ll post about variety in a future blog post!) So what happens to make all the scenes 3 lines? Individuals in the group start to believe that if they DON’T call FREEZE early in the new scene they won’t get a chance to get into the game, because EVERYONE is calling FREEZE to get into the game. There is no consideration for the fact that maybe the audience was really enjoying the beginning of that scene and maybe it had some legs to run on, instead the trust deteriorates and it’s every improviser for themselves. This doesn’t happen all the time. Hardly. But when it DOES happen, it’s glaringly obvious that no one trusts anyone else to allow a scene to progress. This can happen in longform improvisational pieces too, but the Freeze Tag is a great example of a shortform game where you can SEE THE TRUST. Beyond just the editing from scene to scene, you’ll see distrusting improvisers initiate even when they aren’t the ones tapping into the scene. “They didn’t say anything when I thought they should have, so I just started talking.” TRUST that the scene isn’t going to play out like you expect, and be okay with it. I said something cool once in a workshop, on accident I bet, and I’ll put it here because it ties into trust. Don’t have expectations, have anticipations. Anticipating what your scene partner may do is a wonderful tool and mindset, while expecting what they will do sets you up for continual disappointment in your scene partners.
How is it, do you think, that some improvisers who have never met can take the stage for an improv set and come away with an inspiring piece of theatre full of moments of deep trust and support? Are they just that good? Maybe they have learned to trust unconditionally and it leads them to being able to improvise with anyone.
Mutual trust, shared between scene-partners in improvisation will lead to magical, glorious improv moments. Unexpected beauty in silence, only achieved through the trust that silence is okay, is not possible if one of the improvisers is distrusting. Trust opens up the doors of possibility; distrust prevents the scene from leaving the room.
Again, any questions, comments, debate topics, are welcome.
Happy improvising.
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