RSS feedI saw quite a few impro scenes the other day, 50 or so high school kids learning the ropes, and saw lots of great examples of how society negatively indoctrinates us as we grow up. We’re taught subconsciously (conciously even) that the individual is the most important, and that not knowing something, or not being good at something is embarrassing or inferior to our peers.
There’s a few studies going around at the moment showing that communal families, like prides of lions, are the more traditional and genetic programmed form of society for human beings, and only the last x thousand years of civilisation and religious belief has brought us this monogamous and egostistical structure of a society. I don’t know if that’s the case, but there’s some pretty strong programming inside the human animal that seems to take to egotism like a duck to water.
Or as Ripley in Aliens put it…
I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!
Protection from being embarrassed or appearing inferior, usually ends up in a high status competition, a simple fight or flight response, and in impro most often as fight, as again, we all think we’ve got a chance if there’s no physical fight required. Ooh, do we love to argue?! You see it in adult impro too, but with kids, it’s so much more pure and obvious.
Here’s a classic scene from today with four year 11 students, set on a beach.
Cassy: Look, what’s that?
Nathan: I don’t know, what is it Karen?
Karen: I don’t know.
[ at this stage, they’re all standing there pointing at this space on the floor ]
Kelly: I know what it is.
Nathan: What is it?
Kelly: I don’t know [ turns away from the audience and walks to the back of the stage ].
[ commit damn you! name it! (i said to myself) ]
Cassy: It’s a hole! [ Yes! A hole to another dimension? A city under the sea? Let’s see where it leads! ]
There was another scene with two blokes watching TV, changing channels, which ended up in a verbal slanging match “you want to have go?”, “no, you want to have a go?”, with the other two players trying to hold them back physically. All because they couldn’t think what would happen next. Kind of an implied “I can’t think of anything, but I’m not going to look uncool as well.” Get sucked into the TV, a celebrity comes out of the TV, the remote control starts changing life itself… It’s easy to see it from outside the scene, but not so simple when we’ve been taught from a young age that there’s lots of wrong answers, and wrong answers are bad.
Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I love impro, it helps break down those emotional and egotistical barriers, teaches team work, and promotes free thinking. It should be mandatory for high schools students. If only it were available when I was at school.