Exercises
A lot of the time we take the atmosphere of a place for granted. We don’t even notice it because we expect it to be like that. Walk into a busy pub and you expect it to be lively. Sit alone on the rocks by a stormy sea and of course you feel the power of nature and the insignificance of mankind. A funeral feels like a funeral. A romantic evening feels like a romantic evening. In fact, the only time we really become aware that there is an atmosphere around us is when it changes. When someone or something ‘breaks’ the atmosphere.
Funnily enough I sometimes used to drink in a pub near a theatre, even though I wasn’t working in that theatre. It was always a lively place before a show because it would be full of people who had come from out of town by coach. Everyone would be jabbering away in excited anticipation of a good night out. One evening I walked into the pub and there was an extraordinary change in the atmosphere. It was just as full of people as usual and the people were just as excited about a night out. If anything they were even more animated than usual, but the atmosphere was entirely different. And what was the difference? The difference was the sound. It was very quiet. Hardly any noise at all. And the reason it was so quiet was that the people in the pub were all deaf and they were jabbering away using only their hands. Signing.
Pubs and restaurants often try to create a ‘good atmosphere’ with lighting and music. Low lighting creates an intimate atmosphere. Familiar music creates a friendly atmosphere. Classical music creates a sophisticated atmosphere. Atmosphere is around us all the time, and we hardly notice it until it goes wrong.
One year I drove round Italy on my motorbike for five weeks. I was camping, I was on my own, and I was completely self-contained. It was a journey into my soul. It rained all through France, which is pretty depressing on a motorbike and massively depressing when you are camping. Imagine it. You’re out in the rain all day. You get to a campsite and the campsite is partially flooded. You unroll the tent – which is still wet from yesterday – onto the wet ground. You set it up in a place that avoids as many puddles as possible. You get into the tent with your motorcycling wetsuit still on, and you try to remove your wet clothes in a space that’s smaller than your average toilet and only about three feet high. Then you try to cook without setting the tent on fire. It’s not a lot of fun. The next day it’s still raining, and you have to pack up and set off for another day of motorcycling in the rain. It was all very gloomy.
I can’t remember how long it took to get to Italy. Four days perhaps. But as I emerged from a tunnel through the Alps the atmosphere was completely different. The sun was shining and my spirits lifted.
Nevertheless, I was on my own, and I didn’t speak French, Italian, German, or any language except English. Pathetic, I know, and I’m ashamed of it, but that’s my problem. One day I will . . . One day.
I’d never been to Italy before, but I knew that it was famous for Art. So in order to plan some sort of route before I embarked on the trip, I had asked an artist friend of mine where he thought I should go and what he thought I should look out for. He’d given me good advice. He’d said, ‘Why don’t you focus on Piero della Francesca and Giotto. A lot of their paintings are frescos: painted straight onto the walls and ceilings. And because it is hard to move a wall into an art gallery, you have to travel to see their paintings in situ. You could plan a whole route travelling from church to church.’ A good idea, I thought. So before I went I bought some art books and a map and I planned my journey.
It was extraordinary to drive fifty miles into the middle of nowhere to find a church with only one painting in it. I particularly remember seeing ‘The Pregnant Madonna’ by Piero della Francesca. You could hardly believe that such an important and precious work of art is just there, on the end wall of a tiny church in the middle of rural Italy, unguarded and unprotected.
The experience is unsettling (I revisited this painting in 2006 and amazingly enough, they have moved the wall! The little church is locked and devoid of art and the picture has been carefully taken away and restored, and is on display in a small museum nearby. Things change).
The first time you see Assisi it can’t fail to impress. The route that I took had me approaching it across a plain and from miles off you can see the Basilica di San Francesco clinging to the steep edge of Mount Asi. I’ll never forget that first sighting.
I had a good time in Assisi, looking at the fabulous paintings of Giotto in the Basilica and strolling around the shops full of Francis of Assisi sandals and religious icons. In fact, I became rather obsessed with Francis during my stay there, reading his life story (and later on trekking through the mountains to find La Verna where he received the stigmata). So while I was in Assisi I had to visit La Porziuncola where he had lived. This is a tiny chapel on the plain outside Assisi. It’s not much bigger than a garden shed, but it’s easy to find because they have built an enormous church over it and around it called the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli (the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels).
It was a really hot day when I visited. I drove down from Assisi, parked my bike and went in search of an ice cream. The tourists were milling around; the teenagers were zipping about amongst them on their scooters; and the stalls and kiosks were doing a roaring trade in tourist guides, ice creams, pizzas and water. Anything and everything that could make them a few lire. It was very hot and the sunshine was very bright. It was noisy. People were shouting and laughing. There was lots of hustle and bustle, and I felt that relaxed confusion you get when you are on holiday in a hot country.
Eventually I decided to go to see La Porziuncola and headed for the entrance of the Basilica. And here’s the point. As I stepped inside, everything changed. After the brightness of the sunshine it was so dark I could hardly see. After the midday heat it was cool. Cool. After the bustle of the crowd it was calm and hushed. After the noise of the tourists there was cathedral silence punctuated only by the melancholy sound of an organ coming from somewhere in the musky, shadowy depths. The air was cool to breathe and laced with the smell of incense. When people spoke they spoke in hushed, respectful whispers.
The whole atmosphere had changed, and the way people behaved and spoke changed with it.
After taking a look at Saint Francis’s little church and letting my imagination roam at will, filling the little shed with animals and birds and Saint Francis himself, I stepped outside the Basilica once again. Back to the heat. Back to the noise. Back to the smell of pizza. Back to the blinding sunshine. Back to the shouting. Back to the entirely different atmosphere of bustling tourism.
WHATEVER WE ARE DOING, THERE IS ALWAYS AN ATMOSphere around us, and these different atmospheres affect our behaviour. But the funny thing is, people in an improvisation usually just accept the atmosphere of the room they are improvising in and go with that.
However, if improvisers are able to imagine that they are in a different place and they allow their imagination to create the atmosphere, then they will be able to make the place come alive for themselves, affecting the way they move and talk. It will even affect what they say and how they think.
So in order to explore this and use it in an improvisation, it is important for improvisers to analyse various atmospheres and register the impact that these atmospheres have on their behaviour.
Exercises
Soundscapes
Divide the group into two halves. Each half has to decide on a place that has a particular atmosphere but also has a mixture of sounds – a factory, a fairground, the jungle, etc. (If possible each group should work in a separate room so the other group doesn’t know what they are working on.) Then each group has to recreate the sounds of the environment they have chosen. Although it is acceptable to use props to make noises, the more the soundscape can be created using their own voices and bodies, the better. It’s also best to keep spoken words out of this unless they are indistinct and in the distance. Subtlety is good. Tiny sounds and noises work well. When each group feels they have created an acceptable soundscape, then one group should lie on the floor with their eyes shut and the other group should ‘perform’ their soundscape around them, seeing how realistic they can make the atmosphere. The group lying on the floor should be able to guess where the soundscape is supposed to be.
When one group has done this, the other should have a go.
RATIONALE This exercise gets people working together as a group, negotiating their ideas, and learning from each other. But it is also a good exploration of atmosphere because the soundscapes really do conjure up the feeling of a particular environment for the people who are lying on the floor and listening.
A Place I Know
With each person working on their own, but with everyone working at the same time, ask them all to sit comfortably, shut their eyes, and think of somewhere that they know well and that has a particular atmosphere. It could be their bedroom, it could be a fairground that they used to visit when they were children, it could be a club they visited last night, but it’s important that it is a place they can remember quite clearly. Then ask them to use their senses to isolate various aspects of the atmosphere. I usually talk them through this in the following way:
‘What can you hear? Is it quiet or is it noisy? What noises are close to you – the sound of your own breathing, the ticking of a clock? And what sounds are in the distance – dogs barking in the street, wind in the trees, falling rain? Also think of the sounds in between – someone cooking downstairs and clattering pots and pans, traffic outside an open window, music in the background. When you have identified these sounds, start thinking about what you can smell. Can you smell the cooking downstairs? Can you smell the ocean or the cut grass? Is there a sweet fresh smell where you are or is it musky and damp? Is there a smell of incense or perfume? Smoke or hot coals? Does the smell leave a taste in your mouth? Does it make you happy, sad, frightened or calm? What atmosphere does the smell evoke?
‘Now think about how you feel physically. Are you warm or cold? Is there a breeze or is the air still? Are you sitting in a comfortable place surrounded by cushions or are you on a hard wooden bench? Are you bundled up in warm clothes or does the sun burn your skin? How does the surrounding world affect you physically?
‘Lastly, think about what you can see. Keep you eyes closed and try to imagine every detail of the place you are recreating in your mind. Is it bright or is it gloomy? Can you see lots of colours or is the general aspect pale and washed out? What details can you see in your imagination? Try to remember everything. The colour of the walls, the carpet, the furniture. What is on the shelves? What is outside the window? Is the place you are in lit by electricity or by the sun? Can you see other people? Can you see animals? Think of all the details. Remember all the colours. Remember how the shadows fall.’
When they are fully immersed in their imaginations, you can tell them that you are going to ask them individually to describe the place they are ‘in’. As you talk to each person, it’s best to get close to them, and to ask your questions quietly. They should keep their eyes shut, continue to imagine they are in their particular place, and then just answer the questions.
When you have finished with the first person, he or she can then become a ‘questioner’ and each of you can go and talk to a new person. When you have finished questioning the new people, they too can become ‘questioners’ and so on.
RATIONALE This exercise is to get people to think of the details of a place they are imagining, and to explore how the atmosphere impacts on their senses. As they do it, they will discover that the memory of the place affects their thoughts and behaviour.
DEBRIEFING Discuss what happened during this exercise. Was it easy to ‘feel’ the atmosphere of the places they were imagining? Did the atmosphere slow them down and make them calm, or did it excite them and make them want to move around? Did it affect the way they answered the questions? Did it affect the way they thought or the way they talked?
Exploring Atmosphere
This exercise is based on my experience in Assisi as described above.
With each person working on their own, but with everyone working at the same time, talk the group through the change of atmosphere from outside to inside a much-visited Italian cathedral. Before you start, describe the layout of the room you are working in, so they know exactly what part of that room represents the outside world, what part represents the cathedral doors, and what part represents the interior of the cathedral. Start off describing all the detail of a hot busy Italian street, going through the senses. The heat of the sun on their bodies. The sound of Italian conversations, busy traffic and scooters buzzing past. The smell of pizzas cooking nearby. The brightness of the sun and the colour of the sky, etc. And then ask them to walk into the cathedral and feel the change of atmosphere. Again, using sensory experience, describe the dark, gloomy interior. The quiet stillness. The smell of incense. The hushed sound of an organ playing somewhere, etc. When they have experienced the atmosphere of the cathedral interior have them walk out into the bright sunshine, again describing the change of atmosphere. The blinding sunlight. The hustle and bustle of a city, etc. When they are all ‘outside’ get them to imagine that they can see an old barn outside the cathedral which has a spiritual significance. Tell them it was used by Saint Francis to keep his animals in. They can take photographs of it but they can’t get close because it is across the other side of a river. Also the sun is so bright after the gloom of the cathedral that they can hardly see the barn at all.
Improvisations
Cathedral
This group improvisation should follow on from the exercise above. Tell them that they are going to go through the whole sequence again, but this time it will be a group improvisation. They are to be a group of tourists who are sightseeing together. Tell them they have to stay together as a group and also tell them that you won’t be talking them through the improvisation this time, but they should just follow the sequence. Of course, they can now chat as they go. Get them started and then let them explore the scenario in their own time.
The improvisation can stop when they see the barn across the other side of the river, but if the group is quite accomplished, you can continue without a break by adding the ‘Virgin Mary’ improvisation described below.
RATIONALE They now know how to explore atmosphere through its impact on their senses, so this is a chance for them to use that in conjunction with a proper improvisation, where the changes of atmosphere are supporting – rather than dominating – an improvisation.
Virgin Mary
This is a continuation of the ‘Cathedral’ improvisation and can be added without a break. However, it is quite a bold step into unexplored territory and should be used with caution.
When they eventually come out of the cathedral as a group and see the barn across the river I usually say, ‘As you squint your eyes in the blinding sunlight, you see a vision of the Virgin Mary rising above the roof of the barn.’ See how they react!
RATIONALE In a way it is a bit of a trick to add that to the end when they don’t expect it, because they don’t know how to react. Often they will just stare blankly and wait to see what everyone else does or they will say things like ‘I wonder how they do that?’ or ‘It must be a trick.’ But although it’s not an exploration of atmosphere, it’s an important part of the improvisation training. First of all, it teaches them that they must get used to staying in the moment – staying in the improvisation – whatever happens or whatever is thrown at them. This is rather like the moment in Midnight Cowboy that I described in the Introduction when Dustin Hoffman unexpectedly has to dodge a yellow cab and carries on acting while he incorporates the interruption into the scene. It’s that sort of concentration and commitment that needs to be encouraged.
But secondly, the moment with the vision of the Virgin Mary is to encourage the improvisers to be adventurous and dangerous. By saying, ‘I wonder how they do that,’ they are opting out of a challenging reaction. Of course it’s legitimate to respond in that way, but surely it is more interesting to behave as if they are having a real spiritual experience or a frightening experience or a confusing experience. Remember I said, ‘You see a vision of the Virgin Mary rising above the roof of the barn,’ not ‘It looks like there is . . . ’ or ‘It seems as if there is . . . ’ or ‘You think you see . . . ’ I said the absolute positive, ‘You see . . . ’, so they have to learn to react literally as if it is happening and there is a vision. And if it did happen what would they do? Fall on their knees and pray? Start babbling in tongues? Faint? Scream? Cry with joy? Surely all these are more interesting reactions than assuming it is all done with mirrors.
Of course it’s hard to expect them to react that way at this stage of the training, especially when there has been such a strong emphasis on reality. But as actors and improvisers, they may eventually have to find the truth behind some very extraordinary scenarios: an alien in a spaceship, a pig that talks, an invisible man, etc.
But basically, the ‘Virgin Mary’ add-on is to teach them to take risks and to be unafraid of truthful extremes.
DEBRIEFING Let them talk about the experience, the changes of atmosphere and how they felt during the group improvisation. And then talk about their reaction to the vision of the Virgin Mary. Explain the points discussed in the rationale above so they realise that they can be bold and extreme as long as they stay truthful and realistic.
Places with Atmosphere
Ask the group to divide themselves into pairs and ask each pair to decide on a relationship. They should be people who know each other quite well, like best friends or brother and sister. And then get them to improvise a very simple conversation around a bland subject. Their favourite food or what they like to watch on television or which film star they fancy. The sort of conversation that they could have anywhere and is not dictated by the environment they are in. All the pairs can do this at the same time, since there is absolutely no need to watch these conversations. They are like a rehearsal.
Next, give each pair an environment with a particular atmosphere and get them to have the same conversation, but let it take place in this new environment. They must stick more or less to the conversation they had before, and they should not start referring to the place they are in. This time the rest of the group can watch each improvisation and if the environments are handed out secretly, it’s quite good fun for the audience to try to guess where the improvisation is supposed to be taking place.
Here are some suggestions for environments:
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A church |
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A busy pub |
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A prison cell (which the pair have shared for four months) |
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A wedding reception |
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A get-together after a funeral |
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A very hot beach |
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At home waiting for the World Cup to begin on television |
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Lost in the woods |
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Waiting to take an exam |
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The morning after the night before (both with hangovers) |
For this exercise it’s quite easy to imagine the whispery atmosphere of a church or the headache of a hangover; but it’s hard for two people to get the sense of a noisy pub, where they would have to shout at each other and be continually jostled by the crowd, when they are on their own and there is no crowd. It’s also hard to really experience the sense of boredom and never-ending time in a prison cell; as is the heat exhaustion of a beach where every word is an effort to speak. Get them to explore these extremes. If they are having difficulties, ask the rest of the group to create the atmosphere around them and let them try again. If everyone is creating the atmosphere of a noisy pub, for instance, then the improvisers will find it easier to shout and be jostled. If the group recreates the soundscape of the beach, it’s easier for the improvisers to imagine the heat and exhaustion.
RATIONALE These improvisations are to give them the opportunity to put the exploration of atmosphere into practice. But also, by allowing them to see other people doing these improvisations, it helps them to understand how a particular atmosphere can affect a scenario.
After all these exercises, let them discuss how an environment can alter the way people speak and behave. Then remind them about the other important lesson that they should learn – that they can be courageous and bold in their explorations and choices and still maintain a truthful improvisation.
Remind them, yet again, that these improvisations are not ‘to get things right,’ but to explore character, relationships and experiences and to see what happens.
There is no right or wrong, there is only exploration and discovery.