Exercises
Remarkable things, human beings: they can walk and talk at the same time. Is that what they call multi-tasking: talking about something but at the same time doing something entirely different? While I was training for the London Marathon, jogging along at my maximum speed of about five-and-a-half miles per hour, I’d often hear a couple of people behind me chatting about their day at work or the problems with their love life. At first I would think they were on bicycles because their voices seemed to get louder as they came up behind me. But no, they were running too. Really running. Going faster than me and then flying by. These people were properly training. They were conscious of their running style, they were breathing correctly and they were mentally monitoring their pace so they could cover whatever distance they had set out for themselves. And yet at the same time they could talk about some incident at work that had been hard to handle or they could share the emotional ups and downs of their love lives with each other.
In the past I have done a lot of painting and decorating, and I’d often get someone to do it with me in order to get the job done more quickly. Or so I said. But what I really wanted was company. I wanted to have someone to talk to. The funny thing was that the conversations I had with fellow painters and decorators were always fantastic. You could really indulge in the details of a story as you rolled paint onto the walls; you could get into deep emotional matters as you undercoated the window frames; pasting wallpaper inspired philosophical analysis of popular music; hanging it, and holidays were discussed; films; novels; relationships; life in general – at the same time you never stopped decorating. In fact, the very act of applying paint to a wall or a door frame somehow freed the mind to roam into any area of conversation that you wanted. Trivial, meaningful, romantic, funny . . . you name it.
It often amuses me that actors on television just stand and stare at each other while they play a scene, when in real life we are often doing things and speaking to each other at the same time. A long time ago there was a TV series about fighter pilots in the First World War. Two young actors played the flying heroes. I vividly remember watching a scene where the two actors were putting on their flying gear before they went off in their World War One open-cockpit aeroplanes. Open-cockpit! They must have been freezing. The two actors had very different ways of putting on their flying jackets and scarves, etc. The first one put the scarf loosely round his neck so he looked good and then slipped his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, pulled it on and stood there with it unbuttoned so he could carry on talking and still be seen by the camera. Pretty standard stuff, and I wouldn’t have thought too much about it unless the other actor hadn’t approached the scene with a real focus on what his character was actually about to do. He continued to talk but at the same time you could tell that he was putting on warm clothes in order to go flying in the freezing cold, open-cockpit aeroplane.
Funnily enough, I happened to know that the second actor was a motorcyclist and he knew what it meant to put on the proper clothing to keep warm. While the two actors spoke the dialogue, this second actor carefully wrapped his flying scarf around his neck, making sure that there was no gap where the cold air could get in, then he put on his flying jacket and carefully buttoned up each of the buttons, checking that they were done properly. He made sure the scarf was tucked into the collar of the jacket and he made sure that the bottom of the jacket was pulled snugly over the tops of his trousers. Then, still playing the scene, still talking, he sat down to put on his flying boots, taking the same sort of care and was just getting his leather flying hat ready when the scene ended. As they left the room, you really felt that the second actor was going to fly an aeroplane, whereas the first actor looked like he was just leaving the set at the end of a scene.
It was fascinating. Several scenes later, after they had flown their mission, they came back into the same room with very dirty faces. The make-up department had painted on the grime so it looked as if they had been wearing goggles. The first actor wiped the make-up off his face with a towel while they acted the scene, but the second actor, the actor who had been very careful with his dressing procedures, spoke all his lines with his face over a basin making sure that he was thoroughly washing all the grime from the corner of his eyes and from the edge of his nose, etc. While they talked you couldn’t see his face at all, you could only see his back hunched over the basin as he washed.
It struck me as very truthful. This attention to physical action made me believe that the second actor really had been flying. But not only that: I noticed that somehow the dialogue seemed to come alive. His words took on the rhythms of natural speech as he broke up sentences to wash round his mouth and slightly stumbled to think of a word as he multi-tasked. Also, of course, from his awkward position over the basin he really had to try to communicate his thoughts to the other actor. It’s that need to communicate that makes acting come alive.
Mimed Activities
IF YOU ASK INEXPERIENCED PEOPLE TO IMPROVISE A SCENE they will often sit down side by side and just talk. Or they will face each other and stare intently into each other’s eyes to have their conversation. So in order to start incorporating an activity into an improvisation, people need to practise doing something while they talk. It’s not that difficult. In real life they do it all the time. People talk while they are driving a car; they talk while they are clearing up the kitchen or chopping vegetables; they even talk while they are playing Grand Theft Auto!
The trouble with improvising a scene and doing an activity is that the improvisers are not in a real car. They are not in a real kitchen. They don’t have the game console in their hands. They have to imagine these things. If they are chopping vegetables, they have to mime the knife, the chopping board, the carrots, and sometimes even the table they are sitting at. It’s not easy. Especially when they are making up the words as they go along.
But as soon as they get used to adding physical activities to an improvisation, their concentration increases, the scene begins to feel more realistic, and the dialogue starts to come alive.
Magic Modelling Clay
Ask the group to stand in a circle and tell them you have a piece of invisible magic modelling clay. Tell them that they can mould it into anything they like, but it must be something they can physically use or do something with. It can get larger and it can get smaller, all they have to do is mime moulding it into an object. I usually demonstrate this by moulding the imaginary clay into an imaginary tennis racket and then using the imaginary tennis racket to serve an imaginary tennis ball, and they have to guess what it is.
The game is that having used my imaginary object, I pass it to the next person round the circle who first of all has to mime using my object and then has to mime moulding the magic modelling clay into anything that they want it to be. When they have done that, they have to mime using their new imaginary object in an appropriate way until the person next to them guesses what it is. It’s usually quite easy, but if not, you can ask everyone in the group to shout out what they think it is until someone gets it right. After the object has been identified, the second person passes it on to the third person, who uses it, then moulds the clay into something else and uses that, and so on, round the circle until everyone has had a go.
RATIONALE This exercise helps them to imagine the details of an object and ‘feel’ it in their hands. If they can get used to miming things accurately, it can help them believe that imaginary objects are actually there.
Playing and Chatting
I usually make this exercise carry on from the previous exercise, so they can use the object they have ‘created’. But it’s important that the object is something they can play with. Something they can imagine holding in their hands and imagine moving about. A tennis ball. A hula-hoop. A skipping rope. Anything that keeps them physically occupied. Something they can really get the feel of. (If they have created an object that they can’t do much with, ask them to make a new object and then start using that.)
With everyone working on their own in different parts of the room, ask them to use their object and get to know it. How heavy is it? How does it move? What happens to it when they drop it to the ground? Ask them to examine it and play with it until they start to feel that it really exists and they are absolutely comfortable with their mime.
Then ask them to start having conversations with other people in the room. Tell them they must continue to mime playing with their imaginary objects while they talk, and they mustn’t talk about the object they are playing with. They should talk about other subjects: like going clubbing this evening or their favourite food. They could talk about pets or the town they come from, but they must continue to play with their object as they chat. And both chatting and playing should each be as important as the other, but separate. Their physical attention should be on the object and their mental attention should be on the conversation.
RATIONALE This exercise enables them to get used to ‘doing something’ while they improvise dialogue. They have become very familiar with their objects and they are having very simple conversations, so this difficult technique is made as straightforward as possible.
DEBRIEFING Because it’s hard to do, they should be allowed to discuss the difficulties of this exercise. But it is also important for them to understand how their vocal rhythms and inflections changed and how the dialogue became more ‘real’ when they were doing something.
Simple Flat-Share Activities
Ask everyone to get into pairs and set up an improvisation where they are two people sharing a flat. They should decide what their relationship is: best friends, brothers and sisters, or whatever. Then they must decide how the flat is arranged. Where is the kitchen? Where are the bedrooms? Where is the furniture? This only needs to take a couple of minutes.
Then, with all the pairs working together in different parts of the room, let them improvise as flat-sharers for about four minutes.
When they have done this, ask them each to think of some sort of activity they could be doing in the flat: cutting their nails, building a house of cards, sewing on a button, etc. Something small and contained but physically active. Something they can really focus their attention on as they talk. Then, with each person working on their own for a couple of minutes, ask them to concentrate on perfecting the mime of their activity. (Make sure they haven’t decided to read a book or watch television because those are mental activities rather than physical activities. As are writing letters or playing computer games.)
When they have done that, ask each pair to repeat their flat-share improvisation, but this time, they should be doing the activity they have just practised while having more or less the same conversation they had before.
RATIONALE These activities make the improvisations come alive as the improvisers become more focused and involved in the scene.
DEBRIEFING Discuss the differences that these activities bring to an improvisation and how hard they were to do.
Complicated Flat-Share Activities
Ask everyone to get into different pairs and, as before, decide their relationship and plan the layout of their flat. Then ask each pair to choose a more adventurous activity, like cooking a meal together, or cleaning the flat, or moving the furniture around. They should choose an activity that needs a certain amount of verbal communication in order to do it, but one that can be done while they have a conversation about something else. So that, for instance, part of the time they could be talking about something that happened last night and part of the time they could be asking each other to ‘Pass the cooking oil’, or they could talk about going shopping together, and also say things like: ‘Let’s put the sofa over there.’
With all the pairs working at the same time, they should be given the chance to practise this improvisation. Then, one pair at a time, they can show their improvisations to the rest of the group.
RATIONALE Although these improvisations will have been quite difficult to do, when people watch each other improvise, they will see how truthful the scenes have become. The dialogue will have taken on the more natural rhythm of everyday speech: there will have been hesitations; there will have been sudden rushes of words; there will have been pauses; etc. etc. Not only that but, because they will have been distracted by their activities, their voices will have used the inflections and emphases that human beings need to be able to communicate clearly and positively with each other.
Discuss the whole session and how activities can be used in future improvisations. It will be difficult to find suitable activities for some of the scenarios they will be asked to improvise. For instance, if they are shopping, they may wonder what else they could be doing. But there are lots of things. They could concentrate on tiny personal activities, like having an annoying broken nail, or playing with their keys, or coping with a pair of trousers that are on the brink of falling down. Or they could use more subtle activities, like keeping an eye on the street outside because their best friend who is in another shop doesn’t know they went into this particular shop. If they think about it, there are lots of things they could be doing. They don’t have to be interesting activities. They just have to try to keep themselves physically occupied.
There is no doubt that it is harder to mime an activity than it is to use real objects, so the concentration involved in improvising and miming at the same time is quite intense. However, the very nature of that intense concentration causes the improvisers to focus more deeply on the improvisation. And as I have said before, the more they concentrate and the more they have to think about during an improvisation, the less likely they are to feel that they need to entertain whoever is watching. The improvisation itself becomes the purpose of the improvisation.
