 Stepping into fear
I only did improv for a little while when I thought I wanted to become an actor. I remember the first few minutes before I got on stage sweating buckets wondering what I would do. Then I got on stage, and I just did it. This was for practice but even so I was still nerve wracked. The beauty of the experience was that once I did get on stage I simply reacted to what was around me, to what was going on. The type of scene we were doing had each of us going on stage one person at a time. Each person would successively add more to the scene. The director set us up by saying we were in the kitchen of a house.Then as each person went on they created a relationship with the scene and the people who were already there.
I think in this case improv is actually how life is, if we notice the relationships that are going on around us and the changes in those relationships. All we have to do to do improve (and live life) is respond to what is going on around us based on what is going on within us. And what is going on within us, maybe it's trying to get something. In the scene I was in I was trying to retrieve a girls phone number but one of the other people I was sharing the house with had thrown it out. Not only that the garbage truck had already been by to collect the garbage.
the scene turned out to be a lot of fun, similiar to the feeling I've had riding a motorbike fast, following others through twisty turny roads. IN both cases you have to be "there" totally focused on what you are doing. Then there is no room for fear. You just concentrate on what you are doing.  |