# Spontaneity

**1**

'I was given the part of poor Armgard, so I stood in front of the class
and as I began with "Here he cannot escape me, he must hear me", I
suddenly noticed a warm friendly feeling in the region of the stomach,
like a soft hotwater bottle in a cold bed, and when I got to "Mercy,
Lord Governor! Oh, pardon, pardon", I was already
on my knees, tears streaming from my eyes and nose, and sobbing to such
an extent that I could only finish the passage "My wretched orphans cry
for bread" with supreme difficulty. The fishhead was in
favour of a more restrained performance and her cutting voice drove me
to the back of the class room with words of "Un-German hysterical
conduct". It was a nightmare.
I almost died of shame and prayed
for an earthquake or an air raid to deliver me from the derision and
shock . . .
apart from the nagging voice all
went still, the others stared at me as though they had unwittingly
harboured a serpent in their midst. The rest of my days with
Weise were torture. I was afraid of the others and
myself for I could never be certain that I wouldn't again throw myself
down in tears because of the orphans. .
.'
(Hildegarde Knef,
_The Gift
Horse,_ André Deutsch,
1971.)

It's possible to turn unimaginative people into imaginative people at a
moment's notice. I remember an experiment referred
to in the _British Journal of
Psychology_---probably in the summer of 1969
or 1970---in which some businessmen who had showed up as very dull on
work-association tests were asked to imagine themselves as
happy-go-lucky hippy types, in which persona they were retested, and
showed up as far more imaginative. In creativity tests you
may be asked to suggest different ways of using a brick; if you say
things like 'Build a house', or 'Build a wall', then you're classified
as unimaginative---if you say 'Grind it up and use it for diarrhoea
mixture', or 'Rub off warts with it', then you're imaginative.
I'm oversimplifying, but you get
the general idea.

Some tests involve picture completion. You get given a lot of
little squares with signs in them, and you have to add something to the
sign. 'Uncreative' people just add
another squiggle, or join up a 'C' [shape
to make a circle. 'Creative' people have a great
time, parallel lines become the trunk of a tree, a 'V' on its side
becomes the beam of a lighthouse, and so on.
It may be a mistake to think of
such tests as showing people to be creative, or uncreative.
It may be that the tests are
recording different activities. The person who adds a
timid squiggle may be trying to reveal as little as possible about
himself. If we can persuade him to have
fun, and not worry about being judged, then maybe he can approach the
test with the same attitude as a 'creative' person, just like the tired
businessmen when they were pretending to be
hippies.]

Most schools encourage children to be _unimaginative_.
The research so far shows that
imaginative children are disliked by their teachers.
Torrance gives an eye-witness
account of an 'exceptionally creative boy' who questioned one of the
rules in the textbook: 'The teacher became irate, even in the presence
of the principal. She fumed, "So!
You think you know more than this
book!"' She was also upset when the boy
finished the problems she set almost as quickly as it took to read them.
'She couldn't understand how he
was getting the correct answer and demanded that he write down all of
the steps he had gone through in solving each
problem.'

When this boy transferred to another school, his new principal
telephoned to ask if he was the sort of boy 'who has to be squelched
rather roughly'. When it was explained that he was
'a very wholesome, promising lad who needed understanding and
encouragement' the new principal exclaimed 'rather brusquely, "Well,
he's already said too much right here in my office!"'
(E.
P.
Torrance,
_Guiding Creative
Talent_, Prentice-Hall,
1962.)

One of my students spent two years in a classroom where the teacher had
put a large sign over the blackboard. It said 'Get into the
"Yes, Sir" attitude.' No doubt we can all add further
anecdotes. Torrance has a theory that 'many
children with impoverished imaginations have been subjected to rather
vigorous and stern efforts to eliminate fantasy too early.
They are afraid to think.'
Torrance seems to understand the
forces at work, but he still refers to attempts to eliminate fantasy
_too
early_.
Why should we eliminate fantasy at
all? Once we eliminate fantasy, then we
have no artists.

Intelligence is proportional to population, but talent appears not to
be related to population numbers. I'm living in a city at
the edge of the Rocky Mountains; the population is much greater than it
was in Shakespearian London, and almost everyone here is literate, and
has had many thousands of dollars spent on his education.
Where are the
[poets,
and playwrights, and painters, and composers?
Remember that there are hundreds
of thousands of 'literate' people here, while in Shakespeare's London
very few people could read. The great art of this part of the
world was the art of the native people.
The whites flounder about trying
to be 'original' and failing miserably.]

You can get a glimmer of the damage done when you watch people trying
out pens in stationers' shops. They make feeble little
scribbles for fear of giving something away.
If an Aborigine asked us for a
sample of Nordic art we'd have to direct him to an art gallery.
No Aborigine ever told an
anthropologist, 'Sorry, Baas, I can't draw.'
Two of my students said they
couldn't draw, and I asked, 'Why?' One said her teacher had
been sarcastic because she'd painted a blue snowman (every child's
painting was pinned up on the walls except hers.) The other girl had
drawn trees up the sides of her paintings (like Paul Klee), and the
teacher drew a 'correct' tree on top of hers.
She remembered thinking 'I'll
never draw for you again!' (One reason given for filling in
the windows of the local schools here is that it'll help make the
children more attentive!)

Most children can operate in a creative way until they're eleven or
twelve, when suddenly they lose their spontaneity and produce imitations
of 'adult art'. When other races come into contact
with our culture something similar happens.
The great Nigerian sculptor
Bamboya was set up as principal of an art school by some philanthropic
Americans in the 1920s. Not only did he fail to hand on
his talents, but his own inspiration failed him.
He and his students could still
carve coffee tables for the whites, but they weren't
_inspired_ any
more.

So-called 'primitive painters' in our own culture sometimes go to art
school to improve themselves---and lose their talent.
A critic told me of a film school
where each new student made a short film unaided.
These, he said, were always
interesting, although technically crude.
At the end of the course they made
a longer, technically more proficient film, which hardly anyone wanted
to see. He seemed outraged when I
suggested they should close the school (he lectured there); yet until
recently our directors didn't get any training.
Someone asked Kubrick if it was
usual for a director to spend so much care on lighting each shot and he
said, 'I don't know. I've never seen anyone else light
a film.'

You have to be a very stubborn person to remain an artist in this
culture. It's easy to play the role of
'artist', but actually to create something means going against one's
education. I read an interview
[once
in which Grandma Moses was complaining that people kept urging her to
improve her snow scenes by putting blue in them, but she insisted that
the snow she saw was white, so she wouldn't do it.
This little old lady could paint
]_because_ she defied the
'experts'. Even after his works had been
exhibited in court as proof that he wasn't in his right mind, Henri
Rousseau still had the stubbornness to go on
painting!

We see the artist as a wild and aberrant figure.
Maybe our artists are the people
who have been constitutionally unable to conform to the demands of the
teachers. Pavlov found that there were some
dogs that he couldn't 'brainwash' until he'd castrated them, and starved
them for three weeks. If teachers could do that to us,
then maybe they'd achieve Plato's dream of a republic in which there are
no artists left at all.

Many teachers think of children as immature adults.
It might lead to better and more
'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children.
Many 'well adjusted' adults are
bitter, uncreative frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people.
Instead of assuming they were born
that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider
them as people damaged by their education and
upbringing.

**2**

Many teachers express surprise at the switch-off that occurs at
puberty, but I don't, because first of all the child has to hide the
sexual turmoil he's in, and secondly the grown-ups' attitude to him
completely changes.

Suppose an eight-year-old writes a story about being chased down a
mouse-hole by a monstrous spider. It'll be perceived as
'childish' and no one will worry. If he writes the same
story when he's fourteen it may be taken as a sign of mental
abnormality. Creating a story, or painting a
picture, or making up a poem lay an adolescent wide open to criticism.
He therefore has to fake
everything so that he appears 'sensitive' or 'witty' or 'tough' or
'intelligent' according to the image he's trying to establish in the
eyes of other people. If he believed he was a
transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what his
talents really were.

We have an idea that art is self-expression---which historically is
_weird_.
An artist used to be seen as a
medium through which something else operated.
He was a servant of the God.
Maybe a mask-maker
[would
have fasted and prayed for a week before he had a vision of the Mask he
was to carve, because no one wanted to see
]_his_ Mask, they wanted to
see the God's. When Eskimos believed that each
piece of bone only had one shape inside it, then the artist didn't have
to 'think up' an idea. He had to wait until he knew what
was in there---and this is crucial. When he'd finished
carving his friends couldn't say 'I'm a bit worried about that Nanook at
the third igloo', but only, 'He made a mess getting that out!'
or 'There are some very odd bits
of bone about these days.' These days of course the Eskimos
get booklets giving illustrations of what will sell, but before we
infected them, they were in contact with a source of inspiration that we
are not. It's no wonder that our artists
are aberrant characters. It's not surprising that great
African sculptors end up carving coffee tables, or that the talent of
our children dies the moment we expect them to become adult.
Once we believe that art is
self-expression, then the individual can be criticised not only for his
skill or lack of skill, but simply for being what he
is.

Schiller wrote of a 'watcher at the gates of the mind', who examines
ideas too closely. He said that in the case of the
creative mind 'the intellect has withdrawn its watcher from the gates,
and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and
inspect the multitude.' He said that uncreative people
'are ashamed of the momentary passing madness which is found in all real
creators . .
.
regarded in isolation, an idea may
be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may
acquire importance from an idea that follows it; perhaps in collation
with other ideas which seem equally absurd, it may be capable of
furnishing a very serviceable link.'

My teachers had the opposite theory. They wanted me to reject
and discriminate, believing that the best artist was the one who made
the most elegant choices. They analysed poems to show how
difficult 'real' writing was, and they taught that I should always know
where the writing was taking me, and that I should search for better and
better ideas. They spoke as if an image like
'the multitudinous seas incarnadine' could have been worked out like the
clue to a crossword puzzle. Their idea of the 'correct' choice
was the one anyone would have made if he had thought long
enough.

I now feel that imagining should be as effortless as perceiving.
In order to recognise someone my
brain has to perform amazing feats of analysis: 'Shape .
.
.
dark .
.
.
swelling .
.
.
getting closer .
.
.
human .
.
.
nose type X15, eyes type E24B .
.
.
characteristic way of walking .
.
.
look under relative .
.
.'
and so on, in order to turn
electromagnetic [radiation
into the image of my father, yet I don't experience myself as 'doing'
anything at all! My brain creates a whole universe
without my having the least sense of effort.
Of course, if I say 'Hi Dad', and
the approaching figure ignores me, then I'd do something that I perceive
as 'thinking'. 'That's not the coat he usually
wears,' I think. 'This man is shorter.'
It's only when I believe my
perceptions to be in error that I have to 'do' anything.
It's the same with imagination.
Imagination is as effortless as
perception, unless we think it might be 'wrong', which is what our
education encourages us to believe. Then we experience
ourselves as 'imagining', as 'thinking up an idea', but what we're
really doing is faking up the sort of imagination we think we ought to
have.]

When I read a novel I have no sense of effort.
Yet if I pay close attention to my
mental processes I find an amazing amount of activity.
'She walked into the room .
.
.'
I read, and I have a picture in my
mind, very detailed, of a large Victorian room empty of furniture, with
the bare boards painted white around what used to be the edge of the
carpet. I also see some windows with the
shutters open and sunlight streaming through them.
'She noticed some charred papers
in the grate . .
.'
I read, and my mind inserts a
fireplace which I've seen in a friend's house, very ornate.
'A board creaked behind her .
.
.'
I read, and for a split second I
see a Frankenstein's monster holding a wet teddy bear.
'She turned to see a little
wizened old man . .
.', instantly, the monster
shrivels to Picasso with a beret, and the room darkens and fills with
furniture. My imagination is working as hard
as the writer's, but I have no sense of doing anything, or 'being
creative'.

A friend has just read the last paragraph and found it impossible to
imagine that she's being creative when she reads.
I tell her I'll invent a story
especially for her. 'Imagine a man walking along the
street,' I say. 'Suddenly he hears a sound and
turns to see something moving in a doorway .
.
.'
I stop and ask her what the man is
wearing.

'A suit.'

'What sort of suit?'

'Striped.'

'Any other people in the street?'

'A white dog.'

'What was the street like?'

'It was a London street. Working-class.
Some of the buildings have been
demolished.'

[' Any
windows boarded up?']

'Yes. Rusty corrugated
iron.'

'So they've been boarded up a long
time?'

She's obviously created much more than I have.
She doesn't pause to think up the
answers to my questions, she 'knows' them.
They flashed automatically into
her consciousness.

People may seem uncreative, but they'll be extremely ingenious at
rationalising the things they do. You can see this in
people who obey post-hypnotic suggestions, while managing to explain the
behaviour ordered by the hypnotist as being of their own
volition.

People maintain prejudices quite effortlessly.
For example, in this conversation
(R. B.
Zajonc,
_Public Opinion
Quarterly,_ Princeton, 1960, Vol.
24, 2, pp.
280-96):

---

MR X{.small}: The trouble with Jews is that they only take care of
their own group.
MR Y{.small}: But the record of the community chest shows that
they give more generously than non-Jews.
MR X{.small}: That shows that they are always trying to buy favour
and intrude in Christian affairs. They think of nothing
but money; that's why there are so many Jewish
bankers.
MR Y{.small}: But a recent study shows that the per cent of Jews in
banking is proportionally much smaller than the per
cent of non-Jews.
MR X{.small}: That's it. They don't go for respectable businesses.
They would rather run nightclubs.

---

In a way this bigot is being very
creative.

I knew a man who was discovered stark naked in a wardrobe by an irate
husband. The wife screamed, 'I've never
seen this man before in my life.' 'I must be in the wrong
flat,' said my friend. These reactions aren't very
satisfactory, but they didn't have to be 'thought up', they sprang to
mind quite automatically.

I sometimes shock students who have been trained by strict 'method'
teachers.

'Be sad,' I say.

'What do you mean, be sad?'

'Just be sad. See what
happens.'

'But what's my motivation?'

'Just be sad. Start to weep and you'll know
what's upset you.'

The student decides to humour me.

'That isn't very sad. You're just
pretending.'

[' You
asked me to pretend.']

'Raise your arm. Now, why are you raising
it?'

'You asked me to.'

'Yes, but why might you have raised
it?'

'To hold on to a strap in the Tube.'

'Then that's why you raised your
arm.'

'But I could have given any reason.'

'Of course; you could have been waving to someone, or milking a
giraffe, or airing your armpit . .
.'

'But I don't have time to choose the best
reason.'

'Don't choose anything. Trust your mind.
Take the first idea it gives you.
Now try being sad again.
Hold the face in a sad position,
fight back the tears. Be unhappier.
More.
More.
_Now_ tell me why you're in
this state?'

'My child has died.'

'Did you think that up?'

'I just knew.'

'There you are, then.'

'My teacher said you shouldn't act
adjectives.'

'You shouldn't act adjectives without justifying
them.'

If an improviser is stuck for an idea, he shouldn't search for one, he
should trigger his partner's ability to give 'unthought'
answers.

If someone starts a scene by saying 'What are you doing here?'
then his partner can instantly
say, without thinking, 'I just came down to get the milk,
Sir.'

'Didn't I tell you what I'd do if I caught you
again?'

'Oh Sir, don't put me in the refrigerator,
Sir.'

If you don't know what to do in a scene, just say something like, 'Oh
my God! What's
that?'

This immediately jerks images into your partner's mind: 'Mother!'
he says, or 'That dog's messed the
floor again', or 'A secret staircase!'
or
whatever.

**3**

At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble.
I learned never to act on impulse,
and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour
of better ideas. I learned that my imagination
wasn't 'good' enough. I learned that the first idea was
unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2)
obscene;

(3) unoriginal.

[The
truth is that the ]_best_ ideas are often
psychotic, obscene and unoriginal. My best known play---a
one-actor called _Moby
Dick_---is about a servant who keeps
his master's one remaining sperm in a goldfish bowl.
It escapes, grows to monstrous
size, and has to be hunted down on the high seas.
This is certainly a rather obscene
idea to many people, and if I hadn't thrown away everything that my
teachers taught me, I could never have written it.
These teachers, who were so sure
of the rules, didn't produce anything themselves at all.
I was one of a number of
playwrights who emerged in the late 1950s, and it was remarkable that
only one of us had been to a university---that was John Arden---and he'd
studied architecture.

Let's take a look at these three
categories.

**Psychotic Thought**

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we
_learn_ to behave.
We keep this pretence up because
we don't want to be rejected by other people---and being classified
insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete
way.

Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier
than the average person. People understand the energy
necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by
other people. They understand that their own
sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they
confuse the person with the role.

Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think.
It's a matter of presenting
yourself as _safe_.
Little old men wander around
London hallucinating visibly, but no one gets upset.
The same behaviour in a younger,
more vigorous person would get him shut away.
A Canadian study on attitudes to
mental illness concluded that it was when someone's behaviour was
perceived as 'unpredictable' that the community rejected them.
A fat lady was admiring a painting
at a private view at the Tate when the artist strode over and bit her.
They threw him out, but no one
questioned his sanity---it was how he always
behaved.

I once read about a man who believed himself to have a fish in his jaw.
(The case was reported in
_New
Society_.) This fish moved about, and
caused him a lot of discomfort. When he tried to tell
people about the fish, they thought him 'crazy', which led to violent
arguments. After he'd been hospitalised
several times---with no effect on the fish---it was suggested that
perhaps he shouldn't tell anyone. After all it was the
quarrels that were getting him put away, rather than the delusion.
Once
[he'd
agreed to keep his problem secret, he was able to lead a normal life.
His sanity is like our sanity.
We may not have a fish in our jaw,
but we all have its equivalent.]

When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than of
one's mental processes, students are often hysterical with laughter.
They agree that for years they
have been suppressing all sorts of thinking because they classified it
as insane.

Students need a 'guru' who 'gives permission' to allow forbidden
thoughts into their consciousness. A 'guru' doesn't
necessarily teach at all. Some remain speechless for years,
others communicate very cryptically. All reassure by example.
They are people who have been into
the forbidden areas and who have survived unscathed.
I react playfully with my
students, while showing them that there are just as many dead nuns or
chocolate scorpions inside my head as there are in anybody's, yet I
interact very smoothly and sanely. It's no good
_telling_ the student that he
isn't to be held responsible for the content of his imagination, he
needs a teacher who is living proof that the monsters are not real, and
that the imagination will not destroy you.
Otherwise the student will have to
go on _pretending_ to be
dull.

At one time I went from a class of mental patients in the morning to a
class of drama students in the afternoon.
The work of the drama students was
far more bizarre, because they weren't so scared of what their minds
might do. The mental patients mistook even
the normal working of the imagination as proof of their
insanity.

I remember the psychologist David Stafford-Clark criticising Ken
Campbell at a public meeting. Ken had said that he
encouraged his actors to act like lunatics, because then people would
find them amusing. Stafford-Clark was upset at the
idea that mad people should be thought 'funny', but that's hardly Ken's
fault. Laughter is a whip that keeps us
in line. It's horrible to be laughed at
against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome
laughter or you start controlling it. We suppress our
spontaneous impulses, we censor our imaginations, we learn to present
ourselves as 'ordinary', and we destroy our talent--- then no one laughs
at us. If Shakespeare had been worried
about establishing his sanity, he could never have written
_Hamlet_, let alone
_Titus
Andronicus_; Harpo couldn't have inflated a
rubber glove and milked it into the coffee
cups;^[1](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_28)^
Groucho would never have threatened to horse-whip someone---if he had a
horse; W. C.
Fields would never have leapt out
of the aeroplane after his whisky bottle; Stan Laurel would never have
snapped his fingers and ignited his
thumb.

We all know instinctively what 'mad' thought is: mad thoughts are
[those
which other people find unacceptable, and train us not to talk about,
but which we go to the theatre to see
expressed.]

**Obscenity**

I find many things obscene, in the sense of repulsive or shocking.
I find the use of film from real
massacres in the titles of TV shows pretty nasty.
I find the way people take pills
and smoke cigarettes, and generally screw themselves up, rather awful.
The way parents and teachers often
treat children nauseates me. Most people think of
obscene things as sexual like pubic hair, obscene language, but I'm more
shocked by modern cities, by the carcinogens in the air and in the food,
by the ever-increasing volume of radioactive materials in the
environment. In the first seven months of 1975
the cancer rate in America seems to have jumped by 5.2 per cent, but few
noticed---the information didn't have 'news
value'.

Most people's idea of what is or isn't obscene
_varies_.
In some cultures certain times are
set aside when the normal values are reversed---the 'Lord of Misrule',
Zuni clowning, many carnivals--- and something similar happens even in
this culture, or so I'm told, at office parties for example.
People's tolerance of obscenity
varies according to the group they're with, or the particular
circumstances ('_pas devant les
enfants_').
People can laugh at jokes told at
a party that they wouldn't find funny on a more formal occasion.
It seems unfortunate to me that
the classroom is often considered a 'formal' area in this
sense.

The first school I taught at had one woman teacher.
When she went out shopping at
lunchtime, the men pulled their chairs round and told dirty stories
non-stop. Down in the playground, as usual,
the children were swopping similar stories, or writing 'shit' or 'fuck'
on the walls, always correctly spelt; yet the staff considered the
children 'dirty little devils', and punished them for saying things
which were far milder than things the teachers themselves would say, and
enjoy laughing at. When these children grow up, and
perhaps crack up, then they'll find themselves in therapy groups where
they'll be encouraged to say all the things that the teacher would have
forbidden during school.^[2](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_30)^

Foulkes and Anthony (in _Group
Psychotherapy_, Penguin, 1972) say that a
therapeutic situation is one 'in which the patient can freely voice his
innermost thoughts towards himself, towards any other person, and
towards the analyst. He can be confident that he is not
being judged, and that he is fully accepted, whatever he may be, or
whatever he may [disclose.'
Later they add: 'We encourage the relaxation of censorship.
We do this by letting the patient
members understand that they are not only permitted, but expected to say
anything that comes to mind. We tell them not to
allow any of their usual inhibitory considerations to stand in the way
of voicing the ideas that come to them
spontaneously.']

I was at school more than twenty years ago, but in education the more
things change the more they are the same.
(Recent research suggests that the
old 'monitor' system may be one of the most efficient teaching methods!)
Here are some answers that headmasters gave to a questionnaire about sex
education in their schools. (Reported in the
_New
Statesman_, 28 February
1969.)

'I'm against all "frank discussion" of these
matters.'

'Those who are determined to behave like animals can doubtless find out
the facts for themselves.'

'I am sick, sick of the talk about sex.
I'll have none of it in my
school.'

'Everything that needs to be done in my school is done individually,
and in private by a missionary
priest.'

Notice the use of 'my school' rather than 'our school'.
Recently a young girl burned to
death because she was ashamed to run naked from a burning house.
To some extent her teachers are to
blame. Here's Sheila Kitzinger on some
effects of middle-class prudery.

'In Jamaica I discovered that the West Indian peasant woman rarely
feels discomfort in the perineum, or minds the pressure of the baby's
head as it descends. But from the case studies of
English middle-class women it appears that many of them worry about
dirtying the bed and are often shocked by sensations against the rectum
and the vagina in labour---sensations which they may find excruciating.
They feel distressed, in fact, at
just those sensations which the peasant woman meets with
equanimity.

'Some women find relaxation of the abdominal wall difficult, and
especially so when they experience any pain.
They have been taught to "hold
their tummies in", and sometimes it goes against the grain to release
these muscles.' (Sheila Kitzinger,
_The Experience of
Childbirth_, Gollancz, 1962.) She adds that
women with prolonged labours tended to be 'inhibited', embarrassed by
the processes taking place in their bodies, ladylike in the extreme, and
endured what they were undergoing stoically as long as they were able,
without expressing their anxieties. It was not these women's
bodies that were causing them difficulties; they were being held up by
the sort of people they were. They were not able to
_give_
birth.'

[When I
have been teaching in universities, I haven't experienced any problem
with censorship---at least not on 'sexual' grounds---and I'm not saying
that fear of obscenity is the most important factor in making people
reject the first ideas that come to them, but it does help though, if
improvisation teachers are not puritanical, and can allow the students
to behave as ]_they_ want to behave.
The best situation is one in which
the class is seen as a party, rather than a formal teacher-pupil set-up.
If it isn't possible to let
students speak and act with the same freedom they have outside the
school, then it might be better not to teach them drama at all.
The most repressed, and damaged,
and 'unteachable' students that I have to deal with are those who were
the star performers at bad high schools.
Instead of learning how to be warm
and spontaneous and giving, they've become armoured and superficial,
calculating and self-obsessed. I could show you many
many examples where education has clearly been a destructive
process.

My feeling isn't that the group should be 'obscene', but that they
should be aware of the ideas that are occurring to them.
I don't want them to go rigid and
blank out, but to laugh, and say 'I'm not saying that' or
whatever.

**Originality**

Many students block their imaginations because they're afraid of being
unoriginal. They believe they know exactly
what originality is, just as critics are always sure they can recognise
things that are avant-garde.

We have a concept of originality based on things that already exist.
I'm told that avant-garde theatre
groups in Japan are just like those in the West---well of course, or how
would we know what they were? Anyone can run an
avant-garde theatre group; you just get the actors to lie naked in heaps
or outstare the audience, or move in extreme slow motion, or whatever
the fashion is. But the real avant-garde aren't
imitating what other people are doing, or what they did forty years ago;
they're solving the problems that _need_ solving, like how to
get a popular theatre with some worth-while content, and they may not
look avant-garde at all!

The improviser has to realise that the more obvious he is, the more
original he appears. I constantly point out how much
the audience like someone who is direct, and how they always laugh with
pleasure at a really 'obvious' idea. Ordinary people asked to
improvise will search for some original idea because they want to be
_thought_ clever.
They'll say and do all sorts of
inappropriate things. If someone says 'What's for
[supper?' a
bad improviser will desperately try to think up something original.
Whatever he says he'll be too
slow. He'll finally drag up some idea
like 'fried mermaid'. If he'd just said 'fish' the
audience would have been delighted. No two people are
exactly alike, and the more obvious an improviser is, the more himself
he appears. If he wants to impress us with his
originality, then he'll search out ideas that are actually commoner and
less interesting. I gave up asking London audiences
to suggest where scenes should take place.
Some idiot would always shout out
either 'Leicester Square public lavatories' or 'outside Buckingham
Palace' (never ']_inside_ Buckingham Palace').
People trying to be original
always arrive at the same boring old answers.
Ask people to give you an original
idea and see the chaos it throws them into.
If they said the first thing that
came into their head, there'd be no
problem.

An artist who is inspired is being _obvious_.
He's not making any decisions,
he's not weighing one idea against another.
He's accepting his first thoughts.
How else could Dostoyevsky have
dictated one novel in the morning and one in the afternoon for three
weeks in order to fulfil his contracts?
If you consider the volume of work
produced by Bach then you get some idea of his fluency (and we've lost
half of it), yet a lot of his time was spent rehearsing, and teaching
Latin to the choirboys. According to Louis Schlosser,
Beethoven said: 'You ask me where I get my ideas?
That I can't say with any
certainty. They come unbidden, directly, I
could grasp them with my hands.' Mozart said of his
ideas: '_Whence_ and
_how_ they come, I know not;
nor can I force them. Those that please me I retain in
the memory, and I am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them.'
Later in the same letter he says:
'Why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style
that makes them _Mozartish_, and different from
the works of other composers, is probably owing to the same cause which
renders my nose so large or so aquiline, or in short, makes it Mozart's,
and different from those of other people.
For I really do not study or aim
at any originality.'

Suppose Mozart _had_ tried to be original?
It would have been like a man at
the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all the rest of
us. Striving after originality takes
you far away from your true self, and makes your work
mediocre.

**4**

Let's see how these theories work out in practice.
Suppose I say to a student,
'Imagine a box. What's in it?'
Answers will flash into his mind
uninvited. Perhaps:

'Uncle Ted, dead.'

If he said this then people would laugh, and he'd seem good-natured and
witty, but he doesn't want to be thought 'insane', or callous.
'Hundreds of toilet rolls', says
his imagination, but he doesn't want to appear preoccupied with
excretion. 'A big fat, coiled snake'?
No---too Freudian.
Finally after a pause of perhaps
two whole seconds he says 'Old clothes' or 'It's empty', and feels
unimaginative and defeated.

I say to a student, 'Name some
objects.'

He tenses up. 'Er .
.
.
pebble .
.
.
er .
.
.
beach .
.
.
cliff .
.
.
er .
.
.
er .
.
.'

'Have you any idea why you've blocked?'
I
ask.

'I keep thinking of "pebble".'

'Then say it. Say whatever occurs to you.
It doesn't have to be original.'
Actually it would be very original
to keep saying the same word: 'Pebble.
Another pebble.
A big pebble.
A pebble with a hole in it.
A pebble with a white mark.
The pebble with a hole in it
again.'

'Say a word', I say to someone else.

'Er . .
.
er .
.
.
cabbage,' he says looking
alarmed.

'That's not the word you first thought
of.'

'What?'

'I saw your lips move. They formed an "O"
shape.'

'Orange.'

'What's wrong with the word orange?'

'Cabbage seemed more ordinary.'

This student wants to appear *un*imaginative.
What sort of crippling experiences
must he have gone through before he came to
me?

'What's the opposite of "starfish"?'

He gapes.

'Answer, say it,' I shout, because I can see that he did think of
something.

'Sunflower,' he says, amazed because he didn't know that was the idea
that was about to come out of him.

A student mimes taking something off a
shelf.

'What is it?' I
ask.

'A book.'

[' I
saw your hand reject an earlier shape.
What did you want to take?'
'A tin of
sardines.']

'Why didn't you?'

'I don't know.'

'Was it open?'

'Yes.'

'All messy?'

'Yes.'

'Maybe you were opting for a pleasanter object.
Mime taking something else off a
shelf.'

His mind goes blank.

'I can't seem to think of anything.'

'Do you know why?'

'I keep thinking of the sardines.'

'Why don't you take down another tin of
sardines?'

'I wanted to be original.'

I ask a girl to say a word. She hesitates and says
'Pig.'

'What was the first word you thought
of?'

'Pea.'

'Tell me a colour.'

Again she hesitates.

'Red.'

'What colour did you think of first?'

'Pink.'

'Invent a name for a stone.'

'Ground.'

'What was the name you first thought
of?'

'Pebble.'

Normally the mind doesn't know that it's rejecting the first answers
because they don't go into the long-term memory.
If I didn't ask her immediately,
she'd deny that she was substituting better
words.

'Why don't you tell me the first answers that occur to
you?'

'They weren't significant.'

I suggest to her that she didn't say 'Pea' because it suggested
urination, that maybe she rejects pink because it reminds her of flesh.
She agrees, and then says she
rejected 'Pebble' because she didn't want to say three words beginning
with 'P'. This girl isn't really slow, she
doesn't _need_ to hesitate.
Teaching her to accept the first
idea will make her seem far more
inventive.

The first time I meet a group I might ask them to mime taking a hat
off, or to mime taking something off a shelf, or out of their pocket.
I
[won't
watch them while they do it; I'll probably look out of the window.
Afterwards I explain that I'm not
interested in what they did, but in how their minds worked.
I say that either they can put
their hand out, and see what it closes on; or else they can think first,
decide what they'll pick up, and then do the mime.
If they're worried about failing,
then they'll ]_have_ to think first; if
they're being playful, then they can allow their hand to make its own
decision.

Suppose I decide to pick up something.
I can put my hand down and pick up
something dangly. It's and old, used rubber
contraceptive, which isn't something I would have chosen to pick up, but
it is what my hand 'decided' to close on.
My hand is very likely to pick up
something I don't want, like a steaming horse-turd, but the audience
will be delighted. They don't want me to think up
something respectable to mime, like a bucket or a suitcase.
I ask the class to try doing the
mime both with and without 'thinking' so that they can sense the
difference. If I make people produce object
after object, then very likely they'll stop bothering to think first,
and just swing along being mildly interested in what their hands select.
Here's a sequence that was filmed,
so I remember it pretty well. I
said:

'Put your hand into an imaginary box.
What do you take
out?'

'A cricket ball.'

'Take something else out.'

'Another cricket ball.'

'Unscrew it. What's
inside?'

'A medallion.'

'What's written on it?'

' "Christmas 1948."'

'Put both hands in. What have you
got?'

'A box.'

'What's written on it?'

' "Export only."'

'Open it and take something out.'

'A pair of rubber corsets.'

'Put your hands in the far corners of the box.
What have you
got?'

'Two lobsters.'

'Leave them. Take out a handful of
something.'

'Dust.'

'Feel about in it.'

'A pearl.'

'Taste it. What's it taste
of?'

'Pear drops.'

[' Take
something off a shelf.']

'A shoe.'

'What size?'

'Eleven.'

'Reach for something behind you.'

He laughs.

'What is it?'

'A breast . .
.'

Notice that I'm helping him to fantasise by continually changing the
'set' (i.e. the category) of the
questions.

**5**

There are people who prefer to say 'Yes', and there are people who
prefer to say 'No'. Those who say 'Yes' are rewarded
by the adventures they have, and those who say 'No' are rewarded by the
safety they attain. There are far more 'No' sayers
around then 'Yes' sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the
other.^[3](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_32)^

'Your name Smith?'

'No.'

'Oh . .
.
are you Brown,
then?'

'Sorry.'

'Well, have you seen either of them?'

'I'm afraid not.'

Whatever the questioner had in mind has now been demolished and he
feels fed up. The actors are in total
conflict.

Had the answer been 'Yes', then the feeling would have been completely
different.

'Your name Smith?'

'Yes.'

'You're the one who's been mucking about with my wife
then?'

'Very probably.'

'Take that, you swine.

'Augh!'

Fred Karno understood this. When he interviewed
aspiring actors he'd poke his pen into an empty inkwell and pretend to
flick ink at them. If they mimed being hit in the
eye, or whatever, he'd engage them. If they looked baffled,
and 'blocked' him, then he wouldn't.

There is a link with status transactions here, since low-status players
tend to accept, and high-status players to block.
High-status players block any
action unless they feel they can control it.
The high-status
[player
is obviously afraid of being humiliated in front of an audience, but to
block your partner's idea is to be like the drowning man who drags down
his rescuer. There's no reason why you can't
play high status, and yet yield to other people's
invention.]

'Is your name Smith?'

'And what if it is?'

'You've been making indecent suggestions to my
wife.'

'I don't consider them indecent!'

Many teachers get improvisers to work in conflict because conflict is
interesting but we don't actually need to teach competitive behaviour;
the students will already be expert at it, and it's important that we
don't exploit the _actors_' conflicts.
Even in what seems to be a
tremendous argument, the actors should still be
_co-operating_, and coolly developing
the action. The improviser has to understand
that his first skill lies in releasing his partner's imagination.
What happens in my classes, if the
actors stay with me long enough, is that they learn how their 'normal'
procedures destroy other people's talent.
Then, one day they have a flash of
_satori_---they suddenly
understand that all the weapons they were using against other people
they also use inwardly, against
themselves.

**'Working' Someone**

Bill Gaskill used to make one actor responsible for the content and
development of the scene, while his partner just
'assisted'.

'Have you got it?'

'Here it is, Sir.'

'Well, unwrap it.'

'Here you are, Sir.'

'Well, help me put it on.'

'There, Sir. I think it's a good
fit.'

'And the helmet.'

'How's that, Sir?'

'Excellent. Now close the faceplate and start
pumping. I shall give three tugs on the
rope when I find the wreck. Can't be more than twenty
fathoms.'

If you concentrate on the task of involving your assistant in some
action, then a scene evolves automatically.
In my view the game is most
elegant when the audience have no idea that one actor is working the
other.

'Good morning.'

'Good morning.'

[' Yes
. .
.
shall I sit
here?']

'Oh, yes, Sir.'

The first actor sits at a slant in the chair and opens his mouth.
The second actor 'catches on' and
mimes pumping the chair higher, like a
dentist.

'Having some trouble, Sir?'

'Yes. It's one of these
molars.'

'Hmm. Let's see now.
Upper two occlusal .
.
.'

'Aaaauuuggghh!'

'My goodness, that is sensitive.'

The trick is not to think of getting the assistant to do things, but of
ways of getting each other into
trouble.

'The regular dentist is on holiday, is
he?'

'Yes, Sir.'

'I must say, you seem rather young.'

'Just out of dental school, Sir.'

'Will you have to extract it? I mean, is it
urgent?'

'I'll say it's urgent, Sir. Another day or so and
that would have exploded.'

The audience will be convinced that it's the dentist who is controlling
the scene. When improvisers are anxious, each
person tries to 'carry' the whole scene by himself.
Putting the responsibility all on
to one person helps them work more
calmly.^[4](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_34)^

**Blocking and Accepting**

Blocking is a form of aggression. I say this because if I
set up a scene in which two students are to say 'I love you' to each
other, they almost always accept each other's ideas.
Many students do their first
interesting, unforced improvisations during 'I love you'
scenes.

If I say 'start something' to two inexperienced improvisers, they'll
probably talk, because speech feels safer than action.
And they'll block any possibility
of action developing.

'Hallo, how are you.'

'Oh, same as usual. Nice day, isn't
it.'

'Oh I don't think so.'

If one actor yawns his partner will probably say 'I do feel fit today.'
Each actor tends to resist the
invention of the other actor, playing for time, until he can think up a
'good' idea, and then he'll try to make his partner follow it.
The motto of scared improvisers is
'when in doubt, say "NO".' We use this in life as a way of
blocking action. Then we go
[to
the theatre, and at all points where we would say 'No' in life, we want
to see the actors yield, and say 'Yes'.
Then the action we would suppress
if it happened in life begins to develop on the
stage.]

If you'll stop reading for a moment and think of something you wouldn't
want to happen to you, or to someone you love, then you'll have thought
of something worth staging or filming.
We don't want to walk into a
restaurant and be hit in the face by a custard pie, and we don't want to
suddenly glimpse Grannie's wheelchair racing towards the edge of the
cliff, but we'll pay money to attend enactments of such events.
In life, most of us are
high-skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation
teacher has to do is reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted'
improvisers. Bad improvisers block action,
often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop
action:

'Sit down, Smith.'

'Thank you, Sir.'

'It's about the wife, Smith.'

'She told you about it has she, Sir?'

'Yes, yes, she's made a clean breast of
it.'

Neither actor is quite sure what the scene is about but he's willing to
play along, and see what emerges.

At first students don't realise when they're blocking or yielding, and
they're not very good at recognising when it's happening with other
students. Some students prefer to yield
(these are 'charming' people) but most prefer to block, even though they
may have no idea exactly what they are doing.
I often stop an improvisation to
explain how the blocking is preventing the action from developing.
Videotape is a great help: you
replay the transaction, and it's obvious to
everyone.

A: Augh!

B: What's the matter?

A: I've got my trousers on back to
front.

B: I'll take them off.

A: No!

The scene immediately fizzles out. A blocked because he
didn't want to get involved in miming having his trousers taken off, and
having to pretend embarrassment, so he preferred to disappoint the
audience.

I ask them to start a similar scene, and to avoid blocking if
possible.

A: Augh!

B: (_Holding
him_)
Steady!

A: My back hurts.

B: No, it doesn't . .
.
Yes, you're
right.

B has noticed his error in blocking, which resulted from his wishing to
[stick
to the trouser idea. A then blocks his own idea by
shifting to another.]

A: I'm having trouble with my leg.

B: I'm afraid I'll have to amputate.

A: You can't do that, Doctor.

B: Why not?

A: Because I'm rather attached to it.

B: (_Losing
heart_) Come,
man.

A: I've got this growth on my arm too,
Doctor.

During this scene B gets increasingly fed up.
Both actors experience the other
as rather difficult to work with. They can say 'The scene
isn't working', but they still don't consciously realise why.
I've written down the dialogue
while they were playing the scene, and I go through it, and explain
exactly how they were interacting, and why B was looking more and more
depressed.

I get them to start the scene again, and this time they've
understood.

A: Augh!

B: Whatever is it, man?

A: It's my leg, Doctor.

B: This looks nasty. I shall have to
amputate.

A: It's the one you amputated last time,
Doctor.

(This is not a block because he's accepted the
amputation.)

B: You mean you've got a pain in your wooden
leg?

A: Yes, Doctor.

B: You know what this means?

A: Not woodworm, Doctor!

B: Yes. We'll have to remove it before it
spreads to the rest of you.

(_A's chair
collapses_)

B: My God! It's spreading to the furniture!
(And so
on.)

The interest to the audience lies in their admiration and delight in
the actors' attitude to each other. We so seldom see people
working together with such joy and
precision.

Here's another scene I noted down.

A: Is your name Smith?

B: Yes.

A: I've brought the . .
.
car.

I interrupt and ask him why he hesitated.
A says he doesn't know, so I ask
him what he was going to say. He says
'Elephant'.

'You didn't want to say "elephant" because there was one mentioned in
the last scene.'

[' That's
right.']

'Stop trying to be original.'

I make them restart the scene.

A: I've brought the elephant.

B: For the gelding?

A: (_Loudly_)
No!

The audience groan and cry out with disappointment.
They were enthralled with the
possibilities latent in a scene about gelding an elephant, the elephant
suddenly fizzing down to nothing at the first cut, or cutting the trunk
off by mistake, or a severed penis chasing the actors about the room.
But of course this is why A felt
impelled to block. He didn't want to be involved in
anything so obscene or psychotic. He resisted the very
thing that the audience longed to see.

I call anything that an actor does an 'offer'.
Each offer can either be accepted,
or blocked. If you yawn, your partner can yawn
too, and therefore _accept_ your
offer.

A block is anything that prevents the action from developing, or that
wipes out your partner's premise.^[5](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_36)^
If it develops the action it isn't a block.
For
example:

'Your name Smith?'

'What if it is, you horrible little
man!'

This is not a block, even though the answer is antagonistic.
Again:

'I've had enough of your incompetence, Perkins!
Please
leave.'

'No, Sir!'

This isn't a block either. The second speaker has accepted
that he's a servant, and he accepts the situation, one of annoyance
between himself and his employer.

If a scene were to start with someone saying 'Unhand me, Sir Jasper,
let me go', and her partner said 'All right, do what you like, then',
this is probably a block. It would get a laugh but it would
create bad feeling.

Once you have established the categories of 'offer', 'block' and
'accept' you can give some very interesting instructions.
For example, you can ask an actor
to make _dull_ offers, or
_interesting_ offers, or to
'_overaccept_', or to
'_accept and
block_' and so
on.

You can programme two actors so that A offers and accepts, and B offers
and blocks.

A: Hallo, are you a new member?

B: No, I've come to fix the pipes. You got a leak
somewhere?

[A:
Yes, oh thank goodness. There's three feet of water in the
basement.]

B: Basement? You ain't got a
basement.

A: No, well, er, the boiler-room. It's just down a few
steps. You've not brought your
tools.

B: Yes I have. I'm miming
them.

A: Oh, silly of me. I'll leave you to it
then.

B: Oh no. I need an assistant.
Hand me that pipe wrench.
(And so
on.)

Sometimes both actors can block as well as offer.
Bad improvisers do this all the
time, of course, but when you _tell_ people to block each
other their morale doesn't collapse so easily.
This again suggests to me that
blocking is aggressive. If the order comes from me, the
actors don't take it personally.

A: Are you nervous?

B: Not at all. I can see that
_you_
are.

A: Nonsense. I'm just warming my fingers up.
You're taking the piano exam, are
you?

B: I'm here for my flying lesson.

A: In a bathing costume?

B: I always wear a bathing costume.

Me: You've accepted the bathing costume.
(_laughter_.)

An _interesting_ offer can be 'The
house is on fire!', or 'My heart! Quick, my pills!'
but it can also be something
non-specific. 'All right, where's the parcel?'
or 'Shall I sit here, Doctor?'
are interesting offers, because we
want to know what will happen next. Even 'All right, begin'
is OK. Your partner can beat you on the
head with a balloon, and you thank him, and the audience are
delighted.

Here's an example in which A makes dull offers, while B makes
interesting offers.

A: (Dull offer.) Good morning!

B: (Accepts.) Good morning. (Makes interesting
offer.) Great heavens! Frank!
Did they let you out?
Have you
escaped?

A: (Accepts.) I hid in the laundry van.
(Makes dull offer.) I see you've
had the place redecorated.

B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) Yes .
.
.
but .
.
.
look .
.
.
about the money.
You'll get your share.
It wasn't my idea to cut you out.
I've .
.
.
I've got a good business here .
.
.

[A:
(Accepts, makes dull offer.) Yes, it's a step up in the
world.]

B: (Accepts, makes interesting offer.) It was different in the old days
. .
.
I .
.
.
I didn't mean to rat on you
Charlie . .
.

The actors have automatically become involved in some sort of gangster
scene, but all they actually worry about is the category the offers fit
into. The scene 'looks after
itself'.

Scenes spontaneously generate themselves if both actors offer and
accept alternately.

'Haven't we met before?'

'Yes, wasn't it at the yacht club?'

'I'm not a member.'

(Accepts the yacht club. A bad improviser would say 'what
yacht club?')

'Ah, I'm sorry.'

'School!'

'That's right. I was in the first form and you
were one of the school leavers.'

'Pomeroy!'

'Snodgrass!'

'After all these years!'

'What do you mean, after all these years?
It seems only yesterday that you
were beating me up every lunchtime.'

'Oh well . .
.
boys will be boys.
Was it you we held out of the
window by your feet?'

'Butterfingers.'

'I see you're still wearing the
brace.'

Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks prearranged.
This is because they accept all
offers made---which is something no 'normal' person would do.
Also they may accept offers which
weren't really intended. I tell my actors never to think up
an offer, but instead to assume that one has already been made.
Groucho Marx understood this: a
contestant at his quiz game 'froze' so he took the man's pulse and said,
'Either this man's dead or my watch has stopped.'
If you notice that you are shorter
than your partner you can say 'Simpkins!
Didn't I forbid you ever to be
taller than me?'---which can lead on to a scene in which the servant
plays on all fours, or a scene in which the master is starting to
shrink, or a scene in which the servant has been replaced by his elder
brother, or whatever. If your partner is sweating, fan
yourself. If he yawns, say 'Late, isn't
it?'

[Once
you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the
action. When someone's chair collapsed
Stanislavsky berated him for not continuing, for not apologising to the
character whose house he was in. This attitude makes for
something really amazing in the theatre.
The actor who will accept anything
that happens seems supernatural; it's the most marvellous thing about
improvisation: you are suddenly in contact with people who are
unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without
limit.]

By analysing everything into blocks and acceptances, the students get
insight into the forces that shape the scenes, and they understand why
certain people seem difficult to work
with.

These 'offer-block-accept' games have a use quite apart from actor
training. People with dull lives often think
that their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone
chooses more or less what kind of events will happen to them by their
conscious patterns of blocking and yielding.
A student objected to this view by
saying, 'But you don't choose your life.
Sometimes you are at the mercy of
people who push you around.' I said, 'Do you avoid
such people?' 'Oh!'
she said, 'I see what you
mean.'

**6**

Here are some games I've used with my
students.

**'Two Places'**

You can play very funny scenes in which one character plays, for
example, waiting at a bus stop, while another character claims that the
stage is his living-room, and so on. Such scenes exploit
blocking very successfully. (This game comes from the Royal
Court Writers' Group, circa 1959.)

**'Presents'**

I invented a rather childish game, which is now often used with small
children, but works really well with grown-ups, if you coax them through
their initial resistance.

I divide people into pairs and call them A and B.
A gives a present to B who
receives it. B then gives a present back, and
so on. At first each person thinks of
giving an interesting present, but then I stop them and suggest that
they can just hold their hands out, and see what the other person
chooses to take. If you hold out both hands about
three feet apart, then obviously it will be a larger present, but you
don't have to [determine
what your gift is. The trick is to make the thing you
are ]_given_ as interesting as
possible. You want to 'overaccept' the
offer. Everything you are given delights
you. Maybe you wind it up and let it
walk about the floor, or you sit it on your arm and let it fly off after
a small bird, or maybe you put it on and turn into a
gorilla.

An important change of thinking is involved here.
When the actor concentrates on
making the thing he _gives_ interesting, each
actor seems in competition, and feels it.
When they concentrate on making
the gift they _receive_ interesting, then they
generate warmth between them. We have strong
resistances to being overwhelmed by gifts, even when they're just being
mimed. You have to get the class
enthusiastic enough to go over the 'hump'.
Then suddenly great joy and energy
are released. Playing in gibberish
helps.

**'Blind Offers'**

An inexperienced improviser gets annoyed because his partners
misunderstand him. He holds out his hand to see if
it's raining, and his partner shakes it and says 'Pleased to meet you.'
'What an idiot', thinks the first
actor, and begins to sulk. When you make a blind offer, you
have no intention to communicate at all.
Your partner accepts the offer,
and you say 'Thank you.' Then
_he_ makes an intentionless
gesture, and you accept that, and _he_ says 'Thank you' and
so on.

A strikes a pose.

B photographs him.

A says 'Thank you.'

B stands on one leg, and bends the
other.

A straddles the bent leg and 'nails a horseshoe on
it'.

B thanks him and lies on the ground.

A mimes shovelling earth over him.

B thanks him . .
.
And so
on.

Don't underestimate the value of this game.
It's a way of interacting that the
audience love to see. They will watch fascinated, and
every time someone says 'Thank you', they
laugh!

It's best to offer a gesture which moves away from the body.
When you've made a gesture, you
then freeze in the position until your partner
reacts.

Once the basic technique has been mastered, the next step is to get the
actors to play the game while discussing some quite different
subject.

'A touch of autumn in the air today, James,' says A, stretching his
[hand
out. 'Yes, it is a little brisk,' says
B, peeling a glove off A's hand. B then lies on the
floor. 'Is the Mistress at home?'
says A, wiping his feet on B .
.
.
and so on.
The effect is startling, because
each actor seems to have a telepathic understanding of the other's
intentions.]

**'It's Tuesday'**

This game is based on 'overaccepting'.
We called it 'It's Tuesday'
because that's how we started the game.
If A says something matter of fact
to B, like 'It's Tuesday', then maybe B tears his hair, and says 'My
God! The Bishop's coming.
What'll he do when he sees the
state everything's in?' or instead of being upset he can
be overcome with love because it's his wedding day.
All that matters is that an
inconsequential remark should produce the maximum possible effect on the
person it's said to.

A: It's Tuesday.

B: No . .
.
it can't be .
.
.
It's the day predicted for my
death by the old gypsy!

(It doesn't matter how crummy the idea is, what matters is the
intensity of the reaction.) Now B turns white, clutches his throat,
staggers into the audience, reels back, bangs his head on the wall,
somersaults backwards, and 'dies' making horrible noises, and saying at
his last gasp:

B: Feed the goldfish.

A now plays 'It's Tuesday' on the goldfish remark.
Maybe he expresses extreme
jealousy:

A: That's all he ever thought about, that goldfish.
What am I to do now?
Haven't I served him faithfully
all these years? (_Weeps on knee of
audience member_.) He's always preferred that
goldfish to me. Do forgive me, Madam.
Does .
.
.
does anyone have a Kleenex?
Fifty years' supply of ants' eggs,
and what did he leave to me---not a penny.
(_Throws spectacular
temper tantrum_.) I shall write to
Mother.

This last remark introduces new material, so that B now plays 'It's
Tuesday' on that.

B: (_Recovering_) Your mother!
You mean Milly is still
alive?

He then plays passionate yearning, until he can't take the emotion any
further and throws in another 'ordinary' remark.
Any remark will do.
'Forgive me Jenkins, I got rather
carried away.' Maybe Jenkins can
[then
do a five-minute 'hate' tirade: 'Forgive you?
After the way you hounded her?
Turning her out into the snow that
Christmas Eve . .
.'
and so
on.]

Three or four sentences can easily last ten minutes, when expanded a
little, and the audience are astounded and delighted.
They don't expect improvisers, or
actors for that matter, to take things to such
extremes.

I would classify 'It's Tuesday' as a 'make boring offers, and
overaccept' game.

**'Yes, But . .
.'**

This is a well known 'accept-and-block' game (described in Viola
Spolin, _Improvisation for the
Theatre_).
(Its twin game 'Yes, and .
.
.'
is an 'accept-and-offer' game.)
I'll describe it because there are two ways of playing which produce
opposite results, and which tell one a lot about the nature of
spontaneity.

A asks questions that B can say 'Yes' to.
B then says 'But .
.
.'
and then whatever occurs to him.
To play the game badly, B should
think of his reply _before_ he begins to
speak.

'Excuse me, is that your dog?'

'Yes, but I'm thinking of selling
him.'

'Will you sell him to me?'

'Yes, but he's expensive.'

'Is he healthy?'

'Yes, but you can take him to a vet to check him out if you like.'
(And so
on.)

Probably the audience do not laugh, and probably the actors don't enjoy
the experience much. This is because the more logical,
rational part of the mind is in
control.

If you reply 'Yes, but . .
.'
with enthusiasm, as soon as the
question is put to you, and then say whatever comes into your head, the
scenes are quite different. I'll play it with myself now,
typing as quickly as possible.

'Don't I know you?'

'Yes, but I'm going.'

'You took my money!'

'Yes, but I've spent it.'

'You're a swine.'

'Yes, but everyone knows that.'

This time an audience would probably laugh.
It's worth teaching both ways of
playing the game. It can demonstrate to uptight
people [exactly
how cautious they usually are. Also it's funny to
launch out strongly on 'Yes, but . .
.', and then
]_have_ to complete the
sentence off the top of your head.

**Verse**

If the students are in a really happy mood, I might ask them to
improvise in verse. At first they're appalled.
I'll already have made them play
scenes in gibberish, and as impromptu operas, but they'll have been
turned off verse by school, while at the same time retaining an
exaggerated respect for it.

To me the most enjoyable thing about verse is its spontaneity.
You can 'fake up' verse by
deciding what to write, and then thinking up the rhymes, but if you're
asked to improvise it you just have to abandon conscious control, and
let the words come of their own
accord.

I start to talk in verse, and explain that it doesn't matter whether
the verse is good or bad, and that anyway we're going to start with the
worst possible verse:

'Tom and Else take your places,

A happy smile on your faces,

Don't start wondering what to say

Or we will never start today!

We'll have Tom come in and propose

'Cause Else's pregnant, I suppose . .
.'

The worse the verse I speak, the more encouraged the actors are.
I get them to stop thinking ahead,
and just say a line, and trust to luck that there'll be something to
rhyme with it. If they're in trouble and can't
think what to say, they're not to rack their brain, and try and force
their inspiration. I get them to say 'prompt' and
then either I shout something out, or one of the audience
does.

Once a scene starts, the verse has to control the content and the
action. Someone
says:

'At last I've got you in my clutches:

I'll keep you here and take you
crutches.'

He won't make any attempt to mime taking crutches away from his partner
though, until I yell 'Take the crutches!'
Then his partner falls over and
says:

'Oh, please Sir Jasper, let me go!

You must not treat a cripple so . .
.'

'Oh no! I'll not be robbed of my
revenge!

I'll sacrifice you here in old
Stonehenge.'

He makes no attempt to sacrifice her, I have to tell
him:

[' Do
it---it's what you said!]

Everyone wants to see her dead.'

'Lie down on yonder block and pray . .
.
prompt?'

'I'll kill her at the break of day . .
.'
suggests someone in the
audience.

No one in their right senses would think up a scene about sacrificing a
cripple at Stonehenge, but the verse precipitates it.
My job is to get the actors to go
where the verse takes them. If you don't care what you say,
and you go with the verse, the exercise is exhilarating.
But if an actor suddenly produces
a really witty couplet, you'll see him suddenly 'dry' as his standard
rises, and he tries to produce 'better'
verse.

**7**

Reading about spontaneity won't make you more spontaneous, but it may
at least stop you heading off in the opposite direction; and if you play
the exercises with your friends in a good spirit, then soon all your
thinking will be transformed. Rousseau began an essay
on education by saying that if we did the opposite of what our own
teachers did we'd be on the right track, and this still holds
good.

The stages I try to take students through involve the realisation (1)
that we struggle against our imaginations, especially when we
_try_ to be imaginative; (2)
that we are not responsible for the content of our imaginations; and (3)
that we are not, as we are taught to think, our 'personalities', but
that the imagination is our true self.

NOTES{.small}

**[[1 .]](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_27)** I
don't know who originated the rubber glove gag, but in his book
_King of
Comedy_ (Peter Davies, 1955) Mark Sennet
attributes it to Felix Adler.

**[[2 .]](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_29)**
Teachers are obliged to impose a censorship on their pupils, and in
consequence schools provide an anti-therapeutic environment.
In
_Interacting with
Patients_ (Macmillian, New York, 1963), a
work intended for nurses, Joyce Samhammer Hays and Kenneth Larson
describe therapeutic and non-therapeutic ways of interacting.
Here are their first ten
'therapeutic techniques'.

---

_Therapeutic techniques_ _Examples_
Using silence:
Accepting: Yes.
Uh Hmm.
I follow what you said.
Nodding.
Giving recognition: Good morning, Mr S.
You've tooled a leather wallet.
I notice that you've combed your hair.
Offering self: I'll sit with you a while.
I'll stay here with you.
I'm interested in your comfort.
Giving broad openings: Is there something you'd like to talk
about?
What are you thinking about?
Where would you like to begin?
Offering general leads: Go on.
And then?
Tell me about it.
Placing the event in time or in What seemed to lead up to . . .?
sequence: Was this before or after . . .?
When did this happen?
Making observations: You appear tense.
Are you uncomfortable when you . . .
I notice you are biting your lips.
It makes me uncomfortable when you . . .
Encouraging description of Tell me when you feel anxious.
perceptions: What is happening?
What does the voice seem to be saying?
Encouraging comparison: Was this something like . . .?
Have you had similar experiences?

---

Obviously the book has psychiatric nurses in mind, but it's interesting
to compare it to teacher-pupil interactions.
Here are the first ten
'_non_-therapeutic
techniques'.

---

_Non-therapeutic techniques_ _Examples_
Reassuring: I wouldn't worry about . . .
Everything will be all right.
You're coming along fine.
Giving approval: That's good.
I'm glad that you . . .
Rejecting: Let's not discuss . . .
I don't want to hear about . . .
Disapproving: That's bad.
I'd rather you wouldn't . . .
Agreeing: That's right.
I agree.
Disagreeing: That's wrong.
I definitely disagree with . . .
I don't believe that.
Advising: I thing you should . . .
Why don't you . . .?
Probing: Now tell me about . . .
Tell me your life history.
Challenging: But how can you be President of the United
States?
If you're dead, why is your heart beating?
Testing: What day is this?
Do you know what kind of a hospital this is?
Do you still have the idea that . . .?

---

I'm doing the book an injustice by quoting out of context, but it's
widely available, and it analyses many interactions.
Schools make it difficult for
teachers to interact therapeutically. Thinking back to my own
schooling, I remember how isolated the teachers were, how there were
only certain areas in which you could communicate with them at all.
If teachers were allowed to
interact in a therapeutic manner, then the adjective 'school-teachery'
would not be disparaging.

**[[3 .]](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_31)**
When I meet a new group of students they will usually be 'naysayers'.
This term and its opposite,
'yeasayers', come from a paper by Arthur Couch and Kenneth Kenison, who
were investigating the tendency of people answering questionnaires to be
generally affirmative, or generally negative in attitude.
They wrote in Freudian
terms:

'We have arrived at a fairly consistent picture of the variables that
differentiate yeasayers from naysayers.
Yeasayers seem to be
"id-dominated" personalities, with little concern about or positive
evaluation of an integrated control of their impulses.
They say they express themselves
freely and quickly. Their "psychological inertia" is
very low, that is, very few secondary processes intervene as a screen
between underlying wish and overt behavioural response.
The yeasayers desire and actively
search for emotional excitement in their environment.
Novelty, movement, change,
adventure--- these provide the external stimuli for their emotionalism.
They see the world as a stage
where the main theme is 'acting out' libidinal desires.
In the same way, they seek and
respond quickly to internal stimuli: their inner impulses are allowed
ready expression . .
.
the yeasayer's general attitude is
one of _stimulus
acceptance_, by which we mean a pervasive
readiness to respond affirmatively or yield willingly to both outer and
inner forces demanding expression.

'The "disagreeing" naysayers have the opposite orientation.
For them, impulses are seen as
forces requiring control, and perhaps in some sense as threats to
general personality stability. The naysayer wants to
maintain inner equilibrium; his secondary processes are extremely
impulsive and value maintaining forces.
We might describe this as a state
of high psychological inertia---impulses undergo a series of delays,
censorships, and transformations before they are permitted expression.
Both internal and external stimuli
that demand response are carefully scrutinised and evaluated: these
forces appear as unwelcome intruders into a subjective world of
"classical" balance. Thus, as opposed to the yeasayers,
the naysayers' general attitude is one of
_stimulus
rejection_---a pervasive unwillingness to
respond to impulsive or environmental forces.'
('Yeasayers and Naysayers',
_Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology_, Vol.
160, No.
2,
1960.)

**[[4 .]](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_33)**
My impro group used to set up a 'say "Yes"' game using a tape recorder.
We would record a one-sided
dialogue, and then play the tape during a show, and get an actor who did
not know what was on the tape to improvise with it.
It means you have to accept the
tape or fail totally, since the tape can't adapt to you.
One tape ran like
this:

'Hallo. (_Pause_.) No, no, me, I'm down
here. On the footpath.
(_Pause_.) I'm an ant.
(_Pause_.) Pick me up, will
you? (_Pause_.) Go careful.
(_Pause_.) We want to
[surrender.
(]_Pause_.) We're fed up with
being stepped on, bloody great things.
Dictate your terms.
(_Pause_.) Excuse me
interrupting. Can you see what I'm holding?
(_Pause_.) Hold me up to your
eye. (_Pause_.) Closer.
(_Pause_.) Now.
Pick up Willy.
Put your hand down and he'll climb
on. Feel him.
(_Pause_.) Put him on your
shoulder. (_Pause_.) You may feel him
climbing up into your ear. What's that Willy?
He says there's a lot of wax here.
(_Pause_.) Right now you may
hear a sort of crinkling noise. (_Pause_.) That's Willy blowing
up a paper bag. Any trouble from you and he'll
burst it against your eardrum. (_Pause_.)
(_Huge
explosion_.) Do it again, Willy, just to
show him. (_Explosion.
Pause_.) Well?
What have you got to say,
ant-murderer? (_Pause_.) We'll talk later.
Get moving.
Walk.
Left, right, left, right .
.
.'

**[[5 .]](#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_35)** A
Japanese text compares, two actors who block each other to 'two mantids
eating each other. They fight with each other; if one
puts out a hand it is eaten off; if one puts out a leg, it is eaten off,
so that it is natural that in the end they destroy each other.'
(_The Actor's
Analects_, translated by Charles J.
Dunn and Bunzo Torigoe, Columbia
University Press, 1969.)

A problem for the improviser is that the audience are likely to reward
blocking at the moment it first
appears.

'Your name Smith?'

'No!'

(_Laughter_.)

They laugh because they enjoy seeing the actors frustrated, just as
they'll laugh if the actors start to joke.
Jokey TV or radio programmes
usually stop for a song, or some animation, every few minutes.
The improviser, who is committed
to performing for longer periods, gags or blocks at his peril, although
the immediacy, of the audience's laughter is likely to condition him to
do just this. Once the performers have been
lured into gagging or blocking, the audience is already on the way
towards irritation and boredom. More than laughter they
want _action_.

_[[Narrative
Skills]](#06_Contents.xhtml_nat1)_