The pulse

The pulse is what improv is all about. In India, where I grew up, we call it prana, or life-force energy. It pulses through the actor while improvising. It is experienced as a strong energy making the actor act and do as she does without thinking, without planning, without trying.

The pulse is also an exercise. We gather together in a circle holding hands. I send a pulse along by squeezing the hand of my neighbor on one side, who then sends it along with a squeeze of the hand and so on. The pulse moves along at a certain rhythm. The group tries to concentrate on keeping to the rhythm while being alert to the pulse. If someone misses it, the pulse dies, and you can feel the group energy drop off instantly.

With practice a group can handle two simultaneous pulses moving in opposite directions. After the first pulse is established I send a pulse in the opposite direction. The group tries to concentrate on keeping both rhythms going. It gets to be challenging and funny. Sometimes we end up on the floor, laughing in a circular heap, barely able to keep going.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay

Image: Andy Goldsworthy's Pebble Circle. 

Play Space: A Manifesto

We are guided along by an invisible force along lines of least resistance. I call this force the pulse. Improvisation involves simply following the pulse down the paths that suddenly appear before us. Artist Frank Stella calls his canvas his working space. I think that a good name for the performance space is play space. Once we tap into the pulse we can feel it vibrate, zoom up and down and sideways at times, linger lovingly on the side at others, sometimes exploding, sometimes still, filling our play space, exploring its boundaries and everything within with a taut, endless continuity.

Far too many approaches to improvisation have made up rules, rights and wrongs. Many even have the cautionary TM label attached to them. I find such approaches limiting and stifling to the natural instinct to find the pulse and follow it.

Stella sees the work of painting in terms of the need to create dynamic space using a still and two-dimensional medium. I see the work of improvisation as the creation of play space, a space where our natural instincts can play. Anything less I find unsatisfactory. Anything more is too much like work.

May the pulse be with you!
Abhay

Image: Marcel Duchamp's playful masterpiece.

So what's the point of all the exercises?

A student of improv may well ask, what is the point of all the exercises that we do in class? People sometimes assume that the point is to develop certain skills. Develop presence or quickness, for instance.

The truth is that learning improv is really not a matter of learning skills and then honing them. Philosophically, it is not an additive process. It is not as if you come in with skills A and B and then in class you learn skills C and D. If that were the case you could read a book on improv and learn all there is to it.

Learning improv is actually a subtractive art. You are put thorough a carefully, even cunningly, modulated set of exercises that subtract, one step at a time, things that interfere with your perfect and continuous connection with the pulse. One set of execises may work on removing your inhibitions, the next on your resistance, the third on freeing your body to express itself more freely, the fourth on liberating your voice.

You were all born perfect improvisers. We are simply attempting to return to that perfect state.

May the pulse be with you,

Abhay

Image: Radica 20Q Artificial Intelligence Toy

How I Improvise

I have been thinking about how I improvise a piece. Firstly, I let my body do something. It may assume a static shape or start moving in a certain way. I am following the pulse.

Secondly, once the physicality is established, the pulse will move me to what I call one of the four "S"es: silence, sound, speaking, singing. Speaking or singing can be in gibberish. I do not consciously make a choice amongst the four "S"es. When I trust and follow the pulse I seem to be guided along in making that choice, perhaps subconsciously.

Improv for me starts with the physical discovery of the pulse. There is no room for thinking here. If we were to allow for a simplistic mind-body dichotomy, improv definitely starts in the body and stays in the body.

The body has its own logic and sense of direction. That is why it is pointless for me to worry about being clever, funny, or staying on track. I simply take the leap.

Once I completely accept the primacy of the pulse in the body for creating an improvisation, I am also free to explore improv as more than a narrative art. A narrative performance tells a story. The pulse may well guide me to tell a story or be in one but it may just as well guide me to a very different place. A place that has no stories to tell and yet a place I treasure.

Like the small red bottlecap that I loved as a child and played with more than anything else.

May the pulse be with you!

Abhay