improv wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson

Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

The author has taught improv theater at Stanford for over 28 years. She looks at life as improv, and offers some rules. The rules assume a few things, though—such as a genuine commitment and willingness to work hard; otherwise they are worse than useless, as she indicates herself.

1. Say yes
2. Don't prepare
3. Just show up
4. Start anywhere
5. Be average
6. Pay attention
7. Face the facts
8. Stay on course
9. Wake up to the gifts
10. Make mistakes, please
11. Act now
12. Take care of each other
13. Enjoy the ride

Some of these may seem excessively obscure, but she elaborates. For example, item 9 is about counting your blessings. Think about the ways you are supported in your everyday life, and the chain of people working for you from the men fixing the potholes in the road to the lad who delivers your newspaper and the engineer managing the distillation stack that created the gasoline for your car. In improv theater everybody has to support everybody else, and it is important to get a feel for that quickly, and not be greedy for the spotlight.

This is a small short book, and I fear that a summary is likely to be close in length to the original.

I'll be trying to see if I can apply some of this with our kids. Some of the rules: “Just show up” and “Act now” are the sort of thing that aren't always obvious when you have trouble reading emotions. One thing we'll try tonight is the “Parable Game” where the participants create (quickly!) a new “wise” saying, each offering one word at a time. When done, everyone solemnly intones “Yes, yes, yes” to show how wise it was. An example: “Try … not … to … laugh … when … you … look … at … your … waistline.”

Read it.