PHS Friday Letter

PHS kids have become joyful and elegant performers, as I hope you saw and enjoyed at Follies time. They have become comfortable with bringing themselves fully to any moment on stage, and in Improvisation—which we are studying now—they are coming to tolerate the uncertainty of “scriptlessness”; learning to trust the flow of their spontaneous ideas and reactions. In working with them over the years, however, and in my own time spent improvising with adults, I’ve noticed a pattern of halting and rejecting, which can quickly end the life of any story in an Improv game or scene. Often I'll be watching kids create a scene that is going along wonderfully, with the actors offering and accepting each other's ideas, deepening character, building relationships, following their instincts, and finally relaxing into and enjoying the flow of a story which seems almost magically willing to lift them up and carry them as far as they want to go. Then, something mysterious will shift, and suddenly the players will start to tread in place, then turn around and swim against the very current that's been carrying them, and finally start grasping for something to hold on to- a branch to keep them from tumbling over the edge of the waterfall. The momentum of the scene drops out, players block offers and say no to everything, and the scene just dies.

Watching the death of such an elegant flow is always like a little heartbreak. So I've wanted to better understand what triggers it. Witnessing it for the ten millionth time—I think it was in a lower school class this past November—the cause of it finally struck me. I saw the trigger that causes actors of all ages to turn around and grab on like this, to strangle the very life of the story that they're trying to save. It was really simple, and kind of sad. In improv, this change comes invariably when one of the characters is being offered what they want. By the ages of 5 or 6, it seems that most kids have already been conditioned— um, probably by every story available in popular culture—to associate “happy”, or fulfillment, with the Ending. They’ve come to associate making peace, or achieving a goal, or finding fulfilllment, with The End of a story. Which is no wonder. From childhood on, we watch characters disappear from us at the point of some great arrival, and we are left alone to ponder the existance of life after resolution— like life after death. We have lots of hero's journey stories in our popular cannon that chronicle struggles, and then end with arrival or fulfillment. And while these stories may give us instruction or inspiration for our own challenges, they leave some very real, vital and transformative parts of life right off the archetypal map.

What happens to our characters, to us, after a moment of fulfillment? Do we die? Are we transformed? Are we enriched? To many of my students, a moment of fulfillment looks for all the world like an impending end. And if they sense it isn't time for their scene to end, they will fight any momentum that leads them toward fulfillment. They will stall and create obstacles and say no to each other’s ideas until they have successfully stopped the flow of their desire from reaching its fulfillment... until they have, sadly, squashed the life out of the story that they wanted so much to hold on to.

Here's what this can look like in class: Clarance the Great is JUST about to be endowed with the coveted cape of invisibility when—he slips and falls off the edge of the cliff... The farmer’s daughter suddenly looses her hearing just when she's being told the very spell that could save the dying family pig... Aliens come and blow up the world just as the Farley and Marley families are about to end their decades feud…BobJoe (a very popular name on the 4th grade improv scene at present) realizes that he is just a few cents short of being able to afford that shiny new time machine he’s always wanted. It really is too bad. Because fulfillment in any one of these moments could have led to many exciting adventures.

To regain our ability to ride a flow, improvisers have to be willing to have a struggle or a search come to an end, and then be willing to continue on into uncharted territory. We have to be willing to not know what comes next, and with everybody watching. This sounds exceptionally scary to people I know who don’t improvise… but it’s actually what all of us are doing all the time—we just find ways to pretend it isn’t. In a circumstance of infinite possibilities, none of us knows what will happen to us next, ever. But we may use the repetition and familiarity of our present struggles or journeys to orient us, or even define us, when not knowing feels too uncomfortable. Because of this, I think many of us, on stage and off, actually becoming attached to our struggles, and resisting their resolution.

If you want, check for this in yourself. See if you can imagine life after the resolution of a long-held struggle. What does that feel like? Or, try and imagine who you would be without a dearly held quest or fight. Would you know yourself without your struggle for peace, or creative satisfaction, or connection, or healthy community, wellness, or achievement? Who would you be? If you’re like me, it can be hard to imagine… or actually feel like the end of life as I know it… which can be a little scary!

To be sure, I am not suggesting that we just cease all struggling, end our valiant quests, or discontinue our labors of love. No. These are things our stories are made of. What I am suggesting, as I do in class, is that our stories will go on past moments of receiving and triumph. I’m suggesting that Happy isn’t always—or even usually—the Ending, and that true fulfillment will not be the end of you. I’m encouraging my students to travel on past the horizons that they can see, and trust that the world holds more for them to do, and love, and be, than they can imagine. And I’m encouraging all of us too, as a community of creative people who have profound visions of peace and justice and learning, to keep journeying and working towards what we want… and to examine, and maybe even fortify, our own willingness to let our struggles end, and let our dreams come true, when the time comes for such grace.

Willingness to be fulfilled means trusting that you will exist, (and you will; with more brilliance and capacity and resource than you can imagine) beyond your present quest. It means being willing to not know what comes next. And to be seen, in all of your beautiful unknowing.

This is the stuff that improvisers ask of themselves every single time they step up on a stage. I hope you will all be proud to know that right now, in addition to aquiring knowledge about history and composition and mathematics and science, your children are becoming more and more comfortable with not knowing. Every day in performance class, they are coming to better trust the selves that live on beyond achievements… they are delighting each other with their willingness to be seen in their uncertainty… and they’re discovering that their stories not only go on after good things happen—they just keep getting better.

I wish the same for all of us in the year to come.

With love,

Janna