Sep 27, 2024

On Improv

Last night I went to see my 26 year old son in an improv performance at Theatre 99 in Charleston, South Carolina. He was among a handful of students from a class there. They performed beautifully. As my son explained to me, they were doing something called “long form”, which basically means that they are to weave themes throughout their performance, and do so on the spot, thinking things up as they go along. My son, Julian, told me this is akin to writing. “Actually,” he said to me, “long form is more like writing than acting.” 

Portion of an oil painting by Beau Smith, circa 2000s

Can you imagine getting up on stage with a small group and making up your performance as you go along? Well, that is what they did. I have to admit, I was bored at times – not by my son. He was great. But, hey, what do you expect? These guys are making everything up on the spot. 

Okay, so, the students did their performances first. Then, at the end, came on the professionals. These guys perform like this all the time. Do they get paid? I hope so. My son is taking classes at Theatre 99. The classes are highly coveted, especially the ones in the later stages. The classes go all the way up to “stage 5”. At stage 5 one is getting close, very close, to performing with a troup and doing this every week for an audience. Does one get paid? That is always the question. 

I was surprised, with all the demand for it, that there are not more classes given. Like, why not offer more stage 5 classes if so many people want to get into them? If I were a performer, needing money, as I imagine most of them do, why would I not want  to teach? It only stands to reason. They don’t have a lot of stage 5 classes. There might just be one, actually. Highly coveted. You get put into a random lottery. You cross your fingers and hope you get in. That doesn’t seem like the best business model to me. But, again, these are artists. Let’s remember that. 

I once, many years ago, before I was married, even – that was how long ago it was, maybe 35 years ago? – I had a dream that I was teaching an improvisation class. At the time, I had no idea that this could be something taught. I just thought it was an interesting dream. Now my son is taking such a class. So, it turns out, the dream was prophetic. 

The students did admirably. I was, as I say, at times, bored. Do you know how hard this work is? Better you than me, I thought. You get up on stage and have to make things up as you go along. To make it more interesting, your partners, the other people performing with you, can change and add elements to the scene. The dynamics of the scene can totally change in a moment, and you, the performer, have to go along with that. 

So, you can be going along, with an idea of what the scene is about and who the characters, you being one of them, are, and suddenly, one of the performers changes things, and you have to roll with that. So, a lot of great creativity comes of this. It helps to be a good liar. I am an adequate liar. I sometimes practice on my son. When my wife was alive, I sometimes practiced on her. She was great to practice on because sometimes she was gullible. I don’t’ know why. It was a strange thing about her. She was a clinical psychologist, a very good one, and, believe me, not many things got past her. But then, at the same time, she could be very trusting and very gullible. It was all in fun, my games. 

One time, early in our relationship, I was giving her a tarot reading. We would give each other tarot readings. She had this thing she did. If the reading did not end on a happy note, that is, a good card, she would say, “draw  it out to a major arcana.” Which mean, keep pulling cards until a major arcana card came up. In the tarot, there are 24 or so major arcana cards, you know, the archetypal ones, the ones that are the most archetypal, cards like The Fool, The Star, The Devil, The Hierophant… All cards that start with the article “The”. Well, in retrospect, I guess all the cards could start with the article, “the”. But the major arcana has a name of some kind of person or people after the article “the”. 

So, my wife, who was, at the time, my girlfriend, she would always say Draw it out to a major arcana if the card the reading ended on didn’t suit her. So, I thought I would play a trick. I don’t know how I managed to do this secretly. It helps to have some dexterity and to have learned a few card tricks. I stacked the deck so that all the bad cards ended the reading. And, let me remind you if you don’t know, but you probably do, there are a lot of scary, bad cards in the tarot. Honestly, I don’t know why people give themselves and others readings with the tarot. The cards, so many of them, are so bad, so dark. 

I kept pulling bad cards. The Ten of Swords, which is a guy lying on a beach with a bunch of swords stuck in his back and it’s dark, The 5 of Swords, which is considered by many, the worst card int he deck, which has these unhappy people all standing about with lowered swords, and it is obvious something did not go well, and this card means a hollow victory. The sword cards can be bad. There is the 3 of Swords, which is a heart with 3 swords stuck into it. There is the 9 of swords which is someone who looks like he’s lying on his deathbed with a bunch of swords, well, count ‘em, 9, hanging on the wall above him. There are some not so great Cup cards. There is the 5 of cups, which, if my memory serves me, is 5 cups turned upside down, or in some gooey situation. There are so many bad cards, I cannot think of them all. But I was pulling them, the 10 of Swords, the 3 of Swords, the dreaded 5 of Swords. And she was getting wide eyed. She went along with it for the longest time. I couldn’t believe it. Until, smirking me, I gave it away. And, well, who can get that bad a tarot reading anyway? I say that if the tarot reading is that bad, it must be reversed. It must be good. 

Sometimes I practice on my son. I tell him something that is fake. I keep it up until he knows I’m lying. He’s pretty good at this himself. I have to watch out for him. He catches me pretty quickly. Like, sometimes I can’t even get anything over on him. But then, I tell him something that is real. And then he disbelieves that. So I caught him. And I explain, no, that really is true. 

If you think about it, we improvise all the time. But to have to be on stage doing it, that ups the level considerably. Which is to say, I highly regard anyone who has the gumption and creativity to do that. If I were up there, I’m sure I would make things difficult for the other performers, which you are not supposed to do. Yes, your partner actors can throw in a wrench or two, but it should be a fairly small wrench. Not a big one. See, for example, if one of my partner actors was to throw in a wrench and I was to have to roll with it, go along with it, I might not do that. That would be my wrench, and that’s…that’s really against the rules. You shouldn’t do that. Which is to say, I have my own set of rules for what I am doing, and I’m glad I’m not up there. 

But think about it. We are all improvising all the time. We talk to ourselves. I certainly do quite a lot of that. It is entertaining. So, we entertain ourselves. It’s more fun, really, when you can do it with others. So, all that is to say, there is a great amount of creativity that can be had simply by hanging out with people, especially ones you can play with. One hopes this is done in an environment of fun and no judgements. How else can a group work together? 

When the students got finished performing, the professionals came on, and, I have to say, they were rather good. They were able to sustain interest in scene after scene and weave the scenes together. Now, to do this, they had to be wacky. This is not Meryl Streep acting. this is not Shakespeare. Although, who knows? I’m sure there had to be some improvising back then. 

This is tough stuff to do. To purely improvise and weave scene after scene and return to scenes and to sustain interest and be funny? That’s damned hard. You really have to think on your toes. 

Which, by the way, is what a writer has to do – all…the…time. Which is why I have so much respect for them. It is a form of writing, this improv stuff. 

I went to art school for film, film animation and illustration. The animator is classically described thusly: the animator is a closet actor. He’s shy. So he gets a creature, whatever he animates, to act for him. Now, besides this, in my day – because I am old, I’m 62 – it also took a great deal of patience. There was also another skill, besides being able to draw, that an animator had to have or was blessed, hopefully, with, and that is an ability to analyze an action and break it up into parts and see those parts working together. Today, you have the computer doing all that stuff for you. Oh, to be sure, there are still the old fashioned animators. They have their place. They can be part of the effort. But it is also possible nowadays to cobble something together that is an animation and to do so without the tedious process of analyzing the acting and breaking down the movements. That is a specialized skill, being able to break down the movements. 

Many years ago, I thought I was pretty good at doing that, and I thought I was pretty good at drawing. I once worked for this animator – he did commercials in Atlanta, GA. He would, every now and then give me a project of drawing what are called “in betweens”, the movements between the main movements he would draw. I can tell you, he was never satisfied with my work. He was always having to fix it. Not to mention that I took a long enough time doing it. So,even though I thought I was pretty good, apparently I was not as good as I thought. 

Paper Mache Pigs

I’m going to tell you what this blog is really about. It’s kind of about improvising, in a way. I write. I’m a writer, and an artist, a sculptor. So, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. So, I start out writing a blog entry to prime the pump. That’s basically all I am doing. 

Now, is this entertaining? How much of myself am I going to have to share? All sorts of questions like that come to mind. 

I will admit, this is pretty meta. But, that kind of self-referential stuff is something I am familiar with. I do it plenty enough. Any artist does, or can. It is tempting. Maybe I should not bite. 

Killing two birds with one stone. Here is one problem. The whole thing about being able to make money. It is a constant concern. I would imagine it is that way for most artists. Or, “artprenuers”, you might call them. So, the concern here, besides that I mention making money is a concern, the other concern here is that I do not want that to pull me apart in too many places. I don’t want to be over extended. Yes, that is the term. Over extended. I had to think about it. Why? Perhaps because I was over extended. 

And, I will say, maybe I am that. I have all sorts of copper frog sculpture work to do. I have frog sculptures that need to be packed and shipped. I have money that needs to be invoiced. I have materials to buy. I have my studio which always is needing to be organized. And then there’s my house, and the work it needs. I’m just getting started, here. 

I have, as I like to always have, the “new project that I’m all excited about”. Right now, that is pigs. I’m making them out of another material besides copper. This is something I will talk a lot about. In later entries. I don’t want to go into it all now. But, I have been working in copper for over 30 years. I have been making copper frogs for over 30 years. Well, that’s what people want. I know, but the materials are so expensive. Even when I ask for more money, I still don’t make what I think I should be making. With cheaper materials, I have more freedom. 

This comes down to needing also to have a certain amount of confidence. I think about it this way. I’m always thinking about it this way. I’m an artist. I look at what other people have done with certain materials. Does that mean that I’m going to do that with those materials? Even if I use the same methods, the result is going to be different. The result is going to be my art. That is really something I learned. Take the paper mache pigs I am working on right now. There’s a lot of crap out there made with paper mache. Crap. Kids play with paper mache. Maybe that’s when it’s not as much crap. But, that’s crap, too. And the thing with paper mache, it has this way of generalizing the surface, of smoothing everything out. So you don’t have hard corners. So, how am I going to get hard corners? How am I going to work with this material? That’s the thing. There can be a lot of paper mache stuff out there, but some of it is really good. Most of it is not. But some of it is art. 

So I have to tell myself, regardless of what materials you are working with, you are making art, and it’s your art. And if you are any good as a sculptor, there will be those who will want what you make. Now, that’s hard for me to tell myself because, for so many, many years, people have been wanting the copper frog sculptures. And they don’t really care that much that I made them. Although, in the end, they do, of course, because I am not just an artist. I’m also a craftsman. So, the question is, does my artistry and craftsmanship translate into other materials? As a sculptor, I would hope that it does.

So this is a rather important thing to remind oneself of. See, all this time, people have wanted these copper frog sculptures. They want copper. But I don’t want to work in copper all the time. And, by the way, it uses up all my materials. It uses all my fuel because copper requires a lot of heat to weld and braze. And then there is the copper. And there is the brazing rod and stainless steel. These are expensive materials. Plus, the time it takes to make the work. All the labor involved. I would like to work in other materials. But then you cannot put it out in your yard. You see? It has to go in someone’s house. Like a painting. But they don’t have room for a sculpture. It has to go outside. These are the type of problems I have to deal with. 

But I do tell myself, hey, you are an artist and a craftsman. Besides that, you can make an intriguing creature, whatever it is, whether it is a frog or an elf or a pig – whatever. So, that is, in itself, a kind of niche. The creature building thing. That’s what I do. Even before I made frogs for a living, people in art school, friends who I went to school with, knew me as the fellow who made creatures orf one sort or another. Remember, animation? 

So, I tell myself, look, I know how to bring life to a creature. That is what I am really doing. And I have certain skills. I can work with materials. I have versatility and resourcefulness. You don’t know… So, it doesn’t have to always be a copper frog. Oh, to be sure, I do make good money making copper frog sculptures. It may not be enough for me, partly because I want to do other things, make other animals, for one thing, and write. Remember the killing two birds with one stone? That’s multi-tasking. Basically. 

The thing is, regardless of whatever materials you are working with, and even regardless whatever methods and techniques you are using, you have to remember, it’s you doing it. So, Picasso, he like to draw with crayons. Crayons. Probably crayons that belonged to his kids. Take paint. A lot of people work with paint to make pictures. Some of them suck. Let’s be honest about that. And, other pictures painted with the same type of paints, are incredible. It’s like with musicians. A really good one can take a a non-par instrument, and make music out of it. A really great guitarist can make a bad guitar sing. He knows how to do it. Even, he should. He should work with tools and materials that are subpar. Tools and materials that are student grade. He should be able to make those materials sing. Same with a painter. I know we all love the expensive paints, the expensive colors. But, let’s be real, here. If you are any good of an artist, you can take artist grade paints with not as much pigment in them and make the colors sing. If you cannot do that, well, you are not really that great of a painter. Part of that is draftsmanship. Sure, theres is a lot of draftsmanship in a good painting. Even a Jackson Pollock has draftsmanship in it. It truly does. Don’t believe me? Hey, Jackson Pollack is not so easy to copy. Most people cannot do that. His work sings. 

Some Meta

So this is the deal. It is kind of a test. I’m going to write 3000 – count ‘em, 3000 – words for a blog every day. An art blog. It’s about art. It’s about creativity. So it can meander a little bit. A teensy weensy little bit. Hey, if what’s his name can duct tape a banana to a wall and call it a day – a $200,00 day. I think it was. If what’s his name can do that, I can write a teensily weensily meandering just a little bit blog. Can I make as much money from doing it? Well, you got me, there – but… BUT, I bet I can make some money from my blog. If I just get more eyes on my work, even if that becomes yet another sale of another copper frog, still, that’s money. And I have had experience with these sorts of things. I know that content, true content will get me seen on Google. I have done it before with images of my work. Why not writing? 

Look, I will say the same thing, or something similar, to what I read in the comedian Maria Bamford’s book. She says, feel free not to read all of this book, she says of the book she wrote. And then she says, the punchline, “I didn’t.” Which is great. Right? so, feel free to read whatever you like and leave the rest. 

I’ll be honest. When I am reading a book, rarely do I ever linger on every word. There may be patches I don’t even understand. Now, if that happens too much, I might put down the book. But, I will say, if the writer is any good, I can trust him. Okay, I didn’t understand this or that description, or this or that thing you said. I don’t care. I know you will soon cut to the chase, and so, I can live with that and just enjoy the sounds and the veracity of the sounds in the work. I don’t need to understand everything. I learned that skill when, as a kid, I read Shakespeare, which impressed my mother who was a Shakespeare scholar. 

This is how it goes with the art. Every artist, nowadays, who wants to get attention, what are they going to do? They are going to talk about or show in some way their process. You cannot get away from that. So you just have to go with it. And, frankly, not all artists do a good job of that. The reason? Simply, it may be, because they don’t have to. They aren’t having to make a living doing it, maybe. That could be one reason. But the ones that have to make a living form selling the art, certainly, showing process is a big way to create content. Whether it is talking about what you do, or teaching, or taking pictures or video of what you are doing, it is showing process. 

This is such a must that it seems to me a kind of evolutionary thing. Here we are at a point in the evolution of art that showing process is part of the thing. You cannot get away from it. Believe me, I have tried. 

I will talk more in depth about this in later posts. I think it deserves a post focusing on that point. 

A Writing Prompt

I will leave you with this. It is an idea for the beginning of a science fiction story. It is a kind of prompt. Perhaps it could be a first sentence of first paragraph. It is good enough for that. You can use it, too, if you so desire. I’m not afraid of anyone doing that because, hey, your story will not be my story. It’s just a prompt. These ideas are free to be shared. 

Which is a nice thing, a benefit of reading this blog. It’s about creativity. Hopefully, somewhere a long the line, I will inspire. Hopefully, even, maybe, some of my ideas you will want to use in your own work. In that we wwe can be silent collaborators. All art is a collaboration, anyway, when you think of it. What is the saying? Take it and make it yours. Steal it. But do so with pizzazz. Or with whatever. It doesn’t have to be pizzazz. It doesn’t have to be “zestfull”. That’s a Stephen King reference to his book “on Writing.” He read a book once, it was science fiction, where everything was zestful, or something like that. 

Anyway, the idea. Here it is. Maybe someone else has come up with this idea, but I think it’s a good prompt. Here it is.

Flying saucers, on the contrary, are not actually alien creations. They are, indeed, very human creations. 

That’s the prompt. I’m already thinking of more to say and fill out that paragraph with.