I’m in a workshop where we’ve played games called Columbian Headfuck and Columbian Headfuck 2. It feels like coming home.
Since I started trying to share what I love about impro by running workshops, I’ve started to notice my tastes. What’s most important to me is the idea of making the other person feel fabulous, like they just had the best idea ever, and that you love and support them whatever you do. And the idea of making failure a joyful experience rather than a tight, closed one.
Ha – it’s all very well. The reason I think those things are surfacing as the most important is because they are the things I need the most in order to enjoy playing. I go on and on about taking risks, but in fact, I don’t take very many. I play it safe a lot of the time because I’m so afraid of letting others down.
In the past, I’ve heard people say to me ‘you’re so hard on yourself’ and though I wanted to stop, I have to confess that a martyrish part of me was a tiny bit proud. Yes – I can get through this. I’m hard on myself to make myself strong. I can take it. Why? Why would I do that to myself? It makes everything I want to do just so much harder. Why would I choose to be tight and closed and spiky when there are so many juicier options?
And here I am in a workshop with Patti Stiles, and she’s just taken everything to a whole new level. Not enough that you just make your partner look good. No, how about playing every scene as if it’s a game, and the game is for you to find out what gives your partner joy. And to be honest. To give them that gift too.
Making them look good? That could be stuck on from the outside. Look into their eyes and give them what they want. If it doesn’t work, change it so it does. Look for that light that goes on in there eyes, or that inadvertent full-body beam of happiness.
And we’re back to Esther Lilley (I miss her – and have missed her online a few times). She does that. She tries things out until she finds someone’s joy, or that little thing that makes them feel special, and she uses that. She makes them important in their own environment. She brings their own value to the surface of their minds.
I want this. I want to be so much better at failing. And to do that, I have to be so ready and willing to accept that I will no doubt fail at that too. I will get it wrong again and again and I’ll have to learn to accept that and be gentle with myself, and really live the principles I believe in. It IS okay to fail, and when your friends and partners celebrate with you when you do, everything feels so much easier.
All this has given me a bit of a realisation. You know when you’re hiking and you have just done a fairly strenuous hill. You get to the top, full of a sense of achievement, only to see a huge, high horizon full of further mountains to climb. Failing gloriously is the mountain, and my job is to keep on climbing. It may be a big mountain, but god, it’s beautiful, and I’m already putting one foot ahead of the other for the next bit.
The thing about hikers is, they don’t stop once they’ve climbed a mountain, however much of an achievement it was. They find another one, or climb that one again. It’s addictive and joyful and yes please, I want some more.
Someone used the word ‘beef’ today, to mean ‘issue’ or ‘problem’. Gold star. Every time. My beef is… I love it.
I shrugged off my physical body like a fat suit in a scene, and ascended to Heaven. In another, Alex lay in an open grave, cackling as I shoveled dirt over him, sending him to Hell.
There’s a lady here whose face makes me smile immediately. She has the deepest green eyes and fabulous crows’ feet. She smiles a lot and we have had such fun in all the scenes we’ve played. In one, we were lying on the floor, laughing and laughing as we told a story a word at a time. Such raw glee and wonder at the genius and joy of another person. How lucky am I, to get to do this?
I also loved having breakfast alone today. It’s a gift. I’m in a Youth Hostel with 200 or so people, by the feel of things, so it’s amazing to be able to have some privacy. And the autumn outside is stunning. Yellows and reds and browns and that smell.
I find myself beaming when I am alone, walking, going somewhere, but in no particular hurry to get there. Moving, letting thoughts come. It’s wonderful. And I find myself glowing (similar, but not quite the same) when I’ve just played a game with a person and we’ve forgotten ourselves and become mutual gleemongers.
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