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Focusing on Process
Most of us want to do well at the things we attempt. We want to do them right. If it’s improv, we probably want to get a laugh. If it’s dancing, we strive to get the steps correct. All our lives we’re taught and encouraged to meet expectations and excel, whether it’s getting good grades at school, winning at games, or selling ideas or products at work. We want to be in control because we believe it will help us to succeed.
It’s only natural that most of us are tempted to skip from means to the ends, to be concerned more with the destination than the journey. But the destination is only the final part of the journey and not separate from it. And in good improv the destination is determined by the journey because it is an exploration rather than a planned foray.
One of my least favorite improv exercises is an old one. I call it “Meal” although I’m sure it goes by other monikers among other people. In this activity, a group of students, ranging from two to five in number, agree on three different foods and then they mime eating the food for the audience. I tell them that the goal is “to eat the imaginary food.” At some point I ask the audience to guess what the performers are eating.
I don’t like Meal because it’s usually pretty boring for me to watch and I find myself stifling yawns except when people take huge risks. For example, Patrick, an MBA student, devoured a mango with such fervor that he made a virtual mess in the classroom and some students were agog at his abandon.
“So why am I having you do this?” I’ll ask my students. “To get us to pay attention to detail,” someone will respond. “Make us use our imaginations,” another will suggest. “Body language,” another will warily propose.
“Well… Yes…” Mostly though, this game is about focusing on process. You see, once the players realize that others are guessing what foods they’re pretending to eat, they’ll leapfrog the stated goal—“to eat the imaginary food”—and go straight to trying to make sure the spectators correctly guess what the foods are. They pander to their audience and it becomes a parlor game, instead of an exercise in which participants are absorbed in what they’re doing, and that’s when it gets boring.
Ultimately the game isn’t about who got the audience to guess right or who in the audience got the most correct foods. That’s just not all that engaging. What is engaging is when to manipulate our response to them.
Athletes deal with this when they try to control a ball when they throw, shoot, or hit it, rather than just releasing the ball and trusting in the form to get it where it’s supposed to go. And who hasn’t dealt with a salesperson so focused on closing the deal that what we want isn’t even a consideration?
Mary Pinard, a poet who works with business students at Babson College in Boston, talks about getting her students to “trust the form.” Most of us would be worried about how the poem’s going to turn out but her assertion is that if you work within the confines of whatever poetic form you’re using, say, a sonnet, that the poem will take care of itself.
That is also my experience when it comes to writing fiction, which is generally more open stylistically. I may have an idea for where a story’s going, or even an outline, but I will be surprised, if I simply write, by what is revealed. This is what writers mean when they say the story is “telling itself.”
Likewise, when I assign students term papers, I tell them to avoid recounting what they think they learned and instead relate their experience of the course and surprise both of us by discovering what they learned. This is focusing on process.
When we concentrate on outcome rather than process, we also open ourselves up to the paralyzing trap of self-evaluation during performance, which is harmful, wasteful, and inaccurate.
There is no way we can know whether or not we have achieved our desired result while we’re in the middle of a scene, show, game, job interview, or sales pitch. We need all our energy and concentration to perform our task and self-evaluation robs us of that energy and can dishearten us if we have decided we are failing. The stories are legion of folks thinking they stank only to find they were succeeding and vice versa.
Finally, when we’re negotiating an ambiguous situation—improvising—by definition we aren’t in control and don’t know where it’s all going to wind up. If you concentrate on what you’re doing now, the answers will tend to reveal themselves when they become relevant and you need them. In improv we trust that we will know what to do when we need to know it and not a moment beforehand. It’s scary because it is relinquishing control but it is necessary and it works.
So focus on process. Trust the form. Hey, it got me to the end of this essay!
-Greg Hohn, Director
New Jersey, New Jersey, an original scripted musical, written and directed by our own Mark John Lewis, and starring company members Greg, Steve, and Steven, will run April 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17 at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro.
Transactors Improv was selected to perform at the prestigious Miami Improv Festival, featuring groups from around the country, including Bassprov, The Groundlings, SAK Comedy Lab, and The Second City. Performances are Jan. 27 and 31 if you're in south Florida.
"Show Us Your Love," a fundraiser featuring Transactors Improv's The Love Show at The ArtsCenter followed by a reception at Acme Food & Beverage Co., will be held Feb. 21. Tickets are $40, tax-deductible, and your chance to have fun helping the company defray the costs of producing New Jersey, New Jersey and traveling to Miami. For more information or to become a sponsor, contact us at us or (919) 824-0937.
Steven played baseball in high school and was a starter in the outfield.
It seems like only yesterday we were reporting that Steve had married
Anne-Marie Witkege this summer but the fast-working eldest Transactor has now revealed that the couple is expecting a girl child
in May, according to the latest amniocentesis results. Apparently,
Steve and Anne-Marie have heeded the company directive that all children born
of Transactors will be female.
Nancy and her husband Zach and daughter Gemma celebrated the holidays by hosting 10 for Thanksgiving dinner, cooking hot dogs in the fireplace on Christmas Eve (a tradition in Nancy's family), and visiting Gemma's 94-year-old great-grandmother who is still knitting for her 27 grandchildren and 33 great-grandchildren.
Greg will be among three people selected to present alternative teaching approaches at the Graduate Management Admission Council's 2004 MBA Leadership Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, Ca., in February. His presentation at the Improv in Business Summit in Toronto November was a great success and part of an inspiring and enlightening event.
There is this widely-read national column in Canada's biggest newspaper by
this journalist who has lunch with someone famous.
Once she had lunch with this musician named Ashley MacIsaac. The waiter was
qouted in the paper as saying something pretty unwitty--twice. That waiter
was Sandy.
Jill has been rehearsing a new dance piece with Chavasse Dance to be performed this spring and summer. She's excited to be cast in Shorts in Winter, a series of new short plays to be presented at The ArtsCenter in February.
Mike ran sound for a band that opened for Duran Duran and he reports that they traveled with a road case full of undergarments tossed on stage by female spectators.
Regina played soccer (left wing) in middle school.
Transactors Improv has T-shirts! They're black with our lightbulb on the front and our logo and motto on the back in white (we'll have a graphic up soon). Available in S, L, and XL sizes, they are 100% cotton and cost $10. Contact us at transactors@transactors.org if you want one or even more.
To subscribe to our e-mailing list, write transactors@transactors.org.
Winter 2004
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