In Improv, for me, one of the hardest things to master is
the edit. Simply put, editing is where you ‘wipe’ the scene and start something
new. Think back to every time, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam or
Eric Idle (Monty Python) gleefully shouted, “And now for something completely
different” and you have the general idea of an edit.
There are ‘tag edits’, meaning you tap someone on the
shoulder and take their place in the scene and in so doing, bring a fresh
approach or idea to that scene and then there is the so-called, ‘hard edit’
where you walk across the stage, ending all scenes and wiping everyone from the
stage. It’s the equivalent of bringing down the curtain in dramatic theatre.
There is generally very little or no curtain in improv and it makes sense, a
curtain would just get in the way of all that scene building.
One of my instructors, wisely said recently that in life,
just like improv “mastering it means knowing when to edit”. And just like in
improv, where the real beauty of it, is its impermanence, so life can be also.
I think the most difficult thing for me personally is that I
have always lived my life so safely. There have been many times where I’ve
almost quit on Improv, because it was forcing me to change so frequently and
disquietingly. I’m a much more conventional type of person than many of my
scene partners and often I wonder if I ‘stick out too much’. ‘Am I suited for this?’ is a question
that I often ponder when standing outside of myself and observing the other me
in class and shows.
Being Gen X is often problematic as well, so many of my
classmates and scene partners are so much younger than I, with Millennials
often the elder-statesmen where it used to be my fellow Gen X’ers. One time, we
were called to do an exercise where we pretended to take objects out of an imaginary gym bag, making
statements about them and pantomiming their use, acting on whatever impulse you
had, but all of the objects had to follow a ‘trend’ and then you were to ‘hand
them’ to your scene partner who in turn would respond as to how he or she felt
about these objects. I found myself pulling out a Slinky, an old Duran Duran
tape, a beat up old Cabbage Patch kid, and other assorted Gen X paraphernalia
out of the bag, thoroughly enjoying myself and eagerly acting out all my
nostalgia and enthusiasm for these missed objects. When the scene finished and
the instructor came around to ask the question every improviser hears 1,000
times by the end of their first year, “how did that feel?” my scene partner
said, “I dunno, she was pulling out all of these old 80’s toys and stuff!” And
bam! once again it hits me over the head, we are a generation apart, while he
might know of the objects, he doesn’t really get how I felt about them, because
he probably never played with any of them. It was the same in an earlier class
where I attempted to explain the concept of sticker albums and trading of the
same, to nothing but blank looks and a couple of people who just looked up for
a second before diving back into the conversation they were having with a colleague
on social media on their I-phone.
An even stickier situation is when you are Gen X and single
and find yourself, unsettlingly attracted to someone who could also potentially
be your son, or was too young to remember Challenger.
That’s when the editing comes in again, what am I doing in
this life? Do I belong in this group? What could I do differently to change my
situation? Should I move?
Most of the time however, inertia takes over and you allow
yourself the luxury of doing nothing…which any improviser worth their salt
knows is the best way to ruin a scene.
So do I succumb to inertia or do I hard edit my life…
Stay tuned.
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