Asaf Ronen's "Getting Yourself Out of Your Own Way"

Feeling unhappy with the quality of my work with Activity Book, and having an almost tangible sensation of being blocked mentally, I decided to sign up for Asaf Ronen's workshop, "Getting Yourself Out of Your Own Way."

Turns out to have been the best improv-related move I've made in a while. Ronen addressed exactly the issues that have been plaguing me since I started working with Activity Book.

My big problem (in improv and in life) is that I feel an incredible amount of pressure to be "nice." In improv, this is compounded by those lessons we are all taught when starting out:

"Always accept your scene partner's offers."

"Be there for your scene partner."

Granted, these are important lessons to be learned. However, when we spend too much time worrying about our partners, we ultimately end up failing them because we don't make strong choices and offers, and ultimately, we force them to do all the work in a scene.

For example, this is my thought process in a scene:

My partner and I walk out on stage and he begins to mime the act of shoveling. This is a perfectly good physical choice and offer. However, in my mind, I'm thinking:

"Okay, he's shoveling, but what is he shoveling? Is he shoveling snow? Dirt? Or, maybe he's digging! But what is he digging? A hole in which to bury treasure? A grave? Whose grave? His? Mine? But am I sure he's using a shovel? Maybe he's a farmer using a pitchfork on some hay!"

I get so caught up in worrying about getting it "right" that I am unable to add anything to the scene. In trying to be an "unselfish" scene partner and honor my partners' choices, I end up failing them.

The focus of Ronen's workshop was teaching us how to be "selfish" and focus more on ourselves and our choices and less on trying to anticipate and figure out the full extent of a scene partner's offer. Through a series of exercises we learned that if both partners enter with strong choices, even if those choices don't appear to be related, those choices can come together to form a good scene.

The exercise that had the strongest impact on me involved a series of trajectories that Asaf drew on the floor, using painter's tape. The trajectories varied in length and direction (straight, angled, up the wall) and ended with an X. Calling us out in pairs, Asaf instructed us to choose a trajectory, follow it to the X, and develop an attitude, character, or need along the way. Then, we were to begin a scene without checking in visually with our partner.

Naturally, we all found it difficult to resist the instinct to look at our scene partners, because we've all been taught that improv is all about taking care of your partner. But by focusing on ourselves, we were able to avoid second-guessing ourselves and bring strong choices to our scenes. The truly amazing part of this exercise, however, was seeing two people with seemingly incompatible choices coming together to create a good scene without directly relating to each other. Coaching us to "widen the circle," Asaf taught us that we can embrace our partners' choices without letting go of our own choices. If one person decides that he is a stuffy English butler and the other decides that she is an astronaut exploring Mars, a stronger scene will result from both partners accepting the presence of a butler on a Mars expedition rather than from either partner dropping his or her character.

Another way to think of it is as a Venn Diagram, with each person in the scene represented by a circle, and the scene represented by the area of overlap. The best scenes happen when the scene partners work together to find the overlap.

Of course, many people have tried to teach me this lesson, but years of conditioning are not easily undone. What made the difference for me was seeing this concept isolated and explored in a fashion not unlike a laboratory experiment.

At the end of the three hours, I felt that I had a better understanding of improv, and of my own strengths and weaknesses. I'm still working on bringing these lessons to my work with Activity Book, but I do feel that I'm not quite as "in my head" as I have been. Asaf Ronen's workshop more than lived up to its name.