 What a tree to see a room full of improvisers So great so we were introduced, but we didn't have a microphone on You can't hear me can you hear this Can you hear me all right? Are you still up for this So we do the Laura and I do the Center for Communicating Science here at Stony Brook and and Aretha does Viola's improvising teaches Viola's improvising Now you all know Viola, right? So I just found out tonight that Aretha Who's Viola's granddaughter That she doesn't really know my connection to Viola's work and her father Paul Sills So I thought it'd be fun for us to Catch up with each other for the first time on stage here Yeah Yeah, I Want to hear all the stories about how you worked with Paul Sills my dad and Learned Viola's work how you became an improviser. I It's funny when I was on the stage I Always looked forward to a time when the other actor would forget to come on stage Because I think now I got the whole play to my I got Asked to be in an improvising group at Hyannasport while President Kennedy was still alive and It was David Shepard who had helped start He started the original compass Yeah, they did the original compass in Chicago, which then I think became second city Mm-hmm, and then we he called this compass at Hyannasport and we worked in the basement of a hotel Where earlier in the day President Kennedy would give his press conferences and In the basement that night I would do him at a press conference that was So the reporters would come to the show in the cabaret and ask me questions they had asked him But they hadn't been in the paper yet. So I didn't know what they were talking about and it was It was about a year after that that Paul asked me to do a workshop in the afternoon on the stage at second city And that was in New York, right? That was in New York Second City had had a show running in New York, right? And and we weren't part of the second city company Jane Alexander and Sometimes people would drop in but the ones who stuck were there Olympia, Dukakis Really wonderful people and we we would work we'd work for like three hours At a time once a week once or maybe twice a week, I think for six months and It changed my life made me a different actor and made me a different person because the thing of Connecting with the other person Is so fundamental to Improvise it turns out to be fundamental to communication and to living There's so often people try to communicate without that connection. It doesn't happen. So what what point along there were you born? You said you met Alan once when you were one, I think I met you I think did you do some story theater in the Canadian? Yes, I did. Yeah, so I was one when I think that so I was born in 1969 That's about when I did story theater They had done it on Broadway and then Paul did it on TV in Vancouver in Canada somewhere in Canada on the West Coast and That was a little that was difficult Paul almost fired me and I almost quit At one point he said to me what method are you using? What'd you say I said I just I didn't say anything but I I just I went I went off by myself and I thought He's telling me in some strange way. This is not lively enough So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give myself the task. It's like I'm turned it into a viola game The game was I had to get a laugh every 15 seconds And they came back says it's still what was the problem that was fine There you go. I never told them what I did Yeah, he would have said don't go for the laugh. Yeah So when did you start teaching? I Started teaching I I worked with my dad a lot and I would assist him sometimes when I was about Probably about 20 25 years ago And it but it took me a while to teach full-time Because I had other stuff I did I worked in the music industry and I'm a writer. I went to grad school about my MFA and creative writing But in the last, you know, 10 years, I've been primarily teaching full-time We used to do really interesting things when we were doing Those sessions on the stage at second city the workshops and viola came and ran a couple of sessions But we would go to church basements to demonstrate it and we would show them the exercises the games and Then sometimes we just do a play That we didn't we didn't know what it was going to be Started in a place and the place would transform and then would be in a new scene And sometimes it would go on for an hour and it would a theme would develop and characters would emerge and story would happen It was really wonderful and not like what I've seen improvisers do now Where two people will be on stage and somebody offstage thinks I Know what I'll do. I'll introduce this new idea and they come in with an agenda This and the scene would change with us the scene would change because the whole thing changed The place changed the activity changed the attitudes and it was all transformation Which it takes a long time to get used to a very long time to work up to that Did you guys play transformation of relationship that game? Was she doing that yet? I don't remember ever doing that That might come later She might have been working up to it With you guys so after that whenever I was in a Company of actors I would offer to teach a class Did in the the musical they did the Mike Nichols directed and we would get together every week or two and Have a session and everybody loved it. It really is so free. Isn't it? Isn't it a wonderful experience? Yeah, and was that the musical you did with Barbara Harris? Yeah apple tree. Yeah Yeah, a great Improvisor great improviser However, Barbara when we were at second city was to say I performed the second city for just a couple of weeks Well, somebody was on vacation or something and Barbara really Rightly so felt her obligation in a cabaret was to get labs so You know, we all worked with space no props, you know, just imaginary So the two of us were teenagers at a school dance and it was really bombing I Mean it not only wasn't funny. It wasn't anything So Barbara I didn't know she had something funny that she could do with the comb So she said to me at one point in the scene you got a comb And I said yeah, and I take an imaginary comb out and hand it to And she didn't don't you have a real comb So I was a little pissed off at that, you know, it's not what we not the way we worked So I went off stage. I got her a comb came back and she teased her hair and got big laughs So then we had a scene, you know No, I haven't got enough hair So that brings us sort of up to Laura because Laura who's the director of the center for communicating science here He's now Heading the center which is in our 10th year and we've trained 15,000 scientists Oh There's our team stand up a minute These folks work so hard they go around the world all over the United States and in eight or nine other countries and Do one two and three-day workshops at universities corporations wherever there are scientists and physicians people all people in the medical profession and There I don't know how you do it. They're on the road like a hundred and fifty times a year and It's extraordinary. So the way that started was When I did Scientific American Frontiers, I realized that we had something that other shows didn't have Wasn't an ordinary interview. It was It was not me coming in with a list of questions and Then going down the list regardless of what they said I went in really wanting to understand what they were talking about and if I didn't get it I'd shake them. I tell one guy I took I don't get it. What are you talking about? And That was really improvising because I was really there to understand and I didn't care What the questions were that the producer wanted asked I wanted to know what the guy who'd tell me or the woman could tell me and Once the there was one scientist and she was really doing interesting work But she realized while she was talking to me We had real good contact together. She realized that what she was saying was a lot like a lecture. She gave And she turned away from me and looked right at the camera and started to lecture the camera So I pulled her back with some questions and she came back and we were together again Normal tone of voice, you know like a real person done that she turned right back to the camera And I realized what a difference it is when you're lecturing and When you're really having a conversation a friend of mine was a great teacher says a lecture answers questions that nobody asked So I thought when the show is over wouldn't it be great to help scientists Communicate their very important work That's really fascinating when you get the drift of it in ways that we could understand and Wouldn't the way to do it be to teach them to improvise as a beginning and then teach them how to organize the message Teach them how to write Teach them how to talk in front of the camera to be interviewed to talk to politicians to talk to one another Collaboration among scientists is improved with this work and we've been doing that routine So I tried it out first at USC with engineers and it worked Just a three-hour session and they were talking about their work But so much more clarity and then we came I came to Stony Brook who decided to start the center and I'd had 15 or 20 Sciences from different fields And we did six weeks of workshopping three hours a week They became improvisers We did a show where they got up and improvised. That's so great Yeah, and the law has been doing you've been heading this group for how many years three years You were what countries have you been in this? We have banner. Let me see if I can get this right Ireland Scotland Israel Norway Norway, Germany Germany, what am I forgetting? Honolulu, Honolulu is another country. I want a visa Canada Canada right Canada Lydia remembers every scientist she ever trained It has a wonderful effect on people and now I do this podcast where I approach the idea of clarity and connection as the basis of Communication and I talked to all different kinds of people hostage negotiator from the FBI Who uses these techniques it not viola's techniques, but things that are so similar They're not far into one another and this hostage negotiator says that the way he the techniques he uses To release a hostage can be used very well in a marriage Have you tried it? Yeah, I'm gonna be released in a week Have you all heard of balance podcast clear and vivid I love doing it So what have you learned from improvising that you what like you have only actors come to you Do you have you found that it's helpful to people in different fields? I Have people from all different fields come to my workshops It used to be primarily Educators a ton of teachers and some actors and then a few improv people here and there I get more improv people now as they're sort of rediscovering viola. Have you guys noticed that? Right, which is good And but but in my last I just did a five-day intensive in LA and I had I had two drama like Drama teachers who worked with kids in LA USD, which is our public school system. I had a Climate scientist who works for NASA. I had a guy from The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London who is researching Learning differences in actors like he noticed that a lot of actors he'd been working with He guesses about 60% had a form of dyslexia And so he wanted to he was he was 60% of actors. Yeah Yeah, and I thought that actually meshes with my experience. Yeah, they'd really be good to learn them Yeah, yeah, so he he it was it was just oh and I'm a professor of criminal justice who wants to use Games to help. He's he's you know, he's teaching future police officers And he wants to use theater games to teach them empathy. And so I just I was it was wow It was such an encouraging week And as this is an encouraging week after a very tough Week in the world right and you guys all feeling that it's nice to be here and see to see all the good work You guys are doing and spreading this communication Yeah, that's wonderful. I one of the things that We Realized in our work is how hard it is to understand that when you know something really well It's hard to believe that other people Don't know it as well Which leads to our using jargon or using words that we assume, you know that when they brought Words words don't quite do it when they brought for President Obama's Brain initiative they brought together nanoscientists and neuroscientists to collaborate to find new ways to explore the brain and At their first meeting and at other meetings after that they wasted hours Arguing over the meaning of the word probe Isn't that weird it's a normal English word, but the nanoscientist meant something different from what the Neuroscientist meant and we all we all have that I have it too if I'm at a dinner table and somebody next to me says Well, what is this center thing you do is? Communication thing and I start to tell them at least until I started until I stopped myself from doing a boring version of it that is the details Instead of telling them We do these simple exercises like the mirroring exercise and a doctor a medical student Was taking a tour With an older doctor who is a superior and The the older doctor was telling this woman that she had cancer and was gonna not gonna make it And she didn't react at all. She didn't ask questions. She didn't cry and And the doctor felt he had done his work and was leaving and The students who had worked with us Said I don't think she got it You mind if I go back and talk to her so we went back and he sat in front of her took her hands in his hands He didn't say metastasis or any words that were technical He just told her what was happening and a tear started to come down her face And then she started asking questions And he said It was a mirror exercise She I was help I was helping her die. She was helping me be a better doctor I Realized if I had told that story instead of the boring details of what we do That I'd make a better impression on the person next to me because we want to hear stories And we wanted we want to hear it in a language you can understand Jeskia with your hand. We're gonna talk. No That's a beautiful story What is it about the mirror exercise? Do you think that's so helpful for your scientist? I think it's the thing that I always do first because It's the first time Somebody who hasn't done this before Realizes you can actually pay closer attention to another person than you thought you could and There's something about the experience of Moving together which is it's a fruitful experience and When you each have a turn doing it and then you realize you can do it without anybody leading it That's an uncanny experience That's an experience that you think that is not possible. In fact, I know Excuse me. I know a scientist in Israel called Uriel Lone who's a computational Biologist and an improviser. He goes out every week and Improvises in people's homes They hear they have somebody tell them their life story and then they act out their whole life he Wasn't gonna tell you about worry What he does with his group. Oh, I know what he did. He said he was working. He was teaching some sciences the mirror exercise and said now Nobody's leading and Even when they had the experience of nobody leading but still being in sync. They didn't believe it. They said somebody's leading So he did in the scientific experiment. He had a device made up Where we're we're opposite each other you have a handle and I have a handle and when I go like this you mirror you go back Or maybe it's maybe it's toward me. I don't know one way or the other. So now this way this way and little by little We're getting in sync When one person is leading and the other person is following the graph that's made from her movements if she's following Has a jiggly line The leader has a straight line it's smoother Makes sense if you're following you're more not sure where you're going When you're both leading Both lines are straight neither one is jiggly and it proved that you actually can be in sync Without anybody leading now. That's a strange experience. What's doing it? But it happens. It's been shown that it really happens In the old days we used to talk about mind-reading We were all into psychic phenomena in the 60s And once I used to who were born I used to do an exercise where everybody go off by themselves This was Definitely not by over. This was me being the 60s Somebody go off with a piece of paper and a pencil and everybody would try to draw the same picture Without knowing what anybody else was And we say oh my god eight of us drew cards, isn't that amazing? Turns out everybody would drive a car no matter what you did It's an old mentalism trick Yeah, but it was a way of believing that we had some connection But even Paul would sometimes say we do a scene and he'd say to people watching What color was his shirt in the scene? You know, which you could only get telepathically. Yeah But to a surprising extent it seemed that you could get things That weren't literally presented The space objects become real Right when they're communicated clearly when they become visible to the audience. They are Incredibly memorable to the audience, right? I mean that once One of my dad's memorials when he died when he was 80 and at a memorial One of his best friends from childhood Talked about the first time he met Paul was Paul and a bunch of kids from whole house We're doing a little theater games display and they came to his school and he saw Paul and his friends and and there was a tea kettle with steam coming out of it and he described in detail this like 72 years later He described the steam come the space steam coming off the tea kettle Yeah, right and so in some way those objects you see you saw this thing you see it, right? And that's the when in those church basements. We went to I remember when we were doing the workshop with Paul for six months We would show how one after another we would go up to a water fountain and turn the handle and drink the water and Because everybody was making sure that the where the place was the same for everybody Yeah, the people watching ordinary civilians Could see the spout of water and how high it was Yeah, and because we all could see and we all Let it be there by the way we reacted to what the other people were doing it it occurred to me that this was a kind of Democracy that things came into existence by our mutual agreement, right? Yeah, it's just like democracy would be if we ever tried it The reason I was almost late tonight as Donald Trump had visited the Hamptons and their traffic was totally tied up Was in his honor they made all the traffic lights red Make America wait again What do you know a fence I Think you're safe in this crowd Well for one thing what we've been talking about paying attention What we always tell the scientists when we work with them a basic rule is to make your partner look good That's absent in most Arguments Yeah, right on Twitter on Twitter and even in life, you know, I mean some of the people I love the most Get into a conversation with somebody who's not Progressive enough for them and they start yelling at them. Yeah How are we gonna solve anything we don't respect the other person enough to listen we got to listen to one another Yeah What do you think well Viola said play is democratic with a rare exclamation Can't talk about that. That's really interesting. Yeah, play is democratic and it goes back to what she learned from her teacher Neva Boyd at whole house in Chicago when she was very young Neva Boyd I'm gonna I'll go into this in more detail tomorrow in my talk But Neva Boyd She believed that children learn to work together through play Right and that she called it She said children develop social values through play Meaning they'll argue over every little thing and they will I have a almost six-year-old and it's yeah I mean it's amazing what they'll fight over but eventually they will work it out Because they'll be like okay. Well, we'll have two Elsa's or whatever it is Because they want to keep playing the goal is built in right and so this is something and Realize a lot of kids don't even get the opportunity to play that much anymore without adults coming in and say now you share You do this or right? I mean it is so it's it's that idea that they They have to they have to compromise They have to come to some agreement back to that Experiment right that's partly experimenting with with how you have to relate in life. Yeah Sometimes not so easy. I have a granddaughter When she was small Was a little bossy And her younger sisters would have to do what she wanted to do and I said You know, you can't just tell them what to do You have to say what kind of game would you like to play and and meet them halfway? So she said okay, so she said Who who wants to play castle and they said we do she said okay, I'm the queen So that was preparing her for life that's right that's right and when the other two storm off right She has to figure out. Oh, how do I get them back here? How do I keep this game going? So yeah, it it's it's And it goes back to Jane Adams who was the the great progressive era activist who founded whole house You know her idea of social ethics that she talked about how We all that she her great book is democracy and social ethics And we all have to meet someone who's not like us We have to meet people who are not like us and get to know them get to know their needs And that's how democracy is and she thinks Viola and Paul too played it out in the way They ran the workshops I I as I remember Viola explicitly suggests that the leader of the workshop take part in it as one of the players Which is not that easy to do. It's it's it's hard to come off the Perch and say I'm going to take the same risks. You are yeah, and Do you do that when you when you leave class? It's not easy to do but it really can be valuable For me one of the most valuable things is in to have the scene go dead And then I wish for somebody to say do you have a comb Do you find yourself inventing new games? No, I don't too much because I feel that my responsibility is to carry on Viola's work and Paul's work in a pure way because not a lot of people are doing that I do I've developed like Some different ways of teaching like improvisation for writers where I replace bowling games, and then I've created some writing exercises based on those games And and that Changes things a bit and it brings in my experience having you know gone through an MFA program and learning Why Viola's non-authoritarian teaching methods are so helpful because I got the opposite in the MFA program, right? So how about a way to generate more new material and be excited about it than shutting it down and critiquing it only so stuff like that and I do a lot of workshops for generating new material and so we have fun with it and we play around with it, but I tend to feel that just my role is to Keep it pretty pure But how about you guys over the years? You've really introduced new Exercises into the program. Yeah, we have we have a specific objective Which is to get them either to get out in front of an audience or to write With the audience in mind and keep them always in mind So maybe you're interested in talking about the way we've tiered Scaffolded the exercise. Yeah, I think what's really distinct about what we do is that we integrate design of message with Improv so that I mean we're walking or how many of you work with scientists at some point in your work Oh, well, that's really cool I suspect you have a similar experience where you walk in and there's this look like you're gonna make me do and Then you've got to start off with something that doesn't feel too threatening and then move to the next and Then to the next and then you build more trust and you can expand and then do something But they can't imagine like holding up a blank piece of paper and describing a picture And everyone in the room is crying and that feels really risky if you walked in and did that they wouldn't go along with it Do you have similar experiences? So we've worked really carefully to craft it so that we integrate some Cognitive processes which they really crave they want to know. Well, how do I do this? Well Take this and try it but really have an experience of it. Yeah, we found it but pardon me for interrupting We had we started with Viola's Approach which was not to intellectualize it just to go through the experiences Which is the best way to do it if you have weeks or months to keep bringing them back and We found with scientists. They were so oriented toward verbalizing the experience We we settled I think for putting them through the experience without an explanation explanation but then Talking about what it helped them accomplish where it where it put them which made it easier I think for them to go to the next step which would require a little more from them a little more Opening up a little more giving to the other person Right when we do we do talk about it now, but yeah Not until after they've had the experience. I love telling them This is a non-talking exercise They don't know what to do with that and Laura you were new to improvisation when you took this work. I'm a communication research on one of them I mean to me it just makes sense that Communication is not this thing you memorize. It's this relationship that you have So when I saw this training the first time must been five six years ago I was mesmerized by it made sense to me and here I am Yeah, well, she went back to her university and started a communication center and then we realized how what a strong leadership was and we asked her to take over the Leadership of the center and now the center's 10 and I'm 28 and Alan's 40 I I Planned to live forever and so far right on schedule. I Hear it's rare to live forever So you were thinking of doing something something Good yes, but that's it Oh Yeah, they all speak gibberish I can tell how do you how do you get somebody if you want to place a little bit? That'd be fun, but I'm before I forget to ask you How do you get people to understand they can speak gibberish because some people go? That's it. Well Sometimes in workshop. I'll introduce gibberish one day with a short exercise and I'll say go home and talk to your cat Talk to your dog practice on your loved ones. Well, you're driving let your road rage come out and gibberish I'll give them a little time between because it can be very painful for people at first, right? Yeah, and and viola would recommend moving the jaw You know what I've tried is having people stand in a circle and And throw sounds to one another yeah, and then increase It so it till it sounds more like vowels and syllables Yeah, and then put them together and they pick it up from one another and pretty soon Within five minutes most of them are talking some form of gibberish. Oh, that sounds good. I like that idea Now the other thing we do is you we have everybody in the audience turn to their neighbor and hold a conversation in gibberish So should we do that here with these guys you turn to your neighbor and hold the conversation and all in gibberish Will you be my neighbor? Yeah, that's the three of you. Maybe there's three of you. That's fine, too Oh All right, all right, can anybody whistle? Thank you Short round of gibberish English, do you want to play? All right How do you do this? gibberish English is the two players are gonna hold a conversation in English and We'll take the topic from the audience But if they're called to switch To gibberish they'll switch to gibberish even if they're caught mid-syllable Do we have a volunteer to speak gibberish with Alan Alda? You're good Yes, hello, yes Why are we getting all this? Okay, so now we're gonna have a conversation English and you're gonna pull out something. Let's take a topic from the audience Audience we need a topic Thunderstorms I heard Thunderstorms over here Thunderstorms is the topic and as Paul used to say any topic you get from the audience can be Elevated right so what we'll talk about Thunderstorms and I'll stand between you You're gonna start in English you started English so I know We had it to where are you from? I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. They have thunderstorms. Yes, we do Brooklyn Did you just have a huge thunderstorm? Yeah? Oh, the other night. It was an incredible story All over the place oh because I was in Brooklyn a couple of days Never got out of it alive I Was driving on I guess it was King's Highway A hail was coming down and hit the dashboard and hit the George and you can come on like that. I had the same windshield I My gibberish is like Russian You know what would be interesting To show you what I mean that I didn't invent this this was Figured out by a graduate student at Stanford about 20 years ago to show How difficult and how easy it can be to communicate something that's very complicated You want to be a volunteer Hi, what's your name? Hi, Eileen. I'm Alan. Okay one second. I'm gonna write something that stay there Don't go away So you're gonna communicate something to everybody here without Words, it's a song It's a song everybody knows and you're just gonna tap it out. Can y'all hear that? If the song was oh, Susanna, oh, Susanna, but without the singing And everybody will know what the song is it's a everybody knows this song so How this is a song well here Okay, how many people do you think are gonna guess it? What percent? Okay, tap it out don't say if you know don't say Okay, okay, how many people think you know what it is those of you who think you know it is what is Now what is it what they say yes, finally you got it You were you were a perfect example of this demonstration because almost everybody Knows that what they're hearing in the tapping is they hear the melody and They know that if they hear the melody the other people hear the melody and almost everybody says 60 70 80 some people say a hundred percent and Almost everybody in the audience thinks it's happy birthday Because when we keep the melody to ourselves We're leaving out the flesh and blood and the stuff that has a motion in it that has the real communication So you were perfect. Thank you Alan Oh Well, you know, I this is interesting. I was giving a talk one night It's at Stony Brook the other campus and we were on our way there My wife was driving and I said I'm giving this talk about the essential element of playwriting Which to me is dramatic action is The hero trying to achieve something, but there's this obstacle in the way and until you fight your way through the obstacle You don't get to the conclusion of the play. You don't get the prize or not get the prize and Most of us when we tell stories leave that part out The part and also an actor going on stage has to know what the objective is you don't have an objective in the scene There's no scene In improvising in Viola's work very often. I think the objective is placed outside of you on to the Rules of the game. It's the focus the focus. That's what she calls it But there's there's an objective and you're busy doing something remember that That that first thing that I when I have more time. I start the exercises with Where you just stand on the stage Just look at the audience And then you count backwards right? internally You can do that or count the floor boards right and when you're involved in doing something like that You open up You're not fidgety and self-conscious because there's the action that you're doing and then the same thing went into play when the hero or heroine is after an objective and Fighting through this obstacle to get there. That's when we can't take our eyes off That's when something interesting is happening. Here's Want to be a volunteer? Pam hi Pam, I'm Alan Come on over here hold on to the glass an empty glass wait here Okay now carry the glass across the stage to the table here carry it over here excellent Hold it still Hold it as level as you can now very carefully not yet very oh wait a minute Carry it to the other side of the stage, but don't spill a drop or your entire village will die So which trip across the stage was more engaging? I've seen audiences React when a drop of water goes down the side of the glass you can hear them gasp and Everybody knows there's no village There's just this imaginary Circumstance that's enough to make people care about the problem about the obstacle the obstacle is the glass in the water You don't want to spill it and it's such an interesting image to me. I was I Was I made it up on the way to that talk that night because Arlene my wife said well start with an image of some kind So I thought that was a good that was good advice because It's really it to me. It really helps you physicalize the idea But you got to do something That when you're up on the stage if you're not doing something not trying to accomplish something things go dead It really is it really is what Barbara knew When she knew that if she teased her hair and did something it would be interesting help. Yeah, she couldn't do it with a make-believe comb I Well because I love science and I had that experience for 11 years doing the science program and I saw that I could help the scientists Open up and sing the music and not just the tapping and I thought I was in a position to help do something that would be useful and Almost selfish because I want to understand science better and if I can get them to explain it better It's like poetry to me it's it's like what if somebody said tomorrow there'll be no more music We wouldn't stand for it, but we're living now through a time when in for many of us. There's no science And it's just as beautiful as music So that's why there's a lady in the balcony One of the most important thing my father taught me What my father taught me is not that interesting he He was an actor a very famous actor and his advice to me was well if you're going to be an actor Always find a place to sit down because your legs will get tired Her father taught me better things The most important thing I learned from improvising was discovering the moment rather than inventing the moment It's really interesting to me to be Literally to find my performance in the other actor's eyes to To be able and not sometimes more than others sometimes not as much as I'd like Not not always tuned in to the extent that I'd like to be but when I'm really tuned in and the other person Goes through the slightest change that may not even be conscious of I'm changed sometimes not consciously as well but that into a play to be When the goal is to be as sensitive as a leaf in the wind and just move without deciding to Without telling your body what to do There's an ecstasy with that It's a wonderful thing to go through and and the doorway was open for me by Improvisation when when actors young actors asked me what where they should study or what? What kind of Technique they should study. I always suggest they study improv. It's all I ever studied I never I couldn't afford to study at an acting school. I The only things I could afford were Improv which cost nothing And and I took a class in Mine from a 10-day crew the guy who had taught The famous French mind. What's your name? Marcel Marceau Marcel Marceau He's so quiet. I couldn't even say his name Huh Yeah Here's what I hear I'm bad of hearing I'm hard of hearing in 10 years. What if the whole world established service? What if what what would have started about moving? Oh? Oh Well would be me I Went for the joke I'm apologizing for it would be Aretha's grandma and father So I guess we're done One more question Yes, I do. This is so interesting. I Was asked to go to the lunch on 10 House in the Midwest where they they it's now a museum and they have a program where they bring actors together for a week from all over the country Really experienced actors with 30 40 years experience and they have somebody lead a week of Work on some kind of a project. So one person did Shakespeare another person did musical comedy So I said I'd like to have a week where I work with them on spontaneity Because I want to see actors be more spontaneous more actors Go for that you know and be able to do it so They were a little confused by that the actor. What does this mean spontaneous? I Said well, we're going to do improvising for a whole week and They came anyway And I don't think any of them had improvised when these were very experienced actors and one woman who was very Very fine actress who had been on the stage for about 30 35 years Told me later. She was thinking of faking a heart attack to get out To get out of improvising And I had said if you want to bring a scene to work on we can do that But I wanted to do it through improvising and and I said you wanted you brought scenes You want to do some most everybody said no no we love the improvising just keep doing that and she said I'd like to do a scene So she had brought a scene from Duran Mott's play the visit Which is about a woman who's abused by a man made pregnant by him and the abandoned sir She's when she's a girl then she gets rich and comes back to the town to get vengeance She hates him. She hates the baby. She had from him. It's a very fraught play So they read the first scene she and one of the other actors and They were good It was the first reading and they were good at it and when she talked about the baby. She hated She she she meant it And then I said now let's do the scene It's not in the play that all of this stems from when you're in the forest and he lets you know that he's dropping So they started the scene off the way most actors do just writing dialogue on their feet and They said you know use the place use the place morning what you say will come out of you Instead of deciding what it is So they step they were in the forest and they started to realize it was raining and She was saying to him Don't you want to live with me? Don't you want to marry me and he used the rain he said oh look a little raindrop just touched the tip of your nose He avoided her by using the rain and she was crushed And they stopped that and went back and they read the scene again and now when she talked about the things that made her angry Deep inside her she was angry Because she hadn't just imagined the circumstance that produced it. She hadn't lived it she had been through the real experience and And and I I thought I learned something that day You know and she made she had wanted to make a fake a heart attack. She made the most progress Now we have to go