Boy on a Train

[danieldwilliam]

 

 I was talking about improv last night with star_tourmaline . We were discussing the concept of status in improv and in real life and some of the cross over. I related an anecdote about a train trip I had where I played status games with the carriage. For technical reasons we were having the conversation in 140 characters or less so for Star_tourmaline’s benefit here is the anecdote in full with some reflections.

 I was travelling down to Bristol to see Bluebird and had bought and brought with me Keith Johnstone’s seminal work on Improv, called Impro. One of the key chapters, certainly one of the two that really resonated with me was the chapter about status.

 In Improv status is more than just your formal position in a hierarchy. This is certainly part of it but by no means the whole story. Status is about self-worth, your position in the community, how you feel about yourself. There are elements of dominance and submission and position in a pecking order. A janitor can have high status if he feels really strongly positive about his role in society. Status is relative and changes over time. Status is cool.

 Status can come from formal hierarchy but also from charisma, from  your skills and talents and from the situation you find yourself in. If you have the two last life jackets on the sinking ship you have status.

 Low status people often adopt high status behaviour badly.  They behave like they think alpha males behave. They shout or pout.  High status individuals don’t have to do that. People do what high status individuals want without them having to shout. They create an aura of you wanting to please them and of being in control of the themselves.

 I am reminded of my dad teaching my friends and I tricks to do with Zippo lighters. After showing us some neat tricks he picked up the lighter one last time and said “Best trick boys,” then he slowly  and very, very coolly, opened the lighter, light it first time and light a cigarette, “Easy, boys, easy”. The man light a cigarette with the appropriate tool and we would have followed him anywhere.

 So, the chapter is about status, what it is, where it comes from and how to convey it. I decided to try it out on the train. I adopted as many of the hallmarks of a high status individual as I could and staked out a four person table on an increasingly crowded train. I sat in the aisle seat, with my jacket hung up in the window seat (the crucial trick is not to look at your jacket, high status people don’t fuss about their belongings and they don’t apologies for hanging their jacket up in the most convenient place to them). I sat up straight, good posture and calm clear movements. I looked people in the eye briefly. High status people rarely have to stare someone out. The look was not meant to be intimidating, rather it was saying you are welcome to my train, I do hope it conveys you splendidly, these seats are taken.

 

It worked. I felt magnificent. Danicus Magnus, and there were people standing in the aisle rather than ask me if they could sit in either of the two empty seats opposite me.

 I found (and I only properly grounded this last night with star_tourmaline   that I can move between stati but in a way that is much more about me than about playing a role. Like Clark Kent and Superman I can shift from being low status to high and back again. Last night’s learning was that the two aspects are equally part of myself. When I convey high status well I am being myself as I am when I’m having a great day.

 I wasn’t playing a role on the train. I was just being me as I am when I have high status. Myself, but greater, Danicus Magnus indeed.

 If you carry in your head the temporary belief that you have high status, that you are a high status individual and you have learned the high status tells that you use naturally, high status will emanate from you. It just flows out of you like a magnetic field, touching everybody and everybody will react to it. Because of our history as social pack animals we are highly sensitised to status tells. We read the room for them all the time without realising it.

 I hope that in time and through practise I will be able to synthesis the high status leader, the complex status wizard and the low status lost boy into the coherent whole that they should be. Both on stage and in real life.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I have that book. It's how I know about masks. I have a horrible feeling that I stole it from someone instead of buying it, although I have no idea whose it was so I can't make amends, and I may be wrong.

When I was sorting books recently, it was a prime candidate for box-in-the-attic status, as were my other two theatre books (Grotowski and Peter Brook). They just made the cut, largely because you and I have been talking about this.

Time for a reread methinks.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It was the bit on masks and trances where I tuned out. It was fascinating and reminded me of a series of conversations with my old uni flat mate (psychologist, now an academic at Cambridge) about the possibility that your personallity might be a construct of your sub-conscious projected onto more fundamental impulses.

Partly I read that last chapter thinking "Oh, come on", partly I read it thinking "there might be something in this" and then wanting to have a word with myself about being irrational. Mainly, I read it thinking I'm not comfortable going here and I don't think anyone in the Improbables would be either.

I got to a happy place where I thought there genuinely might be something in masks because lots of people from different cultures seem to use it for some purpose or other but i didn't want to be one of them (at the moment)?

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to read this again before I can usefully comment, and TBH I suspect that's going to happen on the journey up to Edinburgh. But my recollection from my first reading is that I thought there was a lot of truth in it. Don't think I was looking it at it from the POV of someone who might actually do it one day, though.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I await your useful comments whenever you have the time and energy to provide them.

As usual I find myself on the theoretical wing of the Improbables and also playing catch up on skills / intuition with the rest of the old guard.

I'm keen that the group isn't just about playing parlour games. So I keep exploring the theory. For example, this last few weeks I've been introducing some exercise handles where we practise particular element of the craft and getting people to do them more than once.

I think there is a distance to travel (together) before we're in a position to talk about masks, certainly I know I have a distance to go myself.