On my daily morning run, I passed two of the cutest goddamn puppies I've ever seen. You know, the ones where fur just exudes out of them and envelopes them at the same time. You know, the kind that have big glistening eyes (far too large for the size of their lil head) and an ever-dripping saliva spout?
Well, hopefully you know what I'm talking about.
Anyways, I've developed a bad habit of exclaiming sweet nothings when I run past cute dogs. The older lady walking them flashed a smile and I gushed "Hey lil guys!" as I zipped past. But before I ran past them, I was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the doggies' reactions - both looked up and smiled (literally smiled) and gave a look that undoubtedly meant "yeah, that's me. I'm this little guy hi!".
Why the hell am i telling you about my conversations with dogs? Well here's the thing, when I called those dogs "lil' guys", they owned it. I mean they embraced it FULLY. They knew exactly what they were and loved everything about who they were and the choices they made. It didn't matter if I called them "lil guys" "ugly mothballs" or "broken faucets". They love it and they own it. Sure you could say, "a dog is a dog no matter what the hell you call them". But here's the thing - do we still beam our true identity when we are addressed in different ways? Are we comfortable showing the same face to everyone? Do I emit the same energy when I am with my mom as I do when I am with my girlfriend or when I am staring at the doctor before a colonoscopy?
So what does this mean for improv and the characters we make onstage? Well we need to put on different faces to be different characters, but anyone can do that. What is hard is being able to embrace fully whatever your scene partner decides to "call" you. In improv, if I walk onstage and someone calls me "doctor", guess what? I'm the doctor the rest of the scene! Yay! But how willing are we to abandon our own ideas onstage and move forward down the trail our scene partner has blazed before us? Will I hold my scene partner's hand and walk side by side or will I remain stubborn and walk in the same direction but down a path of my own devising?
The core of what I am getting at is that the magic happens onstage when every improviser views the offer or naming bestowed upon them as a gift. As soon as I am called "doctor", instead of just becoming a typical, run of the mill doctor, how can I accept the gift from my scene partner but then also build upon it with my own special choice? I can become the medically-inclined fiance who is actually just a construction worker but whose significant other calls him doctor during times of physical stress. Or I can be an eccentric yet good-intentioned doctor set to eradicate smallpox from his hometown before hist relatives fly in. Or I can become Julius Erving.
Dogs just do. They don't give a fuck if the choice they make is the "right" one. They don't always hyperanalyze who they are, what they are doing, and who they are in relation to one another. We do. We are analytical, reflective and aware creatures. What we must pull is the best of both worlds - the ability to fully embrace who we are,committing 100% while also making the choice to move with our scene partner, use our insight to build upon their suggestion and work together in fruitful collaboration.
