I keep thinking about how last night I felt like I jumped off a cliff. I was standing with my back to the audience, Bruce Springsteen (my favourite, yet all too close music) was playing, and it was a scene for one actor. My instinct told me to go as far away from my real self as possible and I jumped. I turned around and I was literally somebody else. I had jumped off a cliff and into another character. Who was she? I had about half a second to find out, because I opened my mouth and a voice and accent and situation all came out. And carried on for the next two or three minutes. Then Bruce Springsteen started singing again and that scene was done.
We were performing Little Space Between, an improv format with scenes and situations about intimacy, sex, relationships and emotions. On the last Thursday of the month some of the more experienced improvisers in our team get to push the boundaries in more risky, experimental improv at The Alexander Bar. It’s a delight to be able to do this kind of playing and I think we’re getting better and better and braver and braver.
Big thanks needs to go to our tiny but brave audience, who take a chance with us, relish the successes but are generous and forgiving of our failures. Of course not everything is going to work. It is improv after all. A bit like jumping off a cliff and landing in a sea of unexplored ideas, feelings, possibilities. All you have to do is trust, and choose something.