In my previous post, I began discussing the connections between improv theory and the book The Three Laws of Performance, by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan. Today I’ll dive a bit deeper into the Second Law: How a situation occurs arises in language.Zaffron and Logan emphasize that “language” in this context means more than just words. “Untying the knots of language begins with seeing that whenever you say something, other communication is carried along with it. We call this phenomenon the unsaid but communicated…. When you walk into a company … [l]ike little cartoon bubbles floating over people’s heads, you can read what people are not saying but are communicating.”
Zaffron and Logan point out that this nonverbal communication comes in many forms – “gestures, tones, eye contact, and so on.”
The reference to “little cartoon bubbles” brings to mind an improv game called Strange Interlude, inspired by the Eugene O’Neill play of the same title. In Strange Interlude, two players conduct a mundane conversation while two other players (the Alter Egos) stand off to the side and follow each line of main dialog with a line that expresses what the main speaker is really thinking. For example:
A: Glad you could make it.
A’s Alter Ego (sarcastically): Thanks for deigning to show up, Your Highness.
B: No problem. I think we can get through this meeting pretty quickly.
B’s Alter Ego: Why are you wasting my time with piddly issues like this?
A: This might be more complicated than it looks.
A’s Alter Ego: Why don’t you try something called “thinking” for a change?
In a theater setting, we laugh because of the gap between the surface and the undercurrent – and because we recognize the scene as an exaggerated example of what people do every day. When scenes like this are played out in our daily lives, however, this gap leads to incongruity, lack of authenticity, and loss of credibility – no laughing matters.
Zaffron and Logan note that the accumulation of such unsaid but communicated messages over time leads to “linguistic clutter” that leaves people with no space to create novel solutions to their performance challenges. The only way to clear out the clutter, they say, is by “moving issues into the light of discussion – saying them, examining them in public.”
As a Daily Improviser, are you aware of the “unsaid but communicated” messages flowing around your daily interactions? Even if so, are you content to keep playing the Strange Interlude game, ignoring the gap between the said and the unsaid as the clutter builds up? Or are you willing to step up and move the Alter Egos to center stage?
In a theater setting, we laugh because of the gap between the surface and the undercurrent – and because we recognize the scene as an exaggerated example of what people do every day. When scenes like this are played out in our daily lives, however, this gap leads to incongruity, lack of authenticity, and loss of credibility – no laughing matters.
Zaffron and Logan note that the accumulation of such unsaid but communicated messages over time leads to “linguistic clutter” that leaves people with no space to create novel solutions to their performance challenges. The only way to clear out the clutter, they say, is by “moving issues into the light of discussion – saying them, examining them in public.”
As a Daily Improviser, are you aware of the “unsaid but communicated” messages flowing around your daily interactions? Even if so, are you content to keep playing the Strange Interlude game, ignoring the gap between the said and the unsaid as the clutter builds up? Or are you willing to step up and move the Alter Egos to center stage?
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