The Three Laws of Performance: Strange Interlude with Groucho and the Bard

In my previous post, I described the Strange Interlude improv game and how it illustrates the concept of “the unsaid but communicated” from The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan. To draw an even more direct connection to the stage, I would note that the “unsaid but communicated” concept is the same as the literary device called subtext (“content underneath the spoken dialogue”). Subtext can be used to lend depth to an artistic work by suggesting underlying emotions, motivations, and themes.

Subtext runs throughout the works of William Shakespeare, often making it difficult for modern-day students to interpret what’s really going on in any given scene. As a long-time Marx Brothers fan who admits to having been totally flummoxed by Shakespeare back in the day, I was gratified recently to find (a few years too late) an article titled Playing with Subtext: Using Groucho to Teach Shakespeare.

In the article, the author refers to a scene in the Marx Brothers' 1931 movie Animal Crackers in which Groucho parodies the stepping-out-of-character structure of Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude. The author then describes how he adapts the Strange Interlude structure to the teaching of subtext in the Bard’s plays:

“I ask students to perform short improv skits in which they must express different ideas from the ones they are feeling, [including] an employee who tells his boss he appreciates the thorough critique he received on a recent evaluation. I give students 5-10 minutes to consider 1) the social context of the scene, 2) their character's goals, 3) the character's desires, and 4) the obstacles which stand in the way of these goals and desires. Even with this scant preparation, their improvised scenes already begin to display an undercurrent of tension between the characters' words and thoughts.”

I think this approach could be easily adapted to teach Daily Improvisers how to recognize the subtext flowing beneath them every day – including in organizational life. I can envision a training, teambuilding, or coaching activity in which participants are asked to consider the context, goals, desires, and obstacles inherent in common interactions. Working from either a script (a la Neutral Scene) or a blank page, they could then create improvised vignettes revealing the gap between what the characters say and “the unsaid but communicated” in these situations.

The debrief could then reflect on what Zaffron and Logan call the self-perpetuating “rackets” involved in these interactions – that is, the patterns of behavior involved, the payoffs for the parties to continue acting this way, and the costs incurred in the process.

In expert hands, the embedding of subtext can lend creative depth to a literary work. However, in an organizational context, the Daily Improviser needs to reverse this process and treat the surfacing of subtext as the real creative act. Otherwise, the organizational culture will continue to play out old themes over and over.

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FOOTNOTE: And here, by the way, is the Strange Interlude sequence from Animal Crackers. Next time I’ll continue my series of posts on The Three Laws of Performance. Until then, I’ll echo Groucho and say: Hello, I must be going!