Patterns from the Paderewski with Pads

What do you think it would sound like if you let your cat loose on a piano keyboard? Chaos, cacophony, noise? A random striking of keys with no purpose, no order?

If that's what you think, then listen to Nora:



You probably wouldn’t have suspected that such a seemingly disjointed tinkling could have been carrying a thread of structure and musicality. All it took was someone like Mindaugas Piecaitis to step back, take in the whole “performance,” and discover the patterns embedded in Nora’s little improvisation.

This video calls to mind a key tenet of improv: “Weave mistakes into the larger pattern.” If your onstage partner accidentally trips and falls during a scene, don’t say “oops!” and wait for him to scramble back up – drop down to the floor next to him and say “Great idea hiding behind these rocks!” In other words, do something to support him so that it doesn’t look like a “mistake” at all.

On a larger scale, the tenet underlies the whole improv form called The Harold, in which the performers first create brief unrelated scenes around a single audience-provided word and then spend the next thirty minutes interweaving the scenes until they all come together at the end. The incongruities between the opening scenes are really instances of “mistakes,” i.e., events that seem disjointed, out of place. The challenge is to find the common patterns in the apparently incongruous themes and blend them into a seamless whole.

The Daily Improviser can also apply the skill of weaving mistakes into the larger pattern. As Patricia Ryan Madson says in her book Improv Wisdom, the key to dealing with “mistakes” in daily life is not to berate yourself for having somehow failed but to ask “What comes next? What can I make of this?” Practicing the Circus Bow activity (described in an earlier post) can help remind the Daily Improviser to look outward rather than inward after a mistake and keep moving forward toward the goal.

It's been said that "The difference between success and failure can't be known in our lifetimes." Only by stepping back and taking the long, broad view can we really see the "larger patterns" into which mistakes can be woven - a theme upon which I'll expand next time.