Idea Fish

The past two months I've been shadowing a level one class at iO. It's been an engaging experience and I've learned a lot from Jessica(the teacher). One of the most interesting things about it has been seeing fledgling improvisers learn the basics, some of them with little to no context for the medium. It's been almost ten years since I took my first class and so the eager yet unformed mindset of some of the students is very refreshing but in some ways challenging. A couple of the students that have struggled a bit more have asked a version of that most mystifying question "where do I get ideas?"

In some ways I think improv, more so than other artforms because of its immediacy, is the discipline of inspiration itself. That, in application they are practically synonymous and trying to explain or teach how to be inspired is almost impossible because it will inevitably turn to how I am inspired as opposed to how one is inspired. This is through no fault of the teacher, there are as many ways to be inspired, to seek and cultivate inspiration, as there are fish in the sea and all you can ultimately impart is your own experience. You can talk in abstractions but for most students abstract instruction is at best inapplicable and at worst confusing. What I try to do is make clear various options or avenues I see during a scene or piece in hopes that it will jump start some internal analysis or imaginative spark. Some students want to know not only how to do it but how to do it right and in improv(in all art) that desire shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what creation is.

There are techniques and tools, forms and rules that can be taught but I think imagination itself can't(it can be strengthened). And most of the time I think when students ask questions about ideas it comes more from a place of natural frustration rather than true lack of ability. The one and only answer to the question "where do I get ideas?" is "I don't know." It is a question that all(famous) creative people get asked frequently but which all almost unilaterally answer with a deflection or a convoluted metaphor. Director David Lynch talks about ideas not being created but discovered. It's a theme writer Stephen King talks about a lot, currently I'm reading his non-fiction book on horror Danse Macabre, and he infers something similar. He talks about the genous of some ideas(a dream, an image of a rabid dog, a busy highway) but their amalgamation and how the book unfolds as he's writing he chalks up to will, talent(also unexplainable), and mystery.

In improv, and I think in all creative endeavors, the job of the teacher isn't to teach how but to help the student on their own path of discovery. To assist in cultivating an individual mode of inspiration. In teaching how we can only hope to produce imitators. Leading a student on their own path is much more difficult and perhaps imperfect. We can't help but impart some of our own personal process to those we hope to teach but it is certainly a more noble and, ultimately, more fruitful attempt.

And on talent, not everyone has it. Improv more so than other disciplines seems to call a lot of hopefuls because it seems relatively accessible. This is great for the improv teaching business but not so great for improv itself. Some folks can grasp how it works but lack the real creative drive that makes improv fun and exciting. King downplays talent(or natural ability) and says some talent is needed but discipline and will are the real necessities of the artist. And I agree up to a point but I've seen many tenacious improv hopefuls who simply do not get it, who do not have it, but keep on doggedly taking classes and performing in seedy locales year after year after year in hopes of a breakthrough that will(seemingly) never come. Not every person is a creative person. And although that can be a tough lesson its a lesson the teacher shouldn't be so afraid of imparting.

Where do ideas come from? I don't know. But I do know where I draw some of my inspiration- personal experience, fiction/TV/film, human observation. How that translates into characters and narrative I can't really explain, its mostly intuitive. That's a muscle you just have to build over time.