improvisation conversation

John Britton, Wendy Smith, Hilary Elliot

This article is the continuation of a discussion between Wendy Smith, John Britton and Hilary Elliot about improvisation and performance. Their conversation from last edition of <proximity> ended with a comment about the depth of experience created through ongoing improvisational practice.

John and Hilary are the co-directors of Quiddity Theatre. Wendy Smith is Australia’s only qualified Skinner Releasing Technique teacher and is also a founding member of State of Flux.

WS I'm working with Grace Walpole at the moment, and I'm loving working with someone completely new, and really enjoying the rehearsal process. But it’s very interesting in performance where I'll make a particular offer that I'm really used to somebody either picking up or clearly not accepting, but Grace won't necessarily read it as an offer, and it’s like, ‘oh right, you understand this differently from me’. And equally she's done some things in performance that she's previously done in her group that I've missed. At times we’ve completely missed each other’s offers. When people have talked to us about those moments, we recognised that they were the moments it felt really weird. When we couldn't figure out what was happening and it's because we don't have the longevity of history yet. The mulch hasn't fully formed. The key elements are there for it to form, but it actually just hasn't cooked away in the vat long enough.

JB Which brings us out from Quiddity ensemble to Quiddity theatre, which is just the two of us (Hilary & John). We have done ten shows, or ten years worth of work together. We don't actually do an awful lot of performance improvising together, we do some, but we do a lot more structured pieces. You know when we got into the space for Fleshtones earlier in 2002, we were way ahead in terms of starting to put together a piece of art, just in terms of not even having to negotiate the niceties and all that.

HE (laughs) You just ignore them!

JB Completely ignore them…

HE “You suck, piss off!!!”

JB The huge physical ability to just sort of go ok, what was that thing we did seven years ago? Because there was sort of a set of moves that we played with which we don't want to do again but…

WS …it’s got the element of what we're after.

JB And for me, even though it’s quite hard to continually churn out duets, and in some ways we're slowing a little bit on that because we used to do about one a year, but for me the work between the two of us is still becoming richer and richer. It’s changing because particularly for me I can't do the sort of physical stuff I used to do, it’s certainly changing. But there is a tremendous kind of wisdom, it’s that thing from moving from knowledge, you know, I know how to perform, Hilary knows how to perform, but there's a growth of real wisdom between us about kind of an understanding of simply how things work for us.

HE Well I think it’s also that we started the journey in the same place in relation to the exploration of where can theatre and dance really meet? And we were sort of in the same place with those questions individually when we met, and then just decided to explore it together. I think that's quite pertinent with the ensemble and with other groups as well, that there's an exploration that you're going on. But what is the starting point for everybody in relationship to that material and that questioning and that philosophy? Even in the ensemble there are some differences in where we've all started in terms of then where we all go, and you know, it's not problematic but it means that it's…

WS It's there.

HE Yeah it's there.

JB Yeah and it’s even partly to do with age. I mean in the ensemble there are emerging artists new out of university, through to Hil who's been performing for ten years, I mean that’s quite…

HE I’m the old gal

JB …that's quite a diversity of experience.

WS Also, different points people are at in their lives as to what they can do in relation to that ensemble, which plays a big part. I think this notion of the… what did you call it the...?

JB Pre-performative state.

WS Pre-performative state, I think that's the really interesting thing and I think that's an area that can evolve in terms of all the art forms that people are trained in.

JB It's certainly interesting doing this sort of work down at NICA with circus performers who are very different, but for some of them they sort of go 'hello, yeah what's the point?' There are others who kind of go wow, this is really just making sense of what I'm doing in a very, very profound way.

WS I think in some ways what we're talking about, is discussed by a lot of teachers. They've all got their own language and their own way of describing it, but I think they're all talking about the same ball park really…

WS Like Joan Skinner for example talks in Skinner Releasing Technique, about the idea of removing the blocks. She describes that as whitewashing the canvas

J&H Ok, yeah, yeah

WS I think that's why a lot of actors do Skinner Releasing in the States and in Japan and various places, because what it teaches you through the use of imagery is an incredible access to the physical, the physicality of the imagination. And not just on an external level, but an internal experience of the physicality of the imagination, which then, like with Butoh, you see the overflow.

H&J Yeah, yeah.

WS And that's what you see. So you only get the overflow as the audience member, whereas the performer's just got the full orchestra going internally, you hear the violin externally, but what you hear in that violin is beautiful…

JB Extraordinary.

WS So she talks about it in terms of whitewashing the canvas, so that you're not trying to get around your own habits as your starting base, but your starting base is just a clean slate. So that if you're, for example, playing a character that physically you're in neutral, you're in physical neutral, and that's what she trains you towards. She trains you towards the capacity for physical neutrality, ultimate three-dimensional balance in space, without excess effort or tension, so that you only use what you need to use, so that you can turn the tap on whenever you want to either up it, or reduce it, take it in any direction at any point in time. So that if you ever want to overlay the neutral with a particular characteristic of a character, then it's just really easy to just add that on, because you’re not already fighting something; trying to get around something in order to do that. Do you know what I mean?

H&J Yeah yeah

WS Her method of work is not about performance, but it is very much about, I think a particular take on what she sees as creating the state of mind and that state of body, availability…

JB Yeah, absolutely.

WS …that allows you to be in the place of possibility. And she's big on state of mind, huge. Now to do the training with her, as a teacher you have to display the capacity for understanding an experience of poetry, voicework, you know, boy I was lucky I went through early. (laughs) I wouldn't have stood a chance! But she will spend hours and hours and hours with you about how you deliver a line as a teacher. She'll just go “nope, that's not it, you haven't found the physical essence of what this is dealing with.” So she uses poetry all the time in her work, but the vehicle that delivers the poetry has to be experiencing the kinaesthetic sense that she's after. So it’s this incredible stripping back, stripping back, stripping back.

JB That's really interesting. I think the thing that's really interesting about it is that it puts the teacher/director/facilitator in the position of… well this may be wrong, but it sounds like it puts her in the position of in the end saying when you have it and when you don't.

WS No, no not really. She'll be dealing with particular physical states, you know, it's dance training, it’s a dance form. So it's not about performance, it's about how you work through the idiosyncratic structures of the body to find ultimate balance, so from my perspective with teaching and studying SRT there are times when you can see someone has got it or understood or embodied the principles physically! Sometimes we just miss it though!

H&J (laughs)

WS If you haven't got the rib integration, you haven't got it. Y'know, you just haven’t got it. And it's no big deal, you just keep playing until you find it. Other people have different takes. But I think they're talking about that same thing, that essence of the state that you can inhabit that is the ultimate training for either improvisation or set work.

JB Absolutely.

WS Or music or painting or...

JB Interestingly this brings us, kind of, to the thing you said before and then winced at when you said it, which is to do with whether or not people are artists. Whether people who make art are necessarily artists or whatever, and for me there's a formulation now for what's the difference between entertainment and art, which is not a very popular formulation.

WS It's not a very popular subject matter is it?

JB No, but I do think there's a difference. And I don't think necessarily one's better than the other, I like entertainment, it’s fun, I just think it's different to art. And I think art is fine, but I think it's different to entertainment.

WS And one's not better than the other, they're just two different things. I think the dilemma comes when people think that art is fantastic and entertainment is just…

JB Yeah, and also the problem comes from people who think that art has got to be entertainment, which it doesn't, because they are different things. But one of the things about…

WS It can be entertaining though, but it just doesn't have to be

JB But in terms of being an artist it does actually come back to that question of it becoming a facet of the way you live your life. But also a facet of the way you conceive of yourself as a person within a culture and so on, which is to do with continual dedication to one's own growth, ones own development, ones own aspiration, ones own sense of being on the process, and so on.

WS I wouldn't even call it dedication, because to me that has the connotation of being somewhat driven.

JB Yeah, ok

WS And I think that brings a lot with it, potentially prejudice that you can look at the world through. It’s more like to have a sense of attention to how you live, being attentive to how you are in the world. Like dancers who never do class; you're not being attentive. Class might be on your own, you know, but never giving the attention to your body that you need. Or actors who abuse their bodies so much that once they hit thirty-five they just get sicker and sicker or more and more injured. Or equally you know people who might be really attentive to their bodies but really inattentive in their brains.

J&H: (laughs) Yeah, yeah,

JB Which is also a problem!

WS A lack of balance I suppose.

JB And also, again, deeply unpopular thing to say, but I also think there is a question in there about… I do think there is an question of respect for the integrity of your own creativity, and I don't think it’s about, necessarily, selling whatever you've got to the highest bidder at all possible occasions.

WS No, no

JB Because I find it very depressing in terms of actor training, that people are being trained as actors, and kind of told it’s a really good thing to go out, and you know, if someone pays you $5000 to make a commercial then that's somehow a really good thing. I'm not saying people shouldn't do that, but at least I'd like it to be acknowledged that it’s a real shame that somebody who's got real skill has to make their money by being a salesperson, rather than an actor. I don't think all things are equal. I don't think as an actor it's fine to be doing a 'crazy john's' advert and still think that's as valuable as creating a new piece of work because I don't think they are. That is in some ways nowadays dismissed as an elitist argument because popular culture is so kind of in, that it's really fantastic to do a 'crazy john’s' mobile phone advert, but I don't think that is actually. I think that there is a difference.