During these minutes in which you will accompany me through this inventory, I will reference something that became part of my life and that feeds with its premises what I am and what I want to be. Trying to be brief, I will share with you seven fundamental premises of impro, useful for life, for working as a team and for those who have just started creating in situ and require ideas to continue on their path. Warning: some of these premises seem to contradict each other, but what I just said is false. Touch!
- Take advantage of mistakes as a way to learn and create. Get rid of the system that forces us to think that: if you get it right, you deserve a prize; If you make a mistake, prepare for punishment. Error teaches you a path and it is that of discovery. Thanks to the questions that arise from mistakes, you will be able to refine your processes and improve. I will be brief: without error, success is an accident. For the scene it is a revelation of what is authentic, true and human. Yes, the public enjoys the success, but the error when it is committed by someone who has the greatness to take advantage of it generates joy and identification: we all fail sometimes! The identification of who is a spectator of the error with the one who recognizes it becomes automatic and this provides a more positive communication channel than its denial. Furthermore, when we accept the error we get rid of our own punishment and this allows us to turn to the authentic, it allows us to recognize the defect and find beauty in ugliness, destroying these canons and frameworks.
- To do something well: you train. Applied to life itself, the difference between getting out of an unexpected situation lies in being prepared or not. Never stop training! Of course, teamwork, whether for the scene or not, requires doing with the other and this implies finding yourself in a group of people who are willing to prepare with you, document themselves and throw themselves into the ring with the progress. Investigating the different tools for collective creation, the multiplicity of formats and objectives, reviewing articles, essays and books on the specific topic, returning to the videos that gave you something and looking at what other groups are doing elsewhere, all of this is essential. Those who consider that talent is enough are wrong and to the eye of a good observer it is very noticeable when a group is full of pop stars and little equipment. In short, only training is useful to improvise because the script knew how to take a walk. Welcome to work in uncertainty!
- Trust your teammate. Trust is essential, believing that the other is determined to fulfill their role and that they will remain firm until the end and that you reciprocate in the same way. Of course, trust is earned, built and also broken. In some cases it will mean that some people leave or you leave, but if you can't trust the other, disaster will ensue. Think for a moment about how distressing it is when the car breaks down in the middle of the trip... The feeling is horrible, right? In case of being on stage, if it happens, you will have to improvise, but in the end those types of things make you lose your joy and you must take care of that like a treasure. Doing exercises that strengthen confidence is essential and it is wonderful when you can close your eyes and know that at your side you have someone who will continue with you until the end of the work. When that happens, without a doubt, you can celebrate and say that you do have a team. Do not rule out, then, as part of the plan, activities that have the sole objective of strengthening this aspect.
- I listen, then I do. Our Western culture taught us to present the answers first than to listen to the questions and this is fatal. The importance of the question, of the information, is vital to build correctly. Listening to be accurate in proposals is highlighted in many places, but little is trained. Are you one of those who gets desperate when you are silent? If so, be careful. The lack of listening, when your organs are in perfect condition, is associated with anxiety, intolerance, egocentrism, lack of humility... What terrible things those are! In the case of collective work, listening to your colleague will allow you to better understand how they communicate, discover who they are. There are many exercises to redouble your attention and the difference between a good story and a weak one is knowing how to read the details. Listening, then, we must also associate it with observation. Identifying how my partner comes physically will give me the key to understanding his moment. In the scene, perhaps highlighting how my partner moved his hand through his hair is the key to the story and the trigger, but none of this is useful if you retreat into insensitivity and deafness.
- Strategic thinking: if my partner wins, we all win. Many times the search for personal success, selfishness, screws you over and this ends up destroying collective creation. In any team this is fatal and in the scene it is something horrifying for the viewer. The idea of the actor whose aura covers the scene just by walking and heals the sick with his shadow is the ticket to failure. The best moments are set when the entire team aligns. In that sense, keep a close eye on your ego, because it will always want to screw up the process. Accept the emergence of leadership when it arises and do not crush your colleagues to stand out, because if someone knows how to show the way and the team reaches a successful conclusion, everyone will have won and among that "everyone" remember that you are there. During life or the representation of life, everything flows better when the simple objective of the imposition of authorities is overcome, it goes better when the layout obeys a strategy that the collective understands. For teams that have problems of this type, the preferable way out is to be mature enough to talk about it and adjust it, tune the instrument before it sounds worse.
- Be generous and never hold anything back so that the other person can succeed. It's simple: if my neighbor is well, I am well. This idea is complex because it has been manipulated politically, but it consists of something logical and that can be seen as selfish: if you take care of the well-being of the other you are also taking care of your own, because if the other fails, when you return, the burden will become heavier for you. In the scene it is like in soccer, put the ball to your partner with the field clear so that he can score; If this is established as a collective thought, at some point in history you will be the one who scores just by putting your foot next to the ball. Also, what kind of sunset is more beautiful, the one where you are alone or the one where you share it with someone else? Generosity is giving abundantly and people believe that this is only for money. In reality, the absence of capital is nonsense in the face of a mean soul.
- Be happy and enjoy. Give others happy moments and dedicate a little for humor, to laugh, because your team will appreciate it. Never lose your joy because, if you stop enjoying it, the people around you will notice and it is contagious. It is not about living in absolute schizophrenia, in absurd hilarity, but about doing what is possible, for as long as possible, and cultivating a path of joy. Also, since this is contagious, at some point it will save you; Not all days are good and perhaps the moment will come when a partner makes you laugh when you needed it most. This applies inside the teams and applies to the scene: if the actor stops enjoying it, the scene dies. Always apply some humor, find your thing, in your own way, as sparse as you can be and give this to your colleagues. It sounds like a storyteller's tale, but even Pope Francis highlights it: the trick is to laugh at something every day.
I hope these reflections are useful to you, because at Santa Palabra we use them to help multiple teams find better ways of working. A thousand cheers for improvisation!