Two weeks into L4C’s outreach program with students at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LAHSA) at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools (as part of PLAY!, a collaboration with USC Annenberg School’s Innovation Lab and RFK-LA Media Lab), the kids are already improvising some very interesting, honest, and funny scenes. In critiquing one of the best improvs, I told the kids that they “owed it to the scene” to be very specific in their space work so that the reality they built played to the audience. “Open the imaginary car door,” I side-coached, “then get in, close the door, put on your seat belt, etc. Take your time. Don’t feel you have to rush. Establish the reality and everything (including the funny) will come out of that.”

A girl in the class enthusiastically responded, “Oh, you’re talking about the details.” Exactly! Pay attention to the details because those details are the “rules” of the game. And, as in any game, the rules provide the structure within which you are free to play and to discover. As the Dalai Lama said, “Learn the rules, so you know how to break them properly.”

At PLAY! the kids are experiencing the fact that playful attention to “the details” can be an important part of the evolution towards new ways of learning in the 21^st century. Creativity and spontaneity are enhanced, listening and trust are developed, and empathic connections are made. In short, here is a model created for all of us to live better lives and also help our communities thrive.

I see the work we do at L4C as part of an important historical continuum. Paul Sills wrote about creating what he envisioned as “Theater for a New Community.” And Del Close, taking the teaching to the next level, saw “the discipline of play” (thought, truth be told, I don’t believe the word “discipline” was in Del’s vocabulary) as a pathway to a powerful and positive communal intelligence: “ the group mind.”

Crucial to the process of introducing this more open, less top down, and ultimately more relevant form of learning, is to re-introduce the term “discipline” to students, not as a punitive concept — something that happens when you don’t turn your homework in on time or when you disrupt the class — but more as a focus that can help you communicate your ideas.

At L4C, we use the medium of improvisational games and play to reset the perspective of students toward what “discipline” means. They experience, as the kids from LAHSA are finding out, that the games are simple, fun and failure proof. In this environment, the players develop a sense of individual safety and mutual trust in an environment that is constantly reinforcing the idea that “discipline” is a good thing and a path to delightful discoveries about how your talent can shine.

Just as improvisational techniques mirror important life skills – looking for agreement not conflict, making active not passive choices, etc. – so improv done well presents us with perspectives for how to live more sustainably. In fact, improvisational theater is, at its very core, about our relationship to the environment. From its early days, when the masters of the form stressed “getting out of our heads and into the space”, making our imaginations environmental has been a major part of improvisational training.

Here are just a few of the ways in which improv is not only about being funny, but also about creating on the stage a model for a more sustainable way to be in the world.

1) You can improvise anywhere – beautiful theater not required! Get a room, push the furniture back, use a few folding chairs, imagine any environment, conjure any prop out of thin air as needed, and you’ve got as low-maintenance a potentially mind-blowing theatrical experience as you could hope for.

2) Improv is all about recycling ideas. Long form improv especially is at its best when so-called “originality” is put aside in favor of making connections and honoring callbacks. It doesn’t waste anything of value. Improvisational theater is a lesson in sustainability because you conserve unnecessarily expended mental energy by not trying to be clever, and you make it easier on yourself by honoring the ideas of others.

3) Improv demands that you honor the space. When improvisers talk about agreement vs. denial, often it is only thought of in terms of verbal denial. But just as bad is denying a physical reality established by the other player. If someone sets up a “space table” in the middle of a room, and you walk through that table, it’s as much a denial as if you said, to use another classic example, “… but we don’t have any kids.”

It may be no coincidence that at this time of shrinking resources and expanding challenges to our wellbeing and very existence, improvisation is growing so rapidly as a pop culture art form. In a scary unsafe world, improvisational theater is all about listening, paying attention and cooperating to create a safe space. It is, at its best, about working and playing simply to be creative, spontaneous, and… sustainable.

One of the show’s greatest pleasures is Jeremy Piven’s portrayal of Ari Gold, the cutthroat super-agent. For the run of the series Ari has wielded his cell phone like a samurai sword, screaming orders and manipulating situations, doing anything to WIN! And yet, predictable as the character is, the performance is consistently fascinating to watch. Why? Because Jeremy Piven is a master of the “unlikely choice.”

For improvisers, going for the unlikely choice is a skill to be mastered. With full commitment AND a sense of play, you wear your character lightly so that who YOU are can show through the character. There is no “motivation” other than to serve the moment and the scene. The flexibility of that improvisational point of view works in all situations.

It’s fun and exciting to watch actors who have the skill and “playfulness” to set up a character with a strong consistent personality, and then veer away from the expected. With the “unlikely choice” they make, they evoke moments that are not at all familiar or imitative and that are truly authentic and relatable.

Case in point, Jeremy Piven’s performance in last week’s season opener. “Mrs. Ari” finally has had enough of her husband’s insensitivity and has kicked him out of their mansion. Ari comes home to try to “negotiate” her taking another shot at making their marriage work. But standing in the marble entryway, Mrs. Ari hits him with the news: she’s seeing someone else. Ari’s jaw tightens and his eyes well up with tears. For just an instant, you watch him respond in a surprising way to the possibility that this is an important deal he might not be able to close.

Then Ari “mans up”, marches resolutely to the ornate front doors, opens them, marches out, and as he leaves… he ever so gently closes the doors behind him. As an audience member, I am expecting the super agent who is always the steamroller and never the road, to slam those doors. But the bombastic, hardened character Piven has built for seven seasons shows vulnerability and sensitivity instead. When he does, I find myself caring for Ari. And, not coincidently, planning to tune in again this week to follow the surprising emotional journey of a “scum-bag-on-the-surface” character made human and sympathetic by a consummate actor making an unlikely choice.

Del was a teen-age runaway when he landed his first job in show business, as part of Lash LaRue’s carnival act. Lash Larue was a cowboy movie star whose weapon of choice was not blazing six guns but a bullwhip. In his act, a kid would hold a cigarette or some other small object in his mouth, and Lash would whip it out, nearly taking off the kid’s nose every time. Del was the kid. But Del soon grew tired of being someone else’s whipping boy (bad pun intended). So he developed his own act. Billed as Asrad the Incombustible Persian, Del toured the carnival circuit swallowing swords and eating fire. (Years later, on our way to a gig, he was exhibiting his fire eating skills and set my car’s interior on fire - but that’s another Del story for another blog).

Following his carny stint, Del matriculated to New York’s cabaret theater scene with Julius Monk’s Review at Upstairs at the Downstairs. There he learned and perfected the “down front fast and funny” style of comedy, all about making the audience laugh. But Del was way too smart and way too restless to stay just “down front fast and funny.” He was looking for something more. And as he turned to directing, he was more interested in a kind of funny based on real people behaving honestly.

As my director at The Committee, Del loved the fact that I worked so “behaviorally” on stage, getting laughs without trying to be funny. Whenever I’d cross the line and “go for the joke”, Del would “direct” me back by using his cabaret performing skills. The lessons I learned were through his entertaining parody of what I was doing. His “direction” was to feign my over-the-top presentational style, amping himself up to performance mode with a purposefully annoying “AND NOW…!” This was our code. It was Del’s unique style of directing. It imprinted upon me important lessons and brought me right back to the reality level that was essential to the kind of comedy we were creating together.

Del taught by performing, and would often punctuate the deepest conversations on profound topics by calling up tricks from his earlier days. One of his favorite tricks was to “swallow” a lit cigarette only to make it appear again in a big puff of smoke, then continue smoking it. Or, one of his rambling but brilliant workshop “lectures” might be capped by Del breaking into a little tap dance ending with him jumping high into the air, seemingly suspended in space, where he’d click his heels together, then land back on his feet and with even greater theatrics, throw his arms out and yell “ACHA!!”

As a teacher, Del was a master at mixing the comical silliness of The Three Stooges with explanations from theoretical physics or esoteric anthropological discoveries. He reveled in an exploration of the dynamic tension between traditional cabaret theater, with elements of vaudeville, burlesque, cabaret comedy, and a much deeper, often darker, hyper-intelligent, cosmic perspective about the work and how to do it.

As a mentor, Del introduced me to his abstract, philosophical, iconoclast bordering on “mad scientist” point of view. He also gave me a lot of books to read that weren’t about being funny, but nonetheless, had everything to do with the work on stage. They’re not too many laughs, to say the least, in books like Colin Wilson’s The Mind Parasites, John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Every now and then, I revisit one of those books. I am just now re-reading Olaf Stapleton’s Star Maker decades after Del first introduced me to it. Star Maker is a far-reaching journey into the infinite reaches of the cosmos. It is the history, over eons and eons, of humanity’s need to find community and connection, the illusiveness of true communication and cooperation, and the power of group mind.

Reading Star Maker after all these years, made me appreciate again the fact that helping people do funny shit on stage was only Del’s “day job.” His passion was in the alchemy of making sparks fly and making creative explosions happen out of a brew of silly ass traditional American comedy mixed with profound explorations of vast ideas that forced actors to truly play, as Del put it “at the top of your intelligence.”

Once, doing one of our epic “Harolds” (15 or 20 people on stage improvising for a couple hours), a full company musical production number ended with everyone falling exhausted onto the floor. After a few seconds, I stood up and started walking through the fallen crowd somberly calling out “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” Del got the reference - let’s call it “Black Plague humor” – and it may have been the loudest laugh I ever got from Del.

With the Harold and long-form improv, Del was reaching for a theater form that could spontaneously explore a theme using a mix of genres, styles and tones. This theater form brought to the stage and to the exploration of a theme or a question, the kaleidoscopic vision that mirrored what was inside Del’s head: comedy, history, all genres, science, slap stick, etc, etc. Del conjured a performance environment where the actors, when they were in sync, thought together like Del thought. Through a series of creative explosions by individual actors with innumerable perspectives, the work on stage evolved into “the group mind.”

Dizzy Gillespie was once asked to define the contribution of Charlie Parker to the history of jazz. His response was that before Charlie Parker there were a lot of great players for many years, playing very fine jazz, but – “Bird added the pyrotechnics.”

It is very, very important that as improvisers we never undervalue the contributions of the great founding fathers and mothers of American improvisational theater. There could have been no Del Close without his teachers and mentors, Viola Spolin and Paul Sills. But with his work and his guidance, particularly in the development of long form improv, Del is responsible for giving us “the pyrotechnics of improv.”

In an improv class the other day, I used Viola Spolin’s “Seeing Without Labeling” game as a warm-up. It goes like this: players move around the stage, are side-coached to stop, see any familiar object – a chair, clock on the wall, stage curtain - without automatically silently naming it. For just a moment you are “seeing without labeling.” I described it as a simple practice for coming to situations with an open mind, ready to view things from a fresh perspective, rather than being stuck, to quote Del again, with “your head up your head.” One student instinctively felt the game’s value, but needed more explanation.

Because it was important, and I wanted him to understand, I spoke to him in “Angelino” – I hit him with a driving metaphor. When you’re driving from your house to the theatre I said, you know the route and follow that route the same way every day. But what you don’t know is what might transpire along the way. There might be a crazy driver in the next lane, a new pothole in the street, an old sofa on the freeway. You follow the same route, but keep an open mind, free of preconceptions. And with the route as your structure, you improvise your way through the “game” of getting to class without getting killed. Put in those terms, my student got it!

One of my favorite venues in Los Angeles to watch people improvise is in the heart of residential Beverly Hills, just off Sunset Boulevard, where Beverly Drive, Canon Drive, and Lomitas Avenue intersect. These three streets form six spokes of a wheel. There are only stop signs. No lights! Everyone must work together. No matter whether you drive a Mercedes, Honda Civic or Lamborghini, there is that sense of playing at the top of your intelligence and a universal recognition of the value of the “yes, and…“

Heads of studios, nannies, sheiks, plastic surgeons and gardeners come to the intersection where they have to let go of preconceptions and status games about who goes first. If everyone pays attention, becomes a player in “the group mind”, then everyone gets through the intersection safely. 24/7, it’s an improv moment at its highest level – simple, honest, and high stakes. You come to the intersection in Beverly Hills without labels, or else! Seen as an improv, that intersection gives new meaning to the phrase – Funny or Die!

The ability to see without labeling is what driving, life in L.A. (and everywhere else), and improv is all about.

Recently, one of my students, determined to grow as an improviser, asked if a deeper reference level makes a big different in the work. Answer: It’s absolutely crucial. The amazing Severn Darden from the early days of Second City in his “Metaphysics Lecture”, answered in great depth (and hilariously) the question “What is Everything… anyway?” At The Committee, I always marveled at Garry Goodrow taking a suggestion for a first line and a style for a poem and then improvising one that could have been written by E.E. Cummings, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay — whoever, he had it dead on! In the last couple years, I’ve seen some long form improv done with intelligence and humanity. To name one example, L.A. based improv team Dasariski, on the day the IPad went on sale, performed a very hip social satire long form improv on the need to have the newest of everything.

To be a really good improviser you need to be open to artistic inspiration anywhere you find it. The more places you explore, the deeper and broader your frame of reference, the better you will be. My early days learning improv were spent pretty much in equal parts work shopping with Del Close and book shopping in City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco with Del, who recommended books, the knowledge from which showed up later and some time as much a surprise to me as anyone, in the work on stage. More recently, my perspective was profoundly changed, my reference level deepened and informed by my experience leading improv comedy workshops in Rwanda with young post-genocide Rwandans. That experience was the inspiration for Laughter for a Change.

The value of our improv outreach at Laughter for a Change is not just for the people who we bring laughter to. The “take away” for us is a deep and broad expansion in our reference levels. Each of the talented Comedy Mentors who lead improv workshops with PTSD vets, or former gang members, or culturally mixed and at-risk middle school students, or seniors dealing with how to stay ahead of the aging process (news flash — laughter helps!) are informed and affected for the good as improvisers as well as people.

So, one recipe for becoming a better improviser, guaranteed: read everything, talk to people, have deep conversations, open yourself up to opportunities to be influenced by diverse opinions and communities. Don’t just think outside the box, get up off your ass and get outside the box!

Say you’re watching basketball on T.V., your favorite player sinks a game winning three pointer at the buzzer, and you feel good, just like the player who hit the shot.  You are connected to him or her through mirror neurons.  Now take this into improv and the whole idea of agreement, team building, trust, active choices, all those elements come together in a whole new way. That connection to the other players – it’s not something you need to create — it’s already there.  In your brain.  Just go with it.  When you’re improvising, remember – you’re already connected. Exciting stuff, isn’t it?

Though I had no real life experience to compare it to, Del’s “death scene” seemed to echo his life-long direction to “go for the unlikely choice”, and as a result was a quintessentially Del production. Incoming farewell phone calls that were being politely deflected in somber hushed tones were interrupted with Del yelling directions: “TELL ‘EM I’M DYING!” Dozens of friends and hundreds of students streamed through to bid farewell. A pre-birthday party/wake brought tears and laughter (filmed by Comedy Central, of course!). There was not much private time.

But in the time we did have alone together in his last hours, Del and I talked about a few things - mostly about the work we did together. He told me how much he loved one scene in particular that we worked on at “The Committee” under his direction for nine months - called “Babble.” Del called it a “high point” of his career.  It was a two-person scene where I played a young guy who had a blind date with a young woman who hardly ever left the house (played brilliantly and alternately by Ruth Silveira and Julie Payne). The woman, an ultimate loner, verbalized everything — not only the small talk with her “date”, but also all her inner-thoughts, anxieties, self-criticism and self-self criticism!  The more stressed the woman became the more she talked. The poor guy struggled to deal with an attractive date who was verbalizing on five levels of consciousness!  Nothing, but NOTHING, was left hidden or unsaid.

Del loved “Babble”  because it was all about how people succeed or fail to communicate.  We played the scene for audiences hundreds of times, and never knew, from night to night, how it would end until the very last minute. Would the guy stay for the relationship or leave and end it? (If I left, the audience would collectively groan, if I stayed, there was a collective sigh of relief, and laughter.)  The scene dealt with a most fundamental question: “When people talk to each other,” Del asked, “what are they really saying?”  And in the scene, the biggest laughs came, just as Del always insisted, as a by-product of the humanity and connectivity displayed on stage.

Del was a complicated man and many things to many people — to most he was a comic genius, “The Funniest One in the Room” (the title of his biography), the shamanic hero of hundreds of antic “Del stories.”  But in our last conversation, Del described himself simply as a “humanist” — more interested in how people communicate than in anything else.

In that tradition, what we do at Laughter for a Change  is primarily an active and playful exploration of how and why people communicate and what they discover in the process.  There is always laughter.  Laughter that in its own profound and silly way, brings us together, changes us, makes us better.

I do an improv warm-up exercise called “Age Walk.” As the players move randomly around the stage, I start to call out different ages, side coaching as the actors play themselves at age – three, then six, then twelve,fifteen, twenty and so on all the way to about eighty-five. Then they end up back at age three. (By the way, I don’t leave them at three – they get to return to their actual age).  One day, I was working with a group of Older Adults, roughly age seventy to eighty-five. They went through the exercise, and when they were playing themselves at “fifty”, they were trying their best to do all the physical exercises they’d done at fifty. Half of them were doing jumping jacks!

The next day, I ran a class of young improvisers ranging in age from eighteen to about mid-twenties. I did the same warm-up exercise. This time, when the twenty-ish ones reached age fifty they slowed down, had more trouble walking, had achy bones, shaky hands, and yes, even used imaginary walkers! The old folks did jumping jacks at fifty and the young ones did walkers.

It seems to be easier being fifty “the second time around.”

On this subject — I was recently emailed this video. Full disclosure – I do not eat red meat.

It is so predictable the way most people who are “doing improv” will play children. They immediately start arguing and whining in fake “kid talk” playing annoying, dumb and argumentative, spewing conflict and denial all over the stage. It’s the most obvious, most boring portrayal of children imaginable. It’s yucky and it’s gross! Once again, as so often happens in improv, when there’s the desperate rush to be funny, there is a separation from your own best instincts, from the other players and from the space. As always, it can only help to focus on what’s your relationship not only to the other players, but to the space. Think about it. You’re a kid. So you’re always looking up. The reality is, most kids are really smart, based to a great degree on the fact that they spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to negotiate their status in a world where even if they’re the smartest one in the room, usually everyone is two or three times bigger than them. Not only that, they haven’t been around as long as us older, more cynical humans. So they’re also exploring a wonder-filled world where there are new discoveries happening all the time, where the other little kids can be your allies as well as enemies. Kids play together. Sometimes they fight, but kids like to get along, to share, trust and feel trusted. Playing the positive qualities in a kid makes for a much more interesting character who can move forward in a scene exploring, agreeing and creating. Every improviser should know that any character you play has to be played at the top of your brains, including playing little kids. And playing that way allows you to truly access the playful kid in you. And isn’t that what improv is really all about?