The little boy is silent.
Spotlighted on stage, the little boy, the volunteer from the Saturday morning family audience, is expressionless and speechless.
Backstage, we grow nervous.
Underneath elaborate gold crowns and rainbow wigs, my fellow improvisers and I sneak concerned looks at one another. I anxiously tug at my feathered neon pink boa.
The entire cast is awaiting the little boy’s response to my presently on-stage improv boss’s question.
Unbeknownst to him, of course, and to the audience, the direction of our improvised show (an unscripted and spontaneous performance) all precariously balances on this answer.
The Saturday morning kids’ show is called, “Fairytale Extras,” a fabulously fun improvised production where we get the suggestion of a fairytale from the attending audience (“Little Red Riding Hood!”) and then invite a kid/kids to join us on stage (most often the kids are bouncing out of their seats to jump onto stage) to help us brainstorm on how to spice up and modernize that fairytale (so it’s like “Little Red Riding Hood” reimagined as a Western, or “Cinderella” as a soap opera with dragons).
In other Saturday morning performances, the children are enthusiastically bubbling with creative ideas (let’s just say a few very storytelling savvy six-year-olds in Austin, Texas, could totally rewrite an Oscar-award-winning revision of “The Three Little Pigs”).
On this fateful morning, though, there is silence.
As I tug loose boa feathers, my improv boss remains calm, patient, utterly attentive. She doesn’t leave her fellow player out in the cold. Like a cool and generous improviser, she makes her fellow player look brilliant.
“Awww,” she claps her hands and gives him a knowing smile, “you’re so right! The genre is mystery.”
In all my improv classes and in all my performances, this single moment shines as the best instructor.
The silence was an answer, and it was an answer that was worthy of note, that sparkled with inspiration, too.
My improv boss accepted the moment, accepted her stage player, and accepted the silence, and in this acceptance, she remained, like all good improvisers, open and ready for the answer.
Mystery.
So often in life and on-stage in improv scenes, I hurry and rush. I look outside for the answer, while forgetting that the answer is right here, right there in the eyes of another, in the listening and all-knowing heart of myself.
Acceptance is at the core of improvisational theatre, and it’s the core of my own healing and wellbeing.
I just forget.
I forget … a lot.
When the spotlight of life is on me, I often get distracted in thinking that the scene needs to go this way … I need to look this way … I need to perform this way to get the desired, expected result. I’m searching for the perfect answer when the answer is already there, already here.
The magic is in the mystery. The magic is in releasing the shoulds, the expectations, the seeking for external approval and the fear of rejection, and letting the moment be what it is, letting there be a pause. And, when I am with the pause, I see that the illusion of stillness holds an aliveness of possibilities.
In improv, we are trained to say YES to the moment, to say YES to our stage partner’s ideas, and also, to say YES to ourselves. And this is a practice that continues on with me on these hot July days.
My summer play involves a heart-centered practice of including all aspects of me. I bring a hand to my heart, and for the first time, accept and acknowledge my high sensitivity. I am a highly sensitive person, and though I’ve always known this, it’s taken almost thirty years to recognize what this truly means, because this is a very different, and neuro-biological way of being and living in the world.
The intensity of my emotions, the deep processing of my thoughts, my essential need like water for sacred solitude … I have been resisting them. And this resistance has made me a match for unsupportive and harsh relationships, the sputtering experience of burn out in almost every job I’ve ever had, and complete emotional breakdowns.
I have been trying to override my sensitive nature, and now, like a good improviser, I want to bring this unique trait onto the stage, I want to give this trait of high sensitivity the unconditional support it deserves.
And simply accepting my high sensitivity brings immediate spaciousness. The resistance evaporates.
What would it feel like to give myself the unconditional emotional support that I freely and lovingly give to others? What would it feel like to say YES to myself – to accepting the present-moment experience of emotions and sensations?
I don’t want that type of self-acceptance to remain a mystery.
Life is a mystery, the unfolding of the scene is a mystery. What if my acceptance (my support) were real. Always there for me.
This is what I am learning.
This is what I am teaching, and will be teaching in my upcoming Body Writes session in August, right in time for the summer shine of Leo, to roar in our own brilliant luminosity.
No, you don’t have to perform.
I won’t be swiveling the Zoom spotlight onto you and ask you for a genre for the show.
I will be directing you to keep that heart-blaze of acceptance and support bright, to include all parts of yourself, to bring everything into the heart space, that inner sun.
And if and when there is a question, from a fellow life improviser or from the depths of yourself, you’ll be like my improv boss, steady and present, open and ready, for the answer within the mystery, and how the mystery is a perfect partner for the real-life play.
Body Writes: Flow With Summer Ease & Shine Out Your Creative Luminosity
When :: Saturday, August 6th: 10am — 12:15pm
Where :: The Zoom Stage
Price :: $122 (proceeds benefit The Children’s Advocacy Center, please read about their work here.)