To start improv class, we circle around the invisible cauldron.
Sunflowers, cat fur, lollipops and beheaded Barbie dolls are spontaneously thrown into the imaginary brew.
The ingredients Splash! Splunk! Scream! into the creativity-infused concoction.
“RISE! SINK! RISE!” we chant to finalize each contribution, and after every student has shared, the potion sizzles as complete. We take out the crystal goblet we always stow in our back pocket (do you have yours too?) and take a long drink before tossing it dramatically aside (it’s enchanted not to break).
NOW we’re ready to improv shine.
Potion, the name of the game, begins and concludes every improv class that I teach. I play this game as a warm-up and a wrap-up for the delight of my students, and also, for me.
I need a game that prompts me to leave the mumblings of my mind and moves me into my sensing, all-knowing body.
I need a game that acknowledges and transmutes my lingering mood.
Concerns and stale contemplations transform into an imaginary bag of toenails or a real half-eaten sandwich, leaving me refreshed and re-centered and ready to respond.
I need a game that helps me ground.
I plant my feet and stir the cauldron and root into the present moment.
The body only exists in the NOW and the NOW is the realm of creativity and intuition. When I am embodied, I can easily access the channel of creativity, and the soft and clear voice of my intuition.
I need a game that lets me greet and focus on each student.
“Claire, what are we throwing in the potion?”
“Arby’s.”
“Perfect!”
I welcome each improv student - exactly as they are.
For the next few hours, I am their improv teacher, but in truth, I consider myself a space holder. Children (well, human beings in general) are natural creatives, and children, in my humble opinion, are naturally funny. As an improv performer, I’m just trying to unravel all my conditioning so I can be as fun and funny as my improv students.
But what I can do as a teacher is create the container and hold the space to enthusiastically encourage my students to trust their own unique creative instincts.
The act of trusting our creative instincts is a masterful art of trusting ourselves, and we live in a world that seeks to undermine and discredit this trust.
The world’s conditioning trains us, and trains us early, to doubt our intuition, to abandon our body, to surrender our inner knowing to outer authority.
This is another potion. A dark potion that once sipped entrances us -- programs us. We fall into performative doing as an effort to prove our lovability, goodness, worthiness. We look to the audience for the validation of applause.
“Am I good enough?”
My improv students silently direct this question to me.
I sense the question in their quick, nervous movements. I see the question in their wide and darting eyes. I hear the question whispering beneath their loud laughter and cacophonous comradery.
After the game, the three-line scene, after the improv show, they look right to me for a confirmation sign. “Please, whatever I said, whatever I did in that world of theatrical make-believe, tell me I was good, tell me that I am enough.”
I feel the heart-quickening question booming from within me, because their question is my own.
Am I good enough?
It’s a question we share, it’s something that I carry in my back pocket by that crystal goblet. I use to deny its presence. I attempted to over-compensate and try to cheerlead it out of existence.
I prefer to acknowledge this now. I expand compassion to include the doubt, and as I do, similar to a potion, there’s an organic transmutation when it’s embraced into the expansive embrace of the heart-space.
And as I make peace with my own insecurities, I can better meet my students – in all their giggling creativity and self-conscious uncertainty.
I can then truthfully provide a few powerful remedies that help me strengthen trust in my creative instincts while still allowing the question (“Am I enough?”) to come along for the improvised ride.
And the answer is PLAY.
When we play, we are released into the flow of life, and become one with life, because we are LIFE.
And here Potion comes into play, because Potion promotes joyous embodiment, and a connection to the befriended body opens us up to our channels of clear intuition and creativity.
So in Potion, we stomp our feet.
We howl and whisper.
We wave our arms up and down.
We chant and we spin.
We move and move ourselves into the heart-hum of the moment.
We don’t need to be practiced and prepped (that will come from the ego, from control, from fear) and we don’t need to obsessively question whatever we present (that’s the acceptance of being a messily fabulous human).
We improvise.
We trust the relationship we have with life in that moment because we are living life in that moment. Our response is aligned and attuned to the needs of the scene.
So let’s conclude like we began. With a potion. Stir a bit. What’s going in? And whatever you say, whatever immediate ingredient was sparked, it’s good and it’s enough. And so are you.