Saying Yes

I finished Life of Pi a few days ago, and I'm fairly dying to discuss it. Unfortunately, after much deliberation, I've decided there's pretty much no way to do that without spoiling the story for those of you who haven't read it. So go read it, and then we can discuss.

And speaking of stories, I am currently in possession of Simpstory, the Stanford Improvisors' archival tome. Each graduating member takes their turn with the book and fills a page or so with recollections and advice to future SImps. I'm not sure what to write.

What is improv? First off, it's wonderful and beautiful. We play games. We tell stories. There are few rushes to be got rivalling that of finding just the right piece at just the right moment: suddenly realizing that of course the doctor was in love with her receptionist all along, and the prescriptions she's been writing contain coded love poems to him, which we will now both read aloud, one word at a time.

Improv is creative in the best way, the way that feels more like discovery than invention. You don't make stories, you find them, waiting for you, in silly suggestions and unconscious offers. The best improvised characters have the least contrived about them; they walk onto the stage ready-made with lost loves, secret ambitions, apartments in the South Bronx, and rose tattoos on their upper arms. The best improvised stories are obvious--even when they are surprising--because the sapphire of Montecristo never really could have been anywhere else but in the mechanic's toolbox, disguised as a ratchethead, all along.

Improv is collective in the best way. Everyone is as different from each other as possible, and it's precisely because one of us is a quiet, self-effacing rubber tycoon and the other a prattling, stage-filling nephew that the magic happens. On stage and off, we take care of each other. We help each other. We share control; there is no room for divas in improv. The SImps are a Team like few teams can be.

Improv is forgiving. One of the main reasons I improvise is because it teaches me to fail, over and over again. The Coach's motto is, "If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't doing improv". The freedom to be absolutely awful, shocking, dull--is what makes it possible (from time to time) to be none of the above. In other circles we call that Grace.

"Improv is the closest thing I've found to a religion", says one SImp, and she speaks for many. And really, there are far worse religions one could find; here is a great deal of genuine wisdom and authentic joy, and that's a large part of why I so exuberantly immerse myself in it. But the immersion has to be slightly ginger, because wholeheartedly entering the world of theater really is very like practicing a foreign religion, and it can be difficult to hang onto the knowledge--that not everything beautiful is true.

And there's the rub. Stories are wonderful and beautiful, but if none of our stories are true, we are impoverished, or worse. Really, despite the enormous beauty I've tried here to describe, at the end of the day my dear playful trusting loving improvisors show all the symptoms of truth-starved people. (Which is to be expected, I suppose--it seems just about everything I've read or watched lately is out to remind me that "truth" isn't a real hot item these days. "Just believe" is more the spirit. Alas.)

So my prayer for the Stanford Improvisors, and for the rest of you, too, I guess, is that we would learn not only to tell stories that are beautiful, but also to hear the stories that are true.

Yes.