Indie.Biz - Improvise

Sometimes my main job with Indyish is to trim the maybes, and sometimes it’s to pursue them. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to do which. Over the past week I’ve met with a potential investor and a television producer, and handed in the last bit of a Phd application that would see me doing my Indyish work (plus stacks of extra reading) for credit. I’m a little dizzy with the maybes, and to be honest I don’t think I’m the best person to be giving business advice (even indie.biz ;) because I feel quite like everything I’ve ever done has been largely improvised.

I’ve had the broad strokes of a plan-ish in mind for a decade and a half, but to actually get from point A to point B has been total guess work and blind leaping with no script. Ie; Improv.

Improv is a kind of interesting art. It can make for seriously annoying watching, or some of the funniest live entertainment. In good company it’s like extreme sports for actors. I’ve taught improv to kids in a few different contexts, and did it on teams in French and English throughout high school and university. It’s possible I may have learned a few things from improv that I apply more widely to life and business, and well, if I can get them down, maybe these will be useful to you.

1 - Good improv requires parallel thinking: Two brain tactics, seemingly contradictory, working in harmony. On one hand you should be completely in the moment, uninhibited to say the first thing that comes to mind. On the other hand, you should be looking at the scene as it comes into existence over time, so you can create narrative or comedy that connects, not just nonsense.

2 - Good improv is great fun on it’s own, but it’s purpose is much bigger then improv games at comedy clubs. Improv is how actors train, and learn how to balance script with spontaneity, plans with reality. It can allow for totally new takes on old ideas, and it can cause crash and burnage, but at least you learn something

3 - Improv forces the actor to play all the roles of the world of performance in microcosm: actor, director, writer, choreographer.

4 - You are inventing the whole world when you improvise: plot, setting, dialogue all must come from you, with the fundamental wrench in the works of having to invent it all in unspoken and instantaneous collaboration with your fellow improvisers. If you don’t give and take what you’re given, it just doesn’t work.

By Flickr Jaako CC

And there is where it becomes useful to me in “business”. With our daily interactions we are always making up the world. All the world’s a cliche, I mean stage.

But it’s true: your business conversations (whether they happen in bars or boardrooms) are unscripted dialogue creating whole new scenes that will unfold from them in the future. Our responsibility is to do our research, know as much as we can, be wise about what the improvisers before us here created, and then spontaneously and openly collaborate with others on making something new, something that connects with an audience for future generations, hopefully without pissing them off over time.

I had two great meetings about Indyish with people I ran into on the bus this week, and I think it’s because I’ve been working on opening my eyes to the people and opportunities right in front of me, trusting that though it seems crazy, what I crave might just be sitting on the 80 Southbound. In a similar vein, I’m increasingly committed to working with the people who show up. Not the cool kids, but the kids who follow through, who are passionate and personally driven to continue, enough to take risks; and who are open and responsive to the new idea when it walks in the room, no matter what it looks like. Improvisers, I guess.