Improv and Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”

- Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest

In choosing to relocate to a new city, I’ve made myself a beginner in many areas of my life: I’m a new New Yorker (versus an experienced Washingtonian); I’m starting a new blog (that would be this one); and I’m starting over in a brand new improv community, where no one knows me, and my years of experience in DC mean very little.

After performing with Washington Improv Theater (WIT) for five years (and teaching, and directing), I now need to take several classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) before I’m even eligible to audition for one of their troupes. On one level, this is irksome – after all, I’m fattening UCB’s pockets to teach me basic skills I’ve known for years. On the other hand: UCB and WIT have very different styles, and learning a new theater’s improv “grammar” from the bottom up will only serve me well, should I choose to audition for them when the time comes.  And, if the teachers are as great as some of my friends have said they are, then I’ll be energized even if the rest of the class is still trying to wrap their minds around “Yes, and” (one of improv’s basic principles).

Even if I’m bored out of my gourd, I have to think it’s good for me to remember what it feels like to be a beginner.

I remember when improv was a brand new toy – how liberated I felt in class each week, how happy I was to perform again after being offstage for years, how much it fed my spirit to play in the midst of an otherwise structured adult life.  The more I learned about the craft, and the more I practiced it, the more nuanced my experience with improv became.  After a show, my troupe-mates and I would analyze what worked and what didn’t, and what skills we needed to drill to make our performances stronger. Even as an audience member, I rarely simply enjoyed a show – if I liked it, I liked it because I admired the performers’ technical prowess, often comparing it to my own: “Dave has great physicality, that’s something I should work on”; or “They aren’t listening to each other, that’s something my group does well.”

This is only natural: in any area of life, our experience with something changes the more intimate it becomes. And while, over time, I stopped feeling the simple, unadulterated joy that I’d felt when improv was new, I began instead to feel the joy of being so close to my troupe-mates that they were truly a second family. The former is like the rush of first love – the latter, like the deeper sense of connection that a long-term relationship provides.

I wish I could have both (don’t you?). But to balance the pain of leaving my group behind, what I’m looking forward to, tomorrow, is the chance for improv to be new again. I’m curious to see how I’m different in a brand-new setting, surrounded by people who’ve never seen me perform, people who don’t know my track record or personality or tendencies. I won’t be able to rest on my experience, to use my credentials as a calling card – I’ll have to rely solely on how I perform tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

I want the teachers to think I’m good. But I’m excited to have to earn that all over again – excited to feel the true, raw rush of improv, where you’re completely without a net, not even the net of familiar faces on stage and in the audience. As gratifying as it is to be at the end of a journey, how thrilling to realize that, as T.S. Eliot wrote, “To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” In other words: the flush of first love, and the satisfaction of deep love, rotate through our lives in cycles, rather than following linearly, and permanently, one after the other.

What’s an area of your life where you consider yourself experienced, if not expert? Can you imagine what it might feel like to be a beginner again? What have you gained from experience – and what, if anything, have you lost? How might you begin a new journey?