So we've now made the presumption that improv groups need at least a degree of group mind in order to function, the question is how do we describe that organization? And more importantly, as I mentioned last week, true group mind is a sort of telepathic communication where all members think the same thing, all the time, and most definitely improv groups are not filled with cookie-cutter automatons, but individuals; each doing their own thing for the group. So what gives?
That concept of group mind that tends to get people all antsy is described by what is known as swarm theory. Swarm theory is based around a group of separate individuals that make up a decentralized, self-organized unit. Essentially, what would normally be a hot mess (say, a group of improvisers all trying to be funny), turns a single force, all bound under a common goal. One person doesn't pull the entire work on their own – responsibility is split evenly among all members, because there is no functional difference between different members of a group. Imagine an ant hill – individually, members are generally incapable of doing significant work, but together they can do all sorts of things. For the survival of the collective, each member must work together. (Alternatively, imagine “Ex Machina” from the end of “Matrix: Revolutions”: a bunch of little machines coming together to make the whole creature.) Each tiny piece plays a part in the entire machine that results in a singularly focused force. One of the keys to swarm function is that all communication is lateral, egalitarian – no single person is in charge. This basically describes the seed of what most people seem to think of as group mind in improv: a group of people working together for a common goal (ants build hives, we build scenes). In essence, this is what group mind all boils down to, in that we don't have a script and we need to be able to achieve a common goal in an efficient way.
My theory regarding group mind is a lot less swarm theory, and a lot more of hive dynamism.
The problem with using a paradigm of only swarm theory to describe an improv group is that we are not selfless, non-unique members of a hive, mostly due to the stochastic sampling effects of group size. Groups are limited by time (show length) and space (stage size) constraints, so for the group mind to emerge in your typically sized group, each member must understand what role they play in the big picture. (The corollary to my theory is that if it were theoretically possible to have a large enough improv group with most of the players on stage at once, swarm function would start to emerge again.) Part of why group mind still works is that everyone has a different role, but the group figures out what each person succeeds at, and everyone works together in a way that utilizes everybody's unique talents. Because we can't disperse the responsibility in a singular piece over a million improvisers, each member has to specialize in order to fill in the gaps. This explains the gap that allows group mind to form in typical organizations; the dynamism approach is a shorthand for reaching unification that isn't possible otherwise, and also not only uses, but takes advantage of, the differences between each other. Groups full of cookie-cutter improvisers aren't interesting to watch for the same reason that a tapestry of only one color isn't interesting to look at: you need the different colored threads - otherwise it's just a carpet.
One of my instructors said that of one of his teams that he always knew who would start each scene, and with what, because everyone kind of settled in the knowledge that, e.g. “John always initiates the first scene with a strong character”. His revelation was that one of his jobs was to find everybody's job, and break them out of it, which encourages the other members to fill in. I had a writing class one time, and in story-telling, you can't just eliminate an archetype from a story, they have to be replaced by someone. For example, in Star Wars, Obi-Wan is the mentor, but even though he is struck down, he hangs around making Luke feel like a schizophrenic, and then is replaced by Yoda. Essentially, you take one element out of the motif, and the motif changes to meet the new criteria. My point here is that you definitely don't want to get so settled into ruts within your group that people quit growing.
At the same time, there is a fair amount of joy to be found in a group where everybody knows their job, and does it. (The point of breaking people out their jobs is to ideally get them to improvise on a wholly different level – not just improvising dialogue, but literally improvising the art of improv every time, as in, let's improvise what our group jobs are. Just because a swarm member has a job doesn't mean that they have to do the same job all the time, just so long as someone does that job.) These roles we have (which also change from group too, pay attention between how you are from one group of friends to the next – you may find, as I have, that I'm essentially the same person, but a slightly different version, then again, maybe it's all relative) are essential to the group dynamic; how each person fits into the group. Groups are flexible to additions as well – you just have to figure out how your threads fit into the tapestry.
No comments:
Post a Comment