The reason many actors fail to get improv - or just don't want to get improv - is because they don't like the uncertainty and unpredictability that comes with it. They don't like not knowing what comes next, and they don't like the feeling that comes with being a part of something uncontrollable. Each moment is unplanned and unexpected, and for some actors, that's utterly terrifying.
Give these actors a script and they take to it like a duck to water. Scripts are predictable, planned, rehearsed - in a word, safe. The actors know what to expect, and how to respond. Nothing unexpected will happen. Everything will happen in its time, and everything will go according to plan.
This is, of course, an illusion and a false reality, even in the live theater. The unexpected can and often does happen, even to the most prepared theatrical production, and in those moments, a little improvisation is inevitable.
It's not a fault of actors that they dislike improv for these reasons. It's really a fault in humanity. We have this false notion that life can be set, planned, arranged, and made perfect, but just like the live theater, it's all an illusion. Life is improvisation. It is uncontrollable and unpredictable. It refuses to be scripted and it rejects all our attempts to control it.
On stage, only scripted theater allows for the Deux ex Machina - the intervention of the gods who can set things right among people. But while the gods have no say over improvisation, we can take comfort in the fact that God has intervened and continues to do so in real life.
Thank God he has come to live in the hearts of this people, directing the paths of his actors from within. Imagine the chaos if there were no Creator in this drama.
Posted by: |