By: Phoebe Kozinets
Hi internet! My name is Phoebe, I am a teacher and performer at Hoopla! Last night I was teaching our level 3 scenes course, and we were working on relationships. Watching everyone in the course do really funny, moving, and beautiful scenes, I was struck by how much power we have on the improv stage to make the choice for our character to be a good hearted human.
Two women in the class (shoutout Daphne and Emily) started a scene and established that one of them had stolen the husband of the other. I felt everyone in the room get ready to see a stereotypical scenario with catty women being undermining and cruel to each other masked by fake niceties. I watched in real time these two women (the improvisers not the characters) realize that they didn’t want to play out a scene like that. In character, they pivoted the scene to find a motivation for the husband stealing that was actually based in kindness and care for the other character. The characters talked to each other about each other, and revealed how much they valued their friendship. What unfolded was a tender and hilarious scene that really had nothing to do with husband stealing but became all about the beauty of female friendship.
There was another scene with some mobster-esque characters, who at first seemed scary but then revealed themselves to be sensitive and complex humans who uplifted each other and even got very excited over the beauty of fireworks.
I watched many of these improvisers get on stage, find themselves in scenarios with conflict, and then find their way to speaking the characters’ emotional truth out loud. This almost always led to the other character expressing empathy, and some type of agreement being found.
This all got me thinking about how exciting it is that we have the power of choice on the improv stage. In real life, we all get up every day and are presented with choices about how to treat ourselves and others. We get to try our best each day to be the most kind and loving versions of ourselves. On the improv stage- of course we want to see all types of people and it is so much fun to play a bad guy or a villain too, of course!!! But how interesting is it that even when we play these “bad guys” on stage, we have a unique opportunity in improv to say an emotional truth in the present moment and suddenly imbue these “bad guys” with humanity. It seems very cool to be participating in an art form where you can decide in the present moment that your character is going to try their best to find agreement and be kind.