Breathing & Partners & Haystacks

I recently improved my improv game by a factor of ten by using a breathing exercise from improv teacher. I told Charles I wanted to work on discovering a scene, not inventing one, as the father of modern improv Keith Johnstone writes. In an improv scene, we are supposed to listen and respond to what the other person is saying and doing instead of making up random shit. If you are in a scene in a grocery store looking at eggplants and a dinosaur walks down the aisle without prompting, someone is making shit up.

This breathing exercise is a game changer in discovering a scene:

1. Breathe in what your scene partner says
2. Breathe out your interpretation
3. Breathe in your feelings
4. Breathe out as you engage

This slows a scene down to a screeching halt--in a good way. I am forced to listen, absorb and respond.

The scene started where I was a Hollywood prima donna on set with a famous director. As I was preening, he was wasn't happy with where things were heading. I interpreted that he was calling me a bitch. My feeling was anger. I was pissed off, but I responded politely through gritted teeth. It was a battle of status, and the prima donna lost. In the end, she ended up wearing a gorilla suit at the director's request.

She was a damn good gorilla, dammit.

This breathing method allows us to move in tandem with our scene partner. 

At pickle ball last weekend, one of guys I played against repeatedly poached the ball from his partner. I hit the ball across court to the woman, and the dude ran across the court, jumped in front of her, and slammed the ball back. This annoyed me, and probably also his partner.

"The goal is to make your partner look good," Ace said.

"Isn't that true in all of life?" I replied. "When is it not true?"

Partnerships are hard, especially for me coming off a divorce. I had thought I was good a partnerships for basically my entire adult life, to now realize I might not be as great I thought I was. Now that I am divorced, I am learning about partnerships through improv and pickle ball.

In pickle ball, I don't want to let my partner down. Most games are mixed doubles, and I don't want to be the weak link, the reason my otherwise good partner lost. The funny thing is that I beat myself up when I lose a point, but I don't pick on my partner for missing one.

Improv is collaborative, not competitive like pickle ball. I still struggle with winning and losing. I feel bad when I get crushed, but at the same time I don't feel amazing when I win. I don't know why. 

This concept of winning and losing is becoming my haystacks. I feel about winning and losing the way Monet looked at haystacks. He painted a series of them in different light and from different angles. There will never be the perfect, definitive haystack. There are a thousand ways to look at a haystack, and each of them gives us an idea of possibilities. Half of my hangup about pickle ball winning and losing isn't as much about me as it is about my views of partnership. Why do I internally carry the blame for a loss?

Maybe I just want someone to want to play with me again.