One of the things I love about Improv is ridiculous physical comedy. Big hand gestures, ridiculous yoga poses, and eye rolling are designed to be seen by the last row of the audience. It’s amazing.
Not every scene lends itself to the dramatic or melodramatic. And that means, when I’m in a scene that isn’t well suited to big gestures, I rein it in.
Why? Because I’ve got to play the scene I’m in.
Well, duh. It would be pretty ridiculous if I were doing yoga poses when the scene called for me to be an uptight waitress in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
But what’s the practical application? Well, are you playing the scene you’re in or are you trying to play a different scene.
Focus on the now
You know which people are miserable? People who wish they were in another scene.
Sure, we all wish we were in that scene where we just had so much free time and so much money that we had no idea what we would possibly do with it all! But that isn’t your scene. It’s not my scene. We have different scenes.
And sometimes those scenes are terrible. Your scene may be a bad job, a bad marriage, or a bad case of toenail fungus. Whatever it is, this is your scene.
You have to play it if you want to get out of it.
If you instead sit down and cry and wail that you wanted to be in a different scene, guess what? It’s like a cruel twist of fate, and you’ll never get out.
You don’t, after all, treat toenail fungus by making friends with a yacht owner. Maybe you’ll get a ride on a yacht, but your toenails will still be icky.
You can’t get out of a bad marriage or a bad job by complaining that you wish you were in a different job or a different marriage.
You have to play the scene you’re in.
You have to focus on what your situation is, not what you wish it would be.
What does playing the scene you’re in look like?
Great question, thanks for asking.
If you are suffering from toenail fungus, you go to the pharmacy and ask for toenail fungus medication, then use it as instructed. If that doesn’t work, you go to the doctor and follow the doctor’s instructions.
If you are in a terrible job, you can play that scene any number of ways. You can
- Work your hardest and hope for a promotion
- Quit
- Find a new job and then quit
- Acknowledge that this is the best you’re going to get right now, so be thankful you have a job at all.
- Acknowledge this is the best you’re going to get right now so you are going to gain additional skills so you can get out.
- Undermine your boss so she gets fired
- Get yourself fired so you are eligible for unemployment payments
- Any combination of the above
Now, I don’t recommend undermining your boss. That makes you a rotten person. But you have to address the issue of your job head-on
I receive emails from people who are in terrible jobs. Sometimes, I ask how long they’ve had this terrible job, and the answer is something like, “Eight years.”
This is a person who is not playing the scene they are in. They are not doing what it takes to take a bad job and make it better. Instead, they are complaining, wishing they were in a different scene, and hoping the job fairy will magic them out of there.
Whatever you do, acknowledge this is the scene you’re in and then start the yes and process. It’s how you’ll succeed. It’s how you turn a bad scene into a good scene.
