Here’s an extended pas­sage from Keith Johnstone’s Impro. Pub­lished in 1961, it remains one of the most notable books con­cern­ing improvisation.

Space

Space is very dif­fi­cult to talk about, but easy to demonstrate.

When I was com­mis­sioned to write my first play I’d hardly been inside a the­atre, so I watched rehearsals to get the feel of it. I was struck by the way space flowed around the actors like a fluid. As the actors moved I could feel imag­i­nary iron fil­ings mark­ing out the force fields. This feel­ing of space was strongest when the stage was unclut­tered, and dur­ing the cof­fee breaks, or when they were dis­cussing some dif­fi­culty. When they weren’t act­ing, the bod­ies of the actors con­tin­u­ally read­justed. As one changed posi­tion so all the oth­ers altered their pos­tures. Some­thing seemed to flow between them. When they were ‘act­ing’ each actor would pre­tend to relate to the oth­ers, but his move­ments would stem from him­self. They seemed ‘encap­su­lated’. In my view it’s only when they actor’s move­ments are related to the space he’s in, and to the other actors, that the audi­ence feel ‘at one’ with the play. The very best actors pump space out and suck it in, or at least that’s what it feels like.

….The move­ment teacher Yat Malm­gren told me that as a child he’d dis­cov­ered that he didn’t end at the sur­face of his body, but was actu­ally an oval ‘Swiss cheese’ shape. To me, this is ‘closed-eye’ space, and you expe­ri­ence it when you shut your eyes and let your body feel out­wards into the sur­round­ing dark­ness. Yat also talked about peo­ple who were cut off from sens­ing areas of them­selves. ‘He has no arms,’ he would say, or ‘She has no legs’, and you could see what he meant. When I inves­ti­gated myself I found many areas that I wasn’t expe­ri­enc­ing, and my feel­ings are still defec­tive. What I did find was another shape besides the ‘Swiss cheese’ shape: a parabola sweep­ing ahead of me like a comet’s tail. When I panic, this parabola crushes in. In stage fright space con­tracts into a nar­row tun­nel down which you can just about walk with­out bump­ing into things. In cases of extreme stage fright the space is like a plas­tic skin press­ing on to you and mak­ing your body rigid and bound. The oppo­site of this is seen when a great actor makes a ges­ture, and it’s as if his arm has swept right over the heads of the peo­ple sit­ting at the back of the audience.

Many act­ing teach­ers have spoke of ‘radi­a­tions’, and they often sound like mys­tics. Here’s Jean-Louis Barrault:

“Just as the earth is sur­rounded by an atmos­phere, the liv­ing human being is sur­rounded by a mag­netic aura which makes con­tact with the exter­nal objects with­out any con­crete con­tact with the human body. This aura, or atmos­phere, varies in depth accord­ing to the vital­ity of the human beings….
“The mime must first of all be aware of this bound­less con­tact with things. There is no insu­lat­ing layer of air between the man and the out­side world. Any man who moves about causes rip­ples in the ambi­ent world in the same way a fish does when it moves in the water.” (The The­atre of Jean-Louis Bar­rault, Bar­rie and Rock­cliff, 1961)

This isn’t very sci­en­tific, but like all mag­i­cal lan­guage it does com­mu­ni­cate a way an actor can ‘feel’. If I stand two stu­dents face to face and about a foot apart they’re likely to feel a strong desire to change their body posi­tion. If they don’t move they’ll begin to feel love or hate as their ‘space’ streams into each other. To pre­vent these feel­ings they’ll mod­ify their posi­tions until their space flows out rel­a­tively unhin­dered, or they’ll move back so that the force isn’t so pow­er­ful. High-status players…will allow their space to flow into other peo­ple. Low-status play­ers will avoid let­ting their space flow into other peo­ple. Kneel­ing, bow­ing and pros­trat­ing one­self are all rit­u­al­ized low-status ways of shut­ting off your space. If we wish to humil­i­ate and degrade a low-status per­son we attack him while refus­ing to let him switch his space off. A sergeant-major will stand a recruit to atten­tion and then scream at his face from about an inch away. Cru­ci­fix­ion exploits this effect, which is why it’s such a pow­er­ful sym­bol as com­pared to, say, boil­ing some­one in oil.

Imag­ine a man sit­ting neu­trally and sym­met­ri­cally on a bench. If he crosses his left leg lover his right then you’ll see his space flow­ing over to the right as if his leg was an aero­foil. If he rests his right arm along the back of the bench you’ll see his space flow­ing out more strongly. If he turns his head to the right, prac­ti­cally all his space will be flow­ing in this same direc­tion. Some­one who is sit­ting neu­trally in the ‘beam’ will seem lower-status. Every move­ment of the body mod­i­fies its space. If a man who is sit­ting neu­trally crosses his left wrist over his right the space flows to his right, and vice versa. It’s very obvi­ous that the top hand gives the direc­tion. But the class are amazed. The dif­fer­ence seems so triv­ial, yet they can see it’s a quite strong effect.

The body has reflexes that pro­tect it from attack. We have a ‘fear-crouch’ posi­tion in which the shoul­ders lift to pro­tect the jugu­lar and the body curls for­ward to pro­tect the under­belly. It’s more effec­tive against car­ni­vores than against police­men jab­bing at your kid­neys, but it evolved a long time ago. The oppo­site to this fear crouch is the ‘cherub pos­ture’, which opens all the planes of the body: the head turns and tilts to offer the neck, the shoul­ders turn the other way to expose the chest, the spine arches slightly back­wards and twists so that the pelvis is in oppo­si­tion to the shoul­ders expos­ing the underbelly—and so on. This is the posi­tion I usu­ally see cherubs carved in, and the open­ing of the body planes is a sign of vul­ner­a­bil­ity and ten­der­ness, and has a pow­er­ful effect on the onlooker. High-status peo­ple often adopt it and straighten, but they won’t adopt the fear crouch. Chal­lenge a low-status player and he’ll show some ten­dency to slide into pos­tures related to the fear crouch.

[This image recalls to mind the trendi­ness in prac­tic­ing yoga. “Heart-opening” posi­tions such as “up-dog” pro­mote high-status posi­tions, which may be one rea­son yoga has become so pop­u­lar among the ambi­tious classes.]

….Imag­ine an empty beach. The first fam­ily to arrive can sit any­where, but they’ll either take up posi­tion against some rocks, or sit a third of the way in—supposing it’s all equally sandy. In my part of Eng­land, where there are many small beaches, the next fam­ily to appear might well move on to the next beach, regard­ing the first one as ‘claimed’. If they do move in they’ll stake out ‘their part of the beach’, away from the first group. If they sat close to the first group then they’d have to make friends, which could be dif­fi­cult. If they sat close with­out mak­ing friends, then the first group would react with alarm. ‘Close’ is a con­cept related to the amount of space avail­able. Once the beach fills up with peo­ple you can sit very close to the orig­i­nal fam­ily. The space peo­ple demand around them con­tracts as more peo­ple are added. Finally as the beach reaches sat­u­ra­tion peo­ple stare at the sky, or roll in to face their friends, or cover their faces with news­pa­per or whatever.

Peo­ple will travel a long way to visit a ‘view’. The essen­tial ele­ment of a good view is dis­tance, and prefer­ably with noth­ing human in the imme­di­ate fore­ground. When we stand on a hill and look across fifty miles of empti­ness at the moun­tains, we are expe­ri­enc­ing the plea­sure of hav­ing our space flow out unhin­dered. As peo­ple come in sigh of a view, it’s nor­mal for their pos­ture to improve and for them to breathe bet­ter. You can see peo­ple remark­ing on the fresh­ness of the air, and tak­ing deep breaths, although it’s the same air as it was just below the brow of the hill. Trips to the sea, and our admi­ra­tion of moun­tains are prob­a­bly symp­toms of overcrowding.

Approach dis­tances are related to space. If I approach some­one on open moor­land I have to raise an arm and shout ‘excuse me’ as soon as I’m within shout­ing dis­tance. In a crowded street I can actu­ally brush against peo­ple with­out hav­ing to interact.

Imag­ine that two strangers are approach­ing each other along an empty street. It’s straight, hun­dreds of yards long and with wide pave­ments. Both strangers are walk­ing at an even pace, and at some point one of them will have to move aside in order to pass. You can see this deci­sion being made a hun­dred yards or more before it actu­ally ‘needs’ to be. In my view the two peo­ple scan each other for signs of sta­tus, and then the lower one moves aside. If they think they’re equal, both move aside, but the posi­tion near­est the wall is actu­ally the strongest. If each per­son believes him­self to be dom­i­nant a very curi­ous thing hap­pens. They approach until they stop face to face, and do a side­ways dance, while mut­ter­ing con­fused apolo­gies. If a lit­tle old half-blind lady wan­ders into your path this ‘mir­ror’ dance doesn’t hap­pen. You move out of her way. It’s only when you think the other per­son is chal­leng­ing that the dance occurs, and such inci­dents are likely to stick in the mind. I remem­ber doing it in a shop door­way with a man who took me by my upper arms and moved me gen­tly out of his path. It still ran­kles. Old peo­ple who don’t want to give way, and who cling to the sta­tus they used to have, will walk along the street hug­ging the wall, and ‘not notic­ing’ any­one who approaches them. If, as an exper­i­ment, you also hug the wall very funny scenes occur when you stop face to face—but the side­ways dance doesn’t hap­pen because you’re con­scious of what you’re doing. Old peo­ple in, say Ham­burg, often col­lide with young Britishes in the street, because they expect the young to step aside for them. Sim­i­larly, a high-status stripped will walk stark naked into a stage­hand who stands in her way….When you watch a bustling crowd from above it’s amaz­ing that they don’t all bump into each other. I think it’s because we’re all giv­ing sta­tus sig­nals, and exchang­ing sub­lim­i­nal sta­tus chal­lenges all the time. The more sub­mis­sive per­son steps aside.

Pg. 57–61

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