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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