Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Today is my great pleasure
Speaker 1: to have Kelly Leonard and Anne Libra on the show.
Speaker 1: Kelly has worked at the Second City for nearly three
Speaker 1: decades in various creative and leadership positions. He's produced shows
Speaker 1: with such a notable talent as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert.
Speaker 1: His latest book is Yes and How Improvisation Reverses no
Speaker 1: Butt Thinking and Improves creativity and collaboration Lessons from the
Speaker 1: Second City. Anne Libra has worked with the Second Stay
Speaker 1: since nineteen eighty six and served as Executive Artistic Director
Speaker 1: of the Second City Training Centers and Education Programs for
Speaker 1: eight years. She's also Director of Comedy Studies at Columbia
Speaker 1: College Chicago. Her book, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation
Speaker 1: is published by Northwestern University Press. Hey, guys, Hello, I Scott,
Speaker 1: how many mistakes I make of that bio? I don't
Speaker 1: think you made any mistakes. I must have spent all
Speaker 1: day practicing that bio and preparing you crafted it well,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Well. Even if I didn't make
Speaker 1: a mistake, your point would be that that's okay, right totally.
Speaker 1: In the improvisation, we talk about seeing all obstacles as
Speaker 1: gifts and making mistakes work for you. Basically, the idea
Speaker 1: there is that we have a very odd relationship to
Speaker 1: failure in our business world and in our culture because
Speaker 1: we fail all the time. And improvisation is an incredible
Speaker 1: art form that acts not only allows for failure, but
Speaker 1: finds ways to use failure. It quite literally embraces failure.
Speaker 1: Well I'm loving that. So let's just start at the fundamentals. Yes,
Speaker 1: and what is that exercise? And maybe we should just
Speaker 1: like do it right now, like just like illustrate to
Speaker 1: the audience what it is we are doing it. Oh yay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we succeeded. I mean the idea behind yes and is
Speaker 1: that you get somewhere faster if whenever someone says something
Speaker 1: or offers something, you don't just agree that it's true,
Speaker 1: but you also build on it. So for example, Scott,
Speaker 1: give me an imaginary superhero, Purple Popsicle Man. Yes, Purple
Speaker 1: Popsicle Man has a giant purple popsicle with which he
Speaker 1: destroys his evil villain nemesis, Green ice cream Cone Man.
Speaker 1: And they all live in a magical world near Mars,
Speaker 1: but not on Mars. It's near Mars until one day
Speaker 1: it rained down on them and they all dissipated and
Speaker 1: melted away. Wait wait, wait, wait, that wasn't good right,
Speaker 1: That was like yes ending. Wait can you yes end
Speaker 1: something negative? Sure? Sure, okay, fo you can also use
Speaker 1: yes and for evil okay, good good. So that was
Speaker 1: yes end And I just yes ended with two of
Speaker 1: the like literally the like inventors, like the geniuses of
Speaker 1: yes end. You guys wouldn't say, because you're humble people,
Speaker 1: But I feel honored to have done that with you guys.
Speaker 1: Just now, Yeah, I mean the thing about yes And
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a bumper sticker at this point,
Speaker 1: because you know, improv now is a little bit more
Speaker 1: in the mainstream than it used to be. But and
Speaker 1: the central tenet is still true, which is so much
Speaker 1: in life and we see this in business, we see
Speaker 1: this in education. People lead with no, and they do
Speaker 1: this for a lot of reasons, mostly because they're working
Speaker 1: out of fear or they want to control, or both
Speaker 1: those things are true. And as a sort of pointed out,
Speaker 1: it's not enough just to say yes. When you yes
Speaker 1: and you explore and heighten, that's a much more positive,
Speaker 1: great place to be. And I talk to a lot
Speaker 1: of business groups in my gig and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of resistance from usually some like haughty guy in the
Speaker 1: back of the auditorium who claims that if he were
Speaker 1: going to yes and all the time, he'd never get
Speaker 1: any work done. And you know that guy is just
Speaker 1: a nightmare, which we just know to be true. But
Speaker 1: the reality is, when you're in a brainstorm or a meeting,
Speaker 1: you're not yes ending for like seven hours. You're yes
Speaker 1: ending for like ten or fifteen minutes, just so everyone
Speaker 1: can be heard, so everyone can participate. There is plenty
Speaker 1: of room for editing and parsing and killing off bad
Speaker 1: ideas in our work. The difficulty is if you don't yes,
Speaker 1: and then you kill off the idea before you've had
Speaker 1: a chance to build it explore it. In a heighten
Speaker 1: and discover what it could be. You know, And when
Speaker 1: we do this all the time, right, somebody starts an
Speaker 1: idea and immediately it's shut down. Well, if you yes
Speaker 1: and it and take it to the next step, it
Speaker 1: may still be a bad idea. You may decide not
Speaker 1: to do it, but you have discovered what about the
Speaker 1: idea is really true and taken it to its next
Speaker 1: natural conclusion. So it's almost like indistincuisable from the creative process. Oh,
Speaker 1: it is different, that is. I mean, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: I'll talk you about when I talk about creativity as well.
Speaker 1: Don't you say, were it improv Yeah? I don't know, well,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's human behavior, right, this is how
Speaker 1: humans behave. And what the founders of Second City and
Speaker 1: the founders of this pedagogy realized quite intently is that
Speaker 1: people don't normally well in groups. Wouldn't it be smart
Speaker 1: to have some rules of the road so that they
Speaker 1: can more effectively create together, because that's not a natural act.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot We were just talking to some
Speaker 1: behavioral scientists this week who sort of claimed that their
Speaker 1: science shows that the best work gets done by individuals.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, now you got to look at that science,
Speaker 1: because I seem to recall that the Beatles were really good,
Speaker 1: and I don't think any of those solo albums were
Speaker 1: as good as you know, the Beatles albums, and oh
Speaker 1: how about a symphony. Immediately you started like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have a good point. So I mean, again, we're never
Speaker 1: in this alone, even if we're, you know, working on
Speaker 1: something by ourselves. Let's say we're a playwright. The play
Speaker 1: doesn't end with a single writer in a room. There
Speaker 1: was likely an editor, and there was most certainly going
Speaker 1: to be a director, and there's going to be actors,
Speaker 1: and there's going to be sets, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be audiences, and all those things affect the creative success.
Speaker 1: And so when you can be oriented towards looking at
Speaker 1: this sort of thing holistically rather than sort of minutely
Speaker 1: or in an isolated way, you're going to unlock things
Speaker 1: that are bigger and better than had you just been alone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in your book you talk a lot about co
Speaker 1: creation as something that happens through improv and this idea
Speaker 1: you can't have co creation with one person, that doesn't
Speaker 1: even make any sense. I think part of what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is It's not to say that creating by yourself,
Speaker 1: it's no, but that co creation is creating something that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't create on your own right and work together.
Speaker 1: The joy of that is that there's something you know, Scott,
Speaker 1: you're going to create something by yourself. I'm going to
Speaker 1: create something by myself. But when we work together, we
Speaker 1: create a third thing that is different. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the Beatles. It's different from what it would
Speaker 1: be if either of us did it by ourselves. And
Speaker 1: I think from a science point of view, those unknown
Speaker 1: variables are very exciting. I mean that that is the
Speaker 1: thing you're trying to get at is what do we
Speaker 1: not understand about this thing as individuals? And maybe what
Speaker 1: do we not understand about something collectively? But through collective
Speaker 1: creative acts we discover all kinds of truths. And we
Speaker 1: just know this from working at Second City for so long.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had Jeff Richmond, who's married to Tina Fey.
Speaker 1: He was a director at Second City for many years,
Speaker 1: and during one sort of ugly process he left me
Speaker 1: a note on my desk at Knight said that just said,
Speaker 1: this is the most inefficient way to create art ever
Speaker 1: and I know what he means. He's not incorrect in
Speaker 1: some regards. However, we have nearly sixty years of proof
Speaker 1: that this way of creating like we do at Second City,
Speaker 1: which is ensembles of actors working with other, with a
Speaker 1: director and a musical director and technicians and all that
Speaker 1: and in front of an audience, in front of an audience,
Speaker 1: in collaboration and conversation, all with each other, has it
Speaker 1: is the most successful, continuously successful theater in the history
Speaker 1: of theater. We have never closed. I mean this is
Speaker 1: we do only original work, and we have never closed
Speaker 1: since nineteen fifty nine, except for a brief time when
Speaker 1: we had a fire, and that was just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. But that doesn't exist in the world a
Speaker 1: commercial venture that has never closed, that only does original work.
Speaker 1: So you know that you've got to look at that
Speaker 1: data and say that that shows you something. It certainly does.
Speaker 1: And I love this idea of this, this trade off
Speaker 1: between efficiency and trial and error and variability. I like
Speaker 1: to think of expertise as being characterized by efficiency, but
Speaker 1: creativity seems to be characterized by variability. I think one
Speaker 1: of the primary elements is this idea of discovery that
Speaker 1: expertise often suggests that we know and advance what the
Speaker 1: outcome is going to be. And you know, I already
Speaker 1: know what this is. I'm going to explain to you
Speaker 1: what it is. I might go find some research that
Speaker 1: backs up what I already know that I know, and
Speaker 1: as opposed to in this creative process and particularly in
Speaker 1: an improvisation process, we talk about the idea of discovery
Speaker 1: that I don't know what's going to happen. Anything can happen,
Speaker 1: and what we're going to find is going to be
Speaker 1: a surprise, We're going to know it, we're going to
Speaker 1: learn from it in a completely different way. So how
Speaker 1: does practice, like, how can you practice be good at
Speaker 1: improv when it's always different every time? Well, but it's not.
Speaker 1: But you're not still leading question because I know that
Speaker 1: you're going to get You're not the reason that you
Speaker 1: can practice. You practice making discoveries. You don't practice what
Speaker 1: the discovery is. And I always use the equation to
Speaker 1: you know, jazz or basketball. I mean, you know you
Speaker 1: shoot those free throws over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and you do those running exercises with your teammates over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, so that when you are
Speaker 1: playing in the game and you are looking to be artful,
Speaker 1: that you don't have to think about it, that you
Speaker 1: move to the right space, that you can read each other.
Speaker 1: So really great improvisers are so steeped in practice. They
Speaker 1: don't start that way. I mean, a lot of people
Speaker 1: start to say to me, why do you think people
Speaker 1: get into improvisation. I say, it's a lot of really
Speaker 1: talented people who are too lazy to memorize scripts in
Speaker 1: anuditional theater. But then when they get into improvisation, they
Speaker 1: love it so much that side of them that wants
Speaker 1: to excel, you know, kicks in the gear and suddenly
Speaker 1: they're extremely unlazy. They are deep in practice in their
Speaker 1: craft so that it can appear effortless when they're doing it. Because, honestly,
Speaker 1: and the reason this relates to everyone is because we
Speaker 1: improvise every day. We are not handed a script in life.
Speaker 1: You're not handed a script when you wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, usually not at work, certainly not when you're
Speaker 1: raising your kids, and so improvisation becomes this. My friend
Speaker 1: Heather Caruso has a way she phrases it, which is
Speaker 1: we become practice practiced in being unpracticed. So it is
Speaker 1: skills building to deal with the unknown. And that can
Speaker 1: be as simple as what we've talked about with a
Speaker 1: yes and exercise, and it can be as difficult as
Speaker 1: building up your resilience in order to thrive from failures,
Speaker 1: which takes a little while. Right, Yeah, it's not natural
Speaker 1: to embrace mistakes, right, it's natural to beat ourselves up
Speaker 1: from us. So the idea that a mistake is an
Speaker 1: opportunity and not an opportunity for blame, it requires practice.
Speaker 1: It requires accepting the mistake and building on it and
Speaker 1: then realizing that it wasn't a failure, it was an opportunity.
Speaker 1: So we literally have you know, basic improv games which
Speaker 1: are about pushing people to make mistakes, to behave mistakingly,
Speaker 1: which they find very difficult because it's not a natural act, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's like, nope, do it again, do it again, mistake, mistake, mistake,
Speaker 1: and then there's exercises to them pivot off of that,
Speaker 1: because this is not the way we're wired. We are,
Speaker 1: as you know very well, we're not wired to create
Speaker 1: to I heard that from someone, this brilliant author use
Speaker 1: that phrase. You might know them too. So we have
Speaker 1: to do a ton of unlearning to get back to
Speaker 1: that sort of more basic human stuff that will allow
Speaker 1: us to create in the moment. Hold on, I want
Speaker 1: to clarify that. So you said we're not why to create, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we are. I think we become Our wires
Speaker 1: get crossed up as we go to things like school,
Speaker 1: block are blocked, you know, corroded, because we are then
Speaker 1: given lots of rules and we're told that there's one
Speaker 1: way to do something, and then we're told that, oh,
Speaker 1: people who look like us need to behave this way,
Speaker 1: and those people who look different than you, well they
Speaker 1: behave differently, and all this junk that, unfortunately, as you
Speaker 1: get older, just gets more deeply cemented. So by the
Speaker 1: time that second City gets hired to go into a
Speaker 1: corporate workshop with these sort of high functioning forty to
Speaker 1: fifty year old salesmen, they are just sort of riddled
Speaker 1: with anxiety over the idea that maybe there's a different
Speaker 1: way to behave that might have success for them. And
Speaker 1: then when they experience it, because our learning is highly experiential,
Speaker 1: when they experience it, it it is utterly transforming because they
Speaker 1: just know they're like, you're right, I don't listen or
Speaker 1: that's right, I don't listen. Well, my wife is right,
Speaker 1: Yeah right, my wife is right. You hear that all
Speaker 1: the time. You hear that all the time, like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank god, actually this is what you hear. Thank god,
Speaker 1: my wife isn't here. Yeah, yeah, Well this is really
Speaker 1: profound because you know, the brain wants to wire itself
Speaker 1: early in development in a fashion that makes us exploratory.
Speaker 1: And so we're actually going against the grain by taking
Speaker 1: that out of us, you know, so we have to
Speaker 1: kind of it's really a shame. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: tragedy how our especially education system kind of crushes that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: isn't it interesting? I mean, one, I think one of
Speaker 1: the things about the improvisational exercises is that what they're
Speaker 1: really designed to do is recreate recognizable human behavior, so
Speaker 1: natural behaviors, and it's that we get away from practicing
Speaker 1: the things that are natural to us. And that what
Speaker 1: a lot of these improvisational exercises do is they literally
Speaker 1: let us go back and practice the thing that was
Speaker 1: natural to us as a behavior as a child, or
Speaker 1: but with more control than a child. Shall we say, so,
Speaker 1: this might be the apt moment to mention that all
Speaker 1: of this stuff comes out of children's games. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: becausely like the fifties, right, even earlier earlier in twenties,
Speaker 1: Nevi Boyd worked in the Hull House movement and she
Speaker 1: brought on a young woman named by the name Viola Spolan,
Speaker 1: who is the mother of Paul Sills, who founded the
Speaker 1: Second City. And Viola created many of these improvisational games
Speaker 1: which are still played today, that she used when she
Speaker 1: was dealing with immigrant children and she was trying to
Speaker 1: find ways to better assimilate them. So many of the
Speaker 1: games are in gibberish or they're silent because these kids
Speaker 1: didn't all share language. But what they all do is
Speaker 1: get groups of people together to interact positively. That they
Speaker 1: enhance empathy, They concentrate on being others focused. They involve
Speaker 1: listening skills, so it's not I mean, you know, just
Speaker 1: listening to that. You know, everyone can look at that
Speaker 1: and go oh wait a sec of course, that's what
Speaker 1: human beings need, because we don't do those things naturally
Speaker 1: as we get older and it gets drummed out of us.
Speaker 1: But there's other sort of realities for why we don't
Speaker 1: because we don't have as many places to play as
Speaker 1: we get older, and that becomes just such an important
Speaker 1: part of the human condition that you know, if you
Speaker 1: are in a place of not playing well, and I'll say,
Speaker 1: they're not playing with other people. You know, we get
Speaker 1: to play with the machine. And again there's room for
Speaker 1: all of that. And that's play, right, and that's also improvising,
Speaker 1: and that's true and that's real. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the things this certainly happens in school, and I
Speaker 1: imagine that's what leads it to the business world. But
Speaker 1: there is so little truth telling in corporate America that
Speaker 1: it has clogged up all the creative channels. And when
Speaker 1: we look at the companies that are innovative, the Virgin
Speaker 1: air Lines or the Southwest Airlines or you know, what
Speaker 1: have you, they are playful, they are funny, they are improvised. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting is is I think this is
Speaker 1: a theory that rather than a thing, but that you know,
Speaker 1: the enemy to play is the need to control. The
Speaker 1: minute we start to worry about control, we start to
Speaker 1: worry about what's going to happen. And you see it
Speaker 1: when a business scales itself right, it goes from something
Speaker 1: group on would maybe be a perfect example of a
Speaker 1: business that started really playful, not just comedy, but just
Speaker 1: a level of play, and then as they got bigger,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, nope, we have to be careful in
Speaker 1: case it gets out of control. And then at that
Speaker 1: moment we start to stifle all the things, all the play,
Speaker 1: all the things that actually allowed us to get creative
Speaker 1: in the first place. So do you find that lay
Speaker 1: can help people who suffer from like generalized anxiety disorder
Speaker 1: or OCD or like a lot of control issues. Well, well, yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that, But what it lets them do
Speaker 1: is play. Specifically, the games that we use in improvisation
Speaker 1: allow you to play in a way that is safe,
Speaker 1: So you can take risks within a very simple, safe
Speaker 1: construct and recognize that the thing that you're afraid of,
Speaker 1: that you're trying to control, you're trying to create control
Speaker 1: to stop it from happening, is actually not a big
Speaker 1: deal at all. And one of our friends who was
Speaker 1: on the Second City main stage for many years and
Speaker 1: now a writer at a Serent Live, she suffers from significant,
Speaker 1: significant social anxiety disorder, and in conversation with her, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was struck because my first reaction when I was
Speaker 1: talking to her about this, was like, why would you
Speaker 1: ever become an actor, you know, in front of all
Speaker 1: these people? And even more so, why would you become
Speaker 1: an improvisational actor who's getting on stage with no script?
Speaker 1: And she said what I needed to understand was that
Speaker 1: when she was improvising, that was the one place she
Speaker 1: didn't feel anxious because she not worry or think about
Speaker 1: what came before. She could not worry or think about
Speaker 1: what came after. She had to stay mindy in the present.
Speaker 1: And the person who was apart from her, her seene
Speaker 1: partner across from her, was their sole job was to
Speaker 1: save her. So the ensemble's job, and that the job
Speaker 1: of every ensemble is to save everyone else. And that's
Speaker 1: that safe place, right, the idea that in the room
Speaker 1: is there. You know. I often talk about ensemble as
Speaker 1: a practice, that your job as a member of the
Speaker 1: ensemble is to take care of everyone else in the ensemble.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily a specific group of special people who
Speaker 1: have a special relationship like the Beatles. It's really you
Speaker 1: and I when we'd come into interaction with each other ensemble,
Speaker 1: and that my job as an improviser with you is
Speaker 1: to make sure that your mistakes are validated and I'm
Speaker 1: taking care of use. There's no no need to fear
Speaker 1: because my job is to have you back. Well, if
Speaker 1: only everyone in society got that the importance of treating
Speaker 1: the world as improv yes, yes, then the world would
Speaker 1: be a safe space. Well yeah, or safer so yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: how does authenticity relate to improv You know, that's such
Speaker 1: a tricky word. I mean, I think on a content level.
Speaker 1: When Anne talked about improvisation as a way to find
Speaker 1: recognizable human behavior that would be authentic. So the minute
Speaker 1: some company hires an advertising company to make them more
Speaker 1: authentic and they're brand more authentic, that is the most
Speaker 1: inauthentic act you could ever do will not succeed. But
Speaker 1: there's a state of being authentic is not always attractive,
Speaker 1: and it's riddled yourself. I believe that even the most
Speaker 1: attractive among us have moments when they wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning that you know, so so authenticity, which is
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons Second Cities have been
Speaker 1: so successful is because people recognize that they look at
Speaker 1: and go, oh my god, this is what everyone's laughing
Speaker 1: about when they come to a Second City show. Is
Speaker 1: shared recognition of something that's true that's just been said
Speaker 1: that normally people don't say, or shining a light in
Speaker 1: an area that we all know to be true that
Speaker 1: we don't get to see that often. So, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're teaching at the training center in the beginning classes,
Speaker 1: we don't teach comedy. Now, we just teach people to
Speaker 1: be honestly in the moment with whatever is going on.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about that is the minute that you
Speaker 1: do that, the minute that you create recognizable human behavior,
Speaker 1: you play these games and you create interactions in the
Speaker 1: way that humans are. It's funny because it includes it
Speaker 1: is because it's authentic, right, because it includes failure, which
Speaker 1: is also part of that authenticity. And that's also what
Speaker 1: comedy is. Comedy is the connective place between truth, recognition, mean,
Speaker 1: you know, failure, and a safe space in which to
Speaker 1: acknowledge those things. I'm trying to visualize the ven diagram
Speaker 1: right now. All those things you just said, well you
Speaker 1: put them all on top and that's you know, every
Speaker 1: comedy is those things is right in the middle of that,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the n the middle so close
Speaker 1: to tragedy close. Well, it's not it is tragedy if
Speaker 1: it's not safe, right, so you remove the safe space
Speaker 1: and it's just truth and pain, then it's tragedy or
Speaker 1: pay those Well, what's the mel Brooks quote? Like if
Speaker 1: I cut my finger? Okay, tragedy is when I cut
Speaker 1: my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a hole
Speaker 1: and die, right yeah, So okay. This idea of authenticity
Speaker 1: as revealing your vulnerable side seems to be something that
Speaker 1: we don't promote in society as much as we probably should,
Speaker 1: and that you can do with improv. I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: of like all these different ways of being authentic, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't it possible because there's so many sides of ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: there's so many ways of being and for instance, someone
Speaker 1: with social anxiety doesn't want to be defined as a
Speaker 1: person with social anxiety might be able to use improv
Speaker 1: as a way to authentically be more playful. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it was funny. So Anne and I were talking
Speaker 1: the other day and it is a conversation that's got
Speaker 1: we've had before when we've talked about stand up comedians
Speaker 1: and improvisers, and as any self respecting stand up comedian
Speaker 1: will tell you, the bulk of them are miserable human beings,
Speaker 1: and improvised is not at all, which is fascinating. She's
Speaker 1: also an improviser. She's also an improviser our friend Aisha,
Speaker 1: but again, and improvisers tend to be happier and more
Speaker 1: well justed, not all of them. I'm laughing as I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this, because I know so many. However, one
Speaker 1: of the things that answer reminded me of was, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that the comedians don't see the power in us. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'd go the other way. I think that this is
Speaker 1: true for both comedy and for improv is. It's not
Speaker 1: that that comedy or improv makes comedians unhappy, because lots
Speaker 1: of communities are unhappy. It's that comedy and improvisation is
Speaker 1: a balm to people who are unhappy. It's a bombs
Speaker 1: so that it makes you feel that comedy is a
Speaker 1: way of dealing with your anxiety and dealing with depression
Speaker 1: and dealing with negative things in your life, and that
Speaker 1: improvisation does give you that opportunity. And you have alcohol
Speaker 1: in there, and you have the Holy Trinity. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the prefailt the cortex will get a reduced activation. It's
Speaker 1: not too much alcohol. Well, that's the problem, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it really is. So this idea of pain and
Speaker 1: being done a comedy, you know it. Also, I find
Speaker 1: this very interesting because I'm in the middle of an
Speaker 1: eight week mindfulness stress reduction course right now, Yes, and
Speaker 1: I am finding it is reducing my levels of anxiety
Speaker 1: and it's helping me stay in the moment more. Do
Speaker 1: you find a lot of good improvisers also do mindfulness
Speaker 1: practice on the side, Well, some do. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I think actually that because improvisation is on its
Speaker 1: own a mindfulness practice, even if it's not labeled that way.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about it is it's mindfulness that does not
Speaker 1: require that you sit by yourself in a chair alone.
Speaker 1: It's mindfulness that you take into the world. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I think we were talking about before,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a mindfulness practice. I have a
Speaker 1: meditation practice. But when I was doing yoga and meditation,
Speaker 1: I would often sort of think, well, and now I
Speaker 1: leave this and I go into the world, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how to bring this into the world. And
Speaker 1: what improvisation really is is a set of guidelines that
Speaker 1: allow you to be mindful, mindful with another human being.
Speaker 1: I love that. So I wanted just to think about
Speaker 1: this's logically for a second. On first blush, it may
Speaker 1: seem that improv is actually at odds with mindfulness because mindfulness,
Speaker 1: whenever you have a thought that is mind wandering, it's
Speaker 1: like most return to the breath. Most return to the breath,
Speaker 1: danger Will Robinson. I'm mind wandering, danger Will Robinson. Where's
Speaker 1: an improv? You want to encourage divergent thinking, and you
Speaker 1: want to you don't want to ignore it. So maybe
Speaker 1: so that said on first blush, but when you peer
Speaker 1: under the cover and you look deeper at what's going
Speaker 1: on with improv, improv seems to be a unique state
Speaker 1: where you simultaneously are mindful while you are bringing to
Speaker 1: the table your inner cell. Yes, so this strikes at
Speaker 1: the heart of what I think is the important next
Speaker 1: step in the study of this work, which is it
Speaker 1: is a duality. It is doing both things. And whether
Speaker 1: we're talking about Danny Conneman's work or we're talking about
Speaker 1: Nick Epley's work, I mean, there are scientists and psychologists
Speaker 1: and all kinds of brilliant people who are eschewing this
Speaker 1: idea of your left brain or your right brain, and like, no,
Speaker 1: your brain and brain is all the those things, and
Speaker 1: improvisation is a wonderful seesaw between those different aspects of
Speaker 1: the brain, the idea of where you need to be
Speaker 1: free to not self censor, but then you need to
Speaker 1: be able to shift and rapidly create well. And I
Speaker 1: also want to say this that so much of mindfulness,
Speaker 1: isn't it bad? Because you know this, it's not about
Speaker 1: not thinking, that's right, it's not. But what it is awareness,
Speaker 1: awareness of what you're thinking. And it's about not getting
Speaker 1: tied to thought, tied to a thought as being what's
Speaker 1: actually happening. So it's not like getting lost in the thought,
Speaker 1: the same thing as improvisation. I don't want. If I'm
Speaker 1: improvising with you, my goal is to be in the
Speaker 1: moment with you and follow what's going on, as opposed
Speaker 1: to getting personally attached to my idea of what it
Speaker 1: should be. Yeah, but this is what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: like it seems like mindfulness trains your mental flexibility, intentional
Speaker 1: control and flexibility, so that you have that tool to
Speaker 1: which you can use for whatever purpose you want. Where
Speaker 1: it seems like improv it's the means and the end
Speaker 1: it seems like improv is it means and an end,
Speaker 1: whereas mindfulness is only a means. Yeah. Well, and I
Speaker 1: think one of the dangers is to think of improvisation
Speaker 1: practices as being that thing that five people get up
Speaker 1: on stage and do with bright T shirts. Right, that is,
Speaker 1: those games can be product, they can be an end,
Speaker 1: but they're designed to train you to be in the
Speaker 1: moment in a process, but not just be in the moment,
Speaker 1: in the moment and co create. Make that. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: So it is we do in the world, right you said,
Speaker 1: when we're actually in the world. Yeah, that's what's the
Speaker 1: world right now? Yes, yes, we are suddenly like I confuse,
Speaker 1: what where does improv start? And everything else? And for
Speaker 1: you guys, probably there is no boundary right in your
Speaker 1: own personal life. You guys are some of the most
Speaker 1: fun people ever to hang out with. I just want
Speaker 1: to make that we had a very good time in Philly. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you guys. I love you guys, And I feel like
Speaker 1: you don't see such these boundaries that probably likes now like,
Speaker 1: oh well, the improv session's done now we have to
Speaker 1: go home, you know. Yeah, well we're so we're pretty lucky.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're lucky in a variety of ways, you know,
Speaker 1: and I've been married for twenty years. We kind of
Speaker 1: grew up together at Second City. We've got two kids.
Speaker 1: You've co created in the most biblical sense, we literally
Speaker 1: co created. I think I did more of that co creation. Yes,
Speaker 1: involved scene part, but one of the things that is
Speaker 1: kind of a here's the blessing of Second City because
Speaker 1: when you start, when you talk, just if we weren't
Speaker 1: talking about Second City, you would never talk to us,
Speaker 1: because improvisation is like, you know, it has no commercial
Speaker 1: aspect other than what Second City has done with it
Speaker 1: in a few other new theaters. But even those theaters
Speaker 1: are like five dollars tickets, you know, and none of
Speaker 1: the actors get paid. At Second City is an equity
Speaker 1: theater that charges a decent amount of money come see
Speaker 1: the shows, that has a you know, corporate division, all
Speaker 1: these sort of applications. So what Ann and I get
Speaker 1: to do is work in this incredibly rich, fun and
Speaker 1: creative art form that is also a thriving commercial business
Speaker 1: so that we can afford to have a good meal
Speaker 1: now and again. But also when I'm sender Sunday College
Speaker 1: or sun to College, and then but when we get
Speaker 1: booked to go to you know, lecture or do keynotes
Speaker 1: or workshops, the expectation isn't that we are going to
Speaker 1: be drying serious. The expectation is that we are going
Speaker 1: to be a bit of fun and be ourselves and
Speaker 1: to your point of authenticity. After I wrote the book
Speaker 1: and I got booked on the speaker circuit, I wrote
Speaker 1: the first few keynotes that I had to deliver because
Speaker 1: I felt they're paying me a lot of money. It's
Speaker 1: called a keynote, I should write it down and why
Speaker 1: really use keynote as use keynote as my presentation? And
Speaker 1: and those were okay, they were fine, the clients seemed okay.
Speaker 1: But I knew it wasn't tapping into the way I
Speaker 1: knew how to deliver within the experience I'd been given
Speaker 1: in my time at Second City, and I had Actually
Speaker 1: I was reading Adam Grant's Originals, where he talks about
Speaker 1: this need for the mind to procrastinate, especially when you're
Speaker 1: sort of playing with your ideas of the things you
Speaker 1: know a lot about, And so I started to do that,
Speaker 1: and I would just sort of beat out, I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about these five things. The minute
Speaker 1: I started doing that, I was tearing the roof off
Speaker 1: of the place. It was exactly what sort of people wanted,
Speaker 1: which was not a negation of whatever scholarly insight or
Speaker 1: business examples that I have, because I have those at
Speaker 1: my disposal. But at least it was a there was
Speaker 1: a convert It was the thing that Anne always says
Speaker 1: about the work, which is the work is a conversation
Speaker 1: with the audio and people when they go to these conferences,
Speaker 1: no one is conversing with them. Everyone is talking at them.
Speaker 1: They might ask some questions at the end, but everyone's
Speaker 1: talking at them, and I converse. I demand it inside
Speaker 1: the whatever sixty minutes I'm given. Well, that's a very
Speaker 1: different model of education. You know that you're a passive
Speaker 1: student and you're just listening to this teacher who knows everything.
Speaker 1: So I just want to say that's a very good
Speaker 1: point that should probably be applied to lots of sectors
Speaker 1: of society. Also, you talk about how you like in
Speaker 1: listening to a muscle. You say listening is like a muscle.
Speaker 1: So is this something that you personally, Kelly, have developed, Like,
Speaker 1: do you think that prov has helped you a lot
Speaker 1: with that I see it. By the way, it just
Speaker 1: like just the worst laughter. I say in every workshop
Speaker 1: I lead where we talk about this that we collectively
Speaker 1: are terrible listeners. Me included. One of the best things
Speaker 1: for Kelly was writing the book, is staff said, because
Speaker 1: he would write the book from eight to ten in
Speaker 1: the morning, and they always knew that the best time
Speaker 1: to bring something to him was at ten ten because
Speaker 1: he would be such a good listener. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: But here's the living by improv because I was practicing.
Speaker 1: I was practicing at least by my words and the
Speaker 1: actions in the moment. And I think that that tends
Speaker 1: to be true. So what I recognize with myself and
Speaker 1: I do now catch myself in meetings more and more
Speaker 1: because I mean, like I'm loud, I talk a lot,
Speaker 1: and I have a tendency to dominate in meetings. And
Speaker 1: so I have really tried in recent years, as I'm
Speaker 1: becoming more and more into trying to be more in
Speaker 1: tune with the pedagogy, is to catch myself and try
Speaker 1: to silence myself and to take a back seat and
Speaker 1: make sure if I see someone who isn't speaking that
Speaker 1: I like eye contact with them and try to encourage
Speaker 1: them to talk if I'm leading the meeting, or even
Speaker 1: if I'm not leading the meeting, to sort of lean
Speaker 1: back as opposed to lean forward all the very sort
Speaker 1: of status things. So like, I'm just as bad as
Speaker 1: everyone else at this, And there's no it's not like
Speaker 1: you solve it one day, you know. It's not like
Speaker 1: you go to the gym and you lift some weights
Speaker 1: and you're done. You got to keep lifting the weights
Speaker 1: you can'tnot well indeed, and you know, this is the
Speaker 1: other thing that really is true about improvisation is that
Speaker 1: the more you do it, the more you discover the
Speaker 1: value of it. So the more you listen, the more
Speaker 1: you actively listen, the more you listen to somebody all
Speaker 1: the way to the end of their sentences and really
Speaker 1: pay attention and respond to what you hear, not to
Speaker 1: what you're planning to say. And that takes a long
Speaker 1: that's a lot of time. But the more you do it,
Speaker 1: the more you realize how valuable it is, and that
Speaker 1: just reinforces it. And that's really what that sort of
Speaker 1: improvisational practice makes listening a muscle out of that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Can you give me some examples of some people you've
Speaker 1: consulted for where you've seen like like a real change,
Speaker 1: so you can like point to say, like when we
Speaker 1: went to this company, they were all boring, like on
Speaker 1: affable people. And then yeah, so working with ge don't
Speaker 1: mention any don't miss but I'm saying, can you think
Speaker 1: of an example of late No, this is a really
Speaker 1: fun sort of example and it's a little bit different,
Speaker 1: but I think it's cool. Our friend mcknapier, who is
Speaker 1: a the founder of the Alliance Theater, a long time artist,
Speaker 1: a consultant the Second City, and he led a lot
Speaker 1: of our early corporate classes. And Mick was in this
Speaker 1: leadership workshop and it was all like twenty major they're
Speaker 1: all CEOs, and there was one Indian gentleman who had
Speaker 1: lived in the United States for years, but he talked
Speaker 1: with a fairly thick accent, and Mick could tell that
Speaker 1: he was having a little bit of trouble in the
Speaker 1: beginning sort of moments, and so he made a point
Speaker 1: of focusing the other people in the class to continually
Speaker 1: help him. This one. He found ways of sort of
Speaker 1: manipulating environment and to encourage ensemble, encourage ensemble on the
Speaker 1: group and towards the end of the workshop and it
Speaker 1: started going great. It was going great. They kind of
Speaker 1: were in a circle talking and this guy was like
Speaker 1: a heavy hitter, real successful guy. He welled up in
Speaker 1: his eyes and he basically said, I can't even tell you.
Speaker 1: I always feel a disadvantage because this isn't my first language,
Speaker 1: and I know I speak with this accent. And I
Speaker 1: looked around and every one of you supported me, and
Speaker 1: then all these other people like start welling up, and
Speaker 1: the client, like these hardened businessmen all had this moment
Speaker 1: of like I wanted to help you because I could
Speaker 1: see how smart you were and you needed to get
Speaker 1: these ideas out and it was my job to do that.
Speaker 1: And I don't want you to feel like you're anything
Speaker 1: less than the brilliant person you are. And that is
Speaker 1: like one of those magic moments where you're like, that's
Speaker 1: as good as it gets. Like if that you know
Speaker 1: you have one of those every year, You're fine because
Speaker 1: you made major breakthroughs, especially with individuals who are in
Speaker 1: a place of power, who hopefully then can bring that
Speaker 1: to their business. I was talking to Simon Sinek this
Speaker 1: week and we had a really interesting conversation around the
Speaker 1: fact that the problem with so many leaders mostly because
Speaker 1: they're not trained to be leaders. Right, So you take
Speaker 1: someone who's really good at their job, and then you're like,
Speaker 1: you are so good a job, we're going to make
Speaker 1: you a leader, which then means you can't do your
Speaker 1: job anymore, you know, which is a paradox. But really
Speaker 1: great leaders then know how to shift their mastery to
Speaker 1: a new place, which is to unlock the leadership and
Speaker 1: brilliant of others. And the minute that you realize that
Speaker 1: when you move to that leadership position is no longer
Speaker 1: your job to do the job. It is your job
Speaker 1: to get everyone else to do the job and do
Speaker 1: it well. That is a place where you can really thrive.
Speaker 1: And there are certain other people who are good at that,
Speaker 1: and guess what, they shouldn't be those kinds of leaders.
Speaker 1: They should just go back to doing their very very
Speaker 1: good job. Does this relate it all to your idea
Speaker 1: of principle of improbably follow the follower? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's related, right, Yeah, it's one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: You know the idea that when you're leading through your
Speaker 1: own brains, you're not co creating, right you are? Oh,
Speaker 1: I have an idea I'm going to make this thing happen,
Speaker 1: and then everybody's job is to follow me. The minute
Speaker 1: that you do this thing of follow the follower, which
Speaker 1: is very scary when we do it as an exercise.
Speaker 1: You know, you have two people doing a mirror exercise
Speaker 1: of each other, and you say no, one leads, everyone follows,
Speaker 1: and immediately everyone in the room says, but then nothing
Speaker 1: will happen. He said, no, just follow the follower, follow
Speaker 1: the person that you see what happens if you assume
Speaker 1: that they're leading. And when that happens, something really magical
Speaker 1: shows up, which is that something is already happening. We
Speaker 1: don't have to push it, We don't have to make
Speaker 1: it happen then, and everyone's involved. It is not the
Speaker 1: win of this magical leader who is doing it all
Speaker 1: by themselves. It is the win of the entire group.
Speaker 1: And from a management in business context, this is simply
Speaker 1: the exercise itself is a physical manifestation of Peter Drucker's theories.
Speaker 1: You know that the hierarchy in business no longer works,
Speaker 1: and it really never worked. But the idea of flat
Speaker 1: organizational structures of knowledge workers stuff that was, you know,
Speaker 1: taking root in the beginning part of the twenty century.
Speaker 1: That's where it's tied to. So there's a very practical
Speaker 1: application with regard to productivity and leadership in building future
Speaker 1: leaders Absolutely. What do you do though, with people who
Speaker 1: come into Second City who just have huge egos, like
Speaker 1: it must be hard for them as an adjustment process, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean yes, yes, yes, but like anywhere, so that
Speaker 1: that's the thing is when they take the classes, they
Speaker 1: cannot succeed unless they give up on that ego, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they literally will fail the level and not
Speaker 1: you know, paradoxical, that's so paradoxical. Yeah, So you need
Speaker 1: an intense ego to be the person who says I'm
Speaker 1: going to get up and with no script and be
Speaker 1: immune using with other people. But you also have to
Speaker 1: sublimate your need to be right, your need to control things.
Speaker 1: And there there unlocks the secret of why Second City
Speaker 1: talent has been so amazing for years. It is exactly
Speaker 1: that is getting incredibly gifted people in a room and
Speaker 1: learning the skill of seating control as a way to
Speaker 1: enhance the power of the group. And this is this
Speaker 1: is what what I always tell people is is Second
Speaker 1: City has one of the most affirming, ensemble oriented processes
Speaker 1: that you'll ever find in any theatrical art form. And
Speaker 1: all we do is create individual stars. I love that.
Speaker 1: I just so you show that that model works. Yes,
Speaker 1: tell me what doesn't work about it? I mean it
Speaker 1: worked from Mike Nichols and Elaine May to Keegan Michael
Speaker 1: Key and Jason Sedeikis and Tina Fey and Steve kra Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it might not make them a great stand up median,
Speaker 1: but it makes them a great improv artist. Well, And
Speaker 1: I mean what it does is when you think about
Speaker 1: it's not just that we're producing. People are working in
Speaker 1: the industry like Second City trained people own late night
Speaker 1: television in America, right, I mean that's Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers,
Speaker 1: the cast of Saturday Night Live. I mean it is,
Speaker 1: you know that that is And then down the line, right,
Speaker 1: these are titans of the industry and they have been
Speaker 1: for decades. More and more people are learning the art
Speaker 1: form and applying it to the industry. That's great. We
Speaker 1: share that with the improve Oalympics of the world and
Speaker 1: the annoying theaters and the upright citizens. We're good. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're all playing in that in that wonderful pool. My
Speaker 1: contention is at Second City because we start with all
Speaker 1: the improv principles, but we do turn it into a
Speaker 1: very commercial product. That's the difference that we've got is
Speaker 1: the sort of professionalization of it. The commercialization of it
Speaker 1: gives those performers an incredible boost because they can't just
Speaker 1: go do this stuff in front of their fifty friends
Speaker 1: who paid five bucks. They've got to do it in
Speaker 1: front of you know, Nancy from Naperville, who you know
Speaker 1: and and well. And what comes out of that then
Speaker 1: is that when you let go of your idea of
Speaker 1: what should be funny and you discover what is funny,
Speaker 1: you discuss through following the follow with from other members
Speaker 1: of your ensemble, but also following the follower with the audience. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that you discussed, so that rather than and it also,
Speaker 1: I think maybe is the reason why improvisers are certainly
Speaker 1: marginally more mentally healthy than stand ups is that you're
Speaker 1: not forcing yourself to come up with the thing, discovering
Speaker 1: it in this moment with everybody else. That's very positive
Speaker 1: psychology as well. Yeah, all those findings of you, well,
Speaker 1: what we know produces well being in life. So I
Speaker 1: want to end on this of what makes great comedy
Speaker 1: great comedy? I read one of the way well okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a whole other podcast discussion, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to table that. But and I was actually going
Speaker 1: to ask earlier if there are a lot of political
Speaker 1: themed things going on at Second City right these days? Completely.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've co created a show with Slate magazine,
Speaker 1: we have another political review that's out, we're writing a
Speaker 1: new show right now. But you know, we always have
Speaker 1: to be careful when we're writing a show during an
Speaker 1: election because we don't know what's going to happen. We
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen, especially in this one,
Speaker 1: so we tend to look for the larger themes. So
Speaker 1: while everyone else is dealing with joke of the moment,
Speaker 1: that's never what's going to end up in the Second
Speaker 1: City show. It's going to be the broader thing of like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing that was really going on for the
Speaker 1: last year. But one of you guys said that great
Speaker 1: comedy involves three things creativity, communication, and collaboration. Didn't one
Speaker 1: of you say that is the improvisation does? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: comedy has got more stuff. Comedy okay, so yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's great comedy. And then when you talk about so
Speaker 1: I think that improv, like as you guys talked throughout
Speaker 1: this whole interview today, it really combines those three things. Yes, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, improv and comedy are two different things,
Speaker 1: and they are connected of course in our world. But
Speaker 1: what improv is a practice, and it is a there
Speaker 1: is a tetagogy. It's a well, it's a creativity practice.
Speaker 1: It is a communication practice that reveals truth that creates comedy.
Speaker 1: So improvisation often creates comedy, but improvisation by itself is
Speaker 1: not inherently comedic, but it creates comedy because it connects
Speaker 1: to those things that are true about comedy, authenticity, recognition,
Speaker 1: and shared social world. Boom. I want to end right there. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for the work you do
Speaker 1: and for showing me so clearly how important improv it is.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: with doctor Scott Barak Kaufman. I hope you found this
Speaker 1: episode just as thought per booking and interesting as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or hear past episodes you can visit the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast dot com.