DOING THE SPLITS:
HOW LOOKING AT "ROLES" Might have you stretching and straddling
JENNIFER KAYLE, NOVEMBER 2019
Role: the one who writes first
Role: the one who waits 24 hours to respond
Role: the one who says NOW
Role: the one who bridges the two sides, two options, two locations, two perspectives, two…
Role: the one who pushes – Yes, but… I mean – Yes, AND!
Role: the one who observes, reports, reflects back, zooms-out.
Role: the one who zooms-in, catches detail, comes close, sits with the intimate stuff, sits with YOU
“Many hats” is a phrase we often use to talk about playing multiple roles, perhaps reflecting a variety of personas, relationships and responsibilities that we take on. I wonder if the very concept of roles reveals something essential about boundaries - needing to establish them or needing to cross them, and using these named identities to make it more clear or to calibrate expectations. Though our society doesn’t work like this anymore, there was a time when the guy coming toward you on the block wore that specific hat and you knew who he was and how this exchange was about to go down.
In an improvisation ensemble, the roles we might play in personal life are sure to show up in the workings of co-creation. After 30 years of practice, I have also observed the opposite, that roles you test in the creative context of improvisation can support versatility and growth in life beyond the studio. It’s an interesting but also useful exercise to examine the roles you typically play in both contexts.
One of the many moments when I learned about the power of roles through improvisation was at WIPI: Work in the Performance of Improvisation, a yearly professional workshop hosted at Bennington College in the summers, co-taught by our mentors (Penny Campbell, Terry Creach, Peter Schmitz, Susan Sgorbati). And now I can’t honestly remember who presented this idea for us to practice, but we were to break into trios and assign ourselves one of three roles: Initiator / Responder / Framer. And after a time, stay with your trio, keep going with the work you’re creating, but switch roles to the next on the list. Oh my gawd…The constraint! The healthy confusion and confounding! Oh nothing… just three little roles that are so formal and simple and easy to… WHAT?! I was immediately confronted with my own zones of comfort and discomfort, zones of knowledge and ignorance, familiar and unfamiliar. For me, this turned out to be a serious work-out in compositional muscle-building, but also, gave much reason for personal reflection. Pleaaazze, TRY IT! And have your senses tuned to detect all the ways that you are facing yourself, at the same time that you are building knowledge as an improviser.
Also, some questions you could consider:
Is a role something you put on like a coat? Like a bad actor, an imposter? Or is a role more like something you repeatedly do – and therefore something you ARE, at least in the functional sense? I think both are possible ways to engage with the idea. Might be important to ask if the roles you play, both inside and outside the ensemble are just an ill-fitting hat you’re wearing, or if you’ve drunk the kool-aid, digested it, and now this role is emanating from your very cells. As I write that, I immediately think to myself, neither of those is inherently good or bad (the superficial or the integrated) in this case because it would depend entirely on the role and its relationship to who you think you are, or want to be, and what’s required of you in the moment. How you think-through authenticity as a practical virtue would affect your stance on roles, and how best to play them.
In an ensemble, we’re concerned with authenticity, but also with expanding our range – the variety and breadth of artistic choices we could materialize in the creative process. On this point, it can be important to find ways to identify and name the roles you habitually play. Could you also name alternatives or opposites, and test them out?
When I led a session at a recent MICI workshop (Movement Intensive in Compositional Improvisation), I focused on the idea of roles partly to meditate on the freedoms and constraints we often feel in our communities. Are there roles for each to play? Do we feel that there is a space in the group, the process, the room, for the way you want to be in it? Is there anything about the idea of “role” that can help you find your place in it, a way to serve your own necessities and also those of the group endeavor? This is another multi-context issue that can be considered through ensemble improvisation practice… How can our communities allow space for lots of different kinds of people? Oh, and still make something together…oh, and still have civil and respectful process…oh, and keep expanding how much difference (or disagreement or conflict) you can accept and still feel that you, too, belong.
In addition to experiencing the Initiator/Responder/Framer structure, some roles I proposed for practice included:
Joiner(what do you want to support with your presence?)
Rebel / Agitator(stir things up - go against something)
Witness (IN or OUT: abstain and stay “out,” or perform the role of witness “in”)
Designer(be the one who tends to the form and arrangement and order of things)
Narrator (be the one who tells the story of what’s happening, verbally or otherwise)
Historian(be the one who keeps track and remembers)
Negotiator/Mediator(be the one who sees the two sides and creates a way to bridge)
Diplomat(be the one who represents, who stands on ceremony, or knows all the rules)
Tourist(be the one who visits, who thinks new experiences are fun)
I wanted to know if exploring one of these identities would help each person to find a way in, but also, find a way to test out new perspectives. Not perspectives that are new to the world, just new to YOUR world. And yet, the fascinating and complicated thing about working on your capacities in the context of an ensemble, is that you are finding out about yourself, and finding your place in a group. You are expanding your range, but also “referring to one another,” being “mutually responsive,” and cultivating “plural-self-awareness” – all phrases from theories on the nature of actions that are so-called COLLECTIVE.How do we consciously and intentionally engage in this collective context, and not only contribute to it, but use it as an opportunity to become more capable and flexible as individuals? Empowering ourselves in an ensemble, we can “do the splits” with a different kind of virtuosity; we can straddle many roles and contexts, practice choosing and testing different ways of being, and find out how to play our best [fill-in-blank, put-on hat] in each situation.
Role: the one who waits 24 hours to respond
Role: the one who says NOW
Role: the one who bridges the two sides, two options, two locations, two perspectives, two…
Role: the one who pushes – Yes, but… I mean – Yes, AND!
Role: the one who observes, reports, reflects back, zooms-out.
Role: the one who zooms-in, catches detail, comes close, sits with the intimate stuff, sits with YOU
“Many hats” is a phrase we often use to talk about playing multiple roles, perhaps reflecting a variety of personas, relationships and responsibilities that we take on. I wonder if the very concept of roles reveals something essential about boundaries - needing to establish them or needing to cross them, and using these named identities to make it more clear or to calibrate expectations. Though our society doesn’t work like this anymore, there was a time when the guy coming toward you on the block wore that specific hat and you knew who he was and how this exchange was about to go down.
In an improvisation ensemble, the roles we might play in personal life are sure to show up in the workings of co-creation. After 30 years of practice, I have also observed the opposite, that roles you test in the creative context of improvisation can support versatility and growth in life beyond the studio. It’s an interesting but also useful exercise to examine the roles you typically play in both contexts.
One of the many moments when I learned about the power of roles through improvisation was at WIPI: Work in the Performance of Improvisation, a yearly professional workshop hosted at Bennington College in the summers, co-taught by our mentors (Penny Campbell, Terry Creach, Peter Schmitz, Susan Sgorbati). And now I can’t honestly remember who presented this idea for us to practice, but we were to break into trios and assign ourselves one of three roles: Initiator / Responder / Framer. And after a time, stay with your trio, keep going with the work you’re creating, but switch roles to the next on the list. Oh my gawd…The constraint! The healthy confusion and confounding! Oh nothing… just three little roles that are so formal and simple and easy to… WHAT?! I was immediately confronted with my own zones of comfort and discomfort, zones of knowledge and ignorance, familiar and unfamiliar. For me, this turned out to be a serious work-out in compositional muscle-building, but also, gave much reason for personal reflection. Pleaaazze, TRY IT! And have your senses tuned to detect all the ways that you are facing yourself, at the same time that you are building knowledge as an improviser.
Also, some questions you could consider:
Is a role something you put on like a coat? Like a bad actor, an imposter? Or is a role more like something you repeatedly do – and therefore something you ARE, at least in the functional sense? I think both are possible ways to engage with the idea. Might be important to ask if the roles you play, both inside and outside the ensemble are just an ill-fitting hat you’re wearing, or if you’ve drunk the kool-aid, digested it, and now this role is emanating from your very cells. As I write that, I immediately think to myself, neither of those is inherently good or bad (the superficial or the integrated) in this case because it would depend entirely on the role and its relationship to who you think you are, or want to be, and what’s required of you in the moment. How you think-through authenticity as a practical virtue would affect your stance on roles, and how best to play them.
In an ensemble, we’re concerned with authenticity, but also with expanding our range – the variety and breadth of artistic choices we could materialize in the creative process. On this point, it can be important to find ways to identify and name the roles you habitually play. Could you also name alternatives or opposites, and test them out?
When I led a session at a recent MICI workshop (Movement Intensive in Compositional Improvisation), I focused on the idea of roles partly to meditate on the freedoms and constraints we often feel in our communities. Are there roles for each to play? Do we feel that there is a space in the group, the process, the room, for the way you want to be in it? Is there anything about the idea of “role” that can help you find your place in it, a way to serve your own necessities and also those of the group endeavor? This is another multi-context issue that can be considered through ensemble improvisation practice… How can our communities allow space for lots of different kinds of people? Oh, and still make something together…oh, and still have civil and respectful process…oh, and keep expanding how much difference (or disagreement or conflict) you can accept and still feel that you, too, belong.
In addition to experiencing the Initiator/Responder/Framer structure, some roles I proposed for practice included:
Joiner(what do you want to support with your presence?)
Rebel / Agitator(stir things up - go against something)
Witness (IN or OUT: abstain and stay “out,” or perform the role of witness “in”)
Designer(be the one who tends to the form and arrangement and order of things)
Narrator (be the one who tells the story of what’s happening, verbally or otherwise)
Historian(be the one who keeps track and remembers)
Negotiator/Mediator(be the one who sees the two sides and creates a way to bridge)
Diplomat(be the one who represents, who stands on ceremony, or knows all the rules)
Tourist(be the one who visits, who thinks new experiences are fun)
I wanted to know if exploring one of these identities would help each person to find a way in, but also, find a way to test out new perspectives. Not perspectives that are new to the world, just new to YOUR world. And yet, the fascinating and complicated thing about working on your capacities in the context of an ensemble, is that you are finding out about yourself, and finding your place in a group. You are expanding your range, but also “referring to one another,” being “mutually responsive,” and cultivating “plural-self-awareness” – all phrases from theories on the nature of actions that are so-called COLLECTIVE.How do we consciously and intentionally engage in this collective context, and not only contribute to it, but use it as an opportunity to become more capable and flexible as individuals? Empowering ourselves in an ensemble, we can “do the splits” with a different kind of virtuosity; we can straddle many roles and contexts, practice choosing and testing different ways of being, and find out how to play our best [fill-in-blank, put-on hat] in each situation.